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Genre: Crime | Drama | Mystery | Thriller
Director: Gaspar Noé
Imdb (7.3 Rating)

I am excited about what’s going on in recent Philippine cinema. I have not been this excited about our cinema for the longest time. Let’s see… since Lino Brocka’s Kapit Sa Patalim (1983), Ishmael Bernal’s Himala (1982), Marilou Diaz-Abaya’s Karnal (1983), Mike de Leon’s Sister Stella L. (1984), Peque Gallaga’s Unfaithful Wife (1986), and Chito Roño’s Itanong Mo Sa Buwan (1988). After the People’s Power Revolution of 1986, and with the passing of Lino Brocka in 1991, Philippine cinema went into a deep coma that lasted two decades. Movie-making did not slacken–next to Bollywood and Hong Kong, the Philippines has perhaps the most vibrant movie industry in Asia–but directors stopped being auteurs, and produced stylistically generic, unengaging work, from cheap horror/fantasy flicks to belabored melodramas, abandoning the visceral and transgressive qualities of their breakthrough films.

Filmmakers still routinely blame stringent censorship, but, like it or not, the Marcos dictatorship was good to Philippine cinema–whether due to the urgency of the times, or the patronage of its delusional First Lady. Lino Brocka’s most intense social-realist films (Insiang, Jaguar, Bona) were made during the height of Martial Law, while Mike de Leon’s Batch ‘81, an allegorical indictment of fascism, was released just after its lifting. De Leon, the last auteur of that generation left standing has also been unproductive (perhaps because he remains uncompromising), turning out his last feature, a black-comedy on Jose Rizal, in 2000. Bayaning Third World, however, remains the most sophisticated take on the national hero’s biography that came out of the nationalistic craze of the Philippine Centennial. (It is also pee-in-your-pants funny!)

Raymond Red made interesting historical films in the ’90s (Bayani, Sakay), but these stiff period pieces sink with their studied gravitas compared to Peque Gallaga’s earlier, more violent and voluptuous take on Philippine history (Oro, Plata, Mata, Virgin Forest). Red did give us, for the record, our first win at Cannes for his short Anino (2002). Among the last Filipino arthouse films I saw were Lav Diaz’s 5-hour bladder-challenge Batang Westside (2001) during its Cinemanila premier, and Ramona Diaz’s Imelda (2003) after its eponymous subject’s court injunctions were lifted. In the US, I essentially remained out of the loop, and nursed my nostalgia for the ’80s golden age by renting Cinefilipino DVDs at Netflix.

Then came Brillante Mendoza’s contentious win at Cannes as best director for Kinatay. Roger Ebert called it an “unbearable experience” that forces him “to apologize to Vincent Gallo for calling The Brown Bunny the worst film in the history of the Cannes Film Festival”. I myself was skeptical, knowing most movies we send off to these film fests are about Manila’s seedy sex trade, corrupt cops, and abject poverty in the slums. The film is indeed about a junkie prostitute, tortured and butchered (kinatay) by cops on the take, and the tabloid title does promise sensational gore. Yes, these are Philippine realities, but these are not all of Philippine reality. When would we produce such masters as Iran’s Majid Majidi (Children of Heaven, Color of Paradise, Baran, The Willow Tree) who depicts the condition of his people so lovingly in stories told with such delicacy?

Other critics were not as ruthless, but nonetheless reserved in their praises:

This rich vision of so much gloom, dim suspension, no action, no spectacle, no drama is a beautiful thing, something out of an avant-garde film dedicated to textures, subtle shifts in color, and spatial uncertainty of a sunless world… [The] rest of the movie is given as a handheld dedication to space—there, a porno theater, here, a sinister, anonymous police van traveling great distances at night for the purpose of terrible things, and later a torture house. But it is a space of obscurity, of uncertainty in a morally certain situation, and so the space, covered and run over again and again by the roving camera, takes on an abstraction nearly outside the story itself.

(from Daniel Kasman, The Auteurs)

Kinatay… is infinitely darker [than Serbis] but an equally strong depiction of modern-day life in the former American colony that some are comparing to Gasper [sic] Noe’s Irreversible… Mendoza is no gore-hound. He’s more serious than Noe. This is a fiercely moral and horribly unforgettable denunciation of societal corruption.

(from Sukhdev Sandhu, Telegraph.co.uk)

The split opinion makes me want to see the film even more. Comparison with Noe’s Irreversible is not such a scarlet letter. I get that movie. Yes, there was shocking violence as the whirling camera probed into depths of human baseness, and, yes, it’s hard to sit through the rape scene, but as the film progressed/regressed, as the photography settled, became more fluid, the earlier repugnance was redeemed by a most tender revelation at the end/beginning. I don’t think I have the stomach to watch this film again, but I will not dismiss its solid ideas, and the directorial decisions (if not taste) in its execution.

I digress. Mendoza’s win, and the critical attention Kinatay elicited, turned out to be just the tip of an iceberg that has been building up since 2006. All at once, a bewildering constellation of new Filipino filmmakers, with a growing body of work–none of which I have seen–came to my attention: Aureus Solito (Pisay, Ang pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros), Adolfo Alix (Manila, Adela, Batanes, Tambolista, Donsol), Pepe Diokno (Engkwentro), G.B. Sampedro (Astig–Mga Batang Kalye), Ralston Jover (Bakal Boys), Sherad Anthony Sanchez (Imburnal), John Torres (Todo todo teros), Jim Libiran (Tribu), Khavn de la Cruz (Maynila sa mga pangil ng dilim), and Raya Martin (Manila, Independencia, Now Showing, Autohystoria, Maicling pelicula nañg ysañg Indio Nacional). And it does not stop there: the international film festival circuit has also been enamored with this “new wave” in Filipino cinema, with special focus on these new crop of mostly young filmmakers, and retrospectives of past master Lino Brocka. Even Joey Gosiengfiao was honored with a retrospective in Paris–as the Filipino John Waters–with the showing of his camp classic Temptation Island.

Today, the 49-year-old Mr. Mendoza is the brightest star in what French film director and scriptwriter Rebecca Zlotowski calls the “constellation” of Philippines art-house film. Following Mr. Mendoza is a diverse band of mostly younger directors, ranging in age from early 20s to early 50s, who often collaborate and have helped confirm their country’s status as a darling of the international festival circuit over the past few years… “Despite the youth of most of these directors, they are making very mature cerebral radical films,” says Ms. Zlotowski… “The common denominator of all these films is their attention to social problems such as homosexuality, adoption, delinquency and poverty and their documentary style.” The Filipino filmmakers, she adds, “are actually contributing to the ongoing breaking down of the distinction between documentary and fiction” that is occuring in movies globally.

(from Emma-Kate Symons, Wall Street Journal)

Filipinos are known not to shy away from reality. And the Filipino reality is relaxed, accommodating, laidback… The Filipino filmmakers are not afraid of breaking rules, they are not restricted by the fear of not finding funding or a showplace for their work; they are in the fortunate position of being given the opportunity to give free rein to their imagination. That perhaps is what makes their films so original…

(from Aruna Vasudev, The Asian Angle)

This renaissance of sorts in Philippine cinema has been attributed to the new digital technology which at least solved the technical hurdles of filmmaking. “[Digital] technology means anyone can shoot a film,” says Raymond Red, who downplays the “revolution in Philippine cinema” as just a “revolution about technology” (from France 24 News). I disagree. In science, enabling technologies usher in scientific revolutions as much as groundbreaking theories, e.g., the invention of scanning probe microscopes in the 1980s paved the way for the current boom in nanotechnology, which was actually first described by Feynman as far back as the 1960s. As the prolific output within the last few years shows–and confirmed at least by the positive response from the international festival crowds–there is talent, craft, and vision latent in Philippine cinema that has been somewhat loosened by the genie of digital technology.

I was particularly impressed after watching a video interview of Raya Martin at the IX Festival Internacional de Cine de Las Palmas. Martin, who is being compared to Canada’s Guy Maddin (e.g., The Heart of the World), was very articulate about his filming process and theory, and had a profound grasp of Philippine film history. How refreshing to witness a very cerebral Filipino filmmaker (since Mike de Leon), which is almost a contradiction in terms, given the hysterical melodramas repeatedly shoved at us as fodder.

Cinema Scope: Why make a silent film, now?

Raya Martin: I just told someone how I become really excited whenever I see actualities and silent films. I think a silent film is how I really see cinema. It’s an exact transportation of time and space, and that there’s something about the purity of images, to see just the images themselves, moving, and understanding that what you’re seeing was a real space in a real time. In this essence it could be an issue of novelty, I’m thinking. We’re in an age where everyone’s in retrospection, including my generation, maybe because there’s no “looking forward” anymore. The old is the new new. I did this film as a “kid” with a mix of natural and illogical motivations: a craving for magic that I get from silent films, curiosity for information, interest in learning…

(from Mark Peranson, Cinema Scope)

In his website, Khavn de la Cruz describes himself cockily as “a very outspoken, experimental film maker with an unstoppable desire to explore and cross boundaries. Considered as the father of Philippine digital filmmaking, he is the most productive film maker in the Philippines and probably also far beyond.” There may be truth to those words. His film Maynila sa mga pangil ng dilim quotes and deconstructs two Brocka masterpieces Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag and Orapronobis. In an ironic turn, the film stars Bembol Roco who also played the central characters in the referenced Brocka films: as Julio Madiaga, a helpless victim of social injustice, and as Major Kontra, a vicious vigilante killer.

These examples signal a significant break with the past when cinema served as a mirror of social realities (under the Marcos regime) with the aim of inspiring people into political activism. There was no coy theorizing, reflexivity, technical playfulness, pastiche; the message was clear, and it was dead serious. Modern versus postmodern. Perhaps these are the signs of the times. Raymond Red hit the nail on the head by asking: now that anybody can make films, the next question to ask is “why [these young filmmakers] are making movies… [and] for whom are they making them”? These indie films still have a limited audience back home–partly due to draconian censorship, deficiency of commercial distribution, and, more importantly, lack of popular appeal. The last is the most crucial aspect; without an audience, there is no show. Once, while chatting up a video store clerk in Gainesville, we lamented the fact that Satyajit Ray–a staple of arthouse video stores–is said to be more well known internationally than in his native India, where people prefer the formulaic Bollywood genres. There’s nothing remotely opaque nor intimidating about Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali–it’s a poetic, emotionally affecting film–but there’s still no song and dance.

Lino Brocka was a great film director because he understood his audience. Even his canonical “auteur” films are accessible because of their directness and realism, and their emotional intensity. Art is not foregrounded, it is hidden in plain sight. Despite his acclaim with film festival audiences, he did not shrink at making popular melodramas at home. He always risked sentimentality. His love for the Filipinos–especially the poor and the victims of social injustice–always shines through his films. He once famously said: “I’m not interested in making the Great Filipino Cinema; I am interested in making the Great Filipino Audience.” If, as recent developments seem to show, Great Filipino Cinema has arrived, I hope the Great Filipino Audience is not far behind.

Sources and Related Links:

Filipinos at Film Festivals
• Cannes
• Los Angeles
• Paris
• Pusan
• Tokyo
• Venice
• Vienna

Cinemalaya
• The Asian Angle
• Hollywood Reporter
• Bankok Post

Our relation to art is mostly an ambiguous one. There are those of us expecting a casual relation with music and movies or any other art form wanting only to be entertained. Some others look for merely daring stuff with an edge of craziness just enough to maintain your mental balance. Whereas Shock value is the potential of an image, text or other form of communication to provoke a reaction of disgust, shock, anger, fear or similar negative emotion. Shock value is often used in the world of TV commercials in order to gain attention for the product or service in offer. For example, the Benetton Group is infamously known for using shocking material in their ads such as two horses, one black, one white, having sex as if to say sex is blind, and so should we. Such shock value can be seen in Gaspar Noé’s movie Irréversible. It is not an easy movie to watch but as an examination of what people are capable and how violence can come from nowhere and from the unexpected. The backward structure takes what is essentially a dull revenge story and turns it on its ear as we are forced to really examine how things get out of hand very quickly and what people will do when pushed to the limit. Gaspar Noe uses low frequency sound to create nausea, headaches, and disorientation in the beginning and uses it again here to make the viewer feel sick after the mood changes dramatically. Such effects are amplified by Daft punk’s frontman Thomas Bangalter who made the score of Irréversible. That soundtrack for Irreversible is a serious, moody and broody piece of work. Bangalter does an absolutely incredible job with this soundtrack in conveying the starkly contrasting emotions and realities portrayed in the film. This record runs the gamut from dark, deeply disturbing ambient tracks, to fast-driving, funky french house beats. My favorite is Rectum a sparse piece of eerie ambiant and sparse music that is quitte effective with is dark climax. I might be alone in my clan but I actually liked Irréversible, I found it to be obnoxious for some moments but also very challenging and daring. After all, isn’t what art is somewhat supposed to do ?

Thomas Bangalter – Rectum [OST Irréversible - 2003]

I’ve been thinking a lot about the mental process of sex-offenders, particularly rapists. It gets tiresome, to hear about someone who knows somebody who was raped (we rarely have acquaintances that would be the actual offenders, it seems their friends keep to themselves)… I say so with both frustration and resignation (Guatemala is a country in which salleged ex offenders either get a slap on the wrist, or are stoned or burned alive). When thinking of the proper image or video to accompany this post, I couldn’t help but think of Irreversible, that disturbing Gaspar Noé film. A random google image search resulted in this very powerful and explicit poster:

I also thought of, but couldn’t embed, that also powerful scene from Pulp Fiction. Males standing up from other pain-inflicting males… it’s what (in part) I want to write about. Like the title to this entry states, it’s not welcoming territory to tread, but a necessary for me.

When issue campaigns go for the shock effect, all kinds of dust is raised and the debate never ends whether the approach helps or hurts in “reframing the debate.” My hunch is that a prolonged onslaught of these tactics, provided everything else is in its place, works quite well. Controversies of particular tactics are long forgotten if issue trends are on your side and you ride the wave without breaking it. The story of what happened to the U.S. public opinion on tobacco in the last two decades is an example.   

From the frontlines of the battle for the moral real estate in your head, here are a few issue campaigns, via AdFreak, that push the envelope. Three are supposed to give you ulcers and are what I call Gaspar advocacy; one reaffirms whatever needs it whenever you end up watching it.  

HIT THE BITCH – Denmark
What a storm caused. That the execution could be better and or that this or that could have been done differently, all that aside, I’m not sure this is quite the end verdict on a campaign that got many talking (just watch a guy actually use the site):

Finding new, exciting, and creative ways to tell men that they shouldn’t hit women is tough, ain’t it? Which is probably why a Danish anti-domestic violence group came up with this ill-advised “Hit The Bitch” web campaign, in which users are encouraged to repeatedly punch a woman’s face until, eventually, they’re admonished for being “100% Idiot.” Really? “Idiot” is the best anti-domestic violence finger-wagging insult they could come up with? And really, what’s the point? To make the user feel guilty for punching this innocent woman’s face, just to see what would happen? I didn’t go to Advertising Douchebag University, but something tells me that the first thing you learn there is that if an ad campaign is at all confusing, you have totally effing failed.

CHILD ABUSE – Italy
Case De Manor is both a home for and an advocacy organization for sexually abused children. On their behalf, McCann Milan is behind a new campaign that stood out with ads like this and a classic of a PSA ad, The Burden (2009):

SEXUAL ABUSE – Germany
Along the same lines, maybe even more brutal, comes this: a German organization that works with sexually abused children, Dunkelziffer, commissioned this ad from Red Rabbit. Creepily well done. Full credits here.

FATHER INVOLVEMENT – United States
This is a classic by now. You should know Ad Council:

This isn’t going to be one of my infamous one-line film reviews because this is a film I want to talk  to you guys about a bit.

A lot of you may not of heard of Irreversible.

I love films. I love small indie films as much as I am a sucker for a big, popcorn blockbuster. I’d heard quite a few things about Irreversible a few years ago when it was released and it was then I first saw it and it was last night that I watched it for a second time.

The film is quite simply the most astonishing, shocking and brutal piece of film I’ve ever seen. It takes its name from the fact the film is played in reverse (you start with the last scene, finish with the first) and is about 3 friends – Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassel and Albert Dupontel - and how quickly an idyllic life can be destroyed by violence.  It’s the brilliance of how director, Gaspar Noe shoots and edits the film that makes it hit home. The first 25 minutes are a brutal assault on your senses – the scene in a gay fetish club and it’s use of high-frequency sound in the overall mix as well as the spinning camera is the most convincing representation of drug and alcohol high that I think cinema has ever created and the act of violence itself is horrific and totally realistic. I’ve seen enough films in my time to not shock easily, in fact it’s a very rare occurence. The fire-extinguisher beat down shocked me to the core of my being as I had no idea it was coming (I’m purposely not discussing the films biggest controversy so that anyone who does decide to watch on account of this post will not know that’s coming either).

The genius of the film is the reverse chronological order it’s shot. 13 scenes in total force us to witness the violence first and then the course of events that lead toward it. You see an act of violence, but you don’t know why it’s happening. Only later do you discover why things have unfolded in this manner and only then do you understand it’s an act of vengeance.  It’s the most affecting piece of film I’ve watched and I can’t get it out of my head. I suggest anyone reading this find it (It’s fairly easy to find on most free-view movie sites or Amazon) and watch it because, as brutal as it may be, it’s a brilliant depiction of just how easy it is for things to be destroyed. The motif at the end of the film (or the start depending on how you see it) is “Time destroys everything” . It caused people to vomit, pass-out and leave movie theaters when it was shown at the Festival de Cannes in 2002 and even sparked riots. It’s not for the faint-hearted but it’s worth getting through (which isn’t easy) because it’s rare you’ll see something as frighteningly honest about the extents human beings can go and the despicable things that even the most placid are capable of. For me this film isn’t shock for shock’s sake, it doesn’t glorify violence. It shows it in the most brutal and horrifying manner and acts as a deterrent in some respects. If you’ve ever had a movie-fantasy about beating someone up, this will have the opposite effect. It’s essential cinema  – raw, visceral and intense. Irreversible is a brilliant piece of film-making and should be seen because of its sheer power.

Below is the clip of the film’s murder. (Do NOT watch this if you are easily offended by violence and disturbing images)

Vez ou outra nos deparamos com filmes que até fazem muito sucesso, ou repercutem de alguma forma, mas que por acaso a gente só consegue analisar bem depois. Irreversível é um longa-metragem de 99 minutos que transcorre de trás pra frente, isso mesmo, para quem não viu, o filme começa com o final e vai se desenrolando até o começo. Estranho? Espere até vê-lo por inteiro, nada pode ser mais estranho que esse filme como um todo. Repleto de violência, ganhou vários prêmios e chocou o público na competição do Festival de Cannes em 2002. De início (ou melhor, final) somos apresentados a uma cena de um crime brutal, e logo após vai regredindo até o início dos fatos com cenas doces e amorosas. Poderia se chamar de final feliz, mesmo quando se trata do começo?

Escrito e dirigido por Gaspar Noé. Nos papéis principais temos o casal na vida real Monica Bellucci e Vincent Cassel, que interpretam bem o casal do filme. Ainda no elenco vemos Albert Dunpontel, Philippe Nahon e Jo Prestia. Os responsáveis pelo trabalho (atores, diretor, roteiristas, etc.) já se encontraram na produção de outros trabalhos, isso contribui para que haja sintonia. E Bellucci já é conhecida do público, principalmente por seu papel de Persephone  nas seqüências de Matrix. Outro detalhe é que muitos personagens ganham o nome do próprio ator, e também é notável quando o personagem Marcus se intitula Vincent.

As pessoas de estômago fraco irão parar de ver o filme nas primeiras cenas, ou simplesmente cobrirão o rosto em algumas, e também aqueles que gostam de um filme linear, com uma câmera estacionária não irão se satisfazer. Nessa obra de arte francesa temos tudo ao contrário, tudo sob controle do diretor, vemos uma câmera girando, dando piruetas e há cenas como se alguém (estranho) tivesse carregando-a. Há momentos transitórios em que há uma sensação de tontura, e cenas longas que as vezes acha-se que são desnecessárias. Cenas fortes como a que se passa nos corredores, que mais parecem masmorras, da boate de sadomasoquismo gay, Rectum.

As cenas transcorrem “do começo ao fim” o que é feito de trás pra frente é a ordem das cenas. Os créditos finais são apresentados logo no início, e no fim temos uma bela cena a princípio sem muito sentido que iniciaria outro filme qualquer. O trabalho é quase todo improvisado pelos excelentes atores, pois o roteiro original só tem 4 páginas. Há quem compare as inovações de cenas batidas que há em Irreversível com a forma de inovar de Psicose. A história se passa em uma única noite, que vai do final dela até o início. Talvez você crie uma aversão ou incompreensão dos motivos que levam o personagem Marcus (Vincent Cassel) e seu amigo Pierre (Albert Dunpontel) a buscar por vingança pelo que acontece à mocinha Alex (Monica Bellucci), mas o filme que começa com o clímax e revelando o fim da história ainda consegue surpreender com fatos relevantes que são explicitados apenas no início (que no caso é o fim do filme).

Há que se esperar até o filme acabar (e a história começar) se você quiser realmente entender, pois esse é um filme que não usa meios para explicar o fim, mas usa o fim para explicar os meios. Enquanto se assiste há um despertar de emoções, desde nojo, horror, aversão, tristeza até emoções singulares em cada um. Acho muito difícil você se levantar de uma cadeira ao final do filme sem sentir uma tontura, ou simplesmente uma confusão de idéias, principalmente com a cena da luz oscilante que encerra o filme. Se você achou esse texto confuso, posso lhe afirmar que o filme é muito mais.

Trailer:

We walked on a red carpet on Monday. I felt like an interloper, especially clad in hobo jacket, Converse, and Green Lantern T-Shirt, but it was still a weirdly thrilling moment. Getting tickets to the first UK performance of Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant! (oh, that infuriating exclamation point…) was an accident of timing, not an attempt to rubberneck at a glamour collision, but it’s fine. The London Film Festival seems to be pretty casual. Only Soderbergh, writer Scott Z. Burns and producer Gregory Jacobs were dressed to the nines, and even then they seemed relaxed. Seeing Soderbergh delighted daisyhellcakes, who has had terrible luck spotting celebrities in the past (so far she’s seen Johnny Vegas, Bill Bailey, Jeffrey Archer and Queen Nigella), but refused to take a picture of the great man, stating that it would be gauche. As I’d seen the Enter The Void audience eagerly snapping away at Gaspar Noé last week, I figured it would be okay, but after taking this blurry picture…

…I convinced myself that the final stutter in Soderbergh’s short speech was caused by him spotting me and thinking, “Dude, that’s totes gauche.” For the record, I’m sorry Mr. Soderbergh. I liked Solaris, if that’s any consolation.

The lack of a distribution deal for Enter The Void is making me unbelievably sad. Attending that screening was something I did on a whim after seeing Drew McWeeny become so enthusiastic, and now I realise that if I hadn’t gone I might never have had the chance to see it on the big screen. Just yesterday Edgar Wright was tweeting his frustration at having missed it, and it threw my good fortune into perspective. Is there any way to start a campaign to save it from oblivion on DVD, when the only distribution deal it has seems to be getting a release in Finland next April? As the version I saw was seemingly different from those at Cannes and Toronto, perhaps it’s still being fine-tuned, and then it will be put on the market again. Certainly there are longueurs at about the 100 minute mark, but I’m not sure what could be removed without ruining the flow.

The one thought I had would be for the Prince Charles Cinema to stump up for their very own print. Despite its punishing length, this is the perfect midnight-screening cult movie in waiting, with massive appeal to counter-cultural audiences and cinephiles who can understand what Noé is trying to achieve (a group that excludes J. Hoberman and Variety’s Rob Nelson, who completely missed the point of the movie). It would take time for them to get their money back, as the buzz on this film has yet to grow properly, but it would be a wise investment. Unless it did suddenly get a distribution deal and the film turned up elsewhere, but still, right now, it’s not looking too good.

Sadness over the fate of that one movie aside, the festival has been extremely enjoyable so far. Even the one movie I’ve not liked — Jason Reitman’s disappointing Up In The Air, which I hope to write about soon — has its pleasures, especially the terrific performances from George Clooney and Anna Kendrick. For the most part audiences have been great too, with enthusiastic responses to The Men Who Stare At Goats and The Informant! reminding me why seeing movies at the cinema can be a rewarding experience, though Mr. Honking McOverlaugh who sat behind us during The Informant! was a bit of a trial. Yes yes, it’s a very funny film, but Mr. Soderbergh is sitting at the back of the room and even your guffaws cannot reach that far, especially when my eardrums are absorbing 90% of the sound energy.

It’s not all roses, though. If you’re a new reader visiting this site after searching for info about London Film Festival screenings, please can I beg you to do the right thing and arrive at the screenings with plenty of time to spare? If you’ve not already picked up your tickets, there can be terrible queues, and that’s after navigating the barriers, security guards, and photographers blocking the pedestrianised roads of Leicester Square. The movies have tended to start a few minutes late, but there are no trailers or adverts, so if a film is supposed to start at, say, 16:15, the film will be on the screen at around 16:20, and arriving at 16:30 is going to piss a lot of people off. Oh, and the tickets have allocated seat numbers on them FOR A REASON. This message is directed at the numerous people who seem to love sitting wherever they want, and then look put out when they are evicted from their seats by ushers not long after the film has already started. I’m looking at you, selfish idiots who figured sitting by me was the thing to do and then ruined the start of Enter The Void and White Material, with extra bonus fuck you’s to the couple who turned up late at White Material and then left their phones on. Assholes.

I’ve had fun with the odd connections between the movies I’ve seen so far. The Informant! and Claire Denis’ White Material are centred by main characters (played with great skill by Matt Damon and the incredible Isabelle Huppert respectively) whose inability to see the dire consequences of their behaviour dooms them. In Soderbergh’s movie Mark Whitacre’s insanity is played for laughs for the most part, though those laughs run out by the end as you realise the man is so deeply embedded in his fantasy life that he doesn’t even seem capable of keeping track of it. Maria Vial — the protagonist of White Material — is in just as much denial, but perhaps even to the extent of not recognising her own cultural and ethnic background. Her ambiguous actions in the final moments of the film could be the product of derangement or berserk revenge, but whatever their origin, they were enough to deeply upset the lady sitting next to me. She seemed traumatised, poor dear.

Other connections abound. Jason Bateman teams up with Jason Reitman again for Up In The Air, and also features in Extract, which I’m hoping to see tomorrow. Melanie Lynskey appears in Up In The Air and The Informant!, and is similarly weak in each movie. Clooney appears in The Men Who Stare At Goats and Up In The Air, and co-produced The Informant! Up In The Air and Up (which I saw again on Sunday, though it was not part of the festival) is about men who find escape in flying, and learn to connect with others. The protagonists of White Material and Enter The Void are often filmed from behind: in White Material as a representation of how Maria is hiding her true face from herself and others, and in Enter The Void as a consequence of the PoV conceit. Enter The Void and The Men Who Stare At Goats features talk of esoteric beliefs, as well as the use of hallucinogens.

That was one of the things that annoyed me most about Goats. While Enter The Void took the use of hallucinogenic compounds seriously, Goats used it as a stupid punchline, with characters acting as if they were drunk and high-lariously falling over a lot and talking about how hungry they are. Goats was a lot of fun, but the relentlessly silly tone made it hard for the film to shift gears in the final act when we see the negative consequences of letting a bunch of insecure New Age dipsticks into the army. What was, in Jon Ronson’s excellent book, a sobering portrait of US psy-ops torture techniques gone weird is here transformed into a slapstick romp with one minute of “Oh noes, war is bad” added to give the protagonists something to fight for. The book still manages to be funny, but Ronson’s a skillful enough writer to juxtapose the wacky with the awful. Here it’s shoehorned in, and seemingly only to give a dramatic edge to the Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey) character arc that suddenly appears midway through the movie. Writer Peter Straughan does some good work in translating the oddness of Ronson’s book into movie form, and keeps the funniest material mostly intact, but the artificial three-act structure and neatness of the final few minutes smack of laziness. Still, it remains very entertaining, and what it gets right it really gets right. Jeff Bridges — as New Earth Army leader Bill Django — perfectly channels the craziness of First Earth Battalion leader Jim Channon…

…and first-time director Grant Heslov is good enough to recreate the pictures shown in Channon’s manifesto: a lovely touch. It feels like the film will touch on all aspects of the insanity of war in a similar way to Clooney’s previous Gulf War film Three Kings, but even with the addition of warring Blackwater-esque security forces and asides showing Clooney and Ewan McGregor wandering through Iraq getting into scrapes, it never fully takes off. I’d still recommend it, though. As with Up In The Air, Clooney does miracle work holding everything together. It’s easy to forget what a great film star he is. He does comedy and drama equally well, and now he’s removed almost all of his tics, he can excel at both over-the-top dopey comedy or subtle and moving character work. We’re lucky he’s around.

My recommendation for The Informant! is much stronger. Though we were exhausted while watching, and were sitting in the Odeon West End which — unlike the Vue West End which is showing the majority of films — is not air-conditioned, it turned out to be almost as good as we had hoped. Spoilery trailers and press releases have given away the delusional nature of Mark Whitacre, but Soderbergh and ace writer Burns hide the depth of his craziness until a wonderful final act where everyone involved in the Lysine price-fixing investigation is shocked by his slowly unravelling web of lies. The cast doesn’t have a single weak link, with an unexpectedly complex performance from Matt Damon at the heart of the movie, but I have to give special props to Scott Bakula, who is particularly affecting as the enthusiastic FBI agent whose career goes awry thanks to Whitacre’s deceptions. His increasingly heartbroken face adds a bittersweet note to the zany proceedings. Props also to Joel McHale in his first dramatic role: weird seeing the snarky Soup host playing straight man to Damon.

I also heartily recommend White Material, but I’m still processing that one, so I won’t go on about it too much, except to say that a) Claire Denis has a mastery of pace and atmosphere that would shame other directors, but then you probably already knew that, and b) Christopher Lambert was good enough to make me partially forgive him for his dire performance in Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales. I can lay the blame that on Kelly, I guess. He doesn’t really know what he’s doing, after all.

In my research of Marina, I have uncovered these interesting and titallating videos, and now I am sharing it for your enjoyment:

This first video features Marina interacting with a writer from The Guardian during a show that Marina curated that involves 12 young and upcoming performance artists in New York.  The reason why I was so excited about this clip was to see new performance work actively being done today, good and bad:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/video/2009/jul/06/marina-abramovic-manchester-festival-adrian-searle

Balkan Erotic Epic

This video is a short film that Marina directed as part of a collection of short films called Destriction.  Other directors include Matthew Barney (Cremaster and Drawing Restraint), Larry Clark (Kids), Marco Brambilla, Gaspar Noe (Irreversible), Richard Prince and Sam Taylor-Wood.   This collections of films explores the connection between art and sex.  I haven’t watched all the shorts in Destriction, but Marina’s piece “Balkan Erotic Epic” is strange and humorous, and I really enjoy it:  http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/balkan+erotic+epic/video/xk7m0_balkaneroticepicmarinaabramovic_creation

God Punishing

And finally, I just recently watched a movie titled Our City Dreams.  The movie documents 5 women artists who live and work in New York City, one of whom is Marina.  The other women in the documentary are Swoon, Nancy Spero, Kiki Smith, and Ghada Amer.  The movie is incredibly interesting, especially (to me) the section on Marina.  If you’re looking to learn more about art, especially women artists, definitely check it out. I give the movie a 8/10.   Here’s the trailer: 

Clearly, I am becoming more and more obsessed with Marina.  And this obsession isn’t stopping any time soon, I don’t think.

The great controversialist Gaspar Noé appears to be a very nice, softly spoken man who keeps making films that polarise audiences. Seul contre tous and Irréversible are notorious enough that I already have a very distinct idea of what Noé’s movies are like without having seen them. This is an embarrassing admission. An attempt to see Irréversible was abandoned through lack of backbone, leading me to see Confessions of a Dangerous Mind instead. Nice enough movie. Nothing particularly memorable about it, other than Hott Sam Rockwell’s performance. Still, it irks me that I didn’t see Noé’s movie, that I thought it would be too much for my sensitive constitution.

Before the first London Film Festival screening of his latest movie — Enter The Void — Noé chatted to us via a typically British mic (i.e. unreliable and sporadically malfunctioning), briefly describing his battle to get the movie made, before doing something a filmmaker will rarely do: he gave us the key to understanding the movie. “Watch the expression of the woman in the final shot. The very final shot. Keep looking at her. It changes everything. It’s very important.” I assume with great confidence that everyone in the audience did keep their eye on that final face, but it did not answer anything. It’s possible to watch that scene and have wildly divergent ideas of what just happened, as evidenced by the muted chatter of my fellow filmgoers as they filed out of the screening.

That expression is viewed by Oscar (or rather “The Soul That Was, At One Point, Within Oscar’s Body), a drug-dealer making a paltry living in Tokyo, and portrayed by Nathaniel Brown in the very few shots we see of him. His only goal in life is to protect his sister — Linda, played by a seemingly drowsy Paz de la Huerta — after they are both orphaned in a car crash, but in doing so he seems to have effectively damned them both. While making what seems to be a simple drug transaction, Oscar is killed by the police, and then leaves his body to go on a journey through the afterlife that tallies with a description of The Tibetan Book of the Dead given early in the film by Oscar’s best friend Alex (Cyril Roy). However, is this death, or a DMT hallucination? And if it is death, where does the journey begin and end? There’s enough ambiguity here to fuel discussions for years.

My own interpretation (which I won’t include here, in order to keep this as spoiler-free as possible) seems to differ from others I’ve heard. All that can be said with certainty is that if you’re willing to give yourself over to it, Enter The Void is a revelatory experience, and the most immersive expression of a person’s viewpoint ever made. Noé’s dedication to presenting lead character Oscar’s point of view is already impressive enough — even down to adding blinking and breathing in early scenes — without then killing him and showing his afterlife experience from the same perspective, albeit now with the laws of physics being no obstacle. The camera floats over the characters, flies through the air above Tokyo, flows through walls, dips into people’s head’s to experience their perspective, and bursts back and forth through time. It’s disorienting, terrifying, liberating.

Comparisons have been made to Kubrick’s 2001 — there is even a direct reference to the Stargate sequence in one throwaway shot — but Noé’s visuals also invite comparison to Ken Russell’s Altered States, and especially Doug Trumbull’s Brainstorm. Trumbull’s attempts to create a hallucinogenic post-death sequence to end all such sequences was scuppered by budgetary troubles and technological restrictions. Enter The Void manages to do what Trumbull dreamed of, to the point that one visual conceit employed by Noé — having the camera move from one light to another to convey a passage of time from one nightmare vision of the future to another — is very similar to the way the camera reviews moments from Louise Fletcher’s life in Brainstorm, passing through a lattice of lights, each containing a single memory.

Before the movie began, Noé described his experiences with hallucinogenic drugs, which he believed had never been replicated properly onscreen, and had been trying to make Enter The Void for years. Until now no one had the technology to accurately depict the experience, but also no one had the single-mindedness to film something as ambitious as this. His formal daring — unmatched by anything else I’ve seen in a while — sadly overwhelms his story, which is as dreary as his presentation is beautiful. The humdrum couplings and binges, indifferently acted, are written with depressing inarticulacy. As the audience’s eyes and ears are hypnotised by everything else, the heart is left unmoved for large stretches, particularly during the long nightmare sequence. It doesn’t help that this is one of the worst performed movies I’ve seen since 300. Perhaps that’s the regrettable downside of filming in such a way that for much of the movie you can only see the tops or the backs of the actors’ heads.

These flaws could have wrecked the movie, but it is saved by the relentless visual flow, beautifully rendered by Buf, and the hypnotic sound design by Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter. If you let it, this throbbing ebb and flow of sound and vision will carry you through any longueurs, dazzling you with astonishing model work that makes Tokyo look like a tilt-shifted playground that gives off its own ambient thrum. All of these atmospherics pay off with a bravura final act that fully engages all senses and emotions. Tipping over completely into pure visual fantasy, Oscar completes his journey through death, and Noé – with endearing sentimentality, not to mention the use of an image that drew amused gasps from the very British audience — brings us to a conclusion at once expected and surprising. Perhaps understanding that the experience of watching the movie is liable to leave his audience in a state of mental disarray, Noé cares enough to bring you out of his dreamstate with a final image and two title cards that act as a slap in the face. Very thoughtful of him.

It’s doubtful that Gaspar Noé would appreciate the comparison, but last year’s Speed Racer was another formal experiment in replicating a particular experience — the Wachowskis with the visual conventions of Japanese anime, Noé with his subjective hallucinatory experiences — which managed to transcend its mundane plot by sheer effort. The Wachowskis and Noé found their movies treated with indifference or hostility by the critical community, and had difficulty finding audiences for their projects: literally in the case of Enter The Void, which has no US distributor at the moment.

The subject matter of this movie is liable to alienate many people for very different reasons than those that made Speed Racer the pariah of 2008’s summer season. While that was a candy-coloured action movie containing a sweetness and innocence that failed to connect with critics. Enter The Void is excessively unpleasant for much of its running time, featuring violent death, graphic sex, and a scene in an abortion clinic destined to achieve notoriety. This kind of unflinching visceral imagery is relentless enough to fuel criticism that Noé is nothing more than a provacateur. To do so would be to ignore the very specific plot structure that is set up early in the movie, as Alex explains to Oscar the distinct stages of the post-death experience as detailed in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. If you’re going to endure a vile nightmare after death, Noé is going to make you experience it. And then some. This point seems to have flown over some critics’ heads, as well as the very obvious fact that the PoV never shifts from Oscar. We experience what his consciousness experiences in one unbroken 155 minute blast, not a melange of images, as some seem to think.

Whenever something as purely sensory as this comes along, it’s easy to complain that the flash hides an empty core, but even if it did — which I don’t believe it does — why should we dismiss something that succeeds so completely at generating a mood, or a mental state, or a new form of telling a story, just because it offends our sensibilities, or celebrates sub-cultures that are considered beneath contempt? The mundanity of the subject matter is easily forgiven when a filmmaker goes to such extreme lengths to bombard your senses, or has such loyalty to his vision that he will change the language of cinema to do it. This is a movie to feel and experience, much as Lars Von Trier’s Anti-Christ achieves such complete mastery of mood that any reservations are swept away. Save the pondering for later, once you’ve reached the end of Noé’s trip. Last year my exhortations to see Speed Racer on the biggest screen possible — preferably IMAX — fell on deaf ears, but — if this gets an international release — the imagery of Enter The Void demands to be seen in a cinema with the best projection and sound system possible. Sit in the middle of the cinema. No popcorn. Take a bottle of water and a catheter. Drop a tab (actually, don’t drop a tab. It will probably negate the hallucinatory properties of the movie and make you think you’re watching something mundane, like a Mike Leigh movie). Keep your eyes open like Alex in A Clockwork Orange. Prepare for awe.

Adineauri am văzut Irreversible, filmul lui Gaspar Noel, cu Monica Bellucci şi Vincent Cassel. Vincent Cassel, în caz că nu ştiaţi, este soţul Monicăi irl. And I get why. Mmm.

În orice caz, mă aşteptam ca filmul să fie violent, dar nu atât de violent. Pot să zic că am tresărit/ţipat puţin pe alocuri. Adică am văzut multe filme violente la viaţa mea, dar ăsta e mult prea realist, which makes the violence much much worse. Înţeleg de ce au plecat mulţi de la film. Şi felul în care e filmat e foarte obositor, şi muzica, şi ritmul. E obositor cu totul. Şi arată multe. Atât din violenţă cât şi din sex. Mult prea mult.

Şi până la final te întristezi groaznic. Dar cei doi au chemistry, asta e clar. Lots of it. Şi reuşesc să fie nice. Despite everything.

E un film cu mult feeling. Poate o să sune ciudat, dar e multă emoţie acolo şi până la final îmi transmite multă emoţie. Şi e toată povestea aia cu scenariu în mare improvizat. Maybe that had a lot to do with it. Poate de-asta pare atât de natural. Că na, până la urmă povestea nu e deosebită, chestiile luate separat nu sunt extraordinare, dar per total filmul merită văzut.

Vi-l recomand. Dar eu n-aş putea să-l mai văd o dată

 El lunes día 12 de octubre se otorgaron los premios correspondientes a la 42ª edición del Festival Internacional de Cine Fantástico de Cataluña. La británica “Moon” de Duncan Jones fue la gran triunfadora obteniendo los galardones a la Mejor Película, Mejor Actor y Mejor Guión. Para más información sobre la citada película, podéis leer la reseña realizada por Minos pichando aquí. 

A continuación os presentamos el palmarés completo:

OFICIAL FANTÀSTIC

Jurado: Neil Marshall, Amanda Plummer, Tuomas Riskala, John Saxon y Jordi Battle Caminal.

-Mejor Película: “Moon” de Duncan Jones

-Premio Especial del Jurado: “Enter the Void” de Gaspar Noé

-Mejor Director: Brillante Mendoza por “Kinatay”

-Mejor Actor: Sam Rockwell por “Moon”

-Mejor Actriz: Ex-aequo para Elena Anaya por “Hierro” y para Kim Ok-vin por “Thirst”

-Mejor Guión: Nathan Parker (basado en la historia original de Duncan Jones) por “Moon”

-Mejor Fotografía: Benoit Debie por “Enter the Void”

-Mejor Banda Sonora Original: Teresa Barrozo por “Kinatay”

-Mejores Efectos Especiales: C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures, Mac Guff, BUF por “Splice”

-Mejores Efectos de Maquillaje: Kaatje Van Damme por “Mr. Nobody”

-Mejor Diseño de Producción: Tony Noble por “Moon”

-Mención Especial: “The boy who wouldn’t kill” de Linus de Paoli

-Mejor Cortometraje: “One of those days” de Hattie Dalton

CARNET JOVE

-Mejor Película FANTÀSTIC: Ex-aequo para “Dogtooth (Canino)” de Yorgos Lanthimos y para “Les derniers jours du monde” de Arnaud Larrieu y Jean-Marie Larrieu

-Mejor Película MIDNIGHT X-TREME: “Wasting Away” de Matthew Kohnen

NOVES VISIONS

-Mejor Película: “Deliver us from Evil” de Ole Bornedal

-Mención Especial: “Van Diemen’s Land” de Jonathan auf der Heide

-Diploma Película No Ficción: “Best Worst Movie” de Michael Paul Stephenson

-Diploma Película Discovery: “Amer” de Hélène Cattet y Bruno Forzani

PREMIO NOVA AUTORIA SGAE – INSTITUT BUÑUEL

-Mejor Dirección: “Swingers” de Javier Rodríguez Espinosa (ESCAC-Escándalo Films)

-Mejor Guión: “44987373-V” de Robert Ors Griera (Centre d’Estudis Cinematogràfics de Catalunya-CECC)

-Mejor Música Original: “The last drag” de Gonçal Perales Roy (Centre d’Estudis de Tècniques d’Animació de Catalunya · 9 ZEROS)

-Mención Especial por la calidad general del trabajo: “Pin up” de Tania Verduzco (Centre d’Estudis Cinematogràfics de Catalunya-CECC)

ORIENT EXPRESS – CASA ÀSIA

-Mejor Película: “Ip Man” de Yip Wai-shun

ANIMA’T – Premio Gertie

-Mejor Largometraje de Animación: “Summer Wars” de Mamoru Hosoda

-Mejor Cortometraje de Animación: “Le petit dragon” de Bruno Collet

-Mejor Largometraje de Animación para Niños: “Panique au village” de Stéphane Aubier y Vincent Patar

 MÉLIÈS DE PLATA

-Méliès d’Argent a la Mejor Película Europea: “The Eclipse” de Conor McPherson

-Méliès de Plata al Mejor Cortometraje Europeo: “One of those days” de Hattie Dalton

MÉLIÈS DE ORO

-Méliès de Oro a la Mejor Película Europea: “Martyrs” de Pascal Laugier

-Méliès de Oro al Mejor Cortometraje: “Cold and Dry” de Kristoffer Joner, codirigido y producido por Bjørn Arne Odden

Gran Premio del Público El Periódico de Catalunya

-Mejor Película: “Zombieland” de Ruben Fleischer

PREMIOS DE LA CRÍTICA

-Premio de la Crítica Jose Luis Guarner: “Les derniers jours du monde” de Arnaud Larrieu y Jean-Marie Larrieu

-Premio Citizen Kane al director/a revelación: “Dogtooth (Canino)” de Yorgos Lanthimos

BRIGADOON Paul Naschy

-Mejor cortometraje: “Torbellino de hostias” de Adrián Cardona

Premio Ben & Jerry’s

[REC]² de Jaume Balagueró y Paco Plaza

Podéis consultar los Premios Honoríficos aquí.

Briony 

REFLEXIONS SOBRE EL FESTIVAL

La primera, en relació a REC 2 i els seus creadors, Jaume Balagueró i Paco Plaza. Amb la saga REC han demostrat que és possible fer un gran entreteniment cinematogràfic, gràcies a dos directors perfectament complementaris. Tant REC com REC 2 són dues pel·lícules on el què i el com funcionen. El què? Doncs una trama senzilla i que enganxa. El com? Segurament la gran virtut, el saber trobar la manera d’explicar la història, amb una càmera en mà que atrapa a l’espectador, a més del so, llum, fotografia i gràcia que li atorguen a la trama una frescura idònea, creant d’aquesta manera dos exercicis de cinema de terror de qualitat. El cinema espanyol pot haver trobat uns bons referents pel futur i la possibilitat de dotar-lo d’honestedat i òptimes maneres, sense buscar el que vulgarment diríem “els tres peus al gat”. La pretenciositat i l’snobisme, que camuflen amb falses aparences algunes creacions, han estat fulminades pels dos directors catalans, i és un pas important per reactivar el cinema d’aquest país.

La segona, en relació al aument del 20% en les vendes d’entrades respecte l’any passat. El Festival de Sitges és un referent cultural internacional, i el seu creixement així ho certifica. De la mateixa manera, es confirma que la qualitat, amb el temps, consolida o fulmina, segons sigui el nivell que s’ofereix, en aquest cas, en un festival de cinema. En l’era d’internet, la xarxa ajuda a fomentar l’art i la cultura, i incrementar el nombre d’aficionats a la cultura, concretament el cinema, com ho demostra l’increment de públic a Sitges. Un bon ús de la tecnologia col·labora directament en la difussió de la cultura. La xarxa permet descobrir artistes interessants, uns de qualitat i altres no, cert, perquè en definitiva, el que interessa és cuidar l’art, per tant, la cultura de qualitat, i despertar la curiositat primer i el paladar després per anar formant un criteri. L’art i la cultura eduquen. En un present on es pot difondre cultura i obrir la fam de coneixements, aprofitem-ho per enriquir-nos primer per després poder ser crítics i exigents amb l’art que ensenya i emociona.

PREMIS DEL FESTIVAL

OFICIAL FANTÀSTIC

Atorgats per jurat format per: Neil Marshall, Amanda Plummer, Tuomas Riskala, John Saxon i Jordi Battle Caminal

Millor Curtmetratge: One of those days de Hattie Dalton
Menció Especial: The boy who wouldn’t kill de Linus de Paoli
Millor Disseny de Producció: Tony Noble per Moon
Millors Efectes de Maquillatge: Kaatje Van Damme per Mr. Nobody
Millors Efectes Especials: C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures, Mac Guff, BUF per Splice
Millor Banda Sonora Original: Teresa Barrozo per Kinatay
Millor Fotografia: Benoit Debie per Enter the Void
Millor Guió: Nathan Parker, basat en la història original de Duncan Jones, per Moon
Millor Actriu: Ex-aequo: Elena Anaya per Hierro i Kim Ok-vin per Thirst
Millor Actor: Sam Rockwell per Moon
Millor Director: Brillante Mendoza per Kinatay
Premi Especial del Jurat: Enter the Void de Gaspar Noé
Millor Pel·lícula: Moon de Duncan Jones

PREMIS atorgats pel jurat Carnet Jove: Arnau Vilaró, Sergi Fabregat, Arantza Marichalar, Joan Sala i Isabel Salvador
Millor Pel·lícula: Ex-aequo: Dogtooth (Canino) de Yorgos Lanthimos i Les derniers jours du monde d’Arnaud
Larrieu i Jean-Marie Larrieu
Millor Pel·lícula: Wasting Away de Matthew Kohnen

NOVES VISIONS

Jurat: Stephanie Billeter, Marc Helwig i Pedro Usabiaga

Millor Pel·lícula: Deliver us from Evil de Ole Bornedal
Menció Especial: Van Diemen’s Land de Jonathan auf der Heide
Diploma Pel·lícula No Ficció: Best Worst Movie de Michael Paul Stephenson
Diploma Pel·lícula Discovery: Amer d’Hélène Cattet i Bruno Forzani

PREMIS NOVA AUTORIA SGAE

Jurat: Roser Aguilar, Lluís Bonet Mojica, Albert Solé i Joan Valent

Millor Direcció: Swingers de Javier Rodríguez Espinosa, presentat per l’ESCAC-Escándalo Films
Millor Guió: 44987373-V de Robert Ors Griera, presentat pel Centre d’Estudis Cinematogràfics de Catalunya
(CECC)
Millor Música Original: The last drag de Gonçal Perales Roy, presentat pel Centre d’Estudis de Tècniques d’Animació de
Catalunya · 9 ZEROS

Menció Especial per la qualitat general del treball:

Pin up de Tania Verduzco, presentat pel Centre d’Estudis Cinematogràfics de Catalunya (CECC)

PREMIS ORIENT EXPRESS – CASA ÀSIA

Jurat: Fausto Fernández, Luis M. Rosales i Marc Walkow

Millor Pel·lícula: Ip Man de Yip Wai-shun

ANIMA’T – Premi Gertie

Jurat: Fausto Fernández, Luis M. Rosales i Marc Walkow

Millor Llargmetratge d’Animació: Summer Wars de Mamoru Hosoda
Millor Curtmetratge d’Animació: Le petit dragon de Bruno Collet
Millor Llargmetratge d’Animació per a Nens: Panique au village de Stéphane Aubier i Vincent Patar

MÉLIÈS D’ARGENT

Jurat: Tim League, Toni Messa i Antje Nikkola Mönning

Méliès d’Argent a la Millor Pel·lícula Europea: The Eclipse de Conor McPherson
Méliès d’Argent al Millor Curtmetratge Europeu: One of those days d’Hattie Dalton

MÉLIÈS D’OR

Méliès d’Or a la Millor Pel·lícula Europea: Martyrs de Pascal Laugier
Méliès d’Or al Millor Curtmetratge: Cold and Dry de Kristoffer Joner, codirigit i produït per Bjørn Arne Odden

ALTRES PREMIS

Gran Premi del Públic El Periódico de Catalunya: Zombieland de Ruben Fleischer

Premi Ben & Jerry’s: [REC]2 de Jaume Balagueró i Paco Plaza

PREMIS DE LA CRÍTICA

Jurat: Desirée de Fez, Imma Merino i Eulàlia Iglesias

Premi de la Crítica Jose Luis Guarner: Les derniers jours du monde d’Arnaud Larrieu i Jean-Marie Larrieu
Premi Citizen Kane al director/a revelació: Dogtooth (Canino) de Yorgos Lanthimos

BRIGADOON Paul Naschy

Jurat: Domingo López Tortosa, Diego López Fernández i José Martos Arroyo

Millor curtmetratge: Torbellino de hostias d’Adrián Cardona

Amb de la meitat de les pel·lícules previstes pel festival ja projectades, intentarem fer un recull de les que hem pogut veure en les jornades de dimarts, dimecres i dijous. Destaquem unes quantes:

KINATAY, de Brillante Mendoza (SOF Competició). Embolic fosc i avorrit.

La pel·li del millor director de Cannes ens ha semblat enrevessada, inintel·ligible en certs moments i fins i tot pesada. Motius? L’inici sembla una filmació d’estar per casa que sembla fer un estudi sociológic sobre el jovent filipí. Posteriorment, hi ha un segrest, sempre en càmera en mà, fet que provoca claustrofòbia i cert embolic. La trama queda prou clara, però la narració és ferragosa i pobra. La massacre es consuma després del segrest, i per molt que intentis veure una crítica social, el que veus és un exercici monòton i previsible sobre un segrest que acaba en una tortura cruel que ja veus venir. Fosca, incòmoda, tediosa i molt fluixa.

BRONSON, de Nicolas Winding Refn (NV Ficció). Magnètica però cansosa.

Contundent, hiperrealista, violenta, impactant…però exagerada en forma per molts motius. El pastitx kitsch del director britànic sobre el delinqüent Michael Peterson anomenat Charlie Bronson d’entrada promet, perquè explica la vida del perla basada en fets reals utilitzant un recurs narratiu a priori interessant: intercala situacions quotidianes de família i de baralles del protagonista amb una obra de teatre que ell mateix interpreta a modus de monòleg on el públic és l’espectador del cinema. Actúa al seu favor que el metratge es limita a 92 minuts i escaix, i que té alguns moments certament atractius, com la presentació del personatge, inclús com arriba a fer-se el pres més respectat, però finalment trobem que és excessiva, tant en forma, com comentàvem, com en la interpretació de Tom Hardy (Oliver Twist, Rocknrolla, i pròximament a Inception), que sí té mèrit, però acaba per esgotar.

IP MAN, de Wilson Yip (Orient Express-Casa Àsia). Arts marcials.

IP Man o Yip Man, fou el mestre de Bruce Lee. Amb aquesta dada un ja es pot imaginar quina és la trama d’aquesta pel·li d’acció del 2008 hongkonesa. El mestre en arts marcials Donnie Yeng, vist a Blade 2 i coreògraf de les escenes d’acció de Hero és el protagonista. El films s’inicia amb un Yip Man pacífic i que tothom admira pel seu art lluitant. Altres mestres el repten, i Yip Man, quan accepta lluitar, ho fa aporta tancada per no humiliar ningú. La pel·li dóna un gir amb la invasió japonesa. Yip Man ha de guanyar-se les garrofes a una fàbrica de carbó; el menjar escasseja per culpa de la guerra. El general Miura, un japonès obsessionat amb les arts marcials, repta a Yip Man en una lluita en la que està el joc l’orgull dels xinesos. Ben filmada, les coreografies són espectaculars; la història es fa molt amena, per tant, molt recomanble pels fans del cine de Bruce Lee.

THE HURT LOCKER, de Kathryn Bigelow (SOF Panorama British Focus). Antibel·licisme insubstancial.

La pel·li antibel·licista de Kathryn Bigelow té com a gràcia, precisament aquesta, la de ser una proposta que intenta denunciar la guerra, en concret la d’Irak. Un grup de soldats amb la missió de desactivar bombes es troba en més d’un merder que poques vegades saben solucionar. La seva idiotesa els hi dificulta la seva tasca, permetent a l’espectador qüestionar lleugerament la intervenció militar, no només a Irak, sinó a tot arreu. Entre Black Hawk Derribado i Redacted, més propera a la primera, sense arribar ni tan sols al nivell acceptable d’entreteniment que tenia la pel·li de Ridley Scott.

HEARTLESS, de Philip Ridley (SOF Competició). Un thriller fosc i distret.

Nova pel·lícula del britànic Philip Ridley, autor de The Reflecting Skin i The Passion of Darkly Noon. Amant de temes sobre l’ocultisme, Ridley s’endinsa en un Londres fantasmal sacsejada per la violència de les bandes juvenils. Els personatges mostren la seva por davant d’un món apocalíptic, fent alguna reflexió sobre el sense sentit de la vida. Jim Sturgess és el protagonista d’aquest conte de por, interpretant a un jove fotògraf marcat per una taca a la cara. El seu pacte amb el diable en persona li neteja la cara i li ofereix l’oportunitat d’una nova vida, però a canvi haurà de treure el cor a una persona. Narrada de forma clàssica, la pel·li es podria entendre com una metàfora de la situació de cert caos en les grans ciutats, provocats per gent sense estímuls que són capaços de qualsevol cosa perquè la seva vida tingui sentit. Aquí Ridley juga amb la violència i amb les decisions que un ha de prendre per sentir-se persona. No obstant, la pel·li finalment no passa de ser un lleuger entreteniment, perquè s’atura innecessàriament en la incomprenssió d’ Sturgess davant del dia a dia; arriba un moment que la pel·li s’estanca en els problemes existencials de Jamie (Jim Sturgess), quan ja d’entrada queda clar que els fantasmes que veu com a integrants de la més temuda de les bandes juvenils són els que du a sobre i que no li permeten sentir-se viu. Al seu favor, direm que és prou entretinguda i la proposta és ben honesta.

9, de Shane Acker (SOF Panorama). Al nivell de la magnífica Wall-E.

Entenem el cinema com una possibilitat de donar un punt de vista sobre un tema i alhora entretenir. 9 és l’exemple perfecte. Pel·li animada on Tim Burton és co-productor, dirigida per Shane Acker, narra la lluita contra les màquines d’uns petits robots que viuen gràcies a que el seu inventor els hi va donar la seva ànima. Un món apocalíptic com el de Wall-E, però sense humans ni tan sols al cel de creuer, on les màquines han acabat amb tota la vida del planeta després de rebel·lar-se per culpa del mal ús que va fer una mena de Hitler en un passat pròxim. Els petits titelles de drap robotitzats s’atreveixen a posar en dubte la dictadura de la tecnologia, i defensar la vida i la llibertat. 9 és el protagonista; es diu nou, perquè senzillament és el ninot número 9, qui s’encarrega d’espavilar a número 1, un líder vell i poruc, i als altres ninots, amb la inestimable ajuda de 7, l’únic que no ha esta al costat de número 1 i sí s’ha dedicat a lluitar contra l’opressor, i de 3 i 4, dos ninots bessons que són com els historiadors de l’època. Finalment, tots units intentaran acabar amb la dinastia robòtica. Una animació magnífica, una trama divertida i amena, amb un rerefons que ja ha quedat prou clar, fan de 9 una pel·lícula de qualitat cinematogràfica indubtable a tots nivells.

ENTER THE VOID, de Gaspar Noé (SOF Competició). Banalitat màxima i extrema.

Palla mental de Gaspar Noé, i així ho entenem per una de les seqüències finals on veiem un penis penetrant una vagina, com si la càmera estigués dins d’aquesta, fins que ejacula a la cara de l’espectador. “He volgut fer una pel·li que parla del més enllà, de com et sents quan et prens un tripi”. Aquest és el discurs del Sr. Noé, segons ha indicat avui mateix a la roda de premsa; si vol saber-ho, que es faci addicte al tripi, però que no malgasti diners ni faci perdre el temps. El que hem vist és un cúmul de despropòsits, com una narració estúpida on la càmera girava 360º sovint perquè sí, on uns personatges estúpids lluitaven per viure i deien tenir un objectiu a la vida mentre es col·locaven durant tot el dia, vivien de nit i no feien res més que ficar-se en embolics i dir tonteries. El tralalarisme fet cinema, perquè una pel·lícula sense punt de vista, amb trama i personatges estúpids i canvis en el narrador continuus, seqüències ridícules com el plans aeris que Noé considerarà impactants i no són més que pura parafernàlia anestesiadora, situacions tan tontes com la d’una protagonista fornicant amb una amiga després de que la poli pelés injustament al seu germà per camell i de patir un avortament, atempta contra la intel·ligència i el cinema. En definitiva, exercici inútil sobre gent, evidentment guapos, a la moda i amb la paraula snob tatuada al front, que es pren la vida amb insultant estupidesa, i que després es queixen del món en el que viuen i de sentir-se maltractats. Per agreujar-ho encara més, el to pedant i pretenciós ho feia tant grotesc, que només se m’acut dir que el valor cinematogràfic de Enter The Void és el mateix que el de Torrente o Resacón en Las Vegas. Sembla una pel·li de Ben Stiller fent una pel·li enfotent-se de Peter Greenaway, amb la diferència que a Enter The Void rius però per no plorar. Parlant més seriosament del que ens permet fer-ho d’una broma com Enter The Void, li diríem a Gaspar Noé que pel·lis sobre drogues bones ja n’hi ha, com Miedo y Asco en Las Vegas, El Hombre Del Brazo de Oro o inlús Requiem for a Dream…i sobre objectius a la vida, doncs miraríem per exemple, La Melodía de la Vida de Gregory La Cava, i com a innovacions cinematogràfiques, doncs apostaríem per Inland Empire. Com es recordarà Enter The Void d’aquí 40 anys? Per l’esquitxada de semen a la pantalla o pels estúpids diàlegs? O per les imatges d’ordinador d’una mena de teixits orgànics que se suposa que veu el protagonista (quan la càmera són els seus ulls), l’Òscar, quan es col·loca amb DMT? O recordarem els cinc minuts on la pantalla era com un flash gegant que encegava? I de provocativa, hipnòtica i psicodèlica, res de res. Un penis, unes llums no són provocadors ni psicodèlics. La proposta és banal i avorrida.

Splice (SOF Competició), Valhalla Rising (SOF Panorama), Morphia (NV Ficció) o Dorian Gray (SOF Competició) ens han deixat del tot freds. Splice de Vincenzo Natali és un film de série B que no acaba de rutllar, ja que la situació familiar dels dos protagonistes, Adrien Brody i Sarah Polley, amb la criatura que han creat, Dren, en el seu intent de crear una monster movie, finalment queda en res. A Valhalla Rising, veiem combats a mort ben filmats i res més en la Finlàndia del S. XI, però no hi ha història. Morphia narra les aventures d’un metge que arriba a un poblat i mica en mica es da addicte a la morfina i a les amputiacions, en un film fosc, on l’equlibri entre cine d’autor i cine blockbuster grinyola per totes bandes. I de Dorian Gray, direm que l’inici és prometedor, que els efectes especials, per qui li agradin, doncs són espectaculars, però que la pel·li avança i no aporta res a la magnífica història d’Oscar Wilde.

Avui, si tot va bé, veurem George A. Romero’s Survival of the Dead, Cold Souls i Accident. Ens ho estem passant d’allò més bé, el temps acompanya, excepte avui, l’organització immillorable, el tracte a premsa magnífic…aviam si avui encertem amb totes les pel·lícules.

El director argentino Gaspar Noé, partidario de que la controversia forme parte del placer, explora sin pudor la mente de dos hermanos que caen en la trampa de la droga y el sexo por dinero en el filme “Enter the Void”, presentado hoy en el Festival de Cine de la localidad española de Sitges.

Afincado en París, Noé ha tomado Tokio como escenario de su película, de factura francesa, alemana e italiana, para desarrollar una historia muy psicodélica en la que conduce al espectador a un viaje alucinante por la droga y el pasado.

Con la premisa de que “un filme sin controversia no tiene interés”, el realizador argentino se puso para el rodaje detrás de la cámara en un filme subjetivo, construido desde el punto de vista del protagonista, Óscar, que aparece de espaldas en casi toda la película.

Noé insiste en planos demasiado largos que quieren llevar al espectador a lo recóndito de la mente y mueve a veces vertiginosamente la cámara.

Tomando como punto de partida el “Libro Tibetano de los Muertos”, Noé relata en círculos que vuelven una y otra vez la relación de dos hermanos, que a veces raya en lo incestuoso, obsesionados por la muerte en accidente de los padres.

Recrea con imágenes la eterna pregunta de qué pasa cuando uno se muere y para ello utiliza como recurso, ya desde el principio, el libro tibetano que ha empezado a leer el protagonista.

“Cuando tenía veinte años tenía miedo de morir sin haber hecho nada de bueno en mi vida y leí muchos libros sobre la vida, la muerte y qué pasa después de ella”, explicó hoy el director en rueda de prensa.

En opinión de Noé, “es impresionante cómo las personas necesitan creer en el más allá, yo soy ateo, pero lo quería ilustrar”.

Cuando tenía seis años, Noé vio “2001 Odisea en el espacio”, filme que le produjo “un gran impacto, fue mi primera droga y me dije: algún día quiero hacer una película que drogue a los demás, como 2001 lo ha hecho conmigo”.

Noé ha querido ilustrar en su película “lo que la gente ve del más allá, que se parece mucho a los ‘tripis’ de las drogas“, señaló.

Con esa intención, el cineasta ha realizado “Enter the Void”, un filme psicodélico escenificado en la capital nipona, “de luces cegadoras, brillantes, trepidantes, que no tienen ni París ni Nueva York”, y un equipo técnico nipón como el que utilizó después Isabel Coixet en “Mapa de los sonidos de Tokio”.

La única actriz profesional del elenco de “Enter the Void” es Paz de la Huerta, de padre español, y el personaje protagonista de Óscar está representado por una persona que quiere ser en el futuro director de cine, pero “al no ser actor no existe la necesidad de que se le vea la cara”.

En su empeño de mostrar en el filme una percepción subjetiva, Noé apenas enseña la cara de su protagonista ya que “cuando sueñas no ves bien las caras”.

La película tiene mucho trabajo digital y “por suerte la compañía que lo ha desarrollado se ha convertido en coproductora del filme porque en caso contrario no nos lo hubiéramos podido permitir”.

Vicent Maraval, uno de los productores del filme, explicó que ambos discuten en estos momentos un nuevo proyecto cinematográfico que versará sobre el erotismo.

Maraval consideró que “lo divertido para un productor es empujar los limites y la censura”.

También de dirección argentina, y en este caso producido por argentinos, ha llegado a la sección oficial Fantàstic el cortometraje “50 años en la luna”, un filme de Mariano Santilli en el guión, dirección y montaje.

El cortometraje recuerda el estilo de los filmes pioneros y presenta la conquista de la Luna en clave políticamente incorrecta, con un científico ruso que quiere llegar a ella con un cohete de fabricación casera lanzado desde un edificio de techo roto. EFE

Picture from www.screendaily.com of a scene in Enter the Void

Lars Von Trier. Park Chan-wook. Michael Haneke. These three auteurs are masters whose works are defined by their distinctive approach to divisive subject matter. France’s Gaspar Noe hinted at soon joining the rank with his first feature, Irreversible. Told in a real-time backwards narrative, the film is infamous for an unflinching nine-minute rape sequence featured in the film’s first half.

Yet as the film unraveled itself, it presented a dilemma. Juxtaposed against the abhorrent sequence were intimate and deeply humane scenes at the end of the film that left a solemn and thoughtful tone on the horror that had transpired. The film was akin to a slap in the face, but there was no denying the boldness of the work and Noe’s grim yet exhilarating vision.

In Noe’s latest venture, Enter the Void, he audaciously tells a three-hour story of life after death with all the visual panache he employed in Irreversible. But while he’s still out to enrage and provoke, there appears to be no sincerity behind the whole endeavor. He’s forsaken any resemblance to narrative for fancy shock tactics.

Noe begins his tale from the eyes of Oscar, a young, wayward American drug dealer working in neon-drenched Tokyo. Oscar takes one last trip (in hallucinatory CGI) before ultimately meeting his death in a bar. From there on, Noe flexes his visionary muscle by having the camera act as a voyeur, peering in on Tokyo from above, sweeping across streets and people in Oscar’s life. The camera is Oscar, on a final hallucinatory trip after death.

Essentially there is no plot to the film. Noe seems intent rather to simulate an experiential state of the afterlife. To do so, his camera ruthlessly cranes in and out of light fixtures, peepholes and in one sequence sure to divide audiences, an aborted fetus. The climax in a celestial brothel that features an orgy of un-simulated sex fulfills the requisite shock value of a Noe feature, but unlike in Irreversible, it seems included merely to titillate than to serve any overarching purpose.

Which leads to the inherent problem with Enter the Void. Whatever point Noe is trying to make about life, death and the afterlife is lost within the plethora of repugnant images and special effects. Noe’s tricks cannot mask what is essentially an offensive, interminable, masochistic, self-conscious slog of a movie.

-Nigel Smith

In 1975 the Nigerian author and critic Chinua Achebe gave a lecture that sent shock-waves through the literary community.  In this lecture, he suggested that the depiction of Africans in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899) was more than sufficient to label not only the text but also its author as racist.  While Achebe would later soften his position by suggesting that his interpretation was only one of many and that his reading in no way invalidated all of the laudatory readings cooked up by admirers of the work, the damage was done.  Over thirty years later the spectre of racism still hangs over Heart of Darkness, provoking the feeling that however glorious the novella might be, it may well be a reflection of a by-gone age with values not quite the same as ours but which we are willing to put up with for the sake of what is good in the work.  In fact, introductions to contemporary editions of the work bend over backwards to stress Conrad’s anti-colonialist credentials.

However, Achebe’s “An Image of Africa : Racism in Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’” actually addresses this issue by discussing Conrad’s layered approach to narration.  Conrad gives the story not one but two narrators; Marlow who recounts his curious experiences in the Congo and a shadowy figure who is telling us about Marlow telling the story.  By insulating himself so carefully, Conrad seems to be insulating himself against the language and the opinions of the story.  It is not Conrad who speaks of ‘buck niggers’ but Marlowe and his chronicler.  However, Achebe’s critique stretches much deeper than merely cataloguing all the uses of racist language and stereotypical depictions of Black people.  In fact, his piece is at its most powerful when it is talking in the abstract about the technique that Conrad uses to project fears onto an entire population.  This is a technique that is still in use today and it is just as problematic as can be seen in films such as William Friedkin’s Cruising (1980) and Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible (2002).

Book Cover

Conrad’s crime, according to Achebe is that he panders to :

“the desire — one might indeed say the need — in Western psychology to set Africa up as a foil to Europe, as a place of negations at once remote and vaguely familiar, in comparison with which Europe’s own state of spiritual grace will be manifest.”

Achebe continues :

“Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as “the other world,” the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilisation, a place where man’s vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant beastiality.”

And yet, for all the Otherness of the Africans’ behaviour and the base savagery of their existence, there is something recognisable about them.  We know this because Conrad shows us partly civilised Africans and the story concludes with the image of Kurtz, that most civilised of white men, who has ‘gone native’ and seen the raw truth that lies behind all of the civilisation, morality and comfortable myth that White men claim to be spreading across the globe.

“The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there — there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly and the men were …. No they were not inhuman. Well, you know that was the worst of it — this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped and spun and made horrid faces, but what thrilled you, was just the thought of their humanity — like yours — the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough, but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you — you so remote from the night of first ages — could comprehend.  Herein lies the meaning of Heart of Darkness and the fascination it holds over the Western mind: “What thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity — like yours …. Ugly.””

I agree with Achebe that it is telling that Conrad decided to set the story of the spiritual defrocking of a Victoria gentleman in Africa.  Could Kurtz not have been pulled from a cotton mill whispering “the horror, the horror”?  The whole point about Victorian myths of civilisation is that they were obviously myths.  In Mike Leigh’s Topsy-Turvy (1999), a nervous W. S. Gilbert steps out of the theatre, unable to be in the building during the premiere of the Mikado.  All he needs to do is round the corner from the Strand and suddenly he finds himself in a sinister and dangerous world very much at odds with the illusions of Victorian propriety and civilisation.  As Achebe points out, Conrad is pushing at an open door… he is drawing upon commonly held stereotypes and prejudices about Africa to fuel his depiction of a savage and lawless world.

Film Poster

However, where Achebe is wrong is in his apparent belief that Africa is somehow being singled out.  When Heart of Darkness was reinvented as Apocalypse Now (1979), Francis Ford Coppola transported the action to South-East Asia and drew upon a popular feeling that the Vietnam war had seen the unravelling of the American conscience.  That Vietnam was a place of madness and death.  John Moore’s Behind Enemy Lines (2001) used the same technique to present former Yugoslavia as a theatre of unrivalled savagery and inhumanity.  Europe’s Dark Heart.  He even plays for laughs the idea that a Yugoslavian teenager might drink Coke rather than water.  A double-edged joke that both speaks to the provincialism of Americans and the supposed surrealism of as mundane an object as a bottle of Coke cropping up in Yugoslavia.

Film Poster

Friedkin’s Cruising and Noe’s Irreversible saw these techniques applied to homosexuality and both films draw upon popular perceptions of the gay fetish underworld to fuel their depictions of the unravelling of a straight man’s mind.

Film Poster

Friedkin’s Cruising deals with a straight cop named Steve Burns (Al Pacino) being sent to work undercover as part of a hunt for a homosexual serial killer.  The cop moves out of the apartment he shares with his girlfriend and takes a flat in the meat-packing district of the West Village, a place which, prior to the AIDS epidemic and the gentrification of inner cities, was packed with gay clubs that catered to New York’s gay BDSM community.  As Friedkin follows Pacino through places with names such as “The Cock Pit” and “The Ramrod”, you can almost hear the Conradian jungle drums beating.  Friedkin shows us a world of mass group sex, bacchanalian excess, of male sexuality unfettered and unconstrained by the presence of either a woman or the authorities.

Still from Film

Still from Film

In this setting, we are shown a series of grizzly murders.  We never see the murderer’s face, we only hear his voice and the voice of the murderer at each new killing is provided by the murder victim from the previous one.  It is almost as though there is no individual killer, but rather the murderer is a manifestation of some violent and deeply buried psychosis embedded in the fabric of the culture itself.  Every leather-boy is as much a potential murderer as a potential victim.  In a scene deleted from the final cut, Friedkin showed a wall daubed with the gay rights slogan “We Are Everywhere” just before the first body part is uncovered.  As the cop spends more and more time in this environment, pushing his engagement with the scene further and further away from the sexual norms of a long-term heterosexual pairing, he starts to change.  He meets up with his girlfriend and expresses his desire to stay with her (“I don’t want to lose you”).  He then fucks her roughly, almost brutally.  When his girlfriend asks him what is going on, the cop merely replies that “What I’m doing, is affecting me”.

Still from Film

Still from Film

Film Still

What the cop means by this becomes evident in the film’s final scenes as Burns’ gay neighbour turns up dead.  The neighbour had a stormy relationship with his boyfriend and throughout the film we can see the cop getting more and more agitated by this and his apparent attraction to the neighbour.  Given that the cop had apparently tracked down the murderer, who killed the neighbour?  The suggestion is that it might well have been Burns.  The film’s final scene sees his girlfriend trying on his leather cap while he shaves.  Clearly, despite attempting to scrub himself clean of what he saw and what he experienced, the cop cannot escape what he has become.  It has followed him home.

Film Poster

The similarities between Heart of Darkness and Irreversible are even more obvious thanks to the film’s remarkable structure.  It opens with a monologue by the character of the Butcher from Noe’s previous films I Stand Alone (1998) and Carne (1991).  The scene is packed with homo-eroticism as the Butcher sits naked on a bed chatting with another man who has a coat draped over his groin.  The degree of intimacy between the two men is difficult to watch.  We feel as though we are intruding on lovers.  The film then moves to scenes of the films’ protagonists being dragged by the police out of a gay S&M night club called The Rectum.  The characters do not speak but we can hear the off-camera taunts of two local thugs who claimed to be able to track down a rapist. “His asshole must have bled a lot.  Fucker.  Fag”  and “All philosophers are fags.  I hope they get you hard.  In prison there are no condoms.  You’ll get AIDS straight away fag”.  These thuggish homophobes are almost like a classical chorus, anointing the characters with their new status as gay men.

Film Still

Film Still

Irreversible is structured back to front so that the film begins with the characters being called gay before showing us the path that lead them to that hellish moment.  A path stretching back through a gay night club (in which they were nearly raped), being called gay by a cab driver, being abused by drunks in a pub because they were looking for a gay club and searching for a transsexual prostitute.  A path stretching all the way back to the infamously brutal scene in which Monica Bellucci’s androgynously named Alex is raped by a man calling himself the Tapeworm.  A man who, whilst sodomising her, coos in her ear “You have such a tight ass.  A nice fag ass”.  The rape scene is almost like the trading post in Heart of Darkness.  It is the furthermost outpost of heteronormative civilisation.  A man raping a woman but making it clear that his frame of reference (as well as his behaviour) is that of another world.  One hidden beneath and outside the world of the characters with their flirtatious parties and their cute heterosexual intimacy.  Irreversible takes us from the gay hell of the Rectum to moments of pure beauty, couples together laughing and playing, a pregnant woman sitting in a park as children play beside her.  As in Cruising, Irreversible changes its colour schemes.  Cruising moves from cold metallic blue to warmth and sunshine.  Irreversible moves from red darkness to a similar sunny hetero- promised land of sunshine and warmth.

Film Still

Film Still

Film Still

Irreversible fits into the Conradian schema not only because of its clear ‘descent to hell’ narrative but also because Noe’s films are littered with a deeply ambiguous attitude towards all forms of sexuality.  In Carne (1991), his daughter’s first period makes the Butcher believe that she has been raped.  Confusing the natural process of becoming a woman with a more tawdry and violent loss of innocence, he sets off and exacts revenge upon an innocent Arab labourer.  In I Stand Alone, the Butcher is trapped between the S&M fantasies of his lover and his deranged incestuous yearning for his own daughter.  It is easy to see the hierarchy present in Noe’s world-view : Women first, then women who have sex, then women who have kinky sex, then transsexuals and finally gay men : Madonna, Whore, Shemale, Queer.

Madonna/Whore Complex by Hansjurgen Bauer

While I agree that there is something profoundly distasteful about this kind of personalised demonisation of entire cultures, sexualities and races, I actually think that it reflects more profoundly upon the people doing the demonising than it does the demonised.  When Conrad wrote of the savagery of Africa, he was giving a voice to his own fears and prejudices as well as those of the society that surrounded him.  Heart of Darkness speaks of the Victorian image of Africa in the same way as Apocalypse Now speaks of the American vision of Vietnam, Behind Enemy Lines speaks of American fears of ‘Old Europe’ and both Friedkin and Noe’s films speak of a deep-seated fear for their own sexuality.

As Achebe says, much of the emotional force from Heart of Darkness comes from the idea of recognition.  White Europeans are supposed to see the Africans not as inscrutable Others but rather as reflections of their own potential for savagery.  Both Friedkin and Noe’s characters begin the films as straight men before encountering the homosexual demi-monde and being sucked into it, a process that changes them forever.

The key question to ask when trying to work out how one feels about this process of Othering is what purpose is served by these kinds of depictions of Black or Gay people.  Achebe sees the European’s demonisation of the African as being motivated by self-aggrandisement.  If you write about how savage the lives of the Africans are then you are also making the civilised life of the European seem that much more attractive, noble and moral.  Think of Conrad’s depiction of the Thames as a grand old river, beautiful because it is civilised and well-travelled.  The wild has been beaten out of it.  It has been tamed.  Compared to this, the Congo seems a terrible place lined with danger and death.  Both are vast rivers, but one has been tamed and made fit for human travel.  The other needs civilising.

Conversely, we can take the demonisation not as a means of elevation but of deflation.  By showing us the savagery of African lives and making it clear to us how recognisably human they are, Conrad is reminding us that civilisation is a myth, a shell game, a vast act of voluntary self-delusion.  The capacity for savagery is within us all and it is only by ignoring the realities of life that we can convince ourselves otherwise.  Consider for example, Conrad’s depiction of the offices of the great trading company at the beginning of the novella : A dried out, fly-blown tomb where manners and fussy decoration are used not to demonstrate civilisation but as a buttress against the forces of entropy.  It is, in its own way, no less horrific than the trading posts of the Congo.

The ambivalence expressed in Heart of Darkness about civilisation is one reason why Achebe’s critique has not lead to the work being marginalised  and seen as merely a product of its time.  Its style is unfashionable.  Its imagery and language unsettling.  And yet the book remains a vital part of the Western canon.  This same ambiguity envelops the works of Friedkin and Noe : We are repulsed by their use of Gay stereotypes and their equation of homosexuality with brutality and death and yet we hesitate before calling either work bigoted.  We return to them because of their ambiguity.  Perhaps Achebe was right and our refusal to reject these works marks a deep-seated and well-hidden vein of prejudice.  A secret belief that all gay men are piss-drinking deviants or leather-clad rapists.  That Africans are brutally uncivilised and incapable of governing themselves.  Perhaps we enjoy these works for the same reason that white teenagers enjoy gangsta rap : it speaks to their prejudices.  This is possible.  It is a question that all of these works pose of us because of their similarity and because of their power.  That too is a reason for returning to them.

Inside or À l'intérieur (2008)

A scene from Inside

Inside or À l’intérieur is a 2007 French horror film released in the United States over a year ago. It is directed by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, who at one point were mentioned as possible directors for the Hellraiser remake. That would’ve been nice to see as Inside is definitely one of the scariest and most sick and twisted movies I’ve ever seen. I’m a full grown adult male and this movie actually gave me nightmares, but I don’t want to overrate the film, as your typical bloodthirsty horror-movie goer may be distracted by the actors who mumble enough that you may actually have to read what they are saying (the film is in French of course). Also, the pace is unnerving and might require some patience from those who appreciate inferior gorefests. This is a very violent film and intentionally so, but it is so much more frightening to watch because it sets you up nicely with great context, writing, and acting. In other words, if a film was this quality and not a horror film I would still be praising it for these reasons, and fellow cinephiles anticipating good horror know exactly what I’m talking about. Well, this is the best horror film since Neil Marshall’s 2005 film The Descent and perhaps maybe even Takashi Miike’s 1999 film Audition. In other words, you really have to look all over the world for a good horror movie and the French deliver big on this one like they did with Aja’s High Tension and the amazing Gaspar Noe film Irreversible.

Dalle and Alysson Paradis

It is set on Christmas Eve during what appears to be the 2005 riots in France. I’m not sure those riots continued much into December but it appears to be the backdrop of the film. We follow pregnant Sarah (Alysson Paradis) after her boyfriend was killed in a car accident they both experienced months earlier. She is stalked by a mysterious woman played by Beatrice Dalle. Dalle is most famous for her performance in 37°2 le matin (Betty Blue to American audiences) over twenty years ago. She really is a great actress and brings out that fierce psychotic rage again for her role here. She is dressed in a long black Victorian gown that hides her well in the shadows and gives her a ghostly presence. This reminded me of some of those great horror films from the silent era and was very effectively used. It also reminded me of the Hellraiser villain Pinhead, which seemed to connect well with the directors’ once rumored involvement in that remake. Anyway, Dalle is frightening in this role and absolutely among the most vicious villains to appear onscreen in quite some time.

Beatrice Dalle's villain is horrifying, intense, and memorable.

Other than pushing the envelope in terms of gore, the influences here run deep. The suspense is effective and we are only gradually given hints about the villain’s motives until the end. How far she will go to get what she wants is another thing we might question, and believe me you cannot even imagine how far she will go. There are moments at the end of this film that scared me to the point where I felt like looking away. Moments that rank up there with scenes from great horror films like Alien, Audition, Dawn of the Dead, Suspiria, or even the The Exorcist, among others. It is hard to write about a horror film I enjoy because I feel compelled to say so much more, but I don’t want to give anything else away. Suffice to say, if you’re not troubled by this film then you are missing out on the fun of watching great horror. Very highly recommended, but not for the squeamish.

My rating is 5 out of 5 stars.