Vancouver International Film Festival 2008

France

Four Nights with Anna

Review by Cameron Maitland

Polish filmmaking has always been praised for having a unique take on story and emotion. It is no wonder that director Jerzy Skolimowski's Four Nights with Anna shows a side of love and obsession that has never before been tackled by conventional filmmaking.

The story follows a hospital worker, Okrasa, and his love for the girl across the field, Anna. We see him follow her and spy on her - eventually breaking into her house multiple times - but the point of the film is not what he does as much as why he does what he does and the consequences his actions.

The strength of the film is its ability to play with the audience's perceptions. When we are first introduced to Okrasa, he is buying an axe, haunting music playing in the background, and looking at a severed hand, we assume him to be nothing more than a slasher movie villain. But, as the film slowly unfolds, we find Okrasa's place in the world to be something quite unique and as his past, revealed in flashbacks, gives the audience insight which shames their original perceptions. All of this slow unfolding creates great tension within an audience, who faces a man doing despicable things for somewhat altruistic reasons and makes them question how they feel about his obsession.

The film is short but it shows a mastery of pacing in its revelatory information in slow, silent shots. Four Nights with Anna is a unique and well-crafted film that is sure to stay with its audiences long after it ends.

Four Nights with Anna
Jerzy Skolimowski | France/Poland | 2008 | 87min

Thur. Oct. 9 | 6:40pm | Empire Granville Theatre 3
Fri. Oct. 10 | 11:00am | Empire Granville Theatre 4

France

Tokyo!

Review by Cameron Maitland

Tokyo! is an interesting film because it exists as one of the loosest anthologies I've ever seen. Granted, Michel Gondry, Leos Carax, and Bong Joon-Ho all created short films set in the city, but each film couldn't be more different.

Gondry's "Interior Design" follows an artistic couple moving to Tokyo who is having trouble both in their relationship and in setting up roots. Carax's "Merde" follows a strange monster emerging from the sewer and creating destruction and havoc. The final film is a romance that focuses on the lives of shut-ins and the cultural acceptance of them in Japan. Each presents a different view of Tokyo - though it could be said that they are all somewhat critical of their subject.

If anything brings these films together it is their abject strangeness - both visually and in their storytelling. There isn't a single film in this collection without elements of fantasy or magic realism pervading the base story. This not only make each film unique, but it also tends to be a strong and consistent anchor to the metaphorical content of the films that is almost lost in the translation and re-translation. The first two films can also be applauded for eschewing the expected French orientalism for a subtle emotional story and, well, almost the complete opposite.

While it may feel like a strange disjointed trip, and I'd be surprised if anyone liked all three portions, Tokyo! should offer something for every viewer to love at the very least in its strange dreamy visuals and unique storytelling.

Tokyo!
Michel Gondry, Leos Carax and Bong Joon-ho | France/South Korea | 2008 | 112min

Wed. Oct. 8 | 2:00pm | Empire Granville Theatre 2
Thur. Oct. 9 | 7:00pm | Empire Granville Theatre 7

Bosnia

Snow

Review by Chris Walts

Most people know something about current events and world conflicts, but, once the wars are over, people tend to overlook the fact that lives have been forever changed. Snow is a film about the remnants of an isolated Bosnian village and its survivors trying to eke out some sort of existence after the war. With all of the able-bodied men missing - their bodies have never been found - the women are forced to sell jam by the side of a road that no one ever drives down. Their luck changes when a rich Serb shows up and offers them all a large sum of money for their land. The women are now faced with a choice: move on, leaving their old life behind, or fight for what they have left. Moving on could mean a new start, but it also likely means foregoing all of their old traditions, and also accepting that their husbands are dead. Beautifully shot and wonderfully directed by Aida Begic, Snow is a sobering film that forces you to remember that the end of a war means the beginning of an entirely different struggle.

Snow
Aida Begic | Bosnia and Herzegovina, France, Germany, Iran | 2008 | 99min

France

A Christmas Tale

Review by Matthew Tsang

Arnaud Desplechin's heavy-hitting drama is essentially about a dysfunctional family reuniting for the Christmas holiday. However, there is much more to it – a perfect set-up makes audiences salivate at the thought of the troubled characters meeting. The film has moments of brilliance and dark comedy that make the lengthy film feel less than it's full two and half hours.

The film opens with the story of Abel and Junon's first son, Joseph. At a young age, Joseph is diagnosed with a disease in which the only cure is a matching bone marrow transplant, so the married couple turns to their youngest daughter Elizabeth as a potential donor. Unfortunately, the daughter isn't a match for the brother, and Joseph dies at the tender age of six. Fast forward to the present, and the melancholic Elizabeth, in need of serious counsel, is now married with a schizophrenic teenage son, Paul. She has two younger brothers, the unpredictable and self-destructive middle brother, Henri, who was banished by her after having needed to bail him out of his last predicament, and Ivan, the sweet, and slightly naive youngest child with a beautiful wife, who seems to have received the aftermath of the family's initial problems. When all these characters reunite for the first time in half a decade, the result is more (delightful) chaos between extremely convincing characters you don't understand or relate to just enough to know that this dysfunction, however much it is beyond you, is very real.

Desplechin does well in providing the audience with messages about family love, despair, and trauma. When the movie ends, audiences are convinced that sometimes the most unrealistic characters and situations on film can be the most realistic in real life.

A Christmas Tale
Arnaud Desplechin | France | 2008 | 151min

France

JCVD

Review by Cameron Maitland

It’s no secret that b-grade actors can revitalize their careers with unexpected turns in movies outside of their regular wheelhouse. Mabrouk El Mechri’s JCVD, exists not only as a taut action-comedy but also as what may be Jean-Claude Van Damme’s last chance to revitalize his career - by playing himself.

Van Damme plays a semi-realistic pastiche of himself, a bloated, failing actor who, after losing his child in a messy divorce, gets caught up in a botched bank robbery in his hometown of Brussels. The film refuses to let Van Damme be the action star the world, and every character in the film including the bank robbers, assumes he is. It deftly darts back and forth between serious dramatic tension and flat-out comedy, working well as a diverting, surprising portrayal of the actor and the ‘reality’ of his life.

That said there are numerous points in the film which seem to grasp at something more and fail. Van Damme gives an impassioned monologue that falls flat and often other characters try to articulate grand ideas that never make any coherent sense. Also, for a film which somewhat claims to parody the actor, nearly every scene portrays him as endlessly put-upon and sympathetic to the point where he comes off more arrogant than his public image has ever been.

As a simple comedy and action film, JCVD works wonderfully. Sadly, its failed attempts at being something bigger seem to only push against the idea that Van Damme is worth anything more than his straight-to-DVD films.

JCVD
Mabrouk El Mechri | France | 2008 | 102min

Sat. Sept. 27 | 9:30pm | Empire Granville Theatre 7
Sun. Sept. 28 | 4:30pm | Empire Granville Theatre 2

France

Charly

Two Schema Writers on Charly

Review by Matthew Tsang
Charly is a poignant coming-of-age tale about a lonely, listless adolescent boy named Nicolas (Kolia Litscher). Isild Le Besco's direction of the film seems to be a reflection of Nicolas and his everlasting comatose state throughout the film. However insufferable this may sound, there is a hidden charm within the protagonist whether it be his innocence or his vulnerability, that makes audience wish for him to wake from his slumber.

At the start of the film, we see that Nicolas receives little counsel of any sort from his foster parents, and thus he attempts to find parental guidance from his teacher Francois. After talking to Francois, who offers him little advice other than the fact that his life will be an uphill climb, Nicolas picks up a copy of Frank Wedekind's “Spring Awakening” left behind by his teacher. Slipped inside the pages of the play is a postcard of a seascape at Belle-Ile-en-Mer, which Nicolas impulsively decides is his new destination. Along his journey, he meets Charly (Julie-Marie Parmentier), a young prostitute with obsessive-compulsive behaviour that ensures her trailer home is always clean and tidy. The unusual relationship forged between the awkward, drowsy Nicolas and the assertive and bold Charly excites the film greatly. With the demanding Charly in the picture, Nicolas learns lessons he desperately needs and wants – the ability to create order, fend for himself, and other life essentials (not always repeating “I dunno”). The film plays on the irony that eventually a young woman in the prostitution business is the only source that Nicolas can rely on to raise him from the dead and develop his maturity.

Overall, the film works nearly flawlessly with precise dialogue and superb chemistry. The performances from Litscher and Parmentier alone make this film worth watching.

Review by Chris Walts
Something screened before Charly. It might have been a mix-up, or a purposeful pairing of short films, but they made me want to leave the theatre and things only got worse from there. Charly is touted as a quirky coming of age story set somewhere in the French country side. It is about a fourteen year old boy who whimsically sets out in the middle of the night for beach he saw on a postcard, and winds up being taken in by a young obsessive compulsive prostitute played by the director Isild le Besco. One positive thing I can say about the movie is Isild le Besco’s performance is actually quite good and her sparse use of dialogue is an interesting cinematic experiment. It is not enough of a saving grace however, as on a whole the film simply isn’t good which was proved by the fact that a decent amount of people got up and left the theatre.

Charly
Isild le Besco | France | 2007 | 95min

Fri. Sept. 26 | 7:00pm | Empire Granville Theatre 2
Sat. Sept. 27 | 4:30pm | Empire Granville Theatre 2
Sun. Oct. 5 | 11:00am | Vancity Theatre