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NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS 2001 Send This Review to a Friend
One thing you can be certain of with the annual New Directors/New Films series in New York is that there will be some especially worthwhile films showcased. You can also be sure there will be a few boring ones, but those that stand out make each series worthwhile, as was the 2001 event, the 30th in the tradition, sponsored jointly by The Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art, where the screenings take place.
One gem, "The Day I Became a Woman," has already opened commercially. (Click in Film or Search to read the review.) Others will be reviewed in detail when they are released.
The film that I enjoyed most in the realm of pure entertainment was "Nine Queens," an ingenious movie from Argentina about con experts. Written and directed by Fabian Bielinsky, it features one duplicitous move after another. You can never accept anything that is said or done, no matter how convincing the gambit, and you never can be sure of the truth until the ending with the final twist. Even then, you may wonder. It is great fun, thanks to the writing, direction, and the amusing performances by Ricardo Darin, Gaston Pauls, Leticia Bredice and the rest of the cast. "Nine Queens," should be a treat for audiences everywhere.
In a more serious vein "La Faute a Voltaire," a French import directed by Abdel Kechiche, makes an impact with its examination of life in Paris for North African immigrants who struggle to establish legality and earn a living. Although the story is strung out too long, it nonetheless is involving. Sami Bouajila has appeal as a young Moroccan trying to make a go of it, but his encounters are more than he can readily handle, such as his relationship with the problematical Lucie. She's played by Elodie Bouchez, so good in "Dreamlife of Angels" and also expert here in the way she creates a difficult character. Kechiche's film, with its convincing cast, takes us through the world of what immigrants face daily--the trouble finding and holding good jobs, of getting proper housing and remaining in France.
Another serious endeavor is "No Place To Go," a German film that echoes the problems brought by the unification of East and West. The protagonist is Hanna Flanders, based on the real life writer, Gisela Elsner, who committed suicide. In the film she is known as Hanna Flanders, and the movie was directed by her son Oskar Roehler, whom she had virtually abandoned. The film he has fashioned focuses on his mother's final days. The interesting aspect here is that the author portrayed believed in East Germany and its system and was a star there. The unification and the adoption of West German values seems to her an utter betrayal. What drives the film is a searing portrait by Hannelore Elsner, a noted actress who although having the same last name is not related to the writer on whose life the film was based. The character is not very sympathetic, but the film lures us into her world and psyche and follows her final trail until her bitter end.
The Polish film "Wojaczek, which also deals with a real-life person, a poet whose death at the age of 28 ended an indulgent life of booze and self-destructiveness, was unrelentingly boring. Nothing in the morass indicates any genuine talent of the protagonist. Director Lech J. Majewski's work assaults an audience with nihilism, with Krzystof Siwczyk's portrayal indicating what a pain the so-called poet must have been to everyone around him. His penchant for throwing himself through windows eventually catches up with him. There is some sex to relieve the doldrums, but even hat fits into the pattern of his boorishness.
I enjoyed "The Cashier Wants to Go to the Sea," a quirky film from Croatia about a supermarket cashier who is a hard, loyal worker with a daughter who has health problems. She desperately needs a week off for vacation, and her efforts to get her boss to agree is a springboard for a tour through the corrupt way in which her boss operates, and the malaise that exists in the store, which seems to attract more shoplifters than customers. It is obviously a metaphor for life in Croatia and perhaps elsewhere. There is much humor in the perspective of writer-director Dalibor Matani, particularly in the way in which the boss and his mistress are compromised. Dora Poli is most sympathetic as the cashier Barica, and the rest of the cast is good, too, with the film wryly making its points through amusing confrontations and situations, while also adding a note of sadness for what the protagonist must go through before the final, hopeful resolution.
"Before the Storm," an interesting but flawed drama from Sweden, mixes two stories, to the advantage of neither. But director Reza Parsa is trying to make a point about the relationship between various types of pressure. A father is being pressured to assassinate someone considered a villain by a Middle East resistance movement to which the father once belonged. His son is under mounting pressure because of the way a bully boy is teasing him in school. Both situations are resolved with violent results. The film grabs one's attention and is quite well done, but the effort to tie the problems together is an ambitious try that doesn't work. There are really two films here.
One favorite is "Face," and unusual film from Japan by director Junji Sakamoto that stars Naomi Fujiyama, a noted actress in that country. She portrays Masako, a dumpy-looking woman who works at a sewing machine and has long resented her younger, prettier sister, who looks down upon her. This is a tale of frustration and eventual murder, and a chronicle of Masako's emergence from the shadows into a new person, yet one plagued by her past and the situations in which she finds herself. The performance is a beautiful one and the story that unfolds is always absorbing both in overall developments and in the details. This is among the best of recent films from Japan, and the star performance alone is worth seeing.
On the other hand, a film from South Korea, "The Foul King," although starting amusingly, soon becomes excruciating. Written and directed by Kim Jee-woon, it is about an outwardly timid office worker who secretly becomes a wrestler. So far so good. But soon the film concentrates on the outrageous wrestling matches and some silly story ploys. Unless you are a wrestling addict and a sucker for very lowbrow comedy a little of this film seems like a lot.
Writer-director Duran Cohen's "Confusion of Genders," which is from France, purports to be a sophisticated look at a mix of heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual relationships. Noel Coward explored such territory years ago with his play "Design for Living." This French concoction is dull because the characters under the microscope are so uninteresting. Instead of being clever and worldly, the film seems silly and juvenile. After a while it is a matter of who cares?
The series also included the provocative documentary "On Common Ground," which, under the co-direction of Jessica Glass and David Eilenberg, follows American veterans of World War II brought together in a reunion with their German counterparts whom they fought in a bloody battle in Huertgen Forest. They reminisce about what hell the slaughter was and in what is obviously an emotionally painful experience they recall long-buried thoughts about their fight to survive in that terrible confrontation. The viewpoint that emerges is that the men on both sides were just poor guys fighting because that's what their countries expected of them. They were thrown into the fray by history.
All of this is interesting as far as it goes, and one sympathizes with the men on both sides. However, it is not that simple. The filmmakers make little attempt to define what the war was about. Some pointed questions to the German veterans (as well as to the Americans) would have been in order. What did you think you were fighting for? How do you view the issues in perspective? What have you learned etc? I left feeling that as interesting as the film is, and as much as one praises the filmmakers for reminding us of the war's toll on soldiers, the situation calls for greater depth in view of the Nazi regime for which the German soldiers were fighting in the rampage for conquest.
I regret not being able to see every film in the series, but for the record various colleagues were high on such others as "Dinner Rush," "L.I.E." and "Lift."
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