Hey folks, Harry here delighted to be presenting yet another helping of Elaine's fantastic coverage of the Rotterdam International Film Festival. This time out she's taking a look at 3 Comedies and of the 3 the one I simply must see immediately is KOPPS, it sounds genuinely hilarious from her descriptions. Here ya go...
ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
DAY 4
What's the epitome of screen eyes? I have no idea, but
I imagine I must resemble it quite closely. Four days
into the festival, I am looking as ghastly as I
normally do after a whole festival - ghostly, one
might even say. As if I'm not entirely there. And six
more days to go before I can get some rest. Oh, joy!
It seems I was a bit hasty when I condemned the
festival organisers for not having "Chihwaseon" on the
programme. It has been announced that "Chihwaseon"
will in fact screen at the IFFR - as the closing film,
no less. Good call, guys. Now get Zhang Yimou's "Hero"
on a screen near me (preferably before, say,
September), and you will have my undying gratitude.
As for today's films, well, it's comedy time. I'm
going to give you reviews of three comedies - each
different from the other, but all hilarious in their
own way. While I recommend all of them, I especially
advise you to seek out "Kopps," of which Rotterdam had
the international premiere. A send-up of almost every
American action movie produced in the past twenty
years, "Kopps" has all the ingredients to become a hit
Stateside - lots of laugh-out-loud humour, good
special effects and a "Die Hard" freak who keeps on
saying "Freeze, motherfucker!" every five seconds.
Shallow fare, to be sure, but very entertaining
indeed.
....................................................
KOPPS
(Written and directed by Josef Fares, Sweden)
Damn, this film is funny.
Two years ago, Lukas Moodysson protege Josef Fares
burst onto the scene with "Jalla! Jalla!," a
multicultural comedy that proved extremely popular
with the Rotterdam audience. Now the Lebanese-Swedish
director is back with "Kopps," which is even more
hilarious than its predecessor. Like "Jalla! Jalla!,"
"Kopps" is largely a family production. However, that
doesn't mean it is amateurish; on the contrary, it is
as slick as anything Hollywood has ever produced, and
features some of the funniest scenes you'll see in
cinemas all year - including some seriously
un-European special effects.
"Kopps" is about four police officers in a village
where nothing ever happens. They love their job, but
unfortunately, the job doesn't love them; no criminal
ever shows up to test their prowess, and the greatest
challenge they have on any given day is preventing
stray cows from trampling the flower beds in front of
the station. Under those circumstances, a
fully-equipped police force is clearly a waste of
money, and so Headquarters dispatches a nubile
inspector to the village to inform the force that
their station will be closed down. Needless to say,
the four friends don't want to lose their jobs, so
they do what any sensible cop would do in their
position: commission crimes to convince Headquarters
that there is a need for a police force, after all.
First they try bribing the village drunk into
shop-lifting. When that doesn't sort the right effect,
they resort to more spectacular crimes. Obviously, the
pretty blonde inspector sent by headquarters finds the
sudden increase in crime suspect, but the question is,
will it stand between her and the sympathetic officer
(played by the director's brother, Fares Fares) who is
in love with her?
"Kopps" has many things going for it, and its original
premise is just the beginning. Far more hilarious is
the part played by one of the officers, Benny (Torkel
Petersson). You see, Benny likes action movies. A lot.
He has seen so many of them that he can't distinguish
between film and reality anymore, to the point where
he believes he is Bruce Willis in "Die Hard" or
Sylvester Stallone in "Rambo." He is so caught up in
his fantasy world that whenever a police situation
arises (real or imagined), he switches from Swedish to
English and starts talking a kind of American cop
gibberish in which the word "motherfucker" features
prominently. And when he enters his own kitchen, he
does so SWAT-style - armed to the teeth, and ready to
shoot whomever stands in his way.
Like his cat, for instance.
There is some riotous fun here. From the ploys the
four friends devise to prevent the closing of their
station to the superhero fantasies Benny lives out in
his dreams, "Kopps" is a string of silly but extremely
amusing set pieces that sends up everything from "Back
to the Future" to "The Matrix." Although it isn't the
most sophisticated humour, it is a much funnier parody
than anything the Wayans brothers have ever come up
with, and it is played so lovingly and presented so
expertly that one has no choice but to laugh very hard
indeed. This should be true for Americans as well as
Europeans, for if ever a European film had crossover
potential, this is it. "Kopps" is not the pretentious
fare Americans associate with European cinema; it's an
American film which just happens to have been made by
a bunch of Swedes, a sizeable part of which doesn't
even require subtitles. It's the closest Europe has
ever come to producing a popcorn movie, and it's a
good one, too.
So what do we call this Swedish Hollywood? Stollywood?
Holmywood? You choose - after you've honoured the film
with the load of popcorn and big laughs it deserves.
Freeze, motherfuckers!
....................................................
THE SEA
(Written and directed by Baltasar Kormakur, Iceland;
based on a play by Olafur Haukur Simonarson)
Times were when the majority of us had no idea Iceland
had a film industry worth speaking of. Now, thanks to
two critically-acclaimed films in the top-20 of the
IFFR (one of which has already been sold to a dozen
countries), Iceland is the talk of the town. And while
Dagur Kari's "Noi Albinoi" (which I will review later)
may be the more popular of the two Icelandic entries,
Baltasar Kormakur's follow-up to "101 Reykjavik" isn't
bad, either. On the contrary, it is pretty damn good,
in that nasty, vicious way which appears to be a
Nordic speciality.
"The Sea" is a tragicomedy disguised as a family
drama. Sixty-something Thordur, factory owner and
uncrowned lord of the town in which he lives, has some
skeletons in his closet. They are getting smelly, so
he decides to do what he should have done ages ago:
get his family together and have it all out. This is
not so easy as it seems, for apart from his eldest
son, who helps him run the factory, his children live
far away: his daughter in Reykjavik and his youngest
son in Paris, France. When everybody finally shows up
for the family reunion, it turns out that they either
hate each other's guts or love each other far too
much. Haraldur, the eldest son, is married to an
alcoholic who can't stand her in-laws but needs their
money; Ragnheidur, the daughter from Reykjavik, is a
bitter old hag who hates both her husband and her
Nintendo-addicted teenage son; and Agust (who is
supposed to be studying business in Paris but really
wants to become a song writer) proudly presents his
pregnant French girlfriend Francoise, but really seems
more interested in his cousin Maria, who is equally
obsessed with him. And in the background there are
Thordur's second wife, whom no one really seems to
like, and a dopey old grandmother who has a few
interesting things to say about Coca Cola and eating
whale meat. Naturally, these people have a few secrets
of their own (not to mention some semi-criminal
plans), and thus the stage is set for a confrontation
- the most explosive, hard-hitting family
confrontation since "Festen" (The Celebration), and a
pretty funny one, at that.
Kormakur knows his comedy. The humour he uses in "The
Sea" comes in many guises, ranging from obvious and
fairly innocuous (the jokes about Icelandic cuisine)
to harsh and pretty bizarre (the grandmother's
monologues). His speciality, however, is black humour,
and black it is - as black as the night that never
really comes in Iceland but very much overshadows the
lives of the protagonists. No one is spared from it;
with the exception of Francoise, who is after all an
outsider, everybody gets a jab, and more often than
not, the jabs are vicious. Subtlety, it appears, is
not a virtue much appreciated by Nordic people.
In many ways, Francoise the Foreigner is the focal
point of the film. Because she knows as little about
her boyfriend's background as the viewer, the viewer
sees the story unfold through her eyes. And what he
sees is an unusual (but recognisable) family saga set
in an almost Edda-esque Iceland. For Iceland is more
than a place where women are blonde and real men eat
whale meat; Iceland, says Agust, is a place "where
idiots get raped by idiots," and where those who know
about it carelessly let it happen. It is a place where
sons plot to have their fathers certified, and fathers
beat up their sons when they choose, for once, to be
honest - not with their bare knuckles, but with iron
rods.
No wonder Iceland produced the Edda. A land this wild
cannot but spawn destruction, can it?
Expertly told and interestingly photographed, "The
Sea" is what one might call "classic festival fare."
Pairing black humour with flashes of feeling (and thus
eliciting compassion as well as big laughs), it should
appeal to those who like "Festen" and Nordic humour in
general. A warning, though - if you make the mistake
of watching "The Sea" immediately after "Whale Rider,"
you'll find the whale jokes to be in bad taste.
....................................................
THE YEAR OF THE DEVIL
(Written and directed by Petr Zelenka, Czech Republic)
Back in 1998, Petr Zelenka won a Tiger Award with his
black comedy "Knoflikari" (Buttoners). Now he is back
with "The Year of the Devil," a film that could be
described as a road movie meets
mockumentary/rockumentary but really defies
pigeon-holing. It is "This Is Spinal Tap" with some
metaphysicism thrown in for good measure, and if that
isn't odd enough for you, it features spontaneous
combustion, too.
You have to admit that's a pretty ambitious
combination.
The first person we meet in "The Year of the Devil" is
Jan Prent, a Dutch alcoholic who has come to the Czech
Republic because he has heard the AA is unusually
effective there. Whilst in therapy, he hits on the
idea of making a documentary about alcoholism, and
what better subject than that famous alcoholic, Czech
singer Jarek Nohavica? For unfathomable reasons,
Nohavica likes the plan, and so Prent follows him and
his friend Karel Plihal during Nohavica's withdrawal
and on his way back to the top. On the way there, the
three hook up with a folk band called Checomor, who
normally only play at weddings and funerals but find
themselves overnight stars when they start playing
with Nohavica. They also meet Jaz Coleman, a former
Killing Joke member who now conducts a Czech orchestra
and introduces Checomor to shamanism. A few ghosts
appear, and the band and their entourage become
convinced that there is an angel in their midst. And
so it goes on, until someone disappears - a case of
spontaneous combustion, or so his friends argue. But
does spontaneous combustion actually exist?
"The Year of the Devil" is a tough film to sell. A
comedy of sorts, it has flashes of side-splitting
hilarity, but much of the humour is so weird, so
off-hand that its appeal will not be immediately
obvious to Americans. Petr Zelenka doesn't go in for
American humour; his humour is of the absurd variety,
and it is delivered with such deadpan
matter-of-factness that one doesn't realise until a
few seconds later how funny it really is. Nor does all
of it come off equally well; the humour sort of dies
towards the end, when the metaphysical stuff takes
over in a not wholly satisfying way. When it IS
successful, though, the humour in "The Year of the
Devil" is so utterly hilarious it induces
stomachaches. It couldn't be anything else, what with
a traditional-costume-wearing folk band learning to be
rock stars and a band leader who won't let them
rehearse because he thinks his lectures on alcoholism
are more important. And I'm not even including the gag
about playing the violin in a lift here, which is the
funniest thing I have seen in the festival so far.
And yet it isn't just an off-beat comedy. A
multi-genre-spanning exercise in ambition, "The Year
of the Devil" is a road movie that takes its
characters on a journey both physical and spiritual.
At the same time, it is a kind of mockumentary, but
with a twist: everybody plays himself. Nohavica and
Checomor really do exist (Checomor did a gig after the
Rotterdam premiere of their film), and apparently
former rock star Jaz Coleman does indeed conduct a
Czech orchestra, which begs a few questions about the
boundaries between fiction and reality. If it is true
that this foggish territory between truth and fiction
is where cinema is headed, Zelenka is ahead of his
time - something everybody who has seen "Knoflikari"
will be ready to concede.
All things considered, "The Year of the Devil" is a
pretty good film - a bit uneven, but highly original
and occasionally brilliant. It may lose some steam
towards the end, but that shouldn't prevent it from
gaining a reputation amongst "Spinal Tap" fans - even
if much of the dialogue is in Czech.
....................................................
AND BEFORE I LEAVE YOU...
... I propose a toast to "Whale Rider," which has
taken over the number-one spot in the Audience Award
poll. I knew it. Let the victory lap begin!
Yours in screen-eyed agony (but happily and
masochistically so),
Elaine
(who is still waiting for some Korean reader to fill
her in on "Resurrection of the Little Match Girl."
Come on, guys - SOMEONE must be willing to post a
review, right?)
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