Hey folks, Harry here... I've seen two of the three films here. I absolutely love RESURRECTION OF THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL and BATTLE ROYALE 2 is a subversive bit of insanity wrapped in a black satire blood drenched sack-cloth. Absolutely unhinged. Watching the film might be considered by some as just cause for confinement in Guantanamo Bay. You'd just have to see it to get where I'm coming from, but wow. Low point is a bout of TERRIBLE ACTING by the guy playing the Teacher in the film. Other than that, I had a blast.
Hey Harry,
I’m back again with another report from the IFFR. I saw three really interesting movie today.
The first was Resurrection of the Little Match Girl, a great movie, which is hard to explain without going into every detail, since so much is going on in this movie. The main story is about a young gamer who plays a game in which he has to make sure the little match girl dies from cold and hunger, while also making sure she’s thinking about him when she dies. A strange concept by itself but it gets even weirder from there as the match girl starts a killing spree. The plot is a bit hard to follow at times, especially since there was one non-subtitled English speaking part that I think gave some important details. But otherwise the movie is great fun, there’s a lot of humour in it and it had some great matrix inspired action scenes with great special effects.
ANATOMIE DE L'ENFER (ANATOMY OF HELL)
The second movie I saw was Anatomie de l'enfer (anatomy of hell) which had its world premiere today at the IFFR. Director Catherine Breillat, producer Jean-François Lepetit, and stars Amira Casar and Rocco Siffredi were all there to introduce the movie. Breillat is a regular at the IFFR and was happy to be back with her latest work. In introducing her film she didn’t really have much to say other then that we probably should have seen her previous films to really get this one. She then asked the audience not to laugh at some of the more shocking scenes, but to be silent throughout the film. The stars too didn’t have very much to say, Rocco Siffredi was only making jokes about the size of his penis.
As for the movie, well I didn’t really get it, I have to admit that I haven’t seen any of Breillats previous movies apart from fat girl, but I didn’t understand what the movie was about. The movie is quite shocking and even starts with a disclaimer telling the audience that it’s just a film and that a body double has been used in some of the more intimate moments. But other then shocking the audience I couldn’t really see the point of the movie, and would almost be tempted to write this one of as an intellectual porn movie.
After the film there was a Q&A, unfortunately couldn’t stay as I had to go see my next movie, in another theatre.
BATTLE ROYALE 2: REQUIEM
That next movie was Battle Royale II: Requiem, Kenta Fukasaku was there to introduce the movie. He was very happy to be in Rotterdam again; he had been here twice before with his father, in 2000 when they showed a retrospect of Kinji Fukasakus work and again in 2001 when they showed the original Battle Royale. Because the movie started late at 10.30 pm there wasn’t gonna be any time after the movie for a Q&A so the Simon field the festival director asked a few questions before the movie started. The first question was what the difference was between battle royale 1 and 2. Kenta replied that in BR1 there’s a Japanese society with a lot of youth crime, so the BR is adapted for that as everybody’s in it for himself, while BR2 takes place in a post September 11 world, where the main concern is the fight against terrorism. So instead of everyone for himself this time it’s the entire group against the terrorists. The second question was how much his father worked on the movie. Kenta explained that he and his father locked themselves in a hotelroom to write the script together, but that he didn’t really understand the vision his father had. Kinji wanted the movie to reflect WW2 in a way. Only after they had shot the movie and Kenta started to understand his father’s vision, and he hopes that the audience will understand it too.
As for the actual movie, I’m not gonna say much about it, since I’m planning to see it again next week, and a review will have to wait till after I’ve seen it again, I just want to say that it was better then I expected after reading some of the reviews, but not as good as I hoped it would be.
Mr Tough Guy
