Father Geek with another of our reports on this year's Spring Edition of HIFF sent in by our Island Editor Moon Yun Choi. Several very good flicks in this one...

DOGVILLE, DOLLS, HAUTE TENSION AMONG FILMS SCREENED DURING HIFF SPRING FEST

by Albert Lanier

Lars Von Trier's controversial drama DOGVILLE and Alexandre Aja's bloody slasher film HAUTE TENSION were among a handful of films screened over the weekend of April 3 and April 4 during the Hawaii International Film Festival's Spring Fling.

The 7th annual event ran for one week in Honolulu from April 2 to April 8 at the Signature Dole Cannery Theaters.

The Spring festival is a diminutive sidebar event compared to the larger 10-day film festival put on by HIFF in the fall.

Takeshi Kitano's DOLLS was the first film shown on April 3. DOLLS focuses on three couples.

The first duo is a young man who nearly marries his boss's daughter but runs off on his wedding day with his former fiancée and true love. She has since been hospitalized after nearly killing herself and having a breakdown over their breakup.

The second duo is a Yakuza boss who pines in his advancing old age for the pretty young co-worker he used to share his bento lunch with years ago as a young factory employee.

The third duo is a young road worker who is besotted with pretty pop-music star Hanuma Yamaguchi and goes to disturbing lengths to finally meet this pop diva he worships from afar.

Kitano opens DOLLS with a Bunraku performance in a theater before an actual audience. Then he cuts to the two Bunraku puppets--one male, one female--used in the show before a background and moves in on the puppets as they stare at the camera and at us ( this scene was a bit unnerving to tell the truth).

Kitano returns to the puppets at the end to bookend his film. The first couple--M! atsumoto and Sawako--also functions as a framing device for Kitano as well as when we see them tethered together by a red cord and walking across landscapes (and past some of the other characters in the film) as they change from spring to summer to winter on the way to their eventual destination.

DOLLS is essentially an examination of doomed love, of fulfilled and unfulfilled love and of tragic love.

These varied types of love are viewed and experienced within a Japanese cultural text and subtext (the use of Bunraku, the seasonal and weather changes).

The film has a bittersweet, reflective quality. A couple of the characters yearn for what they had in the past, one character (the fanatic admirer) is tied to the present.

Kitano has fashioned a nice piece of cinema here with DOLLS. This film is certainly not a masterwork but this picture should! be worth examining in the future within the body of Kitano's overall work as a director.

The direction is sure footed here, the acting effective overall and the script nicely written with a strong sense of fate omnipresent in the story. DOLLS is a sad, sweet film.

LAST LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE on the other hand neither extremely sad or sweet thought it is laid back in a slightly contemplative sort of way.

Thai filmmaker Pen-ek Ratanaruang's latest feature (after his previous film MONRAK TRANSISTOR which essentially seemed like less fantastical variant of Lindsay Anderson's O LUCKY MAN) brings together a Japanese expatriate named Kenji. He's played with nerdy charm here by Tadanobu Asano who works in small library in Bangkok. There's a pretty, blasé young Thai woman named Noi (Sinitta Boonyasak) who is still reeling from her sister's death from a car accident on a busy bridge.

Kenji, who was squatting on a rail on the side of the same bridge and entertaining a suicide fantasy (one of a couple of such fatalistic dreams he conjures up during the course of the film), witnesses the accident.

Noi and Kenji end up meeting when Noi comes to Kenji's workplace to drop off his bag.

The two end up going out to dinner and then talking. Kenji asks Noi if he can stay at her place and two drive out in Noi's yellow VW to her unkempt country home.

Kenji is a neat freak who keeps a perfectly clean and tidy apartment in the city that includes piles of books under labels organized by year of publication. He sees the piles of dirty dishes in her sink and can't help himself. He starts to wash the plates.

Noi will be moving to Japan in a few days. She cries bitter tears in her bedroom thinking about her recently departed sister. She heads out of the house a couple of times and--in an ultimately futile endeavor-- tells Kenji not to wash the dishes.

The two eat together, talk, hang out in the house.

There are a couple of slight complications--Noi has a possessive ex-boyfriend and there is a specif! ic reason why Kenji is loath to go back to his apartment.

LAST LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE has a sort of unforced charm and is an easily likable film.

Ratanaruang, like in MONRAK TRANSISTOR, demonstrates the tricky byways and highways that life often forces people onto, but in LAST LIFE these strange roads bring two people together instead of keeping them apart as it did MONRAK TRANSISTOR.

Asano is terrific here as Kenji. Here he plays a man who is both what he seems and yet more than the sum of his parts but never over or underplays his character. Asano walks a sort of tightrope with his part but manages to get across with a winning personality and a certain geeky grace.

Boonyasak is a good counterpoint to Asano. She does a good job as putting on a poker face at times and evincing a blasé, nonchalant exterior (though she is deeply pained by her si! ster's death and Kenji's geeky charm does seem to be getting past her radar).

Even one of my favorite Japanese directors--Miike Takashi--pops up in a funny cameo in LAST LIFE.

Aided by fine camerawork from Master DP Chris Doyle, LAST LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE just feels right (especially after having seen the heartbreaking DOLLS). A cinematic time-killer with low-key energy and watchable characters.

Perhaps it was a good thing that LAST LIFE was low-key and easy to watch because Lars Von Trier's DOGVILLE was the next film up.

DOGVILLE is perhaps the most accessible film Von Trier has made for a movie-going audience (which I admit is like saying that Quentin Tarantino has produced his least bloodiest picture).

Divided into 9 chapters and a prologue, DOGVILLE is set in the early thirties in an America impacted by the Great Depression.

Dogville, Colorado is a pleasant little town with about 15 or so residents. There's Thomas Edison Jr. (Paul Bettany), the son of the town's physician who fancies himself a philosopher and would be writer. However, he's gotten as a far as a couple of words and a comma as an aspiring writer.

Tom likes to lecture the citizens of the town on morals in the mission house or church which has not been staffed by a minister in a few years.

Dogville is small: a few houses, a couple of stores, an abandoned mill house and what's left of mines that have long since been shut down.

Into this town where--as the theme song for the TV show CHEERS always made clear--everyone knows your name comes a fetching young woman named Grace (Nicole Kidman).

It is Tom that first catches sight of Grace as he sits on a bench nea! r the edge of the town in the evening. He hears gunshots and then in a couple of minutes sees a fashionable looking blond haired lady rush into view.

Tom can clearly see that she is on the run. Grace attempts to climb up some nearby rock formations but Tom tells her to forget it, she won't get anywhere especially at this time of night.

A car is heard coming up on Old Canyon road (the only road in or out of Dogville). Grace needs to hide. Tom advises her to head to the mines and keep out of sight.

A black car pulls up. Men in black suits, wearing fedoras on their heads are in front. There is man in sitting in the back, window shade drawn face obscured. This mystery man asks Tom if he has seen a young woman come into these parts. No, Tom replies. The unseen man then provides his card to Tom just in case he sees her before driving away.

Tom and Grace talk. She obviously wants to get away from the men in the car. He wants her to stay in Dogville for a little while.

Grace is reluctant. It seems her an imposition, a lot to ask the townsfolk. Tom is convinced he can persuade them to allow her to be sheltered in the town.

Tom calls a meeting in the mission house and introduces the town's residents to Grace. He urges the town folk to give her a two week trying out period. If she proves to be a positive influence on the town, Grace should stay. If not, she needs to be on her way.

The vote is taken and Grace--who left the mission house during the vote--hears the mission house bell ring for every single vote. It turns out the vote was unanimous. Grace can stay for two weeks. It's tough going for Grace at first. She approaches the different townspeople and asks if she! has any work that needs to be done. No one seems to have any chores or tasks that need to be accomplished.

Grace does find work. In fact, all the residents eventually discover that there is something that Grace could do for them. The two weeks turns into two months and then a few more months. Grace becomes a part of the town--not a born and bred part, mind you--but familiar nonetheless.

Of course, familiarity--as the saying goes--breeds contempt as Grace soon learns.

I will write no further about DOGVILLE's story because Von Trier's film is one that must be seen in order to be savored. The town of Dogville is actually a singular stage on which the "town" is essentially laid out in a chalk-like outline complete with labels (Moses, a dog sits down in his assigned space labeled "dog"). While there are props and other set dressings, the actors must open and close imaginary "doors".

And speaking of actors, what a cast! Besides Bettany and Kidman, old pros like Lauren Bacall, Ben Gazzara and James Caan are here in full force as are Patri! cia Clarkson, Chloe Sevigny, Stellan Skarsgard and Blair Brown among others. John Hurt provides important voice-over narration throughout the course of this 3-hour film.

DOGVILLE is long but it is powerful. This a masterful work, a truly great film.

However DOGVILLE's greatness derives from its fusion of theater and cinema. Von Trier could easily have built an actual set on some bucolic plot somewhere (Dogma fans might be pissed off at this notion) but actuality is not his aim, the seeming artifice of theater is. Why? Because the lack of "real" houses and an "authentic" environment forces the audience to pay attention to the characters, the dialogue as well as the film as an organic whole.

This is what the conventions of Theatre do to audiences: force them to pay attention to the play and its characters, not just costuming or set design or lighting. Of course DOGVILLE is also a film. Von Trier keeps us in the game, cinematically speaking. We see close ups of Kidman's face and longer shots of the town among many kind of shots here. Von Trier makes sure the editing is up to par, swift when it needs to be, measured at other times.

The performances are excellent here. Bettany does a fine job as Tom Edison. Kidman is strong as Grace.This is a far superior performance compared to her work in COLD MOUNTAIN or even in THE HOURS. It's nice to see Bacall again onscreen and she briefly shines here. Gazzara is especially touching as a blind man who can describe how the the shadow from the mission house steeple falls squarely on a nearby house and Caan is terrific in his small but pivotal role.

DOGVILLE has been called anti-American and I won't get into whether that charge is true ! or untrue (though I understand why the film was labeled as such) due to time constraints here. I will say that DOGVILLE is like a nightmarish version of "Our Town", "Main Street" torn asunder. There is an ugliness of spirit and a foulness of mind that resides in the town of Dogville. Oh, the people look harmless and the town seems lovely but there is nastiness, a brutishness that can well up to the surface.

That of course is the problem with people, human beings. They sometimes forget about human nature. The basic web of human contact and relationships are kind of like crops: What gets planted must eventually be harvested. In Small Town America, no one can hear you scream.

I won't say much about the last film of the day, LEGEND OF THE EVIL LAKE from South Korea other than to say LEGEND i! s a workable action/adventure film with a story loaded with supernatural elements.

I was neither over or underwhelmed by LEGEND though the cinematography by DP Yuen Lu is quite good here.