Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
This is great... one guy’s overall impressions of everything he saw in Rotterdam this year. Plenty of good stuff in this report, so dig in!
Hey Harry,
Yesterday was the last day of the IFFR, ending with a screening of Howl’s Moving Castle, it was a great 10 days, with some great moments and some frustrating ones, but while I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, I’m glad it’s over and I could finally get a decent night of sleep, and finally have the time to type out some reports.
I saw the Thai Film Beautiful Boxer on Monday, Director Ekachai Uekrongtham was present at the screening and introduced the film saying he would be back at the end for a Q&A and for people to throw stuff like bananas at him if they thought the movie was bad. Fortunately for him there was no throwing of anything as the movie was quite good. Beautiful Boxer is a biopic based on the life of the famous Thaiboxer/transvestite Parinya Charoenphol, better known as Nong Toom. It starts with Toom as a small boy from a poor family who likes to dress up like a girl and is often. At a young age he realizes that he feels like a woman trapped in a man’s body. As he grows up he finds out that he can earn a lot of money by Thai boxing, even though the violence of the fights puts him off he still start to train to become a fighter so he can earn money to help out his family. When his trainer finds out he secretly likes to wear make-up, he starts wearing make-up in the ring, at first to stand out from all the other boxers, but as he becomes more successful he realizes he wears make-up to be true to his real nature, and starts to earn money to pay for his sex change operation.
The film was better then I had expected, though it’s a movie about a Thai boxer, it’s no martial arts movie, but rather it deals with the struggle of a man to become a woman. Having said that there are some fights in the movie and they all look great. The director told after the movie that instead of teaching a transvestite how to box, a real Thai boxer was cast for the Role of Toom and it shows as the fight scenes look the part, though more importantly the guy they cast as Toom, Asanee Suwan can actually act, and does a great job at portraying both Toom’s soft cross dressing side and his harder fighting side, a performance which earned him a best actor award at the Thai Oscars. After the screening the director came back to answer some questions, here are some of the answers given.
The movie pretty much follows the real events closely, though the order of some of the events were rearranged, and some of the characters in the movie are composites of a couple of people, the fight with the Japanese wrestler did in fact really happen and the Japanese wrestler in the movie is actually the same wrestler that fought the real Nong Toom in real live. The real Nong Toom did see the movie though she had a hard time watching it at the premiere because she was very nervous, the second time she saw it she loved it, though she wished she had worn waterproof mascara. The real Nong Toom also makes a small cameo in the movie as a beautician. Thai people saw a different cut of the movie, since in Thailand transvestites and transsexuals, are usually seen as clowns, so the Thai version of the movie was more of a comedy. The idea for the movie came from an idea for a play which wasn’t a biopic, when the director was asked to direct a movie this idea turned into a biopic about Nong Toom. The director’s next project will be a Thai/Japanese sword movie, which will be contemporary but will have many historical layers, and deals with reincarnation.
As every year there are Surprise films, at the IFFR, I chanced on going to one this year and luckily it turned out to be a great movie, when I bought the ticket there was some speculation on what was gonna be the film shown, Team America was named, as well as Eros, and the Dutch movie Off Screen. Surprise film 1 turned out to be Off Screen, surprise film 3 was later replaced by a screening of Team America, but there was no word on what surprise film 2, the one I had a ticket for, was going to be. There wasn’t even a hint in the daily festival paper like previous years. So I went in not knowing what I was going to see, though I was hoping for Eros, possibly Birth, and another Dutch film Flirt was another possibility, so when they announced the movie we were going to see was It’s all gone Pete Tong, it came completely out of left field, though director Michael Dowse was there to introduce the movie, telling us it was a movie about a DJ in Ibiza, and that it was going to be a comedy. Honestly I had never heard of the movie, if it was covered on the website I completely missed it, but the moment I saw the ugly mug of Dennis Pennis I knew I was in for a good time. What followed was a brilliantly funny “biopic” of DJ Frankie Wilde, who after being one of the most successful DJ’s in Ibiza falls hard when he looses his hearing. The part of Frankie is played by actor Paul Kaye who I mainly knew from his character Dennis Pennis, the celebrity assaulting reporter. And ultimately Paul Kaye puts in a performance worthy of an oscar, he’s funny as hell, and completely believable as a deaf DJ.
After the screening Michael Dowse came back for a little Q&A, and here are some of the things I can remember:
Paul Kaye was perfect for the role, since he was a funny guy and he really looked the part. Filming took place in Ibiza and during the shoot they lost some of the crew over to the “dark side”, many a time crew members thought they had “great ideas”. They shot several endings including one with the deaf girl getting shot in the end, it’ll probably end up on the DVD. The title of the movie was there from the start, and while there were a couple of times they thought of changing it, ultimately they really loved the title, it’s one of those titles that sounds really weird but actually makes sense once you think about it, it sounds like it’s all gone wrong, wrong, pete tong, pete tong being a DJ, who also makes a guest appearance in the movie.
One of the most pleasant surprises of the festival for me was the movie Meng Ying Tong Nian (Electric Shadows), going in I didn’t know what to expect, all I knew was that it was a Chinese movie about a family of cinema lovers. The movie was preceded by an introduction by director Xiao Jiang. She said the movie was described as a Chinese Cinema Paradiso, and that she felt that this was probably a good audience since we were all probably film lovers. Electric Shadows starts with a Bottled water delivery boy who loves cinema, one day while riding his bike he runs into a pile of bricks falling of his bike, while he’s on the ground a strange girl hit’s him on the head with a brick. After he gets out of the hospital he meets the girl again at the police station, though the girls seems to be unable to talk she writes a note asking him to take care of her fish. Reluctantly he takes the keys to her apartment and goes to feed the fish. But when he arrives in her apartment he finds, it is filled with movie memorabilia and even has a movie screen and projector. Looking about the place he finds a diary of sort which tells the tale of the girl (Ling Ling), starting with her mother. From that point the movie goes back in time to communist China, Ling Ling’s mother has dreams of becoming an actress, but when she gets pregnant her dreams are shattered, though in time she becomes a caring mother. Her Daughter Ling Ling shares her love for cinema, and they can both often be found at the place of Uncle Pan, the local movie operator. Then one day a new boy moves into town, a bully named Mao Dabing, at first he terrorizes Ling Ling, but they soon become best friends that share a love of cinema. From there the story continues telling a tale of loss and love but most importantly a shared love for cinema. This movie was for me the biggest surprise of the festival, it’s a great, funny and sometimes emotional tale of a family growing up in communist china, all the actors in the movie are absolutely brilliant especially the kids and the result is a really great feel good movie that just really works. After the movie the director returned for a Q&A, here are some of the things she mentioned:
The movie is described as a Chinese Cinema Paradiso, but while the director had seen the movie Cinema Paradiso as part of the curriculum in film school, didn’t set out to make a Chinese version of cinema paradise, though she is honoured that the comparison is made. All the children in the movie are first time actors, and she had some difficulties working with them as they had trouble remembering their lines, but it worked out brilliantly in the end. She didn’t have any extra problems being a female director because, she feels that there are equal opportunities for both male and female directors, and male directors help female directors and vice versa. All the Chinese films in the movie were all films she remembers from when she was a kid, the only exception was the Albanian movie, which was found specifically for this movie.
One of the movies I really wanted to see this year was Lukas Moodysson’s Ett hal I mitt hjarta (A Hole in my heart), even though I heard a lot of bad thin gs about the movie, his past track records pretty much speaks for himself, and with Moodysson actually present in Rotterdam this was one I didn’t want to miss. Lukas Moodysson introduced the movie by saying he doesn’t start out to make movies that everybody will like, and that certainly that’s the case for this movie. It’s a movie about anger and hate and ultimately about love. A Hole in my heart is about a four people in an apartment, who over the course of several days make an amateur porn movie. There’s the shy teenage son who locks himself in his room listening to music, There’s his father who’s producing amateur Porn starring himself, and his friend Geko, and Finally there’s Tess, The female lead in the porn movie, a woman who’s wanted to be a pornstar since she was a kid, and even went as far as to get plastic surgery on her genitals. Over the course of several days we see the relation ship between the four characters degenerate. It’s not hard to see why a lot of bad things have been said about this movie, at first glance it’s loud, blaring and filthy, it includes scenes Nudity, of people pissing, people puking in each others mouth, and the scenes are intercut with close ups of them playing with a fake pussy, and scenes replayed with dolls and action figures. The entire movie looks real cheap, and the actors look like they have been pulled from the street, which all gives it the feeling of a home movie rather then that of the latest movie of a respected director. The result is something that’s hard to define; it’s either the biggest pile of crap or a brilliant piece of criticism on human society. After the movie Moodysson returned for some Q&A, here are some of the things he mentioned:
He had a great time filming this movie; in fact this was probably his most pleasant experience shooting a movie, while the filming of the funny happy movie Together was probably his worst time shooting a movie. In fact when told this at a press conference right after the premiere of this movie in Sweden the press became immediately suspicious, and didn’t trust anything they said afterwards. He was asked if the anger in this movie is the same anger that Lilja 4-ever ends with; In Lilja 4-ever it’s not so much anger rather sadness, and the answer to Lilja 4-ever is the movie terrorister, which is a documentary he made about gotenburg riots, though apparently because of legal reasons the film can’t be shown outside of Sweden, he followed by pulling two copies of the movie on DVD out of his bag and putting them on the floor before them for the first two people who were quick enough to grab them.
If watching A hole in my heart wasn’t enough I followed it up with Michael Winterbottom’s latest film 9 songs, described as a simple fuck and music film, that’s ultimately really all 9 songs is. It shows 9 complete songs from start to finish as they are played live at the Brixton academy, and in between those 9 songs, we see a couple, as they fuck. The little story that there is tells about the relationship between your average couple, the American Lisa and the English Matt, you see a few scenes from their everyday life, but we mostly see them during sex, though the sex scenes are quite graphic, they don’t go out of their way to hide things like they would in your average Hollywood movie, it never becomes truly pornographic. The other main part of the movie the concert registrations are great, if you like the bands shown in this movie you’ll probably like it, if you don’t… well there’s not really much to the movie if you don’t like the music.
Howl’s Moving Castle was this year’s closing film, and one of the movies I just had to see, I’m a big Miyazaki fan, and his Nausicaa of the Valley of the wind is still my all time favourite animated movie. Based on an English book by Diane Wynne Jones, Howl’s moving castle tells the tale of Sophie a young hat maker who is cursed by the witch of the west, the young Sophie is turned into an old woman and flees from her hometown. On the road she meets a scarecrow who helps her out and brings her to Howl’s Moving castle a giant castle that walks around on 2 pair of chicken legs, there she meets a curious ensemble of characters, Markl the young apprentice of howl, who often disguises him self as an old man, calcifer a fire demon who is the driving force behind the moving castle, and Howl a handsome wizard who might secretly be a monster. The cast is later completed by the addition of Heen an asthmatic dog and the witch of the west who after being stripped of her powers becomes an old feeble woman.
Howl’s moving castle is the certainly the best looking of all of Miyazaki’s movies, and combines traditional animation with some computer generated animations, taking it just a step further then Spirited away. The characters are great, Calcifer provides comic relief and Heen is just Hilarious, sophie is a sympathetic lead as the old hag who falls in love with Howl and usual the score by Joe Hisaishi is wonderfull. All this combines Howl’s moving castle into a great movie that both young and old can enjoy.
And so ended a great 34th IFFR, I saw some great movies, this years top movie for me was Bin-Jip, as I suspected after watching it on my first day. Other highlights were: 2046, Howl’s moving castle, Electric shadows, Hana & Alice, three…Extremes, The Edukators and Sideways. And though I do have a few complaints, mainly the mind killing unannounced shorts that forced me to miss the endings of some movies because they screwed up my schedule, I can look back at this Festival as another great success, I saw less movies then last year but I did see more good movies then last year. And though my knees are happy to finally get a break from sitting in cramped seats I’m already looking forward to next year.
Mr Tough Guy
Thanks, man. Hopefully you’ll be back for another report for us then.
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