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Sundance: Grib suffers through ALLEGRO!!
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with Grib again, this time with a review that is slightly less happy than his other entry this evening, for the documentary TV Junky. I'm also not a fan of dogme, so I expect my opinion on this film will mirror Grib's here. Enjoy!
Hi, Harry,
Grib here with a review of "Allegro." Well, I must say that I am not a huge fan of the new Danish school of filmmaking. If I'm caught at a Dogme 95 Film Festival, then you'll know I'm dead. So it was with some trepidation that I showed up (alongside fellow screening patron Gwyneth Paltrow) for this morning's screening of Christoffer Boe's second feature, "Allegro." (His first feature, "Reconstruction." won the Camera D'Or at Cannes in 2003, which is the award given for best debut film.) I must say that my trepidation was warranted. I fought sleep during the deathly slow first half of the film, as we meet our hero, a concert pianist named Zetterstrom, who has mysteriously lost all memory of his past as well as his ability to play the piano (this is bad, because he is set to deliver a concert in 30 minutes) and all memory of his former girlfriend, played by supermodel Helena Christensen. Boe intentionally gives us no backstory on these people other than a couple of snippets of Zetterstrom's relationship with Christensen and an animated timeline of selected events from his childhood. About midway through the film, the pace picks up a tad when we learn that a section of Copenhagen has inexplicably become inaccessible to the general population; there are some people in "The Zone," as it is called, but no one knows who they are or what they are doing. Zetterstrom is contacted by a messenger from The Zone and accepts an invitation to cross over the barrier into this strange realm (much to the consternation of the concert organizer and his agent). Once there, he is presented with scenes from his past and is given instructions, which he initially rejects, about how to reclaim his memory. The film eventually lurches to some sort of resolution, which I won't spoil in case you see it, which I wouldn't recommend.
This film makes little sense. Boe attempted to explain some of what was going through his head after the film, but it was more rewarding to look at Helena Christensen, who was standing to his right. She is beautiful and very nice. I don't think she knew what the hell was going on in the film, either, and I'm afraid I have to side with her. Yes, the film is deeply allegorical and intentionally murky, but even though it is somewhat interesting visually, there is not enough there to make it worth the effort.
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Just that. Boo-Ya!
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Allegro is not even close to being Dogme, and if you consider Dogme 95 to be "the new school of Danish filmmaking". You could not be more wrong. A visually stunning Sci-fi ode to Copenhagen is pretty much as far away from Dogme as one can get...sheesh.
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Oops, wrong Allegro.
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...though I've enjoyed other Dogme 95 films. Waxfinger - what would you say is "the new school of Danish filmmaking?" Any recommendations?
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Seems to move further and further away from Dogme 95, a counter-reaction of well-polished visually stunning almost hollywood'ish entertainment. Only with the added character intimacy and intense acting that Dogme seemed to foster. Recommendations these years..well, Adams Apples (Adams
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Nyuk, nyuk. Eh, back to the drawing board.
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I must say that I've been more impressed with Danish Cinema in 2006 than any other countries output, (only possibly exception being S. Korea)...Anyone would be doing themselves a big favour to hunt down the PUSHER Trilogy when it comes out in Feb-March with English Subs...
And Adam's Apples was one of the most jaw-droppingly shocking comedies I've seen in a while.
Reconstruction is just plain fantastic, I'm very much looking forward to Allegro.
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