Click here to read my review of opening night film NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD

Click here to read LATAURO @ MIFF #1: THE SAGA BEGINS...

Click here to read LATAURO @ MIFF #2: IT AIN'T ALL WINE AND ROSES

LATAURO @ MIFF 08 #3: EVERYONE'S A CRITIC? REALLY?

"Everyone's a critic" says this year's MIFF marketing department, presenting us with a photo of a set that looks remarkably like David and Margaret's famous film review show. Instead of Dave and Mags, however, we get a variety of different people in the seats, who apparently represent our culture in all of its diversity (though everybody appears to be white and with oodles of disposable income).

I usually consider the MIFF ad campaigns fairly ineffectual (and therefore easily dismissed), but this one has bothered me slightly. For a start, the point of advertising MIFF is to get people in who don't already have it on their radar. You know, try to bring in people who don't have the MIFF dates circled in their calendar like they're counting down to their birthday (it's my calendar, I can do what I want with it). There's no reason many of the films at MIFF can't be enjoyed by a wider audience, and so bringing in people who might have dismissed film festivals at "elitist" must surely be the whole point of the exercise.

Saying that "Everyone's a critic" (and framing those words in the fig leafs that are universal for "film festival") doesn't really do much for the common filmgoer who generally -- and, much of the time, rightly -- sees critics as out-of-touch intellectuals. Posters featuring these people posing during apparently in-depth discussions doesn't inspire anybody. Where's the passion? Where's the excitement of discovering a rollicking good film that you'd otherwise have never seen? Sure, my favourite part of the festival is having coffee afterwards with friends and talking about the films we've seen, but our conversations are animated, excited, passionate, and hardly the stilted, static poses that are hanging from the light poles all around the city.

Then there's the pre-film ads, which are the same in every single session. Ignoring for the moment the perplexingly uninspired Yalumba ad (though it does have a well-directed ending) and the preview of the new Aussie cop show "Rush" (that manages to look even more formulaic than the last twenty that used the same script), we have The MIFF Ad. Continuing on the theme of "Everyone's a critic", we see two late 20s/early 30s WASPs, a couple, sitting on a couch discussing something they've just seen. "None of the passion of his earlier work." "The ending was confusing." etc. Then, we discover that they're talking about their infant son, who is sitting on the ground in front of them, clearly having just performed a small act for them. The ad ends with: "And the soundtrack!" "La la la la..." "So repetitive!" "I nearly walked out." "I nearly threw up."

Oh, it's very amusing, oh so wry and clever... but how did this get approved? This doesn't inspire me to want to go and see more MIFF films. It makes me want to punch these self-obsessed upper-middle-class negligent parents who apparently represent the MIFF audience. Am I taking it too seriously? Well, perhaps, but if the ad was even a little effective (its primary function), then the rest would hardly matter.

I know MIFF isn't concerned with attendance figures, what with session after session selling out, so the question is begged: why advertise at all? Either don't bother with the irrelevant marketing campaign, or design something that will get people along to the films. Don't just spend the commercial budget because you feel obligated to.

Rant over. Now what? Oh, right: upper-middle-class out-of-touch critiquing...

40x15: THE FORTY YEARS OF THE DIRECTORS' FORTNIGHT

The non-MIFF screening of WALL-E (review in the next AICN-Downunder) made me late for TRIANGLE, the fascinating-looking heist film directed by Johnnie To, Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam, so I made up for it by jumping in on a screening of 40x15, which looked to be a doco about the Directors' Fortnight section at Cannes. I begin my review with a note to the filmmakers: diving your film into "Chapter One" and "Chapter Two" doesn't excuse it being an unfocused film trying to be two things at once. The first half is a moderately dull look at the history of the festival's sub-section, which manages to avoid interviews with many of the notable people involved in it, and manages to turn what sounds like a potentially-fascinating history into something that's mildly distracting. The second half of the film follows the organisers of the 2007 Directors' Fortnight trying to select and confirm their films. This section is utterly devoid of drama or interest, and I left the film wondering why the hell anyone had bothered. Still, I'm all about the positive, so I reassured myself with "Hey, at least it wasn't as bad as yesterday's Burroughs film!" (see: MIFF #2) and headed to the Greater Union to see Klaus Kinski.

JESUS CHRIST SAVIOUR

This was not, as I thought it might be, a documentary. It does not chronicle the attempts by Polish/German actor Klaus Kinski to perform his one man show about Jesus Christ from a historical perspective, peppering it with interviews and explaining cultural contexts. No, it's just a film of the event, with practically no decorative addition at all. You see, back in 1971, Kinski was doing a series of shows as Jesus, and was filmed during his Berlin performance. Right from the outset, the audience is heckling him, shouting back, clearly antagonistic. Why? It's not made clear. At least, not at first. Kinski gets really pissed, storms off stage, comes back, yells back. Audience members get up on stage to give their own opinions into the mic. Kinski threatens violence. A riot nearly breaks out. This is one of the most fascinating -- though admittedly confusing -- piece of archival footage I've ever seen. The audience is reprehensible in its inability to sit back and listen to the show that they paid for (it cost ten marks, so they keep yelling). Kinski is bemusingly hypocritical, screaming about the hypocrisy of those who misinterpret Jesus's message, whilst simultaneously threatening violence against members of the audience. There's something about hearing Christ's message of love and hope screamed by an angry German that makes you want to look up "juxtaposition" to make sure you understand it right. The crowd ate it up; if you get a chance to catch this film, make sure you stay until after the credits. That Kinski was surely out of his mind...

LEMON TREE

This, folks, is where I got to do something I've always wanted to do at MIFF. See, I've never had a festival passport before. In the past, MIFF has kindly provided me with a mini-pass (which allows you thirteen films all up), and I've bought the rest out of my own patched-up pocket. This year, however, I was granted an actual passport, which is essentially limitless. I immediately booked up as many films as I thought I could see, but there was still something I'd been jonesing to do: find myself with a couple of hours to kill, and walk into a screening of a film of which I had no prior knowledge. The film was LEMON TREE, about a Palestinian woman whose lemon grove is considered a security risk for the home of the Israeli Defence Minister, who has just moved in next door. What follows is a clash of cultures as the woman, Salma, does everything she can to save her trees. LEMON TREE is remarkable in that it actually avoids anything remotely approaching a cliche or a stereotype. This is not the "we must all get along" story I was expecting. The two main characters, Salma and the Minister's wife Mira, do not form the doomed bond you expect them to. In fact, even when the film looks like it might veer towards the sentimental, and you feel like you have no trouble at all forgiving it for doing so, it goes in another direction. It also doesn't resort to anything resembling a forced shock or cheap violence. It's simply a drama where no one has a monopoly on moral certitude, where things aren't carefully and clinically measured to be even-handed, and every character is three dimensional. A terrific film that's elevated even further by the performances of the two lead woman, Hiam Abbass, whom I immediately recognised from THE VISITOR (reviewed in the next AICN-D!) and Rona Lipaz-Michael.

GARDENS OF THE NIGHT

Staying in the Forum Theatre, LEMON TREE was followed by GARDENS OF THE NIGHT, a film about a very young girl who is kidnapped by child molesters. You probably won't believe what I'm about to say, but it's true: Tom Arnold gives one of the year's best and most nuanced performances as the man who initially befriends young Leslie. No, seriously, Arnold is brilliant, showing chops as a character actor that I hope he brings to future indie films. If you don't believe me, go see it. You'll be shocked. The first half of the film is utterly incredible, shown with perfect restraint, all from the perspective of the young girl. The second half is very good, but it was jarring to suddenly go from a gentle film about a child surviving molesters to, well, a Gregg Araki film. I don't fault it as a big misstep the way I did when they initially made the jump, as it was clearly the intention of writer/director Damien Harris to show the resulting effects. And the film does hang together very well as a whole, even if the first half is quite superior to the second. Regardless, Harris (who appeared in person to introduce the film) is definitely one to watch, and so is this film.

ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD

GARDENS OF THE NIGHT had begun ten minutes late at about 5:10pm, and was slated to run for 110 minutes. I had a 7pm screening way across at the Capitol, and I was getting nervous. The moment NIGHT's credits began to roll, a girl ran past me to the exit two rows behind me I'd been eying off when I'd sat down. We both noticed the "Emergency Use Only Sign", and swapped a collective "damn". "You running late as well?" I asked. "Yep," she said, and we both set off at a dash towards different exits. Bolting down Flinders Street and then Swanston, I managed to check my phone to see "Can you save me a seat?" from one friend, "We're waiting in the lobby" from two others, and "I've saved you a seat" from my girlfriend. Clearly, this was not the most carefully managed stage event in the world. Still, I reached the line, checked my phone messages, got my card out, and noticed I was standing next to the girl from the Forum. "Hey, Emergency Exit!" I said, and she shot back a smile that could have meant "Yeah, how about this MIFF business, eh?" or "WTF?!". I managed to locate the members of my troupe, and we settled into the front row of the cinema just as the film began. And what a film it was. I'd booked this film because Werner Herzog's THE WILD BLUE YONDER, seen at MIFF two years previous
, had blown my socks off. In that film, he'd used footage from under Antarctica to depict an alien world, and did so more effectively than any overblown special effects budget I've encountered. I had a feeling that ENCOUNTERS -- a documentary about Herzog traveling to the Antarctic -- would do something similar, and it did. The underwater footage is unlike anything you've ever seen, silencing the awed audience for its entire duration. The interviews with the people who inhabit the mini-town that Herzog stays at are nothing short of fascinating, hilarious and touching. The narration by Herzog is sharp and funny. All in all, it's a brilliant documentary that highlights Herzog's ability to demonstrate what's extraordinary about Earth by depicting it as an alien world. Somehow, by contriving a disconnect, he drills home the fact that all of this is right here where we live, that this is the world that we live in. It's an amazing piece of work, one of my favourite of the festival so far, and should be seen in a double with THE WILD BLUE YONDER.

And that's all for now. I'll be back with part four of my MIFF coverage very soon, as I throw myself head-first into another few marathons of world cinema both new and old.

Peace out,

Latauro

AICNDownunder@hotmail.com