Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here, to give you the first of what will probably be a two-part report on one of my absolute favorite film festivals in the Windy City every year, the European Union Film Festival, which takes place at the Gene Siskel Film Center (http://www.siskelfilmcenter.com).
The festival has grown so much since it's birth 10 years ago. It's now a month-long event that features 55 films this year from 24 EU countries, and it's basically a road map through the best film the continent has to offer. Many of these films will eventually be released later in the year, but several never get screened again on these shores again. This year's lineup is stellar, and you should absolutely go to the Siskel Film Center's site to see what else is playing beyond the titles I review. Some of these have already played and it's too late, but a few have yet to screen, so you still have a shot. Again, go to the site for showtimes.
GLASTONBURY
I am nothing if not a sucker for a great concert documentary, especially those about music festivals. If you haven't seen the lengthy and totally satisfying documentaries of the first Woodstock festival or Monterrey Pop or the Newport jazz or folks festivals, they are not only some of the best records of long-dead or disbanded acts at their musical peak, but also impressive time capsules of the time and people who lived and smelled during the 1960s (when most of the festivals were born). What director Julien Temple (who made the exemplary Sex Pistols doc THE FILTH AND THE FURY a few years ago) has done is something quite unique: he presents an entire history of the annual, three-day rock event held in Glastonbury near Stonehenge, which began in 1970. Mixing archival footage from the festival's first couple of years (some shot by director Nicolas Roeg), a few shows in the '80s and '90s and even more in recent years, Temple assembles a nice mix of musical highlights of everyone from the Velvet Underground and David Bowie to Coldplay and Bjork. More importantly, the filmmakers give maybe the best sense of what it must be like to attend an event of this magnitude. No muddy, grotesque corner of this immense mess escapes Temple's eye, and GLASTONBURY works almost better as a sociological exercise on human behavior (especially the practice of public nudity, which is revisited several times in the film's nearly two-and-a-half-hour running time).
THE METHOD
In this slick corporate thriller from Spanish director Marcelo Pineyro, a group of seven male and female job candidates are pitted against each other in a series of unorthodox tests meant to test their psychological mettle and leave standing only the most cunning and sneaky. The film starts subtly as all of the competitors meet and seem friendly enough with each other in an otherwise empty boardroom. They are told one among them is a mole, but there's no way to know whether this is true. They are asked to pick a leader, which seems easy enough, but when various facts about each are revealed throughout the course of the day, even the most competent among them appears devious. Outside, the streets are on fire courtesy of raging anti-globalization riots (the film has much to say on the subject of how corporations are run). But as the film goes on and the herd is thinned, the believability of what goes on between the candidates becomes less believable and less interesting. The closer the film stuck to reality, the more I liked it. Still, there are a handful of truly fine performances from Spanish actors I was largely unfamiliar with. THE METHOD makes a commendable attempt at criticizing at how easily a corporation can eat away at the integrity of even the most morally sound person, but in the end, the film becomes about as bloated and ridiculous as most role-playing games.
COLOR ME KUBRICK
Less a film aimed at lovers of Stanley Kubrick's work, and more a testament to the power of celebrity (even false celebrity), COLOR ME KUBRICK tells the mostly true story of Alan Conway, the gay British con artist who, in the 1990s, trolled the upper and lower levels of gay London pretending to be the reclusive and rarely seen director. John Malkovich is on fire as Conway, putting on a different American or British accent for each one of his victims, whom he's always hitting up for money, drinks or sex with the promise of being cast in his next film. Since nobody knows what Kubrick really looks like at the time, and many in the gay community seem so eager to be friends with such a noted celebrity, the farce goes on for some time. Director Brian Cook and screenwriter Anthony Frewin (both associates of Kubrick's for many years) stuff this work with outrageous behavior, an impossible wardrobe, familiar music cues and inspired cameos from the likes of Richard E. Grant and Ken Russell. But it's Malkovich that rules this roost as the absolutely fearless Conway, who never misses an opportunity to use his assumed name even when it becomes clear that he knows very little about Kubrick's films beyond the more well-known titles. For those who remember Malkovich when he used to take bold chances, COLOR ME KUBRICK is a raucous reminder of his enormous talent.
FLIES ON THE WALL
In this interesting experiment from Denmark, director Ake Sandgren (the Dogme film TRULY HUMAN) attempts to apply a political thriller feel to what is essentially a story about a local political scandal. When the Liberal Party hires a documentary filmmaker (Trine Dyrholm) to profile the party and its most dynamic candidate (Lars Brygmann), they tell her she'll have total access to all aspects of the party's inner workings. She translates this to mean she can plant hidden cameras everywhere and even sometimes wear spy cameras on her person to capture private conversations. She inadvertently uncovers a massive corruption and money diversion scandal that could bring down the candidate and the party. Of course, her life becomes endangered when it's discovered she knows too much. A few things about FLIES ON THE WALL don't quite hold water. First, why would such a corrupt government allow total access to anything they do? Maybe they think since she's working for them, they can kill whatever final film she edits together, but that isn't ever mentioned. Second, the filmmaker starts sleeping with her subject. I never bought this for a second. Third, much of the film is shown through the eye of the filmmaker's many cameras; it's as if we're watching her final film as she's compiling it. However, whenever a scene is required that her cameras could not have captured, director Sandgren simply cuts away to his own third-party vantage point. It's a slightly jolting experience that would have been more exciting if he were forced to stick with just her vantage point. Still, the film has plenty of suspense to keep us charged, and the performances are solid, even if the film doesn't quite add up.
MANUAL OF LOVE
Four stories of couples representing the four stages of love, from goofy young love to painful breakup, make up this award-winning offering from Italy. Each emotionally charged tale is worth watching, but some (especially the stalker-ish nature of the first story) are a little too out of touch with reality. Still, that shortcoming is more than made up for by the second story, an all-too-real account of troubled marriage (played by ex-spouses Margherita Buy and Sergio Rubini). I was also moved by the tale of a sorrowful doctor (Carlo Verdone) trying to pull his life together after his wife abandons him. The stories are slightly interconnected, but not in a overly trite manner. One story flows nicely into the next, and the performances are uniformly solid, even if the lessons learned are familiar. Director Giovanni Veronesi has crafted a warm and affectionate work that doesn't seek to shake the foundations of relationship films, but he still manages to find some fresh insight on the subject.
ME AND MY SISTER
If you put Isabelle Huppert in a movie, I'm there. And if you make her a cold-hearted, abrasive bitch, well, I don't have any choice but to fall in love with her. In this tasty bit from France, Huppert plays the city mouse Martine, who plays host to her country mouse sister Louise (the charming Catherine Frot), a beautician coming to Paris to meet with a publisher that might be interested in a book she's written. Martine finds Louise's cheeriness and upbeat personality an annoyance and an embarrassment, especially when mixing with her upper-crust friends. But the fact is, most people find Louise sweet and not nearly as unsophisticated as Martine believes she is. What Martine is really troubled by is how Louise's cheer seems to underscore the fact that Martine hates her life and her marriage to a womanizing husband (Francois Berleand). Huppert is at her seething best here. There's a scene during a dinner party in which she gets drunk and spouts off all sorts of terrible things about Louise in front of all the guests. It's a painful event to witness, and director Alexandra Leclere punctuates the event with the perfect amount of awkwardness. Far from the comic tripe that Hollywood would turn this subject matter into, ME AND MY SISTER is among the darkest of dark comedies that still manages to pack in a fair amount of love for and between its characters.
DEAD LONG ENOUGH
From Ireland comes one of the weaker entries at this year's festival, DEAD LONG ENOUGH, which tells the story of two brothers: Harry, a celebrity played by THE QUEEN's Michael Sheen, and Ben, a lawyer in a bad relationship made all the worse by his perpetual broken heart over his hometown sweetie (Angeline Ball) that he hasn't seen in 16 years. Although I'd read somewhere that Sheen's character is a rock star, I think he's the host of a popular television show about digging up ancient remains that shares the same title as this film. He's sort of the leather-clad, longhaired archaeological version of the Crocodile Hunter. Anyway, Harry decides the pair are going to fly back to their hometown as part of Ben's bachelor party, but his real intention is to make Ben forget this woman once and for all. It turns out the woman in question, Sinead, had a baby shortly after the brothers left town, but who's the father? Hmmm. There are more candidates than you might think. The last 30 minutes of DEAD LONG ENOUGH feature a messy series of events that neatly tie up age-old conflicts and unresolved feelings as only a 90-minute movie can. The best thing about the film is the rousing soundtrack, which features a mix of traditional and rock music from Irish musicians. I suppose Sheen's presence (I'm fairly certain he shot this movie before THE QUEEN) adds a bit of professionalism to the piece, but the whole production is childish and off-putting.
INTO GREAT SILENCE
A lot of times when critics use words like "contemplative" or "meditative" to describe a particularly long or slow-moving film, what they really mean is "the movie was boring, but I still liked it." In the case of this nearly three-hour documentary from German director Philip Groning, I confess I found this look inside the usually secluded life of the Grand Chartreuse monastery in the French Alps absolutely serene and lovely, but at times it borders on contemplative and meditative. Much like the typically lengthy documentaries of Frederick Wiseman, INTO GREAT SILENCE is more than a filmmaker pointing his camera at a subject. Using only the natural sound and light around him, Groning (with no additional crew) completely immerses himself in this largely silent and still world, in which the monks work and pray and hope that sometime before they die, God will reveal himself to them. We observe even the smallest aspects of their routines and rituals, including meal preparation, inducting new members into their order, laundry and, of course, praying. I'm sure during the course of watching this work, even the most dedicated audience member will be fighting off sleep at times (do not attempt to operate heavy equipment while watching this film), but the end result is a work of rare and compelling beauty.
THE ICEBERG
In one of the oddest and most weirdly entertaining films in a while, this feature from Belgium opens with Fiona (Dominique Abel), a restaurant manager, accidentally getting locked in the establishment's walk-in freezer. After nearly dying in the grip of the sub-zero temperatures, she narrowly escapes. The experience imprints her brain with an obsession with cold, and she leaves her life and family behind to seek passage to an iceberg in the small sailboat of a deaf-mute fisherman. If the story wasn't kooky enough, this nearly wordless spectacle is absolutely hilarious as this group of actors (three of whom are also listed as the directors, which leads me to believe this may be some sort of comedy troop) performs some classic slapstick on their way to the Arctic wonderland. There is something both sweet and dark about the whole affair, but that only heightens the comedy of this tasty film I think would play very well to audiences in this country.
RED ROAD
One of the downright creepiest offerings this year is writer-director Andrea Arnold's RED ROAD, a film that begins with the story of a woman (Kate Dickie) who works as a closed-circuit television monitor, watching over dozens of small monitors that reveal some of the nastier parts of a Glasgow neighborhood. If she sees something bad happen or about to happen, she calls the cops and her job is done. At first I thought this film might turn into a REAR WINDOW rip-off, but thankfully that's not what happens. The woman spots a familiar face (MIAMI VICE's Tony Curran) on the bank of monitors, and you can almost see her blood turn cold. She takes it upon herself to track the guy down and infiltrate his life and circle of friends. It's clear he doesn't recognize her, so we're not sure at first what their connection is. Eventually she seduces him in an intensely graphic scene that is both weirdly erotic and utterly tense and mystifying. The film's final act is something of a let down, but revealing the true nature of this relationship would have to be since the reality could never be as interesting as what our mind has speculated up to this point. Director Arnold (she made the Oscar-winning short film WASP a couple years back) has a gift for taking these seemingly unremarkable people and giving them emotionally devastating lives. Dickie's performance is sad and moving, and she has a face I won't soon forget. RED ROAD is part of an interesting experiment conceived by Danish filmmakers Lone Scherfig and Anders Thomas Jensen, who are credited with conceiving these characters. Three directors will write and shoot three films set in Scotland with the same cast playing essentially the same character but in completely different stories. I don't think the other two films have been made yet, but I'd be curious to see how this exercise plays out.
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