Harry here with Elaine's DAY 9 --- She's nearing the end of her 10 day odyssey in Rotterdam... A grueling marathon of film watching endurance. Sure it seems she has seen a fine selection of film, but it is an everyday ordeal... films... lots of them. Too many. They never stop, they keep coming, like Mickey's water bucket carrying brooms, flooding your every waking thought with more celluloid till you begin to drown, clinging to your notebook, praying to stay afloat till the grand wizard calls a halt to them all and that final one ebbs to death on the floor of the last screening of the fest. That's right, Elaine has almost survived the festival... she has one more day, one more day to freedom, one more day till she can lay at home and sleep a dream that mixes it all up into a nightmare that only the doldroms of every day life can shake you out of. Personally the film I want to see most out of this day was SUCK MY DICK, only so I can tell people to go to SUCK MY DICK... yes I am that mature... here's Elaine...
DAY 9
If I had eight words to describe the penultimate day of the festival, they would be, "Day 9: When Festivals Are No Longer Fun." Day 9 was when the crowds around me started to get on my nerves. When images from one film began to be magically superimposed on images from other films because I had seen so many that I could hardly distinguish between them anymore. When I was supposed to catch up on reviews, but could not formulate a single coherent thought, let alone write a series of reports. When I told myself that I would never attend a festival again, even though I knew in my heart of hearts that I'd be doing it again (and loving every minute of it) in less than a year's time. In short, when I was tired, and wondering (as I always do towards the end of a festival) why I was putting myself through this ordeal.
As it happens, I found out by my third film why I keep going to Rotterdam even when I'm exhausted. My screening of Claire Denis' "Trouble Every Day" turned out to be brilliant fun - not so much for the film itself (although I liked it a lot more than I thought I was going to) as for the looks on the faces of the people around me. It was one of those occasions where it is just as funny watching the crowd as it is to keep an eye on the screen. The same held true for my screening of Takashi Miike's "Visitor Q," which elicited some, er, interesting reactions from the crowd. Surprisingly enough, no one left until the film was over - not bad when you consider that this is probably the sickest film Miike has made to date, and that more than ten people had left during my screening of "Trouble Every Day."
Anyway, on to the day's films...
WEEKEND PLOT (Zhang Ming, 2001)
Zhang Ming's "Weekend Plot" was originally conceived as a horror film, then restyled into a whodunnit during shooting. The horror origins are discernible in the finished product, which features some strangely intense moments. Interesting though these moments are in themselves, though, they muddle up what is essentially a straightforward game of Clue, resulting in a film that is at best uneven and at worst... bad.
"Weekend Plot" is about a group of Beijing-based twenty-something friends who spend a weekend on the Yangzi, near a place where two of them grew up. The atmosphere is tense, for amongst the friends are a few former lovers who now see themselves confronted with their loved ones' new significant others. And if that weren't enough to make them nervous, one of them finds a note with four words on it: "Love you till death." It isn't clear to whom the note is addressed, nor who wrote it, but the friends attach great importance to it, and immediately start suspecting each other of all sorts of nasty things.
The are some interesting scenes at the beginning of the film, when the relationships between the characters are exposed and the tension between them begins to mount. However, the film quickly falls into the trap of wishing to tell too many stories. Instead of concentrating on the five bickering friends on the bank of the Yangzi, Zhang insists on including the home situation of a friend of theirs who lives in town - a sub-plot which is relevant to the plot (because the friend in question may have written the mysterious note) but which somehow distracts from the main storyline. And if that weren't annoying enough, one soon begins to wonder just how important the note is, and whether all the fuss about it isn't, well, a waste of time.
This is the crux to "Weekend Plot." Whether or not you get into the film depends on whether you accept the main premise, namely that the note the friends find is of great significance. If you attach any importance to the note, you will probably enjoy the resulting ado, although it remains highly unbalanced. However, if, like me, you can't see the relevance of the note, you are likely to find the hour that follows long and tedious, and the ending lame.
SUCK MY DICK (Oskar Roehler, 2001)
This year's "Fucking Amal" Award for Title Most Likely to Be Changed upon Release in the US goes to... "Suck My Dick," a German comedy about a writer who, having been robbed of his giant penis, goes on to lose his hair, his teeth, his girlfriend and his dignity, until he learns that he can actually live without his penis - a lesson, I think, that more "dick-tated" (a word that is used in the film) men should learn.
"Suck My Dick" is a satire on the male castration complex. It relates the story of a neurotic writer called Jekyll (Edgar Selge) who feels his life is being taken over by the protagonist of one of his novels, naturally called Hyde (Ralf Richter). While his psychiatrist (played with lots of vanity by designer Wolfgang Joop) keeps telling him that he is merely suffering from a midlife crisis, Jekyll maintains that Hyde's threat is real and grows increasingly paranoid. Before long, he is proven right; Hyde indeed takes on a human shape, and with the help of a sluttish fairy called Jeanny (Katja Flint), he first robs Jekyll of his pride and joy (his giant penis), then of his hair and teeth, and ultimately of his reputation as a writer. Meanwhile, Jekyll's ex-wife (a dentist with a few vampires amongst her clientele) thinks he is crazy, and the only people willing to listen to his increasingly bizarre stories are his cokehead daughter and her far-too-young-and-far-too-stoned girlfriends.
As one would expect of a film which answers to a description like this, "Suck My Dick" is a surreal and often grotesque affair with exuberant performances from all involved and a near-sordid sense of humour which occasionally goes over the top but manages to remain entertaining for at least one half of the film. The funniest scene occurs halfway, when an unmanned Jekyll, after having turned off all the lights to hide the empty spot between his legs, tries to make love to Jeanny with a vibrator which not only buzzes but lights up in the dark, too. It's a cheap gag and none too tasteful, but the way it is filmed (a tiny pink dot lighting up an otherwise pitch black screen) is really quite hilarious.
Sadly, it all goes downhill from there. Shortly after the vibrator scene, the humour loses its edge, until it gets to the point where it is neither shocking nor thought-provoking, let alone funny. It is then that the dated look and mood of the film (seemingly copied from a bad 1960s comedy), which more or less "work" in the first half, begin to irk, demonstrating for once and for all that what worked in 1968 does not necessarily prove successful in 2002. It's a greater "fuck you" than the title, which is saying a fair bit.
TROUBLE EVERY DAY (Claire Denis, 2001)
Claire Denis' "Trouble Every Day" has come in for its share of criticism. It got booed at its Cannes premiere, and the IMDb entry for the film reads like a catalogue of "worst-film-ever!"-type comments. So what is it about the film that turns people off so badly?
To be quite honest, I don't know. True, "Trouble Every Day" is not "Beau travail" (which I admire immensely), but while it leaves much to be desired, it also has a lot going for it.
"Trouble Every Day" is the story of two seemingly unrelated persons who yearn to love but can't. That is, not in the conventional way, for the moment Core (Beatrice Dalle) and Shane (Vincent Gallo) have intercourse with someone, they turn into praying mantis-like ghouls who not only tear their sexual partners apart, but actually proceed to eat them. Needless to say, the two are not proud of the way they treat their lovers; it just makes their lives a dreadful tragedy, as they are painfully aware that both they themselves and the people to whom they are attracted (both Shane and Core are married) are doomed.
"Trouble Every Day" is a fascinating film in that it refuses to answer the questions it raises. First of all, there is no answer (I think) to the obvious question as to why Shane and Core are the way they are. It is suggested that they have some disease, but exactly how they came by the disease remains a mystery. Nor is there conclusive evidence that there is a connection between the two cases, although it is hinted that Core (who is French) and Shane (who is American) know each other and may even have been lovers. Finally, it never becomes clear whether Shane and Core have sex with their victims with the express purpose of killing them afterwards (that is to say, in order to satisfy their thirst for blood) or whether they genuinely yearn for some kind of intimacy, with the murders occurring only as the tragic consequence of their inability to unite. All the viewer has to go by are a few sensual scenes followed by heinous acts of violence, with neither an explanation nor a consequence proffered.
It is easy to see how Denis' refusal to provide an explanation for the events depicted in the film would put some people off, just as it is easily understood why they might call her film exploitative. As in "Beau travail," a lot of stress is put on the beauty of the human body, which is frequently shown in full, naked glory even when it adds little to the development of the story. Furthermore, the love scenes featured in "Trouble Every Day" are quite gruesome, and there is something obscene about the way Dalle's character plays with the mutilated bodies of her victims, smearing their blood all over her body, not to mention the way Gallo's character abuses his victim after having coveted her for days. However, that does not alter the fact that "Trouble Every Day" is a beautiful-looking film with two highly tragic protagonists, some of the most impressive night-time photography I have seen and a well-drawn atmosphere of doom and despair. It may leave a lot of questions unanswered, but in my opinion, the hunger for love and the sensuality of some of the love scenes (notably the incredibly tender one in which Dr Semeneau sponges off Core's blood-splattered body after a night on the town) quite make up for that.
VISITOR Q (Takashi Miike, 2001)
Have you ever...
- done it with your dad?
- beaten up your mother?
- fallen prey to a firework bombardment?
- said, "Good night, I'm going to bed" while your wife was screaming, "Not my face! Please don't hit my face!"
- shoved a microphone up someone's arse?
- lactated all over your teenage daughter's photo?
- asked someone to film you while you chopped up your daughter's body?
- said, "Come on, let's do it! I don't care if you're a corpse!"
If you have answered one or more of the above questions affirmatively, you are either pervert or a character in Takashi Miike's "Visitor Q," in which case you're a pervert, too.
"Visitor Q" is probably Miike's most depraved piece of work to date. The level of violence depicted in it may not be quite as outrageous as that shown in "Ichi the Killer," but with incest, necrophilia and mothers who get whipped by their sons, it isn't exactly a walk in the woods either. Moreover, the impact of the events depicted in the film is greater because, unlike "Ichi," "Visitor Q" is not redeemed by a cartoonesque sense of humour. True, some of the scenes are absurd enough to elicit some laughter, but when it comes to the point, it's a fairly shocking chronicle (masquerading as a documentary) of the lives of five utterly sick people who don't communicate except through violence: a documentary-maker wishing to record his own, rather atypical life; his clueless wife, whose finest moment is when she discovers that she can squirt milk all over the place; their prostitute daughter who seduces her own father; their aggressive son who takes his own frustrations out on his mother; and a mysterious visitor who could well be sicker than all four of them combined.
There are those who will have you believe that "Visitor Q" is the most mature and subdued (ahem) thing Miike has done in the past two years - a straightforward indictment of a morally bankrupt Japanese society in which communication between family members has become extinct, overworked salarymen and bullied kids revenge themselves on their oppressors and wives empower themselves in unusual ways, preferably in front of a camera. This may be true, but that doesn't necessarily make "Visitor Q" a great film. While it is undoubtedly fascinating material (presented, despite the nature of the subject matter, in a refreshingly understated manner - by Miike's standards, anyway), it lacks the plot and character development of films such as "Audition" and "Dead or Alive." It's a bizarre series of images to saturate oneself with, but as a story, as an experience meant to engage the viewer, it falls short of Miike's other works.
Still, that microphone scene is interesting. It pops up again in a slightly different guise in Miike's most recently finished film, "Agitator," leaving one to wonder whether this is the director's idea of a recurring motif...?
IN MY FINAL REPORT:
- Sinisa Dragin's "Every Day God Kisses Us on the Mouth"
- Tahmineh Milani's "The Hidden Half"
- Nan Achnas' "Whispering Sands"
- John Cameron Mitchell's "Hedwig and the Angry Inch"
- Jean-Francois Stevenin's "Mischka"
... two of which made my festival top-10!
Elaine
