LFF 2010: Winter Vacation

Craig here with more from the LFF 2010


Winter Vacation (Han jia), the acclaimed new film from writer-poet Li Hongqi, arrives at the LFF with prizes from both the Seoul and Locarno film festivals. It languorously tracks the existence of a community of mostly-related residents, chiefly a gang of teens awaiting their return to school,  during the last days of a particularly desolate and weather-soured holiday in a Chinese housing complex. It’s visually chilly, but, despite the intriguing barrage of listlessly austere long takes, its tone is markedly light – but deceptively, drably so (yet it still manages to arouse pertinent issues about contemporary China with sly craft). We’re in the kind of film territory usually dominated by the likes of Aki Kaurismäki and Jim Jarmusch – although neither of those bastions of the brazenly bizarre could have shaped as film as dry and droll as this.

The film is loosely structured as a series of interconnected vignettes: a grandfather and grandson verbally spar in a front room; a couple get a divorce; a vegetable market opens to a few frugally-minded customers; a group of youths squabble and loaf around on discarded sofas or stand comically inert amid the bleak industrial surroundings. Humorous banter is frequent, and is on the whole very funny. These exchanges and the lengthy silences between them create some inspired moments of comic interaction. It’s also beautifully edited by Li: he’s very much the auteur on the film, and he shows considerable directorial style and a great knack for pace. Also worth mention is the film’s alluring, off-kilter soundtrack (courtesy of Zuoxiao Zuzhou and The Top Floor Circus): onscreen noises, both diegetic and non-, and odd acapella voices-off enhance the strange, plaintive rhythm of Li’s direction. Winter Vacation is a minor treat – not solely for those with acquired arthouse tastes – to seek out if and when it gets a theatrical release. B

Winter Vacation is at the LFF on Friday 22nd & Saturday 23rd October

NYFF Finale: 7 Word Reviews (Meek's Cutoff, Another Year, Hereafter, More...)

Oh readers. What to do with me? I'm always falling behind. In an effort to acknowledge that NYFF ended this weekend, and fall prestige/early campaign season is already upon us (Toy Story 3 event tonight!), here's everything I saw at the NYFF. I got sick right in the middle so I missed a handful I wanted to see. The films are presented in the order I saw with a brief description and a 7 Word Review. For now.  Surely I'll find time to say something more about two or three of these later. If you've wondered why I've been posting 2 grades for each movie I see lately, it's because it's my current grade (bold) plus the grade I could be talked into / might end up with when all is said and done.

Poetry & Oki's Movie (South Korea) |  Tuesday After Christmas (Romania)

Poetry full review A-/A 

Oki's Movie
A filmmaker recounts a romantic affair and professional entanglements.
7WR: Funny. Repetitive. Aggressively unwilling to engage visually. C/C-



Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives full review B+/B

Tuesday After Christmas
A Romanian man loves two women. Must choose.
7WR: Love Wrecked! Incisive, naturalistic gem. Pitch-perfect ending. B/B+

 The Robber (Germany/Austria) | My Joy (Ukraine) | Certified Copy (Various)

The Robber & My Joy
The Robber: an ex-con trains for long distance runs but continues his life of crime.
My Joy: a truck driver gets lost on dangerous allegorical roads.
7WR (x2): Virtuosic filmmaking but autistic experience. Couldn't connect.
Grade? Depends on what we're grading. This is when Nick's VOR would come in handy as both films strike me as worthy sees for commited cinephiles. But they're almost impossible to enjoy because they're so emotionally deficient or at least tonally limited to entirely nihilistic worldviews.

 Certified Copy
The English author of a book on the worth of artistic forgeries, tours Italy with a beautiful married French stranger (Binoche!).
7WR: Transcends its fun intellectual gimmick. Beautifully acted. B+/A-

Of Gods and Men
French monks living peacefully in a Muslim village are warned to leave when terrorists arrive.
7WR: Despite vibrant emotional pulses, touch too sedate. B/B+

The Social Network previous articles A-/A

 We Are What We Are (Mexico) | Another Year (UK) | Meek's Cutoff (USA)

We Are What We Are
A poor Mexican family struggles to keep their "rituals" alive after the father dies in this gruesome horror film.
7WR: Thematically obvious/clumsy but compulsively, masochistically watchable B-/C+

Tempest
Julie Taymor adapts Shakespeare's shipwrecks & sorcery play.
7WR: Muddy everything: ideas, sound, performance. Visual tourettes. D-/F

Another Year
Mike Leigh! A long married couple in England are surrounded by needy friends in four seasonal vignettes.
7WR: Blissful troupe rapport, comic beats. Weirdly judgmental. B+/B

Meek's Cutoff
Three families in covered wagons get lost in Indian country. They're running out of water.
7WR: Western From Another Planet but mysteriously confident. B/B+

Hereafter
A French woman experiences near death. A British boy copes with grief. An American psychic resists his gift.
7WR: Mawkishly moving but stiff, disjointed, weak storytelling. C-/D+


The Social Network used the fest as its world premiere and then promptly opened to great acclaim and presumptively leggy box office. Otherwise you're going to have to wait until 2011 for these films, apart from two: Hereafter (Oct 22nd) and The Tempest (Dec 10th)... unless you want to count Another Year but New Year's Eve releases are soooo next year if you ask us.

Disastrous Javier and Disaster Epic Compete For Foreign-Language Oscar

Fifty countries have now announced their Oscar submissions. We usually end with sixty-plus competitors so there's a dozen movies (approximately) left unannounced. The big question marks are Spain (we're guessing Celda 211 nope, Spain chose Even the Rain starring Gael García Bernal) and Italy (we're guessing The Man Who Will Come) since both countries are favorites of Academy voters. We'll know the "official" official list in early October. I've updated all the pages.

• Afghanistan to France
• Germany to The Netherlands
• Norway to Venezuela (plus finalist list for Uruguay)

Two biggies recently announced are Mexico's choice Biutiful which won admirers and haters at Cannes --for the same reasons as director Alejandro González Iñárritu's past efforts have divided -- and China's Aftershock (2010), the country's first homegrown IMAX epic that was a huge hit this summer.

Biutiful is a drama about a man who is dying and his life is falling apart on his way to the grave. Javier Bardem won Best Actor at Cannes so it's definitely One to Watch as it were. Plus, we know AMPAS voters respond well to Iñárritu's specific brand of miserabilism since they've handed nominations to all three of his previous feature films: Amores Perros (Best Foreign Language Film) 21 Grams (acting nominations) and Babel (several nods including Best Picture).

China's submission is inspired by a 1976 earthquake that killed nearly a quarter of a million people. I assumed it's fictionally dramatized (like Titanic for example) as the main plot apparently revolves around a woman who must face her own Sophie's Choice when her twins are buried alive and the rescue team can only save one of them.

The unusual trailer takes us backwards in time. I'm personally not much of a fan of disaster epics -- if I see New York City or Paris destroyed one more time in a movie. Grrrrr -- but will Oscar be? I mean, this won't have the science fiction silliness of something like 2012 and they do like a good historical epic.

At any rate, it's important to remember that no film is ever a safe bet in this particular derby since there are so many options and the voters actually have to watch the films (unlike other races where you can theoretically be nominated on goodwill and campaigning alone, no screenings necessary)



Have any of our international readers seen either of these films? Speak up if you have. Or prognosticate blindly in the comments. You know how we do.

Nathaniel's Oscar-Submission Reviews Thus Far
Peru's Undertow
Thailand's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
More soon...

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NYFF: "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives"

*slight spoilers ahead but this is not a "plot" film.*

Uncle Boonmee can recall his past lives. My memory is hardly as uncanny. Recalling or describing Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, the Cannes Palme D'Or winner and Thailand's Oscar submission, even a few days after the screening is mysteriously challenging. Even your notes won't help you.

This is not to say that the movie isn't memorable, rather that its most memorable images and stories refuse direct interpretation or cloud the edges of your vision, making it as hazy as the lovely cinematography. You can recall the skeletal story these images drift towards like moths and you can try to get to know the opaque characters that see them with you but these efforts have a low return on investment. What's important is the seeing.

What's wrong with my eyes? They are open but I can't see a thing.

Most synopses of the movie will only embellish on the film's title. And while Uncle Boonmee does reflect on past lives, he only does so directly in the pre-title sequence as we follow him in ox form through an attempted escape from his farmer master, who will eventually rope him back in. The bulk of the film is not a recollection -- at least not from Boonmee himself, but a slow march towards his death while he meditates on life and the film meditates on animal and human relations. His nephew and sister in law, who objects to his immigrant nurse, visit him. So too does his dead wife and another ghostly visitor on the same night, in a bravura early sequence that as incongruously relaxed as it is eery and startling.

The film peaks well before its wrap with the story of a scarred princess and a lustful talking catfish and then we begin the march towards Boonmee's death, perhaps the most literal moment in the movie. And then curiously, the movie continues on once he's gone. If it loses much of its potency after Boonmee has departed, there are still a few fascinating images to scratch your head over when he's gone.

The bifurcated structure that Weerathesakul has employed in the past is less prevalent this time.  Uncle Boonmee plays out not so much like two mysteriously reflective halves (see the haunting Tropical Malady which I find less accessible but actually stronger), but rather like a series of short films that all belong to the same continuous chronological movie, give or take that gifted horny catfish.

Surely a google search, press notes, academic analysis or listening to the celebrated director Apichatpong "Joe" Weerathesakul speak (as I did after the screening) would and can provide direct meaning to indirect cinema. But what's important is the seeing.

Vision is frequently mentioned and referenced in Uncle Boonmee, whether it's mechanical -- as in a preoccupation with photography which peaks in a late film sequence composed of still images -- or organic. But like the ghost monkey with glowing red eyes (the film's signature image) says to Uncle Boonmee early in the film, "I can't see well in the bright light." It's the one exchange in the film that I wholly related to and understood. I'm not sure I need or want to understand, to attach specific meaning to these confounding stories and images. I only want to see them. Weerasethakul's movie is best experienced in the dark, with the images as spiritual guides. They fall around you like mosquito netting as you walk slowly through the Thai jungle. B+/B

NYFF: "Poetry"

Nathaniel, reporting from the New York Film Festival

In the first shots of Poetry, the latest film from gifted director Lee Chang-dong (Secret Sunshine) an idyllic moment of little kids playing by a river is interrupted by a floating object in the water. The corpse of a middle school student is floating their way. This nonsensational but horrific reveal will soon intersect with the story of Mija (Jeong-hee Yoon), a sixty-six year old maid. She happens to be exiting the hospital from a worrisome test (her arm has been tingling), when she is startled by the chaos of the body's arrival and the grieving mother of the middle-schooler.

Mija is quick with smiles and laughter, but as the camera intimately follows her about her daily life it starts to look suspiciously empty and full of loneliness and drudgery. She cleans, she cooks, she care-takes, and she has conversations with just about everyone, though those are often one-sided. Her grandson, who went to school with the suicide victim, treats her like the help, spending all of his time with his friends. Her cheerfulness starts to feel like a saving grace. She's a good soul but she's basically fading away without close friends or family members or anyone taking notice of her. Impulsively she starts attending a poetry class, eager to experience more beauty and do something creative.

Lee Chang-dong, who coaxed such a wondrous performance out of his lead actress in Secret Sunshine, performs similar magic again. Jeong-hee Yoon, who came out of retirement after 16 years for this role, is a wonder as Mija, beautifully fleshing out this woman's high spirits, kindness, and fears. Yoon's nuanced performance manages to reflect all of this within Mija's ever present curiousity. Mija seems to instinctively understand that her endless curiousity will fill her life with both more beauty and more sadness.

Actress and Director, basking in well earned praise.

Watching the old woman deal with neighbors, grandson, doctors, employers, and fellow would-be poets, Poetry finds pockets of both humor and tragedy in its detailed observations of her character and the patriarchal town she lives in. Two things continually occupy her: the poetry class and the teen suicide. The poetry fills her days and the dead girl hovers on the periphery of her thoughts... sometimes taking over completely. In one fascinating scene that's exquisitely shot and performed, Mija impulsively steals a photo of the dead girl from her memorial service.

So Poetry begins, as many movies do, with a shot of a dead body. But it ends so very differently. What sets this beautiful character study apart from so many movies, is the reanimation of the young girl's corpse -- not literally, of course. It's not accomplished through cheap flashbacks (the story is told chronologically) but it happens spiritually and, well, poetically. This movie's magic is a spell cast through the genuine empathy of the writer/director and the inquisitive humanity of the protagonist, who can't let the girl, a complete stranger, go. Mija wants to write poetry, to commemorate the beauty in life. She knows its fragility, at any moment it can slip away. A-

Poetry won Best Screenplay at Cannes. Unfortunately it was not submitted by South Korea for the Oscars. Kino International will distribute the film in the States. Release date TBA.

The Foreign Film Oscar Race: So Much (International) Drama

But first things first. If German's popular drama When We Leave is nominated and wins, can the actress Sibel Kekilli please -- pretty pretty please -- repeat her barefoot acceptance/sit- in from Germany's Film Awards this past April? That'd be so sweet.


Oscar night thrives on weird surprises and they get so few. Sibel to the rescue. (I'm aware that Actresses don't accept Best Foreign Film Statues but let me dream!) I've only seen her in Head On but found her just riveting to watch onscreen and I've heard only good things about her performance in this particular movie. Will it be a nominee?

[tangent] Helpful hint: If you ever search for pictures of her online, makes sure to have you "safesearch" filters on though. I'm just saying. Is she now, quite literally, the best/most acclaimed actress to have ever started in the most disreputable form of acting? She was once Amber Waves and now she's Julianne Moore if you catch my drift. I'm trying to avoid spelling it out because I woke up this morning with an intense fear of spambot comments. But my point is this: Well done! She's now a two-time German Oscar winner. [/tangent]


Good luck to Sibel this season.

Click on the links below to go to pages with lots of info about the submitted films. And a big round of applause to The Film Experience's faithful international readership who have been helping track this journey each year since long before every movie site regurgitated each announcement in the 24 hour news cycle. Cinema is a global language and you rock.

Algeria to France

• Algeria. Outside the Law
• Austria. La Pivellina
• Azerbaijan. The Precinct
• Brazil
• Croatia. The Blacks
• Estonia. The Temptation of St. Tony
• Finland. Steam of Life (there's always at least one documentary submitted though none have ever been nominated)
  
• France. Of Gods and Men
  ...and let us break here for a moment to enjoy the beauty of silver fox Lambert Wilson, an actor/model/singer who we've always loved to look at whether that was in French movies, Calvin Klein Eternity ads or even during his stint as Evil Eurotrash Baddie in terrible Hollywood movies (Catwoman, The Matrix Revolution, etcetera)
  
  
  You're welcome.
  
  Oh and here he is with one of his Of Gods and Men co-star and his director. He's as kissy as Jeremy Renner is huggy!
  
  
  

We wish Lambert and especially France luck. Even though French cinema is the most frequently nominated, they haven't won the Foreign Language Oscar since Indochine (1992). Isn't that crazy? Major players Argentina, Denmark and The Czech Republic --countries that have won multiple times -- have yet to announce.

Germany to The Netherlands

• Greece. Dogtooth
• Hungary. Bibliothèque Pascal
• Iraq. Son of Babylon
• Israel. (The Ophir awards are almost here so we'll know soon. They'll send the Best Picture winner which we suspect will be Intimate Grammar)
  
• Japan. Confessions by Tetsuya Nakashima.
  ...and let us break here for a moment to watch the unsettling operatic trailer. I can't imagine Oscar voters responding to something this stylized but you never know. And I do respect the countries that just submit what they love most / deem best rather than worrying about Oscar's particular and sometimes disappointingly narrow aesthetic.
  
  
  
  Creepy odd and loud but doesn't it look highly watchable?
  
  
• Mexico - long list announced. We suspect they'll choose Biutiful on account of the Oscar pull of its team (Gonzalez Innaritu + Bardem). That said, countries don't always choose in a Bait-focused way so we can't guarantee it.
  
• The Netherlands. Tirza
  

Frequently nominated players Italy and Israel have yet to announce. Hong Kong is also up in the air. What will they choose?

Norway to Venezuela

• Peru. Undertow (Contracorriente) my review
• Poland. All That I Love
• Romania. If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle
• Russia. The Edge
  ...and let us break here for a moment to ponder how much Vladimir Mashkov looks like a superhero on his movie poster. Actually the movie poster itself suggests a steampunk adventure or maybe a sci-fi superhero movie. What powers does "The Edge" have?
  
  
  Actually it's a post World War II drama (as in immediately following the war) about a man who loves speeding locomotives or some such. I can't find an official site though, damnit. Readers outside of Russia, might recognize Vladimir from films like Behind Enemy Lines (2001) or TV series like Alias.
  
  
• Slovakia. The Border
• South Africa. Life, Above All
• South Korea. A Barefoot Dream
  
• Spain. They've narrowed it down to three films. I suspect it'll be prison drama Celda 211 which was big at the Goyas.
• Switzerland. La Petite Chambre
• Sweden. Simple Simon (previously discussed)
  
• Taiwan. Monga (previously discussed)
• Thailand. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
• Turkey. Honey (Bal)
• Venezuela. Hermano
  

As always your input and comments are welcome. Which of these films are you most curious about? Have you seen any of the films. Do you like your countries choice?

Oscar Nomination Prediction Index

Links: Glenn Shadix (RIP). Plus Jones, Cronenberg, Captain America

/Film first set photos of January Jones as Emma Frost in X-Men: First Class. As I believe I've stated before I love this casting. But it does seem wierd that she is already pigeonholed as "sixties girl". Will this be our first true period piece superhero flick or am I forgetting something? At least they're trying something slightly different with this one.
All Things Fangirl relives the glory of (500) Days of Summer last year with summer concerts in the now featuring JGL and Zooey Deschanel.
Cinema Viewfinder There's a Cronenberg blog-a-thon going on that I didn't know about. Shame. I don't really understand the format to get to the article contributions but I'm certain there's good things to read there. I shall investigate further. Love that David Cronenberg.
/Film long interview with Never Let Me Go director Mark Romanek.
Film Business Asia the upcoming London Film Festival (we'll be covering it again) has a healthy selection of Asian films.
Sina Andy Lau. Let him eat cake (for an early birthday celebration)
Topless Robot would like you to calm the f*** down about that picture from the set of Captain America.
DListed Henry Cavill on the set of The Cold Light of the Day

Finally, in my weekly column over @ Towleroad I've got a brief bit about The Romantics and yet more links including the sad news that character actor Glenn Shadix passed away two days ago. He's best known as "Otho" from Beetlejuice but when I think of him I nearly always think of that funeral scene in Heathers..."ESK-I-MO!!!" I also lovelovelovelove the two-faced Mayor from The Nightmare Before Christmas which he voiced. He hadn't been seen on the screen much lately but he was actually blogging just last week.He will be missed but he sure will live on through those comedy classics.

Foreign Film Oscar Submissions: Juvenile Delinquents and Missing Persons

I've updated the foreign film pages to reflect some of our now known contenders: Iraq (Son of Babylon), The Netherlands (Tirza), Romania (If I Want to Whistle, I'll Whistle) and Taiwan (Monga) have all announced. South Korea has narrowed their list down to six films, though most suspect it'll be Lee Chang-Dong's Poetry in the end. Many countries have yet to announce but there's still time. We generally don't know the full list until sometime in October. And some of the submissions won't have even opened in their home countries yet. (Foreign language submissions have to have been released in their home countries between October 1st, 2009 through Sept 30th, 2010 to compete in this category for the 2010 film year.) UPDATE: if you're looking for the current race (2011) that's here.

Romania: if he wants to whistle, he'll whistle, okay?

Taiwan: if he wants to shoot, he'll shoot.

Many countries have yet to announce but there's still time. We generally don't know the full list until sometime in October. And some of the submissions won't have even opened in their home countries yet. (Foreign language submissions have to have been released in their home countries between October 1st, 2009 through Sept 30th, 2010 to be eligible in this category for the 2010 film year.)

So far in the competitive lineups we have two rough sets of twins: two dramas about young male criminals (Taiwan & Romania) and two journey films wherein an older person searches for their adult child with a young child helping them (Iran & The Netherlands). And yes, "Oscar already loves the Iran and Dutch entries sight unseen," he said sarcastically. This AMPAS branch just digs cross generational journeys. A lot. You know they do.

I wrote about the Taiwanese submission Monga very briefly over at Towleroad earlier this year because of some talk show incident wherein they asked the 20something leads, Mark Zhao and Ethan Ruan, to kiss. I can't imagine an American talk show asking Young Hollywood co-stars to kiss. Could you imagine the ruckus if the ladies from The View asked the Twilight boys to lip lock in order to get their trailer shown?

To quote Nomi Malone... "different places!"

Here are the popular boys singing "Tonight Tonight" from Monga (with clips from the movie). It appears to be the theme song though Wikipedia states differently saying that this cover of "Making Love Out of Nothing At All," the Air Supply classic, has that honor. ("!!!" and also "???")



I'll update more Oscar pages tomorrow. In the meantime, if you need more Oscar speculation check out All These Wonderful Things' list of documentary hopefuls.
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