(originally
published in The Outreach Connection
in October 2006)
This is the fourth
of Jack Hughes’ reports from the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival.
Nue Propriete (Joachim
Lafosse)
This was a total
wild card selection for me – I know nothing of Lafosse’s previous work. Not
that the presence of Isabelle Huppert doesn’t provide a major guarantee against
wasted time – I’m not sure there’s an actress who chooses material so
consistently well (certainly from her own perspective, and usually from ours
too). Nue Propriete turns out to be an interesting but
minor effort about a divorced woman living with her somewhat aimless early-20’s
twin sons, in a boisterous but finely balanced relationship which disintegrates
when she thinks of selling the house to get on with her life. The “private
property” of the film’s English title is not primarily the disputed dwelling,
but rather the unique and unknowable contours of any family, and for much of
the way Lafosse depicts this quite engrossingly, with a fine eye for quirky
detail, sometimes pushing general notions of appropriateness (the film,
carrying the opening dedication “To our boundaries” could be read as a
cautionary tale against the perils of discarding familial norms, and thus as
being somewhat conservative). The direction of all this is broadly predictable,
and Lafosse’s final shot is a lame stab at evoking universality. Still, the
film is certainly strong enough to mark him as a director of interest. And, of
course, the acting is compelling.
Time (Kim Ki-duk)
Kim’s eclectic
career seemed to be buzzing along just fine, and then came a few speed bumps
including a stinging critique in Sight and
Sound. I read somewhere that he’s threatening not even to release his films
in his native South Korea any more. He seems to be one of those directors who
keeps cranking out movies, always with pictorial composure and a certain
inherent gravity, but with thinning underlying ideas. Time doesn’t help his case very much; I found it quite a letdown.
The premise is promising enough – a jealous girlfriend, neurotic about the
prospect of her boyfriend getting tired of looking at her, submits to plastic
surgery and disappears for six months to recuperate. He tries to get something
going with someone else, but it’s all thwarted for one reason or another, and
anyway he finds he really loves his missing girlfriend. But then she comes
back, and things get very complicated. The movie seems to me best suited for
those who’ve been longing for an Asian version of Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected – if there’s any
serious commentary here on plastic surgery or identity more generally, it’s
submerged under narrative logistics. The film’s knowingly artificial ambiance
suits its theme, but results in an increasingly academic viewing experience.
Woman on the Beach (Hong
Sang-soo)
I think it was
Paul Mazursky’s Willie & Phil in
which one critic discerned the theme of how men do the asking but women do the
deciding. Well, I guess it may have been covered elsewhere too. And here it is
again in the unexpected setting of a deserted South Korean beach resort. A film
director (who’s less refined in person than people imagine from his pictures)
drags along a younger friend to the resort to help him work on a script; the
other brings his girlfriend, and the director falls for her. Then another woman
enters the picture, leading to some increasingly complex relationship geometry
(the director sketches this on a napkin, in triangles and trapezoids, at one
point) and some increasingly philosophical (although always accessible) musing
on how it all breaks down between the sexes. Hong exploits the bleak
surroundings without overplaying the symbolism; the film is clearly a comedy,
even if the laughs are mostly bunched up in the earlier section. And he has an
intriguing sense of personal breaking points. The film probably isn’t ambitious
enough to stand among the most memorable that I saw at the festival, but it has
the feeling of a director gently hitting the targets he was aiming for.
I didn’t see these
next two at the Festival, but in their subsequent commercial releases.
All
the King’s Men (Steven Zaillian)
Zaillian’s remake
of the 1949 classic (which I must admit I don’t remember at all) wasn’t
received with much enthusiasm, and turned into a swift box office failure. It’s
a handsome enough package, but the overall approach is often mystifying. There
seems to be no point remounting this story of Southern state politics, focusing
on a small town populist who rants his way into the governor’s office, if not
to position it as contemporary commentary, but it’s hard to extract much
relevance from anything here. After the initial build-up, Zaillian hardly even
seems interested in the raw texture of politics, instead letting the film bog
down in some hackneyed sidelines, and events are often so choppy that I
genuinely wondered at one point whether the projectionist had loaded on the
reels in the wrong order. Sean Penn is entertaining, but always too technical
and conscious of his effects, in the lead role, but the fine surrounding cast
(Jude Law, Anthony Hopkins, Kate Winslet and others) mostly stagnates in either
unsuitable or inadequate roles. Inevitably, the resources involved give it a
patina of watchability, and there’s the odd galvanizing moment of melodrama,
but overall the film feels consistently wrong-headed, even absent.
The Last Kiss (Tony
Goldwyn)
Gabriele Muccino’s
The Last Kiss was a huge hit in Italy
a few years ago. Centering on a man who - freaked out by life crystallizing
around him - cheats on the pregnant girlfriend he adores, it weaves in any
amount of angst about relationships; it’s not so far removed from soap opera of
course, but still highly accomplished (it also struck me, when I saw it, as a
milestone in depicting how cell phones have rewritten the fabric of everyday
interactions). Tony Goldwyn’s remake, written by Paul Haggis, stays fairly
close to the original in most regards, but comes in half an hour shorter, and
thus about 25% simpler. It’s certainly smooth and generally engrossing, often
articulate and with some raw moments; on the other hand it’s too often sketchy,
inconsistent, lunging for emotional climaxes. Zach Braff seems to me a wholly
inadequate central figure, unable to invest his character with more than a
petulant, sitcom-level restlessness; the movie is otherwise well cast, although
most of the actors are allowed only a few signature moments. Like All the King’s Men, although in a very
different way, the basic point of the remake never becomes clear – it’s as if a
higher power had imposed the project on the filmmakers, and they could never
transcend damage minimization mode.
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