Month: May 2017

Happy End

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This was by far the most eagerly anticipated film of the 70th Cannes International Film Festival. That’s because Michael Haneke’s last two films L’Amour (2009) and The White Ribbon (2012) both received the Palme d’Or. Plus he received other major prizes at the event for The Piano Teacher (2001) and Hidden (2005). And this also he kick-started his international career exactly 20 years ago with Funny Games.

The stakes were very high and the anticipation was such that the Festival and the director refused to provide a synopsis of the film. The only information available until two days ago were a couple of pictures, a short extract (at the bottom of this article), the cast and a very succinct clue as to what the film may be: “All around us, the world, and we, in its midst, blind.”

Haneke has delivered yet another majorly bleak study of Europe and human being. It tells the story of a bourgeois family based in Calais. Anne Laurent (Haneke’s regular anti-superstar Isabelle Huppert) runs the family business because her father Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant, pictured below) is too old and her son Pierre (Franz Rogowski) is too emotionally unstable. Her brother Thomas (Mathieu Kassovitz) has a wife, a mysterious lover and two children, including 13-year-old Eve (Fantine Harduin) – whose mother is in hospital in a comma after a suicide attempt.

Death and suicide are central themes of the film, and they seem affect nearly every character in one way or another. Taking away your own life look like the only feasible solution, the only possible “happy end” to these deeply trouble people. They are engulfed in the mediocrity of their vulgar wealth, their loveless relationships and their futile routines. Huppert is extremely effective as usual, even if her character is one of the least complex in the movie. The little Fantine Harduin is the star of the movie, conveying a sense of misery and gloom that is guaranteed haunt you. Jean-Louis Trintignant is also very convincing in the role of the patriarch losing not just his desire to live but also his connection to the real world, as dementia begins to set in.

The first sequence of the movie will upset animal lovers, and I’m still not sure how it was done (whether the animal was harmed or killed in the making). One way or the other, it’s very realistic, and it sets the tone for the movie very early on: this is going to a deadly ride.

The socio-political commentary is also there. It is no coincidence that the film takes place in Calais, located in one of only two departments where Marine Le Pen beat Emmanuel Macron in the second round of the French presidential elections this month, and also where thousands of refugees are located. These largely unwelcomed aliens, who were often the subject of Le Pen’s rabid campaigning platform, make a very inconvenient appearance in a crucial moment of the film.

While effective as both a socio-political and emotional statement, Happy End feels a little trite if you are familiar with Haneke’s filmography and cinematic trademarks. It tries to recycle old devices without adding anything new. You will recognise the twisted sexuality of The Piano Teacher, the obsession with capturing banal actions on camera of Hidden and a very central element of Amour (which I can’t mention without spoiling the movie). In a nutshell, Happy End is a little too ambitious and not fresh enough.

Happy End was very well received, but it did not take the Palme d’Or home (which would be the Austrian director’s third). I wasn’t rooting for it. Haneke needs to come up with more original devices before taking receiving the highest prize in the film festival world for the third time.

This piece was originally written during the Cannes International Film Festival in May. The film premieres in the UK during the 61st BFI London Film Festival, taking place from October 5th to 15th. It is finally out in cinemas on Friday, December 1st.

Jeune Femme

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We all know a crazy little bitch. She might be dormant inside you or she might be living next door. But she’s not very far. You are guaranteed to recognise her in Paula (Laetitia Dosch), a young female living in Paris and suffering a mental breakdown. Of course you will wish you will never meet someone like her. She is prone to fits, violent outbursts and absurd philosophical rants. She’s the kind of person you’d rather not date, be friends or even engage in a small conversation.

The paradox of freedom prevails in Paula’s life: she shudders with fear every time she’s confronted with the notion that “she’s free to do whatever she wants”. This freedom suffocates her.

The young and pretty Paula has just been ditched by her boyfriend, she doesn’t have any close friends and she has never worked in her life. She doesn’t talk to her estranged mother, and her father is dead. The only company she enjoys is her cat. She’s so desperate for love and attention that she pretends to be someone else to a stranger on the train, hoping to strike up an instant friendship.

The first-time director Léonor Serraille finds humour in her dysfunctional behaviour, which includes smashing her head against doors and mirrors, and screaming outside her former boyfriend building at night. The girl is hopeless!

Or not! Against all odds, Paula manages to pull herself together and miraculously lands a job in a shop selling knickers plus working as a nanny, despite having no references at all. She slowly begins to turn her life around, embracing new sexual experiences and even making new friends. Maybe she wasn’t crazy after all.

Paula is an allegory of how anonymous life in big cities such as Paris can be (or “incognito”, as a atrsnger explains to her), and how loneliness can lead to mental health problems. And most importantly: how our society often isn’t prepared to deal with people with such problems, and how we urgently need to work on our sense of solidarity and compassion. Jeune Femme is a very effective tale of urban life malaise, plus a lighthearted study of a mental breakdown, with excellent acting and a sturdy hand at the helm. I would hazard a guess that the filmmaker has a very promising future ahead.

Jeune Femme showed at the 70th Cannes International Film Festival in 2017, as part of the Un Certain Regard section – this is when this piece was originally written. It is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, May 18th (2018). On Mubi in June/July 2020.

Golden Years (Nos Anées Folles)

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QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM CANNES

Fifty years are neither 50 weeks nor 50 months. The French filmmaker André Techiné has directed more than 20 films in his career spanning five decades, and he has worked with the likes of Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche and Isabelle Huppert. So the Cannes Film Festival, which is also having a big anniversary this year (add two decades; it’s 70th edition of the Festival), decided to honour the director with a special screening attended by no less than the three aforementioned ladies.

And as you would expect, the 76-year artist, possibly the greatest LGBT director alive, hasn’t disappointed us. Golden Years is a superb piece of filmmaking, exuding guile, vigour, elegance and subversive fragrances. As usual, he challenges expectations of gay relations, sexuality and national identity. The film tells the real story of the French WW1 deserter Paul Grappe (Pierre Deladonchamps) and his wife Louise (Céline Sallette). In order to avoid being caught, Paul disguises himself as Suzanne. He quickly and enthusiastically embraces his new identity and turns to prostitution in order to make ends meet and cater for his wife.

Paul/Suzanne seems to be fully bisexual, enjoying orgies and all sorts of sexual experiments with people of both genders, while still in love with his wife. She remains devoted to her husband despite his sexuality, which was extremely unorthodox for the times. At first, she seems entirely indifferent to his job and “perversions”. Eventually Paul/Suzanne becomes a cabaret act, but then the split identity begins to haunt and to suffocate him. Suzanne wishes to take over.

This plot will sound extremely familiar in case you watched the British-American drama The Danish Girl (Tom Hooper, 2016). The movie tells the (kind of ) real story of the transsexual Lili Elbe, who lived in Denmark at around the same time as Paul. Lili is played by Eddie Redmayne, who looks a lot like Deladonchamps. And Lili also had the love and support of his wife. But that’s where the similarities stop.

The difference is that The Danish Girl twisted Lili’s real story in order to a create an easily-digestible movie, and to make the characters more pallatable. The director opted to show Lili’s wife holding her hand as Lili died in his movie, when in real life she was remarried and living in another continent when Lili passed away.

Well, you wouldn’t expected a saccharine ending from Techiné. Instead, Paul/Suzanne becomes violent and unpredictable in his gender dysphoria. And Louise’s devotion to him turns into something else. Golden Years is not celebration of transgenderism. This is a study of human dysfunction, and the role of sexuality in power relations. No transgender person will wish to have Paul/Suzanne as a role model. The French director is not here to give us simple answers and to revere LGBT culture. He’s here to hit you in the face. And it’s gonna hurt.

No less important is noting that this Golden Years is a statement against war. Deserting is the ultimate act of treason against your nation. In this case, also against heteronormativity.

Golden Years is showing at the 70th Cannes Film Festival, which DMovies is covering live right now. The movie is not part of the official competition, and instead it was screened in a special session celebrating the 50 years of filmmaking by André Techiné.

Click here for our review of Techiné’s Being 17, from last year.

The Day After (Geu-Hu)

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I watched my first film by the Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo earlier this year in the Berlin Film Festival and I hated it. I found On the Beach at Night Alone so boring and insufferable that I compared it to “watching paint fade”. I thought that it was even slower than Eric Rohmer’s films (who I happen to like a lot), which a critic once famously described as “watching paint dry”.

I am now on my third Hong Sang-soo film and so I have decided that I reassess my relationship to his language and pace. The black-and-white The Day After takes place almost entirely during a single day, when Song Areum (Kim Min-hee, pictured above) starts her new job, only to be confronted and assaulted by her boss Kim Bong-wan’s (Kwon Hae-hyo) wife, who mistakes her for his lover. Understandably, she wants to keep it quiet, but Bong-wan insists that she doesn’t. Then his real lover unexpectedly turns up and the story takes a hilarious turn. The fallibility of the male is fully exposed, plus his inability to recognise his mistakes, lies and shortcomings.

The Day After is urgent in its simplicity. The dialogues are mundane and banal, and yet extreme engaging in their shallow philosophical thinking. Despite being set in Korea, you will feel that this have taken place anywhere and you are guaranteed to recognise yourself in the platitudes that the characters utter. The little twists are extremely credible and touching in their directness and candour. The catty and the petty fights are very similar to the ones you have experienced, whether you are Korean, British, Nigerian and Ucuadorean. This is cinema at its fullest universality.

The very beautiful and talented Kim Min-hee (she won the Silver Bear for On the Beach at Night Alone) is a regular actress for Hong. In fact, she’s the protagonist in all of his three films that I have seen. The three movie also have common topics: all three focus a young woman having an affair or a dalliance with an older and more powerful man. I would hazard a guess that his films have strong autobiographical elements. And they almost feel like a continuation of each other. And the more you watch, the more you get absorbed. Maybe watching paint fade isn’t so boring at all!

The Day After showed at the 70th Cannes Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. The film is opening the London Korean Film Festival starting on October 26th. We are giving away a pair of tickets for the special screening. Just write to us at info@dirtymovies.org; we will announce the winner on October 25th.

The Villainess (Ak-Nyeo)

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Punch! Ouch… Now punch again! Kick! Slash that throat! Blood gushes! Stab his chest! More blood gushes!!! Slice that leg! Shazam! Blood splats everywhere!!! Sever his hand! Aha… More blood gushing! Scream, shout, run, duck, twist, hit her on the face! Jump out of the window! Survive. Brouhahaha. Slash another throat. Yet more blood gushes. Carry on. Slash ten more throats. Run, hide, jump. Oops. Explosion! Boom! Blood everywhere. Slash some more throats. Yeah!!! HUFKvbblkj!!! Run again. Boom again!!! Finally…TAH DAH more blood gushes!!!

This is more or less what the Villainess is all about. In fact, it works quite well in the first 10 minutes, when it emulates some sort of video game. The problem is that the film is two hours and ten minutes long. The special effects are good and arresting enough to start with, but their unrelenting repetition with an infinite number of characters and an incredibly complicated plot make this film very painful to watch.

The story more or less revolves around Sook-Hee (Kim Ok-Vin), who is trained to become a highly skilled assassin. She eventually ends up working for South Korea’s Inteligence Agency Chief Kwon, where she becomes a sleeper cell. She gives birth to a daughter, is given a new identity and home, under the promise of freedom after 10 years serving her country. She falls in love with an informer, and her plans go terribly awry.

The film intends to make some sort of feminist statement by placing empowered and efficient women in the main roles (Sook-Hee and Kwon), plus many more in supporting ones. Yet the gaze is extremely masculine (the director Jung Byung-Gil is a man); this is the type of testosterone-fueled movie more likely to please men. It attempts to be some sort of Kill Bill (Quentin Tarantino, 2003), with a bloody marriage and even a daughter witnessing her father being killed from under the bed, but it fails tremendously to do so because it focuses too much on the violence, and there’s hardly any room for character development. This is neither Ang Lee nor Park Chan-Wook; it lacks elegance and cohesion.

The Villainess showed as part of the 70th Cannes Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. It’s out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 15th, plus there is a special screening at the Regent Street Cinema on Monday September 11th as a preview of the Korean Film Festival (which takes place from October 26th and November 19th)

Claire’s Camera (Keul-Le-Eo-Ui Ka-Me-La)

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No, I didn’t overlook it and repeat myself. This is a Korean film set in Cannes and it also premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. The film features the big star of the event, the emblematic French actress Isabelle Huppert. So it’s only natural that it received a lot of attention and a filled up one of the large theatres of the Palais des Festivals.

It’s also a good film. It tells the story of the film saleswoman Jeon Man-hee (Kim Min-hee), who is made redundant from her job while in Cannes for the premiere of a film by the director So Wansoo (Jeong Jin-young). Her female boss accuses her of dishonesty, but in reality she’s being dismissed because she had sex with the filmmaker, with whom her boss also her a relation. Meanwhile, the teacher poet Claire (Isabelle Huppert) casually meets both the director and Man-hee, and she develops a bond with the young and pretty lady.

Claire always carries a camera around and takes pictures of most people she meets. She wants immortalise qualities in some sort of Dorian Gray way, arguing that people change very quickly, even within a few hours. Huppert is excellent, conveying profundity in the most banal actions. There are some moments of awkward silence – probably due to the cultural differences between the French and the Korean – which are both funny and moving. Huppert isn’t just the master of the dysfunctional. She’s also very good at the mundane.

The serendipitous meets, the small talk, the triviality of the events, the placid attitude of the characters and the slow pace of the movie are very much reminiscent of the late French filmmaker Eric Rohmer. Both Sang-soo and Rohmer directors have a very female sensitivity, and they know how to touch viewers with a simple and straight-forward language, devoid of complex tricks and epic twists. This is very human cinema, arresting for its simplicity.

Claire’s Camera showed as part of the 70th Cannes Film Festival (2017), when this piece was originally written. Hong Sang-soo is one of the biggest exponents of Korean cinema right now, and three of his films showed in Cannes last year. The director confessed last year that he’s in a relationship with Min-hee, suggesting that the film has many biographical elements. Claire’s Camera shows on July 23rd as a teaser of the London Korean Film Festival.

Redoubtable (Le Redoutable)

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Jean-Luc Godard epitomises the dilemma of the revolution like no one else does. He knows that cinema is a tool for liberation from capitalism, but he also understands that by making films you become a (by-)product of the system. He spent his life attempting to be different and audacious, and yet he was often accused of becoming a commodity and a caricature. So what does it take to be a revolutionary filmmaker? Godard has grappled with this question for decades. He’s probably still questioning, “redoubting” himself.

Michel Hazanavicious’s latest movie is a gentle, comprehensible and easy-digestible film about a very complex artist, who is often very difficult to stomach. Godard thrived on controversy, paradoxes and even rejection – he both loathed and admired his most ferocious critics: the students and activists. His fiery, rowdy, peremptory, arrogant and blasé temperament are efficiently delivered by the actor Louis Carrel (who also looks a lot like the director at young age). His sharp humour and caustic wit are successfully inserted in the movie script.

France has recently encountered a backlash of extreme right-wing politics in the shape of Marine Le Pen. So it’s refreshing to see a film that’s prepared to remind the country of its revolutionary streak, and its Marxist-Leninist leanings. One of Godard’s remarks in the film is very prescient and representative of the past few months in France: “politics are like shoes, you have the left and the right, but sometimes you just go barefoot”. It’s almost as if the director knew the country was about to shun both the left and the right and instead elect the centrist Emmanuel Macron as president.

The Redoubtable takes place in 1967, a year before the student protests erupted in Paris, and when Godard to married Anne Wiazemsky (Stacy Martin, pictured above) – that’s NOT Anna Karina, whom he divorced two years earlier. The film focuses on both his unpredictable demeanour and Anne’s difficulties in putting up with his cold and confrontational style, which extended from politics to bed. Beneath the enfant terrible façade, on the other hand, dwelled a very insecure man fearsome of his limitations. Plus the awareness of his fallibility and intrinsically paradoxical aspirations caused him to attempt suicide. Luckily he didn’t make it to the famous Claude Engel/Serge Gainsbourg song Chatterton.

The movie also discusses the duality of Cannes, the very event where it’s premiering right now. Godard had many reservations about showing his films there, as the Festival in many ways represent a powerful establishment and was disliked by students and activists. Reconciling artistic freedom with commercial objectives is a challenge not just for Cannes, but for any film festival anywhere.

Don’t expect to see, however, an audacious movie experimenting with language in the way Godard did (and still does). There are bite-size references to the ingenious devices created by the director, such the faux raccords, the jump cuts and film negative. But they are a charming tribute to the director, and do not drive and define the film (which is a pity). This is not a brassy biopic of a subversive genius, like the outstanding Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life (Joann Sfar, 2010) about the (in)famous French musician. Instead this is a very straightforward eulogy to a living legend. Still a very pleasant, didactic and commendable one.

Redoubtable showed 70th Cannes Film Festival in May 2017, when this piece was originally written. It is also showing at the 61st BFI London Film Festival, taking place from October 5th to 15th. It is out in cinemas on Friday May 11th, 2018, and available for digital streaming later in the month. On Mubi in June 2020.

A Prayer Before Dawn

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There is absolutely no doubt that the story of Billy Moore is profoundly inspirational for young people. The British boxer spent three years in a Thai prison, following a conviction for drug-dealing. His daily life was more or less confined to cigarettes and extreme violence, which he both suffered and helped to perpetrate. There were no signs of rehabilitation. Against all odds, Billy represented his prison in a boxing tournament and won, and soon he was forgiven by the Thai King and sent back to the UK. He now leads a drug-free life, having found redemption through the combat sport.

The realism of the film A Prayer Before Dawn isn’t questionable. It’s easy to see that the French director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire did his homework, and used real locations and real convicts with their bodies fully tattooed, golden teeth et al. The violence and the drug-taking are extremely graphic and vivid, and indeed disturbing. Strangely, the only thing that isn’t entirely graphic are the sex scenes. Cigarettes and punching are the most important currencies in an environment not too different from what purgatory must look like. The prison officers are corrupt and sadistic. The libido of the inmates is catered for in the shape of rape or consensual interaction with the occasional ladyboy (one of whom Billy has a short romance with). Life in prison is not a walk in the park.

The problem with A Prayer Before Dawn isn’t the realism, not even Joe Cole’s performance (which is quite convincing). Instead, it simply lacks emotional depth. The violence is so intense and incessant that it does not allow for reflection and contemplation. We never learn about Billy’s inner motives, feelings and ambitions. It’s true that a prison environment is not the place to share such sentiments, but cinema does have the power to convey more profound messages, and to rescue latent qualities not easily discernible at sight. And that’s what A Prayer Before Dawn fails to do. After watching nearly two hours of unrelenting and unforgiving violence, you might feel a little beaten down. Or maybe even knocked out.

Despite the realism, the gaze of the film is also very foreign. Most of the Thai dialogue doesn’t have subtitles, leaving the Asian men looking like some sort of incomprehensible beasts. That’s probably because the film is based on Billy’s own memoir, and it took him years before he learnt some Thai. I’m not suggesting life in a Thai prison is good, and the inmates and officers are kind and generous people, but removing the only tool that we have to understand them makes the story a little partial, contributing to a feeling of alienation. Ultimately, it feels a little like “good European corrupted by evil Asians”, even if that wasn’t the intention of the director (and I doubt it was).

A Prayer Before Dawn showed in the Cannes International Film Festival in May 2017, when this piece was originally written. It is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, July 20th.

The Square

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Scandinavian humour isn’t very easy to grasp, particularly if you come from a Latin culture (like myself), more used to explicit and on-your-face jest glazed with sexual innuendo. The director of the acclaimed Force Majeure (2015) returns with a strange blend of comedy and suspense, dotted with social commentary. The social and corporate jokes are reminiscent of Lars von Trier’s The Boss of it all (2006). Much of the humour in The Square is build upon awkwardness, and how Scandinavians are uncomfortable with confrontation.

Christian (Claes Bang) is the very square and respectable curator of a contemporary art museum, and the divorced father of two girls. Their upcoming art installation is entitled The Square, and it invites passersby to leave their belongings and trust their fellow beings. Christian has a dalliance with Anna (Elisabeth Moss), an American living with a pet chimpanzee about twice her size. The equilibrium in Christian’s life is disrupted when his mobile phone is stolen, thereby shattering his very own notions of solidarity and altruism. Such a small mishap triggers some very extreme reactions from a man otherwise calm and balanced.

The Scandinavian obsession with freedom of speech (the same one that led to the persecution of Danish cartoonist Jyllands-Posten) is central to the film, and it creates some of the most hilarious moments. During a television show, a member of the audience who suffers from Tourette’s can’t stop screaming the most shocking profanities to Christian and the female presenter: “cock”, “show your tits” and “cameltoe”. Yet no one will stop the man. Later in the movie, a performer is hired to act as a wild beast during a dinner (pictured at the top), and it takes a very long time before anyone attempts to stop him. Foucault would be proud indeed, body and soul.

The wild beast sequence is probably the most important one in the movie, and it reminded me a lot of people “spassing” (ie pretending to have serious mental problems) in The Idiots (once again by Lars Von Trier, 1998). Both the Danish and the Swedish director successfully experiment with the limits of humour and sanity. In both cases the people embrace the character so thoroughly that they seem to lose the connections with their own selves.

The film, however, has a few shortcomings. Firstly, it’s extremely long at 145 minutes. Second, The Square is a cubist movie which doesn’t manage to gel the fragments together in a intelligible way. It’s a painting the perfectionist Picasso would not show in an art exhibition. Overall, it lacks cohesion. Christian’s family life is never fully explored, not is his relation to Anna. Despite the long duration, a lot of narrative strains are left up in the air, and the film feels a little tedious at times.

Plus there is an extremely unnerving version of Schubert’s Ave Maria with a “doo doo dah” scatting in the background played ad infinitum in the movie. Not funny at all!

The Square showed as part of the 70th Cannes International Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. It won the Palme d’Or. It’s out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 16th.

Filmworker

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Would you give up your career in order to become someone else’s shadow? What about your own life? Well, Leon Vitali did. He surrendered his job as an actor in British TV in favour of working as an assistant for the legendary American filmmaker Stanley Kubrick (who moved to the UK at the age of 19). In a way, he also gave up his own family life. He did marry and have children, but these seemed to be secondary in his life. Filmworker reveals that Vitali worked 16-hour-shifts nearly every single day for much of the time comprised between 1975, when he first met the director, until 1999, when the filmmaker passed away.

Vitali was described not only as Kubrick’s shadow; someone also called him Igor (in a reference to Doctor Frankenstein’s assistant). It wasn’t easy dealing with the seemingly avuncular man, who in reality had an explosive temperament, Kubrick often screamed, bullied and humiliated his workers, delivering expletive-laden rants of all sorts. Vitali (pictured below at present, looking a lot like Ozzy Osbourne) reveals that the closest you could Stanley Kubrick nowadays was Gordon Ramsey (that’s F**KING insane!!!).

A filmworker is not a filmmaker, but it’s not that bad at all, either. Vitali wasn’t a mere grovelling pawn without a say. He was an enabler; and he deserves a lot of respect for that. It’s widely recognised that Kubrick wouldn’t function without his assistant. Vitali was in charge of virtually everything: from direction assistance to casting, coaching of the actors, post-production and even marketing and publicity (he allegedly vetted every single international poster and trailer of his films). His stamina, loyalty and efficiency were undeniable, and we must credit him for warranting the excellence of Stanley Kubrick.

Vitali’s job did not end after Kubrick’s untimely death at the age of just 70. Quite the opposite. At that stage, the shadow had to step forward and replace his master. He had to finish Eyes Wide Shut to his best knowledge of Kubrick would have wanted the film to look like. He was also in charge of the restoration of his entire collection. If you are a fan of Kubrick, this doc will feel like a candy shop to you: there are loads of film extracts, plenty of behind-the-scenes and interviews with Vitali and his family. If you are not a fan, however, you might want to give it a miss, or at least familiarise yourself with Kubrick’s work first.

Filmworker showed the 70th Cannes International Film Festival in May 2017, when this piece was originally written. It’s out in cinemas Friday, May 18th (2018). On VoD on Monday, April 22nd (2019).

Jupiter’s Moon (Jupiter Holdja)

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The first five minutes of this film are so frenetic and electrifying that I could swear it was going to win the Palme d’Or. Syrian refugees are trying to cross from Serbia into Hungary at night on a makeshift boat controlled by greedy smugglers, where they are met with bullets. Their precarious craft capsizes, many are killed and others run into the dense Puszta forest. This is where Aryaan (Zsombor Jéger) is met by a police cop, who shoots him three times. Unexplainably, the bullets fail to kill him. But that’s not the only miracle: the young Syrian suddenly learns that he can fly.

This a premise for a very promising movie, lyrically translating the political connotations of the refugee crisis into supernatural powers. Plus, the film is a metaphor of Europe: it opens up with titles explaining that there is a sea of salt water on one of Jupiter’s moons that could harbour life, and this sea is aptly named “Europa”. Sadly these promises do not materialise. The film slowly morphs into a action thriller dotted with a few poetical devices. By the time we reach the end, the pan-European political message is hardly recognisable, diluted instead in the beautiful cinematography and a fast-paced script.

A greedy doctor called Stern (Merad Ninidze) takes the “angel” Aryaan (maybe it’s no coincidence that his name sounds a lot like “Ariel”) to the Hungarian capital in order to monetise his superpowers. Until the police realise what’s happening and begin to pursue both men, who predictably begin to develop a bond. The bad guy Stern ultimately finds redemption in his life, and tries to make amends with those whom he wronged in the past. He was touched by an angel, it soon becomes clear.

This is not a bad movie per se. The camerawork is indeed impressive, with the image rotating and swiveling across the skies of Budapest. Aryaan also has telekinetic powers. There’s a sequence in the middle of the movie where he makes all the furniture inside a room rotate, thereby taking revenge on a minor antagonist. It looks like some sort of Carrie (Brian de Palma, 1976) meets Mirror (Tarkovsky, 1975), which plenty of reflections, shadows, dirty windows and water dripping from the ceiling. It’s worth watching Jupiter’s Moon even for this sequence alone.

The problem is that the film is a bit to long at 120 minutes, and the special effects become repetitive after a while. After 60 minutes or so, the dizzying heights and ingenious camerawork will no longer make your head spin. Plus it plods too heavily towards some sort of grand finale. You will often get the impression the director is working very hard towards some sort of magnificent ET or King Kong-like ending. Yet there’s nothing novel, surprising and audacious about the closing of the movie.

Jupiter’s Moon showed as part of the official competition of the 70th Cannes Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. Overall, the film did not pleased critics, no miracle happened and so the film did not take the Palme d’Or. It is out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 5th (2018). On Mubi on Tuesday, May 24th (2022). Also available on Amazon Prime.