Month: November 2018

December is the month of European cinema!

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We are delight to announce that the third edition of the ArteKino Festival will take place throughout the month of December, from the very first day until the end of the year. This means more time to enjoy 10 films for free online (eight in the UK).

Just like in the past two years, each title has been carefully selected from the most prestigious festivals to ensure you get a taste of Europe’s exciting cinema. This year, however, ArteKino Festival has improved the accessibility of its titles by making films available in 10 languages. Audiences will have the ability to watch this year’s selection with subtitles in ARTE’s official languages (French, German, English, Italian, Spanish and Polish), and in Ukrainian, Romanian, Hungarian and Portuguese.

This year, the selection includes five films made by women directors. This represents a snapshot of the diverse and eclectic nature of contemporary European cinema. Viewers from 45 European countries will be able to explore a rich selection of films by established directors and also nascent filmmakers, along with outstanding performances by a new generation of on-screen talent.

Online viewers will vote to determine the winner of the ArteKino Audience Award. The award gives a shared prize of €30,000 to the filmmakers and the sales agent of the winning film. Voters will also be entered into a contest where they can win a trip to the 2019 edition of the Locarno Festival in Switzerland.

ArteKino is supported of the Creative Europe MEDIA Programme of the European Union. Below is a list of the qo films (click on the title in order to accede to our dirty review, where available).

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1. 24 Weeks (Anne Zohra Berrached, 2016):

German film investigates the difficult decision that a woman has to be between having a dirty abortion and a “disgusting” severely sick and disabled child.

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2. Mug (Malgorzala Szumowska, 2018):

NOT AVAILABLE IN THE UK, BUT IT’S OUT IN CINEMAS ON DECEMBER 7th

Polish film about face transplant and a giant Jesus statue combines elements of drama and comedy.

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3. Flemish Heaven (Peter Monsaert, 2018):

Set in a brothel on the French-Belgian border, queasy tale asks difficult questions about parenthood and responsibility

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4. Pity (Yannis Drakopoulos, 2018):

Greek man actively seeks attention and pity after his wife falls into a coma, in a quaint and twisted tale about out lack of time for each other.

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5. L’Animale (Katharina Mueckstein, 2018):

Small town in Austria is riddled with repressed sexuality and confused sentiments, but there’s also a beam of hope for the silent hearts.

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6. For Some Inexplicable Reason (Gabor Reisz, 2015):

Hungarian film reminiscent of Michel Gondry deals with the existential realities of youth, and it’s also infused with political flavours and a heartfelt tribute to Budapest.

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7. Those Who Are Fine (Cyril Schaublin, 2017):

Call centre worker Alice begins scamming elderly women, and the interwoven consequences of her deeds could be serious.

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8. Crater (Luca Bellino and Silvia Luzzi, 2017)

Rosario works as a street seller on the fairgrounds of the suburbs of Naples. His dream to escape poverty latches onto the musical talent of his daughter Sharon.

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9. Pin Cushion (Deborah Haywood, 2017):

NOT AVAILABLE IN THE UK

Super close Mother Lyn and daughter Iona are excited for their new life in a new town.

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10. Flesh Memory (Jack Goldberg, 2018)

Finley Blake is a cam girl: she does sexual exhibition on Internet, in front of her webcam, for a living. She is 33 years old, lives alone in an isolated house in Austin, Texas.

Those Who Are Fine (Dene Wos Guet Geit)

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Cyril Schaublin veers into the heart of capitalism with a hypnotic vent, veering into the insides of the financial ridden parades of Zurich side-streets. Here, in his directorial debut, the filmmaker depicts a greyer, sadder city consumed with economical prowess. The ungainly Alice (Sarah Stauffer) operates within her call centre, phoning elderly women, to pose as their perpetuated granddaughter. The film takes a chastened liking to numerical and digital codings, motifs made from wifi passwords, bank sums and cross-codes. They reveal a society reliant on capital and technology. There are few flickers of emotions. When Alice comes face to face with those she has stolen from, there is no triumph, there are no tears. There’s just vacancy.

Geometric architecture plays an indelible and indispensable part of the story’s landscape.

Claustrophobic through interior ennui, the burly buildings offer more character than the humans who walk under it. The two police officers working through the fraudulent case find more of interest through their mobile phones than on the humans, a dystopian reality realised in all too real settings. Through a brisk 71 minutes, the dour, shallow photography pictures a world in which docudramatic fears feel too commonplace to ignore in a world that has a greater dependency on a screen. Dwarfing people in frames, similarly dwarfed by modernist areas, capital driven demands dwarf daily dutiful deeds.

Economical in time, economical in theme, the Swiss capital delves a common conversation carried in monetary syllables. There are half cut angles tidying the bankers and callers in unseemly angles, angling the lens rid camera in an style less human that stance. A cheerfully optimistic title irretrievably ignites an ironic intuition.

Conversations are laid through a tune, whose name the hummer cannot remember, and discussing a film, by which those participating, can scarcely describe in memory. Machines, mechanisms, codes and queries can aid humanity, and rid it too. Slow speeds and side cuts colour a colourless world chillingly close to the audience’s bone.

Schaublin understands the trick of cinema, the realisation that the film form feels friendly, yet consuming. The characters watched wait behind smiles and friendly gestures, vacuous words willingly wheel the repeated muscles a memory can store. Anguishingly alienating, Schaublin’s serene style hits in hauntingly, handsome manners.

Those Who Are Fine is available to view until December 31st with ArteKino – just click here for more information.

For Some Inexplicable Reason (Van Valami Furcsa Es Megmagyarázhatatlan)

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T is Hungarian director Gábor Reisz’s first feature film, following on from a series of domestically-popular shorts. Set in Budapest, this distinctly indie debut shows some playful camerawork alongside a lot of love for the beauty of Hungary’s capital. It also procrastinates a little, much like its protagonist’s attempts at life.

The film follows 29-year-old geek Áron (Áron Ferenczik), who has recently graduated from film history studies. Unbeknown to his friends and family, Áron’s girlfriend Eszter (Juli Jakab) has also just broken up with him, leaving him jobless, loveless, and in a state of melancholic ennui. On his 30th birthday, Áron’s more financially and socially successful friends see a photo of Eszter with a new man on social media, leading to a blurring bar-bouncing night during which the birthday boy books flights to Lisbon with his father’s credit card. The film proceeds to explore the many decisions Áron agonises over in the run-up to his possible trip to Portugal.

At its best,For Some Inexplicable Reason is reminiscent of Michel Gondry – on more than a couple of occasions it switches unexpectedly into delightfully dreamy surreal sequences. The eternal bickering of Áron’s overprotective mother (Katalin Takács) and father (Zsolt Kovács) is a hilarious joy to watch. The film takes a good stab at the sort of existential realities we all encounter as we creep towards the end of our twenties – from the vacuousness of compulsory gift-giving to the absurd dehumanising drone of corporate jargon. At times, it touches on domestic political issues.

The acceptable limit of Hungarian patriotism is shown humorously through Áron’s mother’s insistence on Hungarian fruit and veg, while one montage shows the protagonist walking past different slices of Hungarian society, including black-balaclava clad ‘nationalists’ and people in traditional rural dress. In one café conversation, Áron’s friends have a frank and eye-opening discussion about whether it makes more economic sense to stay in Hungary or work further west.

The film skims across the above topics light-heartedly. Reisz appears more interested in his protagonist’s despondent musings than anything else, which leads to extended characterisation. Before Áron gets close to Lisbon, we witness his prudish sexual despair, his unnerving tendency to obsess over romantic interests, his mismatched relationship with his group of friends. As a result, the narrative climax comes late on. Something is lost in the final rushed flurry of the film, and it would be better served with a more detailed examination of Áron’s stay in Lisbon. Without this, the film is weighed down by his hopeless Budapest existence, albeit with interspersions of mild entertainment.

Away from its fantastical fourth-wall-breaking, For Some Inexplicable Reason has a rough feel to it. It makes frequent use of cameraphone-style footage. The style of cinematography is haphazard and hardly beautiful, much like Áron’s life. There’s a certain realism to this that – if you can get on board with it – makes for light, fun, but occasionally laboured viewing.

For Some Inexplicable Reason is available to view online during the month of December only with ArteKino – just click here for more information.

L’Animale

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High school student, Mati (Sophie Stockinger) is about to graduate and leave the rural countryside for the university of Vienna. From the very beginning, we are introduced to Mati’s world, which includes her close and only group of friends – a ‘gang’ of three male students. Mati is a fundamental and vital part of the group – she’s the best one at riding the motorcycle. We see her constantly hanging out with them – either at the local bar or at the motocross sandlot – often causing trouble or even bullying/attacking her female classmates.

We come across a number of people. Each character represses their sexuality and their feelings in a different way. It’s not only Mati, who seems to haven’t yet come to terms with her sexuality – she gradually realises her feelings for her classmate Carla (Julia Franz Richter). Mati’s father hasn’t yet come out, either, despite the many extramarital dalliances with men. Mati’s mother finds out about her husband’s secret and makes the decision to turn a blind eye instead. She chooses to repress her feelings instead of dealing with the unhappy marriage.

Katharina Mückstein’s second feature film is very topical. It addresses many contemporary issues, such as sexual diversity, gender identity, violence and bullying.

The feeling of belonging and inclusion is even stronger and more necessary when living in a small community. For Mati – to be part of the gang means that she has to behave in a certain way, which includes often verbally attacking her female classmates or making a mess in the supermarket where Carla works. However – unlike her parents opt to forge a middle-class normality normality – Mati makes a very brave decision.

The film ends with some of the main characters singing the titular Italian song L’Animale. This final sequence is a reflection of the emotional struggles and dilemmas the protagonists face. The contrast between Mati and her family crystal-clear, and an upbeat note leaves audiences feeling positive about our future!

L’Animale is available to view online during the entire month of December with ArteKino. Just click here for more information.

Pity

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Taking a cue from that woe-is-me friend we all had when we were teenagers, the new film from Babis Makridis, Pity, follows the life of a very square lawyer (Yannis Drakopoulos). Our protagonist develops a taste for the kindness of strangers while his wife is in a coma. This being a Greek film, however, things eventually spiral out of control in quiet yet shocking ways.

The concept explored in the script, penned by Makridis and Efthymis Filippou, is born out of the farcical technique of blowing up a trope to absurd proportions – in this case, a man that actually find joy and satisfaction on being pitied by everyone around him. Once his wife comes out of the coma, that situation is shattered and the man sets out to win his misery back.

If you’re familiar with productions associated with the Greek New Wave movement, you know what’s in store for you: symmetrical and clinical camerawork, deadpan and deliberately stiff acting and pervasive dark humour. The tone here is particularly reminiscent of Filippou’s work with his most famous collaborator, Yorgos Lanthimos, although completely devoid of laugh out loud moments that he allowed for in previous screenplays.

Despite feeling at times too reliant on style, Pity works because of the ingenuity of its core idea and Drakopoulos’s pitch-perfect delivery. On his hands, there’s something about the lawyer that’s quite relatable.

In a world that grows apathetic by the minute and suppresses a lot of human connections, especially in big cities, he gets an emotional and physical response from people that wouldn’t otherwise give him a second glance. His neighbour bakes him a cake everyday, his launderette’s attendant gives him discounts, even his father seems to treat him more kindly.

In his thoughts, which funnily appear on screen in elaborate intertitles, he argues at one point that “everyone needs a hug” – and he might be onto something. It’s that connection, prompted by pain, that he becomes addicted to, and it’s startling how grounded that sounds when put in those terms. That these strangers are being kind out of mere politeness doesn’t seem to matter to him and, in all honesty. If someone comforts us in a moment of deep need, we wouldn’t question their reasoning either.

I wouldn’t call this a comedy even for Greek standards, who tend to have a dark sense of humour. Instead, it’s a treat for fans of cringeworthy, unforgiving and eccentric cinema. It questions our human needs and our very own ability to convert our everyday life into a performance, leaving a bitter taste in its aftermath. After the ending of Pity, you too might need a little comforting.

Pity is available with ArteKino throughout the month of December.

Flemish Heaven (Le Ciel Flamand)

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Focusing on character first and its difficult situation second, this naturalistic drama gathers its power from a strong attention to detail and two subtly effective central performances. The brothel is a family business, started by Sylvie’s (Sara Vertongen) deceased father. Sometimes she entertains the clients, but mostly she works behind the bar, takes care of the other girls and organises the accounts. She is a mother, juggling parental responsibilities with Dirk (Wim Willaert). Her daughter Eline (Esra Vandenbussche) believes her is her “uncle”. Although not stated outright, its implied that Dirk was once a patron of the brothel when he knocked Sylvie up, perhaps making her loath to tell her daughter his real identity.

At times Sylvie seems ashamed of her work, and understands that it’s not something to be discussed frankly with such a young girl. Eline does ask her mother what she does for work, and she replies that she helps people by giving them “hugs”. Eline is intrigued by the building, especially at night when it’s light up like its Christmas, and is annoyed when her mother tells her that she is not allowed inside. On her sixth birthday she leaves the car and walks inside, only to be met by a French-speaking man who takes her back to the car and sexually abuses her.

This incident forms the main crux of the narrative, but director Peter Monseart is more interested in how it affects Dirk and Sylvie than delving into police procedural cliché. This approach makes it a difficult watch, perhaps not so much in terms of its subject matter – which is handled gracefully – but due to the objective distance it keeps from its characters. Who is responsible for what happened, both literally and thematically? Sylvie, for letting her daughter stick around the brothel, or Dirk, for not asserting his fatherhood earlier? We never really know, giving the film a constant feeling of slow-boiling tension.

There is little strained or melodramatic here. The reality of working in a brothel, from the banality of bookkeeping to dodging racist comments from the clientele, is explored in great detail here. Like this year’s Cam (David Goldhaber, 2018) which focused on the life of a webcam model, sex is deglamourised and destigmatised, simply seen as a job like any other.

The reality of operating under police scrutiny forms a fascinating subtext; for example, when one girl is physically abused by a patron she is told not to press charges as it would put too much pressure on the brothel’s operations. Had this subplot been explored with a little more thematic precision, Flemish Heaven could have soared into even richer territory.

As brothels are illegal in France but legal in Belgium – where red light districts are common in most cities – the border has clientele from both sides of the border. Monsaert integrates this bilingual setting into the plot, using Eline’s inability to understand French to create a general sense of confusion. While there may not be any wider significance to the fact the abuser is from France, it still couches the film in a specific sense of place that helps certain details pay off later. There are even a couple of times that Monseart throws us red herrings, constantly setting up the expectation that the abuser will be caught, before scaling back once again. This management of tone doesn’t always work, but when it does it makes for some fascinatingly complex viewing.

Flemish Heaven is available on ArteKino throughout the month of December.

Until We Fall (Til vi Falder)

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It has “Maddie McCann” written all over it. Except that it’s in a different country, and the missing child is of a different gender. A couple from the Northern Europe (Danish Adam and Swedish Louise) are desperately seeking their boy in the Canary Islands, years after he vanished. The Spanish police have now decided to close the case, adamant that the boy simply drowned. The parents remain resolute to find their beloved child whatever it takes, and they take justice into their own hands.

The search isn’t an easy one. The local teenagers – who were about the age of their son Lucas when he disappeared – are very unhelpful, as if they had something to hide. Adam (Dar Salim) confronts Emilio, one of the adolescents. The ensuing kerfuffle culminates in violence. Adam becomes increasingly dysfunctional in his search, he’s even willing to confront the police. There is an element of cultural arrogance, it seems. Perhaps Adam believes that the Spanish police are not as efficient and reliable as its Danish counterpart.

Louise (Lisa Carleheld) is slightly more levelheaded and prudent. She is the most complex and intriguing character (the other ones are mostly flat personages) in Until We Fall. Plus, Carleheld looks a lot like a younger version of her countrysake Liv Ullmann. Eventually, her husband’s incessant vigilantism and aggressive demeanour begin to take their toll on the couple’s relationship. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Louise begins an affair in the final third of the movie.

There are many problems with Until We Fall, the biggest one of them being a narrative arc that doesn’t go anywhere. There is no climax and no resolution. The story goes off on a tangent and never returns. The ending is extremely bland. Some elements of the movie are hardly plausible, such as the fact that every single Spanish person speaks perfect English. Other elements are blurry and/or don’t make much sense: it’s never clear how many years earlier the child disappeared, why the couple never sold their apartment, and what happened in all these years since the tragic event took place. The suspense devices are quite unimaginative: such as having a cigarette or a glass of wine in order to extend the moments just before a big revelation is made. The camerawork is quite uninspired, and never captures the exquisite beauty of the Canary Islands. Unfortunately there isn’t much to salvage in Until We Fall, except perhaps for Carlehed’s nuanced performance.

Until We Fall is showing in Competition at the 22nd Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, taking place right now. It’s unlikely to make it beyond the festival circuit.

A Shelter Among the Clouds (Streha mes Reve)

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Besnik lives way up on the mountains with his family, in a small village somewhere in Northern Albania. The scenery is nothing short of spectacular. The craggy landscape is both verdant and white, partly covered by snow, partly covered by the lush vegetation. Goats are everywhere, and they seem to outnumber humans. They also provide milk, meat and their skin the locals, who lead a precarious yet relatively stable and satisfactory life.

The clouds in film title have a double significance. They refer to both the mountains where the story takes place, their pinnacles often covered with clouds, and the search for a higher moral ground, some sort of ecumenical heaven. Besnik’s ailing father is a Muslim, his brother Alban is convert Greek Orthodox, while his late mother was a Catholic. Besnik resents not being able to marry the love of his life for religious reasons. To top it all up, the villagers are still reeling from Enver Hohxja’s Communist regime, which forbid all types of religion.

One day, Besnik takes the very unusual step of damaging the local mosque’s internal wall, only Catholic imagery to be revealed underneath. Two female experts from a monument preservation organisation are sent to assess and fix the damage. Then come the shocking news. The mosque used to be a church less than three centuries ago, up until 1740. A little bit like the Agia Sophia in Istanbul. And for a long time, the mosque allowed Catholic devotees to practice their religion in the building once a week. This was a political gesture by the then ruling Turks, who wanted to boast their religious tolerance credentials. Albania only became an independent state 116 years ago, on November 28th 1912 (in fact, A Shelter Among Clouds premiered at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival on Albanian Independence day).

Locals now suggest that they should extend another olive branch to the Catholic community and reopen the mosque once a week to the Christian faith. The proposal is met with both enthusiasm and derision. In a way, this very unorthodox idea is aligned with Besnik personal search for religious liberation. He is very laconic, and it isn’t always easy to work out his motives. Perhaps not coincidentally, the quiet and timid man begins a dalliance with one of the females sent to the viallage in order to assess the damage that he caused himself. A Shelter Among the Clouds is a subtle and gentle drama about reconciling personal and religious freedoms.

A Shelter Among the Clouds is showing in Competition at the 22nd Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, which is taking place right now. DMovies are live at the event as special guests.

Slam

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This is not your average Australian film. In fact, it’s as international as it gets. The action takes place in New South Wales, but the crew and cast are very international indeed. The director Partho Sen-Gupta is originally from Mumbai, while the lead role is played by Palestinian actor Adam Bakri. The topics addressed are also universal: cultural assimilation, Islamophobia and religious/political extremism.

Ameena (Danielle Horvat) is a young rebel. She lives with her mother, a Palestinian refugee. She’s an activist and a feminist. She wears a hijab out of choice because she believes that women should be respected for their fists, and not for their curves. She routinely engages in slam poetry in the local community centre, a competition in which poets perform the spoken word. The letters “S-L-A-M” are written on her hand, very much à la The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955). Her performances are hypnotic and passionate. Her room is covered in Palestinian freedom, fight racism and antifa posters.

Her brother Ricky, on the other hand, is not politically active. He’s married to a pretty Australian woman, with whom he’s had two children (plus she’s now expecting a third one). They run a small cafe and shy away from political controversy. Ricky feels very Australian. His relationship to his sister Ameena is a little distant, given their very different lifestyles and political beliefs.

Then one day Ameena vanishes. Local police officer Joanne Hendriks (Rachael Blake) begins to investigate the missing person case, only for Ameena to be caught on CCTV abroad. She has become a “homegrown jihadi bride”, a newspaper cries out. Despite not even being a suspect of terrorism, Ricky’s life is turned upside down by paparazzi and police investigations. The young father slowly realises that he’s not as Australian as he thinks. He’s still a “wog”, a friend of Ameena asserts. He’s a second-class citizen, and he’s not exempt of racism and Islamophobia.

Slam does not blame individual Australians for racism. Aussies are not vilified. Ricky’s Australian family are very supportive of him. Joanne hesitates to believe that Ameena is a jihadi, despite the CCTV evidence. She confronts her boss, and wishes to carry on with a missing person case (instead of a jihadi/witch-hunt). Joanne reconciles the sternness of police duty with the humanity of someone who has also experienced a tragedy in her life, the byproduct of political actions. Blake’s performance is nothing short of astounding.

Xenophobia is a more sophisticated and yet no less dangerous form of patriarchal violence and colonial oppression. This anti-immigrant sentiment is constantly fed through the radio, television waves and also written newspapers. Headlines such as “Monsters want to behead Aussie pilot!!!” help to concoct the “Us versus Them” narrative. Nationalism is intimately linked to bigotry, and the argument that a generous Australia opened their doors to ungrateful immigrants/refugees is repeated throughout the movie. Ameena’s mother, however, begs to differ. She used to be a teacher in Palestine, while in Australia she was advised that she could never be more than a seamstress or a cleaner.

A profoundly reactionary and dangerous trend is addressed in the movie: denaturalisation. This is already conspicuous in the US and, to a lesser extend, in the UK. Now Australia is also joining the bandwagon. In Slam, the media suggests that not only “jihadi traitors” (such as Ameena) should be stripped of their citizenship, but also their entire family. A friend of Ameena could face denaturalisation simply because he donated A$400 to a Palestinian charity. The repercussions for Ricky could be disastrous. So should he apologise on behalf of his sister? Or should he try to understand what drove her to such extreme actions?

Slam is a impeccable piece of filmmaking. It will keep you hooked throughout its relatively long duration of almost two hours. Each and every character has depth, and nothing is redundant. The outcome is neither Manichean nor exploitative. Shaky camera moves are used to convey franticness an emotional despair, while red images are used to illustrate violence and also the memories of war. Very simple and yet effective devices. Plus get prepared for one of the most shocking endings I have seen in a long time. The final image of a person inside a car (I can tell you more without spoiling the movie) will haunt me for some time.

The extremely powerful slam poetry in the film was written by Lesbian feminist activist Candy Royalle, who sadly passed away this year after a battle against cancer. The film is dedicated to her.

Slam showed in Competition at the 22nd Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (2018), when this piece was originally written. It premieres in Australia on June 15th 2019 as part of the Sydney Film Festival.

A Place to Live

Posted on by victorfraga

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM THE TALLINN BLACK NIGHTS FILM FESTIVAL

Monique’s husband has passed away. He had a heart attack while in his little wood cabin. Their adult children return from Montreal for his burial, and they are very concerned that mother might not be able to cope with the grief entirely on her own. The young adults find life in the countryside tedious and suffocating, but Monique begs to differ. She has led a mostly happy life in her remote corner of Eastern Quebec, and she has barely budged. Even the small and nearby city of Beau-Comeau feels far away. She hasn’t visited her birthplace in three decades, the town of Sturgeon Falls in Toronto (one of the few places in the English-speaking state where French is widely spoken).

Suddenly, Monique gathers the courage and gets behind the wheel. The death of her husband, in strange some way, has allowed Monique to be reborn. She visits her children in Montreal. They are kind and caring, yet they seem to have little time for her. She’s very fond of her daughter-in-law and grandchildren, however there is a language barrier. Monique only speaks French, while her new relatives only speak English. She also visits Sylvie, the widow of her late son (it’s never clear when and how he died). She decides to take her journey further and to drive overnight to Sturgeon Falls in search of the place where she lived, her grandparents’ old house and so on. She’s seeking to reconnecting to reconnect with the past an attempt to mitigate her grief.

The landscape is wintry. Almost everything is covered under a thick layer of snow. The tombstones in a cemetery are barely visible. In a way, the pervasive whiteness is calming and soothing. Perhaps Monique wishes to become snow-blind. In A Place to Live, Winter is not oppressive.

Monique is played Elise Guilbault. She’s quiet and stoical with a sad smile permanently attached to her face. She’s trying to conceal her suffering, but deep inside she’s experiencing a turmoil of sentiments and changes. She reminded me a lot of Charlotte Rampling in Under the Sand (Francois Ozon, 2000), which also deals with a middle-aged woman dealing with the unexpected loss of her partner. The biggest difference is that the topic of sexuality is entirely (and strangely) absent from A Place to Live.

All in all, A Place to Live is an effective and heartfelt piece, but it also lacks a certain dramatic depth. A third person voiceover isn’t entirely effective. It only serves to alienate viewers from the main character. Structurally, this is a very simple and conventional movie, made in accordance with the filmmaker’s manual. It lacks a little inventiveness.

A Place to Live is showing in Competition at the 22nd Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, which is taking place right now. The topics of cold climate and loneliness fit in well which the Festival, which is intended to celebrate the solitary and dark nights near the Winter solstice. DMovies is following the event live, as special guests.

Disobedience

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Highly respected rabbi Rav Krushna (Anton Lesser) addresses his synagogue about the qualities that make mankind different from the animals and the angels. Man, he says, has free will. Alone in creation, he is able to disobey his creator. Then, as if struck down for preaching some treatise in defence of apostasy, he collapses.

Ronit Krushka (Rachel Weisz) is a British portrait photographer working in New York. She is promiscuous, rootless and seems to be looking for something although she’s no idea what. One day she gets a phone call which makes her return to London and the Hendon orthodox Jewish community which she left years ago. She heads straight for the house of Dovid Kuperman (Alessandro Nivola), at once her father’s favourite pupil (and likely successor as Rav) and an old childhood friend. She’s a little surprised to find he and her other great childhood friend Esti (Rachel McAdams) are now man and wife. The couple agree to put Ronit up during her stay.

Two things become clear as the narrative plays out. One, Dovid’s relationship with the Rav is the father/child relationship that Ronit never had with her father. Dovid spent hours discussing Jewish religious texts with him while Ronit wasn’t really interested. But now she’s back, she wants proof that her father really did love her. Scant evidence is forthcoming on that front. Two, Ronit and Esti were in love back in the day. Ronit chose freedom from the religious community and got out; Esti married a husband as the community expected and made herself fit in. However although Dovid is a good man who cares deeply for Esti, there’s a certain spark missing in the relationship. A spark which threatens to ignite when Ronit returns.

There is much to admire here – tortured performances which plumb the depths of the soul from its two female leads, a feeling that the Orthodox Jewish background has been researched and put on the screen at a very deep level, unresolved issues with a departed father. It’s a world unfamiliar to the movies and to most cinemagoers, but the film plunges you right in. Director Sebastián Lelio and cameraman Danny Cohen seem completely in sync in their dealings with the cast, ensuring that those amazing things that actors do end up on the screen without the mechanics of film making getting in the way.

The theological and human contradiction of the Rav’s opening and final address underpin everything that follows. What is obedience? What is transgression? What’s more important – the community or the individual? As the two women struggle with their feelings for each other and events take their predictable course, you can almost feel the boxes of a contemporary Western individualist view being ticked off. Almost. The piece seems to be at its strongest where its characters struggle with these tensions.

Weisz is one of the instigating producers behind the project and has chosen well both in source material and director. It’s a surprisingly effective and cinematic movie adapted from a novel, a process which all too often produces the exact opposite outcome. Leilo having proved himself highly adept at stories involving women’s issues such in Gloria/2013 and transgressive sexuality in A Fantastic Woman (2017) here delivers a compelling story in a completely convincing, parochial North London environment. The result could so easily have been a tedious plod, but somehow, it all comes together. An impressive achievement.

Disobedience is in cinemas from Friday, November 30th (2017). On BritBox on Wednesday, March 17th (2021). On Mubi on Sunday, June 5th.