Tag: Berlinale

Vice

Posted on by victorfraga

This is a very clever film title. A vice is someone who is second. In this case, the Vice President of the United States between 2001 and 2009, Dick Cheney. And a vice is an addiction. Dick Cheney was addicted to power. Before he became Vice President, he held many senior positions including Secretary of Defense, White House Chief of Staff and Chair of the House Republican Conference. He was so preoccupied with power that he advised his own daughters (at least in this very unofficial biopic): “Always remember, if you have power, there will always be someone trying to take it away from you”.

Christian Bale plays Dick Cheney at all ages, from his early days in Wyoming after he was expelled from Yale University (due to drunkenness and rowdy behaviour) all the way to the Obama years, when he had a heart transplant. The physical transformation is extraordinary, making Vice a very serious contender for the Make Up Oscar (along with Ali Abbasi’s Border). Christian Bale is also very convincing in the skin of a cold, calculating, arrogant, selfish, unrepentant and unscrupulous politician.

Vice has various comedic elements. It opens up with the claim that “this is a true story”, yet not entirely reliable due to Cheney’s secretive nature, the director promising to do his “fucking very best” in order to recreate reality. George “Dubya” Bush (played by a terrific Sam Rockwell) naturally triggers a lot of laughter. Yet this is not Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), a far funnier and sharper denunciation of the Iraq War and oil interests.

Some of he most controversial episodes of Dick Cheney’s life are all portrayed in Vice. They include his dysfunctional marriage in the 1960s, his daughter Mary’s controversial homosexuality (at a time the Republican Party was viciously anti-gay marriage), his accidental and unapologetic shooting of a man while hunting, and – far more significantly – his role and vested interests in Iraq. Cheney was CEO of oil services company Halliburton between 1995 and 2000, immediately before the became Vice President. He received a pay-off of U$26 million, and the multinational saw its shares rocket following the invasion of the Middle Eastern country.

We also learn that Cheney was a very unusual Vice President. At first, he was reluctant to accept George Bush’s invitation, and was only persuaded to become his running mate once he had guarantees that he would enjoy more power than a regular Vice President does. He fully embraced the unitary executive theory, which mandated that a (vice) president can do anything he wishes (“because if the president does it, then it has to be legal”. Such theory is normally applied to kings and dictators, but not the (Vice) President of the United States. He leveraged his extra powers in order to implement torture in Iraq and the erosion of privacy and civil rights in the US (all emails in the country were placed under surveillance). He counted with a helping hand from Korean American attorney John Yoo.

Another highlight is the movie is an unrecognisable Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld (or “Rummy”, as Dick would affectionately call him). We learn about Rumsfeld’s secret meetings with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1970s. They decided about the fate of innocent people in Cambodia behind closed doors, with little regard for human life. Cheney was just a few feet away, as if preparing for three decades later, when he would become personally responsible for the deaths of 600,000 people in Iraq (this figure is provided in the movie).

Cheney remains unrepentant of his crimes in Iraq to present days, insisting that he acted in the best interests of the American people, despite all the evidence suggesting otherwise. Bale’s character delivers a preposterous and cringeworthy soliloquy in the very end of the film, cynically claiming that he has no regrets about his many controversial actions.

This revealing biopic, however, overstays its welcome at 137 minutes. It could have done with 30 minutes less. And not all the narrative devices work. For example, there’s a mysterious character that appears throughout the film promising to reveal his function at the end of the film (which he does). And there is a very unusual cutaway gag in the middle of the movie showing what life would be like had Cheney given up politics for the sake of the privacy of his Lesbian daughter Mary (he would be breeding golden retrievers with his wife). I think both artifices were redundant.

Vice premiered at the 69th Berlin Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. The film director Adam McKey and the film star Christian Bale were present on the red carpet. Audiences vigorously applauded the movie once the credited rolled. The film was released in UK cinemas on January 25th. It has since received received wight Oscar nominations, including Best Film. It’s available on VoD on Monday, June 3rd.

Ondog

Posted on by victorfraga

Wang Quan’an’s Ondog is one of those sensory filmic experiences where the narrative is extremely slow and seemingly secondary. The Sixth Generation Chinese director has filmed his latest movie on the vast Mongolian steppe, one of the most sparsely populated places on Earth. He attempts to find vibrant colours and peculiar human existences in a seemingly bleak and lifeless environment.

It all starts when the body of a naked woman is found on the reeds. The police are quickly notified and they arrive to investigate the apparent passion killing. A young herdswoman known locally as “dinosaur” is summoned in order to keep company to an 18-year-old officer who has to spend the night at the crime scene. There’s no one else within a radius of 100 kilometres, we are told. The female is extremely skilled. She dwells entirely on her own, with a small herd of goats and cows. She can handle a rifle and fend for herself. She only requires a neighbour’s help when she needs to slaughter a goat. Otherwise, men (and humans in general) are entirely redundant to her.

The herdswoman and the young officer spend the cold night together. Alcohol helps to keep them warm and talkative. Eventually, they break the ice. The herdswoman makes an advance and they have sex. This is one of the most distinctive sex sequence I have ever watched in film because it’s extremely cold and they keep an enormous amount of layers on while having coitus. The action is very moving in its quirkiness and eccentricity. The young officer parts the following morning. The woman soon finds out that she’s pregnant. Could a baby change the way she engages (or rather refrains from engaging) with the rest of the world? Will the “dinosaur” finally become civilised?

The photography of Ondong is urgent in its simplicity. Audiences used to frames populated with rich details on every corner of the screen might find such visual candour a little unusual. Here it is the vastness that prevails. The never-ending grasslands flood the screen. Their colour is constantly changing along with the clouds and the shifting sky. You will see various shades of yellow and blue, and everything in between. Very little artificial lighting is used, allowing nature to paint the landscapes instead. A little bit like a Monet painting. This is an impressionistic film. There are very few close-ups and medium close-ups, and copious wide/very wide shots, ensuring that the characters distant and mysterious.

The frankness of Ondong is guaranteed to raise a few eyebrows in the UK. The slaughtering of a goat is depicted in graphic detail. The herdswoman lights a cigarette shortly after finding out she’s pregnant. Not recommended by British doctors. Yet, Ondong is unlikely to make it to UK cinemas. It’s quite remarkable and audacious that it made it to the competition of the Berlin Film Festival. I commend the Festival Director and curator Dieter Koslick for his choice. Cannes would never pick such an unconventional film. We should be grateful that prestigious festivals are still willing to take risks.

Ondog showed in competition at the 69th Berlinale, when this piece was originally written. It premieres in the UK in October, as part of the BFI London Film Festival.

The Russian filmmaker who shot Elvis!

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Most people in the West have never heard of Sergei Dovlatov, the Armenian-Russian writer who never found fame in the Soviet Union before eventually leaving for New York in 1979, but after his death slowly grew to become one of the most famous of all Russian novelists. A tragic symbol of the kind of culture Russia could’ve had if it were not under the yolk of an authoritarian regime, he is the subject of a new film by Aleksei German Jr. The director has a personal investment in the material, as his father, Aleksei German Sr., found himself constantly blocked by the Soviet authorities, only making six films over his lifetime.

Coming at a critical time in contemporary Russia, whereby thousands of citizens are also leaving the country for brighter opportunities, the dramatisation of seven days in the writer’s life seems to ring with political overtones. Winning the Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution at the 68th Berlinale, and just picked up by Netflix, Aleksei German Jr.’s latest film depicts a week in the life of the writer in Leningrad, 1971. Showing him hanging out with contemporaries such as Joseph Brodsky, the film is a muted and contemplative affair that creates an intimate portrait of the writer’s dream to be published and wish for a better life. Redmond Bacon sat down with Aleksei German Jr. during the 68th Berlinale to talk about his personal relationship to the material, the film’s political messages, and why Dovlatov isn’t as famous in the West as his contemporaries.

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Redmond Bacon – Did you have a personal interest in the works of Sergei Dovlatov for a long time?

Aleksei German Jr – The starting point is that Dovlatov knew my father. And my grandfather helped the family of Dovlatov. We lived close to them, a distance of several kilometres, and my father had a destiny that was a bit similar to Dovlatov’s. One of his movies was banned for almost 15 years [the 1971 WW2 film Trial on the Road]. It was personal family history for me. And of course, Dovlatov is like [the] Elvis Presley of Russian literature and there were no movies made about him before. And he’s a bit of paradox. He doesn’t look like [a] writer. Half-Jewish, half-Armenian, he was different from all the people who lived in St Petersburg. He’s witty and he’s tragic and he’s sometimes funny [but] can be hurt really easily. For example, he was very popular among women, but he loved his family and his wife very deeply. He’s a big paradox in himself.

RB – Can you tell me if you had a political message with this movie?

AG Jr – I wasn’t really interested in political messages three years ago when we started the film. When I want to give a political message I’ll give it directly, for example, through an article. I wasn’t interested in the political element. I just [wanted] very sincerely to make a film about the destinies of those people and things that shouldn’t be forgotten and as a reminder for the future that these things shouldn’t happen again. It’s not a political movie for me. It’s more a personal story for me, and it just so happened the time caught up with the film.

RB – Can you tell me why you choose such a white colour scheme for your cinematography?

AG Jr – We wanted to make two feelings possible. The first one is the feeling of [the] observer, the way you would observe what is happening. And the second is creating this feeling of a not very bright era. Because the Soviet Era was not very bright, we didn’t want to enhance this colour. I hate official Russian TV series about that era. They’re very bright, very rich, the fabrics are very beautiful. That was not the truth. It was quite [a] poor time. We didn’t want it to look like the pages of [a] fashion magazine.

RB – When you talk about an author like Dovlatov, how do you make the movie universal and not only for specific audiences?

AG Jr – We made a lot of translations [subtitles] of this film: 14 translations! And we tried to clarify the things that wouldn’t be clear to an international viewer. We wanted to put ourselves in the place of an international viewer who doesn’t know anything about 1970s or Leningrad. That was why we had a lot of translations to make it more readable.

RB – So Dovlatov is a very accessible writer, he’s very funny and his books are quite short. But he’s not as famous as other Russian writers from the period like Pasternak or Solzhenitsyn even though those writers are arguably more difficult to read and their books are longer. So why isn’t Dovlatov as famous in the UK or the USA as these writers?

AG Jr – It’s a very complicated question. You need to know in Russia that Dovlatov is one of the most famous writers, maybe the most famous writer, of the last quarter of the 20th century. And for foreigners it’s a bit complicated to understand his jokes because they are so rooted in Russian contexts and I think he’s not an expert writer. With Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn, they’re just more understandable, the context is more understandable, the events, the situations of Stalin and repression are more understandable.

For example, we have two directors: [Andrey Petrovich] Zvyagintsev and [Boris Igorewitsch] Khlebnikov. Zvyagintsev is more famous than Khlebnikov. Both are very good, but Zvyagintsev is more understandable for Western viewers, because he can fit in with this view that foreigners have of Russia. Khlebnikov not. But they are directors of the same level, so it’s a matter of understanding the context and the culture. But they look the same. A lot like each other.

This is why we have these never-ending problems between West and East. You see what we are not, and we see what we will never become in your eyes and this is where the problem lies.

RB – Did you find something about Dovlatov you didn’t know and that surprised you?

AG Jr – We have unique material we found [during] the preparation. I found a lot of archived poems and alcoholic short stories of Brodsky for example. We even found the moment and the paper of when Brodsky first wrote down the telephone [number] of Dovlatov. We have literature and culture that’s a lot worse than came before — we found a lot of things in open access [that] wasn’t used in any books on Dovlatov. That means that the qualifications of the people who are writing these books about Dovlatov and Brodsky is getting poorer and poorer. They didn’t even use the material that is accessible.

RB – Why did poetry survive in the post-war time in Soviet Russia, when it was much less popular in other countries?

AG Jr – The duration was complicated. The war ended recently. There was a freedom when Khrushchev was in power. There was no immigration. The war with the government made the poets more united and stronger. I don’t know why we don’t have such striving poetry right now. Maybe it’s the tragic paradox that when the poetry gets worse, the country gets better.

Win a flight, hotel and pass to the Berlinale!!!

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Have you ever dreamt of attending the largest film festival in the world and witnessing all the dirty action on the red carpet and inside the cinema with your very own eyes? Well, your dream could be about to come true, as ArteKino is giving away a flight, accommodation and accreditation for the next Berlinale, which is taking place between February 15th and 25th, 2018.

All you have to do is register with ArteKino and watch their films online before December 17th, entirely free. The difficult part is that you will have to select from 10 dirtylicious and precious gems of European cinema, and you won’t know where to start. And then you have to vote. Such hard work! The amazing selection includes a Bulgarian story of lovelessness, corruption and addiction, with a twist, a Portuguese tale of sorrow and nostalgia, the life of controversial Polish surrealist painter Zdzisław Beksiński, before he rose to fame, and also a very dysfunctional macho game in Greece, plus much much more.

Click here for the full terms and conditions, including which films you can see, where and who’s eligible for the promotion.

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A little about the Berlinale

The German capital is an exciting, cosmopolitan cultural hub that never ceases to attract artists from around the world. A diverse cultural scene, a critical public and an audience of film-lovers characterise the city. In the middle of it all, the Berlinale: a great cultural event and one of the most important dates for the international film industry. More than 334,000 sold tickets, more than 21,000 professional visitors from 127 countries, including more than 3,700 journalists: art, glamour, parties and business are all inseparably linked at the Berlinale.

The public programme of the Berlin International Film Festival shows about 400 films per year, mostly international or European premieres. Films of every genre, length and format find their place in the various sections. Click here for more information on the Festival’s website.

DMovies will be at the Berlinale digging up the dirt under the red carpet. Two of our journalists, Victor Fraga and Tiago Di Mauro will attend the event. So if you are not fortunate enough to win this amazing promo, panic not. Our coverage will bring the dirtiest event highlights to you on this website.

Muito Romântico

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Take an emotional trip from Brazil to Berlin with two young Brazilian filmmakers Gustavo Jahn and Melissa Dullius. Muito Romântico is a multi-stop journey into the heart of Europe, and a very imaginative piece of experimental cinema, with elements of video art. It feels almost like a film from German filmmaker Alexander Kluge in its deeply fragmented montage approach, but instead from a transatlantic perspective. The movie is a collage of moving images, stills, shreds of imagination and slivers of allegory. The narrative is fluid and organic: many viewers will rearrange the story and make sense of it according to their own experience.

The film sets off the two partners cross the Atlantic on a red cargo ship. The Ocean is a watershed, as the immigrants embrace a new life in the old continent. The story is then inundated with literature from Goethe, Alfred Doeblin, DH Lawrence, as well as music of all sorts (the title of the film was taken from the eponymous song by the legendary Brazilian musician Caetano Veloso). The couple also venture into the music territory, and the movie wraps up with a melancholic bedroom performance. The most intimate living space is often where creativity flourishes.

But the waters of the Atlantic are not the only symbol of change. There are also plenty of construction sites in Berlin, and – despite their apparent inaction and stillness – they are a fitting metaphor for transition. The German capital is a city in perpetual movement, and the two directors examine such phenomenon by observing the urban architecture. There are plenty of contrasts, with the old being destroyed in order to make room for the new. Yet the “new” is often barren and soulless, while the “old” is teeming with nostalgia. Which raises the question: why do we constantly need to embrace change?

Spoken in various languages, Muito Romântico will explores a plethora of themes, always from a very idiosyncratic perspective. The movie delves with the identity of Brazilians in Europe, the longing for home (both as in your residence and as in your homeland), the fear of disease, the relation between time and space, and much more. The film is dotted with a wealth of both intelligeable and non-intelligeable, visual and sensorial anecdotes. Muito Romântico is a plesant and soothing experience, if reserved to those more used to alternative cinema practices.

Muito Romântico is currently showing in festivals around Europe and the world. Click here for more information about film distribution and exhibition.

The film trailer can be viewed here:

Bones of Contention

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In less than three decades, Spain morphed from a deeply reactionary dictatorship that violently persecuted the LBGT community into the forefront of equality rights. Spaniards more than any other country in the world now believe that homosexuality is morally acceptable, a recent piece of research shows. But there’s still plenty of homework to be done, as the country attempts to reconcile its socially progressive present with its brutal past, and to dissociate amnesty from amnesia.

This clear and concise doc explores the historical memory of Spain using the human remains (the bones in the title) of victims of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and the subsequent Franco dictatorship (1939-75) as a symbol of oppression and possible rapprochement with history. The openly homosexual writer Federico García Lorca (pictured above, in the centre) is the most prominent of the 500,000 victims of the dictator, and his body is still in an unidentified mass grave alongside with 120,000 others, the film reveals. Lorca’s writings punctuate the narrative, which is tribute to all of those who died under the oppressive brunt of the Caudillo.

Gay men and transvestites were routinely beaten and arrested during Franco’s Regime, which also subjugated women and violently chastised political opponents and defectors of any type. All with the enthusiastic support of the freedom-loving US, the film also alleges. Upon release from prison, these gay men and transvestites would not be able to reintegrate, and most either committed suicide or resorted to prostitution. Lesbian suffered less oppression simply because the Regime couldn’t even conceive that two women could have sex. They were simply ignored and forgotten, a very different but also painful predicament.

The movie wraps up with a point of contention. While an interviewee thinks that reclaiming bones is a crucial step at making amends with the past (he has located his grandfather’s and reburied them next to his grandmother), García Lorca’s surviving niece Laura thinks that this is disrespectful to other people and to the memory of the site of execution. She believes that these bones – including her uncle’s – should be left to rest where they are.

The famous Spanish actor Miguel Ángel Muñoz narrates the film in both Spanish and English, with his deep, masculine and very Latin voice and accent.

Bones of Contention is showing as part of the 67th Berlin Film Festival, which comes to and end today. DMovies has been following all the action live and in loco, and bringing the dirtiest film firsthand and exclusively for you. Just click here for more information.

And don’t forget to watch the film teaser trailer, too:

Vazante

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QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM BERLIN

The photography of Vazante is extraordinary enough to make the late French photographer Pierre Verger and Brazilian Sebastião Salgado impressed 24 times per second. Daniela Thomas’s first solo major is major aesthetic, ethnographic and anthropological achievement. The sharp and crisp black and white images will transport you to colonial Brazil in the year 1821, shortly before the country’s Independence.

The Brazilian director spent 14 years making the movie, and hwer attention to detail is crystal clear. The mountains and the plateaus of the Serro Region in Southeastern Brazil acquire a texture somewhere between craggy and veiny, wrapped up in clouds often dark and threatening. For the first time in my life Brazil reminded me of Iceland. Vazante does indeed have a cold and bleak feel to it, mostly supported by terse action and laconic dialogues. Images communicate far more than words. The costumes and the props are also very convincing, as are the decorative scars and the sweat on the face of the slaves.

The movie tells the story of mine owner Antônio (Adriano Carvalho), who has given up digging up the increasingly scarse gold in favour of cattle ranching. He recently lost his wife and heir at childbirth, and so he marries his late wife’s 12-year-old niece Beatriz (Luana Nastas), who still plays with dolls. He owns a number of slaves, and many are constantly chained up like animals. They are dehumanised, much like the Jews during World War. Antônio’s cruelty is entirely banalised, in the Hannah Arendt sense of the word.

Vazante is a doubly subversive movie, revealing a country where deep-seated race and gender inadequacies reign. The final minute of the 116-minute-long feature is guaranteed to leave you speechless, as the director blends these prejudices in one ultimate and deeply symbolic gesture. This could have only come from a female director fine-tuned with the history of her homeland, plus the roots of modern cordial racism and misogyny.

Some newly-arrived slaves in the ranch speak a language which no one can identify. They have something to say, but no one can understands what it is. It’s as if these people where living inside a soundproof bubble. The director revealed that the actors are refugees from Mali living in Brazil and that they spoke Bamana (a language which wasn’t spoken in colonial Brazil). Very interestingly, not even the director knew what they were saying. This is a very significant and clever artistic twist, a meaningful gesture connecting fiction to reality, past to present, and Brazil to Africa.

The only shortcoming of the film is a convoluted plot that due to the laconic quality of the narrative is sometimes difficult to follow. As a result, you might find yourself a little lost sometimes halfway through the movie, but this will not affect your overall experience. This is a must-see experience for anyone interested in Brazilian history, female and black representation in cinema.

Vazante is showing as part of the Panorama Section of the 67th Berlin Film Festival taking place right now, but such a mature and accomplished movie should be instead in the event’s Official Competition. DMovies is following the action live – just click here for more information.

Get a taste of the film with the excerpt below:

Ana, mon Amour

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Ana (Diana Cavallioti) is a university girl to whom most people would find it difficult to relate. She suffers from depression, anxiety, panic attacks and she’s prone to all sorts of emotional outbursts. To most, she would be simply “annoying”. Her family background is deeply dysfunctional, and there are clues to suggest that she was molested by her stepfather as a teenager. She is unable to voice with the origin of the woes, and she struggles with the various types of medication she has to take. Yet her fellow student and boyfriend Toma (Mircea Postelnicu) is extremely patient, comprehensive and supportive of the extremely unstable and vulnerable young woman.

This might sound like the perfect plot for a languid and dire movie, or an unabashed tearjerker. Yet Ana, mon Amour has enough vigour, candour and pronfundity to make for a very convincing and compelling 127-minute viewing experience. The movie shuns a traditional chronology in favour a very irregular zigzag. Ana and Toma move back and forth in time from the early days when they met to their marriage, children all the way to separation. At time you won’t be able to determine when the action is taking place, and that’s ok. There’s no build-up towards an epic revelation at the end of the movie, and the dramatic strength of the movie lies instead in the subtles twists of fate and gradual changes of personality, supported by very strong performances.

Tamo will constantly seek answers to Ana’s mental health problems, but he will often fail to find them. Audiences will embark on a similar quest, being able to join some dots, but not all of them. Tamo will slowly begin to experience uncertainties of his very own, and he too will turn to others for support: first a priest then a psychoanalyst. The jolly, generous, affable and emotionally balanced young man will begin to morph into something else, and so will Ana. Those who identified themselves with the highly likable male character in the beginning of the film have a surprise in store waiting for them, as he too falls prey to his fallibility.

The anatomic realism of Ana, mon Amour is certain to be misinterpreted. Prudes will cringe dismiss some of the scenes as “unnecessary”. There’s real sex and ejaculation, a bloodied vagina following an unidentified medical episode, plus Toma applying cream to his son’s penis. These sequences are never exploitative, in fact they are rather fast and banal, even tender in their simplicity. They are still enough to unsettle Brits uncomfortable with anything too close to the bone.

Ana, mon Amour showed at the 67th Berlin Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. Forty-one-year-old Călin Peter Netzer won the award just four years ago with the film Child’s Pose. It is showing at the BFI London Film Festival.

Have a Nice Day (Hao Ji Le)

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Dilapidated buildings, cracked walls, chipped doors, neglected railway tracks, shabby cars, mangy dogs, plenty of rain and blood: this is more or less the filthy image of China that will you see in this highly imaginative animation and black comedy from the People’s Republic. Have a Nice Day premiered today at the Berlinale (when this piece was originally written, and it’s a breath of fresh air plus a welcome break from a streak of stern and languid pieces such as the Korean On the Beach at Night Alone (Hong Sangsoo) and the Portuguese Colo (Teresa Villaverde) in the Festival’s Competition).

The movie looks almost like a rotoscope animation due to the realism of faces and places, but a few dissonant elements effectively cater for the more ingenious and resourceful side of the endeavour. There’s a thin line of smoke coming up undisturbed from a cigarette, there are paintings with a very different texture and there’s a very plush allegorical montage blending dreams with symbols of pop culture (from which the image above was taken). And there’s cheesy Chinese music to top it all up, sometimes coming from bad quality speakers, as if you were in a student’s room.

The premise of the film is rather simple. A bag with one million yuan is enough to change the life of anyone who comes across it. These greedy Chinese commoners will lie, cheat, run and kill in order to keep the money and fulfil their capitalist fantasy: to give up work, to pay for your girlfriend’s plastic surgery or to move to the promising Shangri-La. Needless to say, their plans go terribly awry and these people one by one encounter a very bloody fate. Failed communist ideals turn into violence. These people literally go from red to red.

This is the parody of the ambitions of a country stuck between its communist legacy and a megalomaniacal consumerist dream – which turns out to be a bloody nightmare!

One of the most interesting dialogues of the film reveals the absurdity of modern Chinese philosophy, when a man lectures a friend about the three types of freedom: farmer’s market freedom, supermarket freedom and online shopping freedom. It does seem indeed that the life of the Chinese revolves around purchasing. No wonder they will do anything for one million yuan!

The film also jokes about our very own failed capitalism and ambitions in the UK, when a character asks another one: “Why do you want to go to England? It’s not even part of Europe anymore!”.

What’s most remarkable about Have a Nice Day is how it successfully transposes the aesthetics of an arthouse cinema into animation, thereby throwing in comedic elements. Some of the takes are long and still, as if there was a static camera capturing the mood of the external environment. The movements are harsh, almost spasmodic and cars drive past extremely fast, contrasting with the slow action otherwise. It’s almost as if a knife cut past the screen when vehicles and people begin to move. You will feel threatened and entranced.

Have a Nice Day was in the Official Competition of the 67th Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year, but it did not take the prize from jury led by Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven. This piece was originally written back then. The film was in the the 61st BFI London Film Festival taking place from October 5th to the 15th, and then the London East Asia Film Festival the following week. The film is out in US cinemas on January 26th, and then out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 23rd.

On the Beach at Night Alone (Bamui Haebyun-Eoseo Honja)

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A film critic once famously said that seeing an Eric Rohmer movie was the equivalent to “watching paint dry”. Now Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo has excelled the late French director and created a film with a pace even more painful and sluggish. This is a hitherto unthinkable achievement. On the Beach at Night Alone is equivalent to watching paint fade.

Younghee (Kim Min-hee) is a famous actress who travels to Hamburg to meet a friend. They walk through wintry parks and riverbanks reflecting about the meaning of love, men, ageing and so on. The beautiful artist, who is probably in her 30s, reveals that she has recently ended an affair with a married man. Back in South Korea, Young-hee meets up with some old friends in the coastal town of Gangneung. They engage in prolongued conversations about more or less the same platitudes.

At less than 100 minutes, On the Beach at Night Alone isn’t a particularly long film. But the dialogues are so banal, that the film becomes insufferable after just 30 minutes or so. Similarly to Rohmer, the movie is almost entirely conversational and much of the “action” takes place in parks or around the dinner table. The beach in the film title refers to the place where Younghee goes to relax and meditate. She sits in front of the sea staring at the horizon for long periods of time. It’s almost as if she was waiting for a magic sign from the waters, just like in Eric Rohmer’s The Green Ray (1986). Unsurprisingly, nothing ever happens.

What might surprise you is that, in reality, I like Eric Rohmer’s movies a lot. I have seen nearly every one of them. On the other hand, On the Beach at Night Alone was an excruciating experience. I have some possible explanations for the disconnect:

Perhaps the problem is a strange camera zoom-in replicated in almost every sequence of the movie. Maybe it’s the constant repetition of Franz Schubert’s Cello Quintet in an apparent attempt to emphasise solitude and inwardness. Despite liking Schubert, the tune is mercilessly piercing my brain right now as I write this. Or it could be the triviality of the girly chit-chat and petit-bourgeois themes: “which girl is the prettiest?”, “am I too old?”, and so on. Or maybe I’m just too Western in order to understand Korean sensibility?

Whatever the answer, I think you may have gathered by now that neither I enjoyed and nor would I recommend this film to anyone. Unless you enjoy watching paint fade.

On the Beach at Night Alone showed in February as part of the Berlin Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. The film is showing as part of the 61st BFI London Film Festival taking place between October 5th and 15th.

It is worthwhile noting that the film was, at least in part, a response to the rumours that the director was having an extra-marital affair. In March, he confessed that he is dating the lead actress.

A few months later, after watching a couple more films by the Korean director, Victor Fraga changed has had a change of heart about Hong Sang-soo. Click here in order to find out what he thinks about Hong Sang-soo now!

Joaquim

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QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM BERLIN

Few Europeans know that the Independence of Brazil took place as late as in 1822, nearly half a century after the US and also posterior to most countries in the continent. And mostpeopl remain oblivious to the fact that the largest country of Latin America was the last one to abolish slavery in the New World. Joaquim goes back in time to the late 18th century and opens up the wounds of colonisation, exposing a deeply corrupt Brasil where racism and subservience to the Portuguese Crown prevail.

Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, nicknamed Tiradentes, was a leading member of a failed revolutionary movement fighting for Brazilian Independence. Joaquim was arrested tried, decapicated and quartered. The pieces of his body where publicly exhibited in order silence any sort of dissent. His execution on April 21st later became a public holiday in Brazil, and Tiradentes is now celebrated as a national hero and a martyr, the film explains in the opening by the means of a voiceover.

The revolutionary figure is played by the Júlio Machado: he has long-hair, olive skin and a rough, manly complexion. He looks like some sort of cowboy Jesus Christ from the Brazilian Backlands. He is a lieutenant hunting illegal gold-diggers on behalf of Queen Maria of Portugal. He is enamoured with the slave Blackie (the exceptionally beautiful Portuguese-Angolan Isabél Zuaa, pictured above), but he does not have enough money to buy her. He gradually begins to despise the system to which he belongs, realising that Brazil would be much better off without the rule of the Portuguese Crown.

Director Marcelo Gomes reveals an exhuberant country teeming with diverse cultures, races and languages. You will listen to Brazilian Portuguese, Creoule Portuguese, as well as African and Indigenous languages – all of which except for the first have but disappeared since. There’s African singing, indigenous yodelling and a Portuguese guitar. It would be safe to say that the filmmaker did a very good job with his homework in anthropology.

With equal success, the director also debunks the colonial myth of moral supremacy. The Portuguese often described the Brazilians as “bandits, corrupts and lazybones”, but Joaquim realises that this a reflection of their own flawed character, and a vain attempt to patronise and to demoralise Brazilians. That’s when he decides to switch allegiances and to fight for the ideals of independence, influenced by the teachings of Rousseau.

Joaquim is not the only film in the Berlinale this year to deal with the subject of a coloniser describing the colonised as inferior. Viceroy’s House (Gurinder Chadha) reveals a profoundly racist Churchill who said that Indians were “primitive”. Both Britain and Portugal shared a delusional sense of racial superiority. But have they now overcome these prejudices?

There’s a very short dialogue that’s central to the movie, when Joaquim expresses his desire for Brazil to be like the US. He hazards a guess that everyone in the former British colony is now free and equal, and that such a nation would never be oppressive towards others. The director is making a tongue-in-cheek commentary about the hypocrisy of Americans Imperialism.

Joaquim is showing in the Official Competition of the 67th Berlin International Film Festival, and it’s a viable contender for the much coveted Golden Bear. DMovies is following the event live – just click here for more information.

Don’t forget to watch the teaser trailer below: