Le Havre

Described by its Finnish director, Aki Kaurismäki, as an “unrealistic film”. Described by the the Film Festival programme as a comedy. Described elsewhere as a political movie. While there is lightest sprinkling of funny moments in Le Havre and illegal immigration is a political issue, I agree with the director.

Le Havre is a simple story of an old shoe-shine man who tries to save a refugee. It is told in an unrealistic style that is reminiscent of 1950s films in a way that is hard to put your finger on. For me the stand-out character is Inspector Monet (Jean-Pierre Darroussin - the gardener in Conversations with my gardener) who drives a Renault 16 and channels Casablanca's Captain Renault (Claude Rains) - I doubt this is a coincidence. Unfortunately this one performance, the few odd-ball moments and Elina Salo's smile don't add up to the ticket price.

View trailer

Critics at Cannes liked this film, but in my opinion Romantics Anonymous is a far better French comedy.

Ian's rating 1/5 Anne's rating 2/5

Sons of Perdition

If you're in need of a movie to make you grateful for your upbringing, Sons of Perdition is a good one. It features three teenage boys who are escapees from the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (FLDS) community in Colorado City. The FLDS are a sect that still practice polygamy so there's not really room for too many adult males. It treats women as chattels, undisciplined men as expendable and children as a free source of labour. Growing up in Colorado City means no TV, no pop music, no toys, not much education, an ingrained belief that you'll be going to hell if you leave the community but also lots and lots of brothers and sisters and a deep sense of family. And a much closer relationship with your mother than your father, because you don't have to share her with quite so many others.

Escapees tend to move to St George, a nearby city, where there is a remarkable degree of support from other past escapees. It seems if you've grown up with 13 siblings, you don't find putting three teenage boys in your spare bedroom too perturbing. Life doesn't run especially smoothly for our three featured boys - Sam, Bruce and Joe. They move house often, struggle with trying to enrol in high school without birth certificates, dabble in drink and drugs and succeed in liberating some of their siblings only to have them returned to Colorado City.

It's a really interesting story. Lack of education is a downside for the boys, but on the upside they have amazing practical skills and work ethic and they're really unattached to things. For people who have been told what to do all their lives, they're amazingly unresentful.I'm hopeful they'll go far. I am a bit disappointed in retrospect that the fact that expulsion is really common for boys didn't feature more and very little time was spent on why these particular boys left, whether there was any compulsion and whether they grew up expecting to leave. It was obvious that the families made much more effort to try and retrieve escaped daughters than they did sons.

Sons of Perdition wasn't quite as gripping as Hot Coffee but does expose you to an area of the US you may not have seen before and slice of society you're unlikely to have had anything to do with. It's worth a look.

Anne's rating 3/5

Project Nim

In 1973 Herbert Terrace of Columbia University started a scientific experiment to determine if a chimpanzee could be taught American Sign Language and hence disprove Noam Chomsky's hypothesis that only humans have the ability to communicate using language. He put a 2 week old chimpanzee with a human family and later with some student researchers to see if it could be taught American Sign Language. The chimp was named Nim Chimpsky.

The documentary Project Nim is not about whether the use of hand signs and groups of signs by chimpanzees constitutes a use of language or not. You'll have to read about that elsewhere. The focus is on how the baby chimp is brought up, and what effects he has on the people around him. Contemporary video footage and interviews with the family he was with in New York and the researchers leave no doubt that the experiment wasn't rigorous enough to produce much useful data and that Herbert Terrace took a very casual and ad hoc approach. What is more interesting about this phase is not his use of sign language but how a chimp uses its social skills in an alien human environment. Even as baby he began asserting his dominance over certain people. Later one research student demonstrated her understanding of this by responding to a bite from Nim by biting him back (on the ear). He never bit her again. He did bite other researchers often drawing blood and sometimes requiring stitches (chimpanzees have strong jaws and large canine teeth and humans have lots of body fat, looser skin and no protective fur).

Eventually the language experiment was abruptly terminated and he was returned to the Oklahoma primate research facility he was born in. This cage environment was a huge change from the up state New York mansion and 38 acre grounds where he lived during the sign language experiment. The bigger change was meeting other chimpanzees for the first time. Unfortunately the Oklahoma facility was running out of funding and the chimps were sold to a New York University pharmaceutical testing laboratory (in late 1970s to early 1980s many chimps were bred and used for AIDs and hepatitis research in America).

The second half of the film races though the next 20 odd years of Nim's life in large leaps. Nim's adult life was depressing and boring, including 8-10 years in solitary confinement in an equine animal sanctuary. Meanwhile the owner issued legal threats against one of Nim's keepers from Oklahoma who wanted to maintain contact and improve his social conditions. Eventually 2 other ex-medical testing chimps join Nim.

The animal cruelty message of the film is never in doubt, even though you could argue that focusing on an intelligent and social animal like a chimp, and specifically focusing on a named chimp that was initially treated well and then going from bad to worse plays strongly on the emotional side of the argument. Especially with half the film showing Nim when he is young and cute. But cinema is largely an emotional media. If you want reasoned argument about animal cruelty there is plenty of philosophy to read.

Herbert Terrace eventually decided that Nim wasn't using the hand signs in language like sequences and that his main motivation for signing was only a means of obtaining an outcome (mostly food and hugs) and not to express meanings, thoughts, or ideas. Though in my mind these two things are not as far apart as he is suggesting. For instance my writing of this blog is a means of obtaining an outcome. It is more a case that I am interested in a wider range of outcomes than Nim.

There are interesting insights into the more casual 1970s attitudes to the ethics around both research and student-teacher sex and the differences in the money that different universities have (or had) in America. The interviews in the film are remarkably candid.

Ian's rating 4/5 Anne's rating 2.5/5

The Trip

As its name implies, The Trip is a road trip movie, and it's done really, really well. I discovered after I started writing this blog that it's actually a condensed version of a 6 part BBC TV series of the same name - so I'm not sure if we or the TV audience got the best of the deal. British Comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon go on a gastronomic trip around Lancashire, Cumbria and Yorkshire, purportedly because Steve Coogan's girlfriend dropped out at short notice.

This premise provides layers and layers of entertainment potential. Firstly, the scenery is great, and since we went to most their destinations 20 years ago it had the pleasure of the revisiting old haunts. In particular, Malham Cove in Yorkshire is just as spectacular as I remember.

Secondly, it puts two very funny people together to amuse us. Lots of time is spent in idle banter, competitive impersonation of other actors, making puns and singing. It's just fun to be tagging along.

Thirdly, there's an interesting investigation of Rob and Steve's friendship, with a clever contrasting of their personal lives and personalities. Steve is portrayed as sexier but more troubled - the bigger woman magnet and the one with the broken marriage. Rob is portrayed as the devoted new dad with a loving wife waiting at home. Their relationship is portrayed as superficial and competitive, but as the film unfolds it seems that genuine affection and enjoyment of each other's company emerges. An insight into how much this is fact or fiction appears in a Guardian Article if you want to know more.

Fourthly, there's a background of gourmet food - I thought this was going to part of the comedy, a sort of piss-take on pretentiousness but this wasn't the case. Maybe the food was a bigger part of the TV series.

And fifthly, there's a kind of celebration of Englishness - epitomised, I thought, by Steve Coogan's parents - cups of tea, an enthusiastic dissertation on the best route from A to B and a dismissal of Steve as being not as funny as his siblings.

The Trip is laugh-out-loud funny and I think you should go.

Anne's rating 5/5. Ian's rating 3/5.

Submarine

Oliver, the subject of Submarine, is the only son of a depression-prone marine biologist and an office worker . He worries a lot about his parents relationship (particularly since one his mother's old flames has moved in to the house next door) and about the fact that he's still a virgin. When he's not mooching about in his bedroom he's walking on the beach or on industrial wasteland near home.

One of his school mates, Jordana, who is equally odd but more outgoing, initiates a relationship and then they mooch together. She burns the hair on his legs because it amuses her, and they sit in an old bath in the aforementioned industrial wasteland. They have sex. Eventually Oliver is brave enough to tell her about his fears for his parents relationship, and she confides that her mother has a brain tumour. They teeter towards a meaningful and supportive relationship but Oliver misses his chance to really secure Jordana's affections. She asked him to come with her to the hospital the day her mother has an operation and he doesn't, so she dumps him. Meanwhile, his parents sort their differences.

Submarine takes place in the winter in Wales and so the landscape is gloomy as well as the plot. Sally Hawkins and Noah Taylor (Oliver's parents) are completely unbelievable caricatures - think George and Mildred with slightly higher IQ's. Oliver and Jordana are more believable but not very likeable. You could call Submarine a teenage love story or you could call it an oddball coming of age movie. For either of those genres to be successful its necessary to like or at least sympathise with the protagonists - and I didn't.

Anne's rating 1.5/5

Romantics Anonymous

At last! The planets align (or at least our film schedules do) and Ian and I manage to go to the same movie at the same time. Romantics Anonymous (think alcoholics anonymous for people with emotional and/or romantic issues which hinder them functioning well in society) is a love story between two such individuals, Angelique and Jean-Rene.

Angelique is generally nervous and has a tendency to faint when under scrutiny, particularly when she's praised. Jean-Rene is pathologically terrified of women and attempts to cover this up by being brusque. Angelique applies for a job at Jean-Rene's hand-made chocolate factory - she thinks its a chocolate-maker's job (since that's what she does) but in fact the job is for a sales rep. When you see how short the interview is, you can grasp how this misunderstanding gets perpetuated.

Anyhow, spurred on by his shrink, Jean-Rene asks Angelique out for dinner. Their date borders on the excruciating to watch, but is very funny. Undeterred by the disaster, Angelique continues to turn up to work trying to sell not-very-good chocolate to local businesses.

She brings the company back from the brink of financial ruin by suggesting and helping create a new line of chocolates and of course she and Jean-Rene manage to get it together eventually, united by a love of good chocolate and recognising in the other a soul as peculiar as their own. The fact that you're pretty sure there will be a happy ending doesn't detract at all from this film.

If you're looking for a charming, short (80 minutes), escapist and funny film to brighten your day, then Romantics anonymous is a good choice.

Anne's rating 4/5 Ian's rating 4/5

Space Battleship Yamato

Space Battleship Yamato is classic space opera with the usual disregard for physics and common sense. It is a live action / CGI remake of a 1970s Japanese anime series. Despite an unmilitary overdose of emotion in every scene (enough to make a samurai cringe) I found it completely uninvolving. If you channel your inner 9 or 10 year old you'll better suited to enjoying this space adventure story which follows Susumu Kodai as he re-enlists and learns the hard lessons of military command (learn why mummy and daddy do mean things sometimes).

If you are not going to engage with the story on that level intended you can still get your money's worth looking for the space battles and camaraderie of Star Wars, the bridge scenes from Star Trek and many other homages to sci-fi films and TV series. Contrast that with the grey, cramped interiors and craziness of making a spaceship that looks like a WW II battleship. Judging from audience reaction at the Paramount Bergman, most of the audience were engaging with the film on this level. Don't see this at home, it is best enjoyed on a big screen where you can fully appreciate this nostalgic spectacle.


The spaceship of the title bares more than a passing resemblance to the Japanese WWII battleship Yamato the largest battleship ever built and a legend in Japan for its final one way mission to try and protect Okinawa from the Americans.


Ian's rating 2.5/5

The Salt of Life

In Mid-August Lunch Gianni Di Gregorio looked at old women and their demands on the younger generation, as represented by eager-to-please middle aged Gianni (this writer-director doesn't have a lot of imagination with naming his characters).

This time he starts with a similar character (also played by himself and also called Gianni) and takes on the more challenging assignment of exploring a middle-aged man's relationship with women of all ages. Gianni complains to his friend that his is invisible to women. This is not strictly true. He has been forced into early retirement. His wife goes to work leaving him a to-do list. His daughter goes to university leaving him to feed her boyfriend. His cute neighbour is happy to have him walk her dog and do her shopping. While his mother rings him incessantly for various trivial "emergencies". He longs to be taken seriously as a male, rather than taken advantage of as an eager-to-please person. His attempts to make even slightly romantic contact with either younger women or those his own age fail ignominiously. It is not that the women swat him down, they just don't seem to notice that he is trying.

In British or American hands such a comic premise is likely to end up taking a crueller view of either men or women. But this Italian comedy is much gentler on both women and middle age male fantasies.

Ian's rating 4/5

The Innkeepers

The Innkeepers is almost worth watching for the super cute elfin Claire (Sara Paxton) who spends most of the movie creeping and running around an old hotel scaring herself to near hysteria by doing all the things that have the audience whispering "don't do that".

Claire and the cooler, geekier Luke are the sole staff on duty on the last weekend the hotel is open. They are so obsessed with ghost hunting that between them they manage to get off side with all the guests. Which also has the audience thinking: "don't do that".

This is an exceedingly slow burning slacker horror movie that waits until its final minutes to deliver its punch.

Ian's rating 2/5

The Forgiveness of Blood

Glibly speaking, The Forgiveness of Blood is about home detention Albanian style. Nik's dad and uncle are in a long running feud with Sokol over a road that runs across land that was once in the family but since the end of communism is now owned by Sokol. In a society of gun and knife wielding, honour obsessed, hot heads such disputes can go from jokes and jibes at the pubs to dead bodies before you can say "Enver Halil Hoxha".

Once Sokol is dead, uncle Zif arrested by the police and dad has vanished, the real blood feud starts. The Sokol's extended family insist that teenage Nik and little brother Dren are valid targets and will be shot on sight if they leave the house. This means no more school for Nik and his brother and sisters. Older sister Rudina has to take over the family horse and cart bread delivery business, and a teacher comes back to give home tuition to the two primary school age kids. Nik's best friend from school visits and reminds him of a kid they used to know who had to stay inside for over 5 years until the feud his family was involved in was solved through mediation.

This concept of blood feud that everyone in the community including the school teachers take seriously is based on Albania's traditional law code called the Kanun (an oral tradition that was first written down in the 20th century). It is not part of Albanian law and was suppressed under communism but is being revived again in the north of the country. The Kanun is based around honour, respect, revenge and the family as a unit. As there is no central enforcement authority it can also be misused by large and powerful families to persecute smaller weaker ones. Luckily in the Kanun the family home is more or less sacrosanct (though theoretically so are women and children).

In a tradition where women and teenagers have no say in what happens and with their father gone, the decisions are in the hands of uncles and more distant male relatives who not living under the same curfew are happy to wait the feud out. By focusing on Nik and Rudina, otherwise normal cellphone wielding teenagers, the film shows how badly this tradition works in the 21st century and how both teenagers try to make the best of the situation. This film is a must see for those people in NZ who clamour for a system of justice that puts the victim's desire for revenge in the driving seat (and is an interesting look at life in a part of Europe few of us will ever go to).

Ian's rating 4/5

Weekend

Weekend is a gay romance which takes place over the course of three days. Russell, a quiet and tidy swimming pool life guard meets Glen, who is off to the USA to study, in a gay bar. Despite Russell thinking Glen is out of his league, they end up having sex at Russell's flat.

In the morning, over cups of coffee in bed, Glen indulges his habit of interviewing the person he's just had sex with about how it went and what they were thinking, recording the conversation on a small dictaphone. He confesses to sharing the recordings with his female flatmate. And so Russell and Glen get to know each other better.

Watching this process is really the guts of the movie, and it's done with some charm. It turns out Russell likes to keep a record of sexual encounters too - he has a diary on his computer, and he reads it to Glen. They talk about coming out, about Russell being a foster child, about public displays of affection and their attitudes to goodbyes. There's drinking, drug taking and more sex, but, crucially, more talking. So, when 4 o'clock on Sunday afternoon arrives and Glen has to catch a train as the first stage of traveling to the USA, Russell achieves a personal breakthrough by publicly kissing him goodbye at the station and we feel a potentially great relationship has been formed.

Visually, I found the grainy appearance of this film quite annoying. Perhaps it was supposed to underline the slightly gritty nature of the environment - Russell's flat is in an ugly high rise block in Nottingham. Whatever its purpose, eventually I forgot about it. In contrast, the two leads were visually appealing and the dialogue was great. I don't think this is a film to set the world alight, but it was absorbing and well-acted. I liked how what started as a one-night stand blossomed into something more meaningful and fulfilling, even it was doomed by circumstance not to last.

Anne's rating 3/5.

Meek's Cutoff

Three families with their covered wagons follow their guide Stephen Meek on a route through Oregon that he told them would take two weeks. Five weeks later they are running short of food and even shorter of water and are having doubts about Mr Meek. Is he lost, did he never know the way, is he mad or is he out to kill settlers? More importantly do they continue to follow him south west or strike north to try and find the main trail (who knows how far north)?

Their dilemma is further complicated when a third option arises bringing with it some hope but even more unknowns. Meek's Cutoff is a very slow paced film and it is a long time before the dialogue starts. But that pacing bring with it the rising tension of the life or death situation the three families are in, once past the point of no return. The camera generally stays with the three wives as they become aware of the problem the men have tried to keep to themselves. Eventually a power struggle emerges and Meek himself finally admits that power has already transferred to the new leader of the expedition.

The film is a study of the dynamics in small group leadership and decision making. How many of the apparent choices really exist when faced with a decision? How and why does power transfer itself from one person to another?

The camera work is very nice as is the attention to detail of trail life so you won't be impatient with the slow pace of the film. This is one of those films that will have you thinking and talking after you leave the cinema and might end up on some feminist top 10 list.

The real Stephen Meek led 200 wagons and 1000 people into the Oregon Desert in 1845.

Ian's rating 4/5

The Man from Nowhere

I've generally had a good experiences with South Korean films, and The Man from Nowhere is no exception. While there is a tendency towards the violent end of the spectrum in South Korean cinema, there is also focus on the human element of story telling.

In The Man from Nowhere the core of the story is the relationship between a lonely little girl and a reclusive young pawnbroker living next door. So-mi is bullied at school and ignored by her stripper, drug addict solo mother. She is much cuter than but just as stubborn as Marcus in About a Boy. As in that film the relationship between the lonely child and the reluctant man ends up involving him in the complications of the mother's life. And those complications involve a drug deal gone wrong and two warring gangs, with the police closing in.

In many violent thrillers the baddies mostly exist to charge towards the protagonist and die in a flailing of arms and legs and fountains of blood. Lee Jeong-beom (who wrote and directed The Man from Nowhere) has made the effort to give his baddies personalities, albeit relatively thin ones; with varying attitudes to our hero ranging from fear to contempt to admiration. But of course it is the audience attitude to the hero that matters. It is difficult to get the audience on side when the hero is a silent loner, hence the crucial importance of So-mi.

Overall this is a film with Quentin Tarantino's flair for violence and Steven Spielberg flair for pathos, with a sprinkling of humour. If you want to see a crime thriller done well and packing an emotional punch this should be on your must-see list. That said there is a lot of violence and the crimes go beyond drug dealing and kidnapping.

Ian's rating 5/5

Happy Happy

Happy Happy is billed as a comdey in the Film Festival program, but this is stretching the definition of comedy even by Scandinavian standards. There are some blackly comic scenes to smile over as you recover from cringing at other scenes. Elisabeth, Sigve and their adopted son Noa arrive from urban Denmark to rent the house next door to Kaja, Eirik and son Theodor out in the middle of snowy rural Norway. Chirpy, annoyingly talkative, overly outgoing Kaja has an inferiority complex to end all inferiority complexes, and is obviously mismatched to her silent, gruff, hunting fishing husband. The new couple seem urban sophisticated and perfect in her eyes.

But nothing is right in either relationship and Kaja's need to reach out to people cause skeletons to come out of closets in both households. In the background the boys are also forcing by circumstances into an unhealthy unequal relationship. All six characters misbehave, to remind you that no-one is perfect, regardless of how it looks on the surface. It is also arguable that through hurting each other they facilitated resolving issues as far as such issues can be resolved.

This film reminded me of last years Cyrus, both films dealing with serious relationship issues in a darkly funny way.

Ian's rating 3/5

Let the Bullets Fly

You know you are not in Kansas now when someone on horseback stops a train by throwing a couple of axes which embed thmeselves into the rails. From the outrageous opening scene Let the Bullets Fly attempts to out do itself in an orgy of stunts and plot twists. Set in anarchic 1920's China when a lack of strong central government left opportunities for local governers to enrich themselves, and when such governerships could be bought and sold. The story follows 3 protagonists on the wrong side of the almost non-existant law as they strive to be top dog of a small town.

Unlike many Chinese and Hong Kong movies I've seen the plot is completely coherent and no expense has been spared on the special effects, sets and the expected over the top fight scenes. You might go to this film for the fight scenes but it is the plot which twists and turns for 132 minutes which will keep you entertained.

One or two of the more sadisticly violent scenes seemed unnecessary to me. But overall Let the Bullets Fly is an amazing entertaining Chinese shaggy dog story.

Ian's rating 4/5