The Reports on Sarah and Saleem

We've seen quite a few movies about Palestinians who live in the West Bank (Paradise Now, A Wedding in Ramallah, Omar, Private, The Zoo) but few about Palestinians who are Israeli citizens. So  The Reports on Sarah and Saleem broke some new ground in terms of both that and interaction between Jewish and Arab Israeli citizens.

So in this movie, Sarah is a Jewish Israeli cafe owner, and Saleem is a Palestinian who delivers croissants to her cafe. They move in different circles but they both live in Jerusalem. They both have distracted spouses - Sarah's husband David is an officer in the IDF and is often away and Saleem's wife Bisan is pregnant and is declining sex because it's bad for the baby. So they have motive, proximity and opportunity for the affair they embark on. The bakery van provides a handy venue. You could say their affair was bound to lead to trouble but it seemed harmless enough initially.

The event that really starts the trouble is a late-night trip to Bethlehem. Despite the plan to pretend Sarah is foreign by having her only speak in English, she's rumbled as Jewish and some unhappy Arabs not only give Saleem a hard time, they report him to the authorities, and things escalate from there.

Any affair has potentially troublesome ramifications and I guess the plot revolves around the many ramifications that this affair had, in this politically and racially charged part of the world. Many of them were unexpected, and I was never bored and never knew quite what was going to happen next. This movie is quite woman-centric for a Middle-Eastern film and I liked how Sarah and Bisan didn't just roll over and do what their husbands wanted. I liked how interesting and well-acted some of the lesser characters were - Saleem's lawyer Maryam and the bald Israeli security guy in particular..

Jerusalem looked beautiful as always and the similarities and differences between Jewish and Arab Israelis were nicely highlighted.

Anne's rating 4.5/5 Ian's rating 4.5/5

The Guilty

The detectives who feature in crime novels, particularly Scandinavian ones, are usually troubled souls. They're a bit too devoted to their jobs, and as a result their relationships fail. They're a bit prone to cutting corners to get a result in a case, and so are often in trouble with their bosses but they inspire complete loyalty from their work partners.

Asger Holm, the star character in The Guilty is just such a Scandinavian police officer. He's been suspended from regular police duties since he shot a criminal and has been reassigned to working in the call centre answering 112 emergency calls. A routine evening in the centre is coming to an end when a woman who has been abducted by her husband phones in and we see Asger's detective and organisational skill at work despite him never leaving the desk.

Asger is a huge character and he features in every scene. He's compassionate and thoughtful, persuasive, determined  and unwavering. He's a classically flawed hero and he is totally worth watching - both for his character and his hugely expressive and largely flawless face.

The film is very clever, with the plot detail  unfolding with each phone call between Asger and the woman  (Iben), and Asger and Iben's daughter, a Asger and the staff who dispatch offices and cars around the city . (The instant nature of the dispatches is truly impressive if you've ever been made aware of New Zealand's rationing of police resources). Despite being filmed entirely in the call centre, the Guilty keeps you on the edge of your seat, as a thriller should, and the realisation that things are not exactly as you first thought is nicely gradual.

Anne's rating 4/5, Ian's rating 4.5/5

Good Manners

Good Manners is misfiled outside the NZIFF's Incredibly Strange section. It is an urban Brazillian horror film among other things, which starts with pregnant Ana interviewing nannies in an upmarket apartment. She hires Clara who moves in to work as a housekeeper prior to to the birth. The impassive Clara contrasts with the flighty, impulsive, Zumba obsessed Ana. Despite the difference in social class and personality the two develop a close bond, which holds them together when odd things start to happen.

When the story of Ana and Clara came to an end and I expected the credits to roll, but there is jump of 8-10 years and a new plot starts. Good Manners is like a double feature, two stories back to back, with Clara as the linking character. This time Clara is in charge, running her own pharmacy and looking after her son.

I didn't know there were home ultrasound kits

There is more humour than horror in Good Manners and some stylish set pieces. It is also one of a surprising number of films at this year's festival which are either lesbian centric or with lesbian content.

Ian's rating 3/5

Rafiki

Your dad and my dad are rivals, is it Okay for us to be friends? This is the first question confronting Kena and Ziki in Rafiki. Their fathers are rival candidates in the upcoming election. But the initial attraction between the skateboard riding, soccer playing Kena and Ziki with her huge earrings and pink and blue dreds, moves onto kissing. Homosexuality is illegal in Kenya and the local pastor regularly preaches against it, so coming out as a lesbian is dangerous. But the two girls can't keep away from each other.

Rafiki is a simple story set in a colourful Nairobi suburb. The passion the two girls have for each other is communicated by their recklessness. The charm of the film is not only stubbornness of Kena contrasting with the flirty Ziki but also the colourful exotic setting (to non-Africans) but also the directness and emotional expressiveness of the dialogue. I was left with slight disappointment at the end at how little plot there was, a feeling of is-that-all-there-is? But remember that this is an issue film which wants to communicate is message in a positive feel-good way rather than a complex drama.

The film is adapted from a Ugandan short story and has been banned in Kenya.

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Ian's rating 3.5/5 Anne's rating 3/5

Holiday

Director Isabella Eklöf's Holiday is set in the bright sun and colours of a Turkish resort town. Bikinis, swimming pools, clubwear, nightclubs and colourful amusement parks. It is a film about power relationships.

Sascha is the trophy girlfriend of Michael, a Danish gangster more than twice her age. From Michael's point of view, there isn't much of a downside to this relationship. For Sascha, it is more of a trade-off. Endless leisure time and material benefits on one side and verbal, sexual and physical abuse on the other. Is it a reasonable trade-off?

Michael, family and close colleagues are on holiday at a coastal Turkish villa. Consequently, Sascha is isolated from anyone outside Michael's circle of friends, with only casual holiday contacts which she certainly can't rely on to counterbalance Michael et al. Understandably Sascha takes a cautious, timid and mostly passive role in proceedings though her most dramatic act is certainly decisive as is the subsequent decision. Sascha's passivity and her lack of lines leave it very much up to us to conjecture what is going on behind the sunglasses.

While ostensibly filmed from a Male Gaze perspective, the camera often shifts to view Sascha and what is happening to her in a non-glamourous way. There are also plenty of scenes to disturb (including a rape). There were 2 walkouts in the showing I was at (one loudly telling us what he thought).

My initial reaction was that the message of this message was that women should burn their pushup bras, miniskirts, bikinis and high heels and put on their baggy overalls and comfortable shoes. But on further consideration perhaps Isabella Eklöf wants us to consider our relationships and the relationships of those we might judge in all their facets, trade-offs and consequences. What do people get from their relationships? What is the downside? How easy is it for them to get out of situations?

After reading other reviews, I see I am not alone at finding this a difficult film to process.

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Ian's rating 2.5/5

And Breathe Normally

Social commentary through drama is the sort of film we expect from Ken Loach. But And Breathe Normally is by Ísold Uggadóttir and therefore set in Iceland, which probably looks pretty bleak for much of the year and where buildings and other trappings of human life tend to look out of place.

Lara is trying to improve her life. A life which comes with baggage, including tattoos, debts, people she is trying to avoid, a flat she can't afford and a 4 or 5 year old son. She is just starting a job as border guard at Keflavík International Airport. Anxious to impress on the first day on passport control, she notices an imperfection in a French passport of a woman heading for Canada. The woman, Adja from Guinea-Bissau, is also a solo mother with a daughter in Canada and completely out of her comfort zone in Iceland. She is sent to a prison, and then to a downtown boarding house for people awaiting asylum decisions or deportation. Meanwhile, Lara has a major crisis of her own, which leads her to cross paths with Adja again.

Some suspension of belief is required here and there in order to take the plot seriously and to engineer the ending that Ísold Uggadóttir is aiming for, but And Breathe Normally is none-the-worse for that.

And Breathe Normally champions the cause of those on the fringes of society and those who feel they have to break rules when those rules are designed for the benefit of others. There is also a sly, casual promotion of the sisterhood and a super cute kid.

Ian's rating 3.5/5 Anne's rating 3.5/5

Shoplifters

Shoplifters is the most popular film in Japan so far this year. It also won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival this year.

The Shoplifters are a family that supplements their menial jobs with petty crime. One night they come across a little girl who is cold, hungry and apparently abandoned. They notice her bruises and decide to informally adopt her without involving the authorities who might ask awkward questions about their criminal activities. For a while things work. Summer arrives, the family goes to the beach. Everything looks good until the wheels fall off and the police get involved.

Shoplifters is a gentle comedy that humanises a bunch of people at the margin of society. It helps that it stars two very cute little children. It also raises an awkward question about what should authorities do with a child that has been illegally adopted or stolen but brought up very well by parents who acquired the child illicitly. What is the best for that child?

I noticed that the Society to Prevent Shoplifting is mentioned in the credits.

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Ian's rating 4/5 Anne's rating 3/5

Beirut

So far this is the most gripping film of the 2018 NZIFF. A spy noir. Unusually for an American spy movie, Beirut is more John le Carré than Jason Bourne. This is the movie where you don't want to miss a line of dialogue. Working out everyone's motives and relationships is important.

Beirut sets the scene in 1972 at a party thrown by American diplomat Mason Skiles at his mansion in the hills above Beirut. The party is gatecrashed at the front door by the CIA and Mossad and at the back door by gunmen and his wife is killed. Jumping forwards to 1982 and Skiles has left the diplomatic service and is working as a negotiator in a labour dispute and is reputed to be an alcoholic. But an American has been kidnapped in Beirut and Mason is asked to come out of retirement and negotiate with the kidnappers. Mason arrives in a very different Beirut, the Lebanese Civil War occurred while he was away and everyone thinks that Israel is about to invade. Mason not only has to work out what the kidnappers want and what he needs to do to get the kidnapped man released but also deal with factions at the U.S. Embassy who have their own priorities, which include encouraging the Israelis to invade.

This is a movie that may reward a second viewing as I am not sure I picked up on all the minor plot lines, particularly for characters who suddenly reappear after being absent for much of the film. There are no flashy stunts, our hero knows what to say to achieve something rather than how to leap between tall buildings.

The has-been that everyone has written off but gets to make a comeback is a staple lead character in Hollywood movies. It is a way of getting sympathy with the hero and separating them from the other characters in the story.

That said this film is not without faults. There are at least 9 significant characters, some of whom don't get much screen time. So most of the characters are pretty thin, but it is their motives that are important rather than their personality. All but 2 of these people work for governments (or the P.L.O.), so their personal stories take back seat while they do their jobs. For a film set in Beirut there are no significant Lebanese characters and in typical Hollywood-fashion Arabs are portrayed as violent, uncivilised characters always out for revenge and to be killed with impunity. While the Israelis are not the good guys in this film at least they get some minor parts, and there is disillusionment with the American government.

Beirut was filmed in Tangier, Morocco. Which apparently has a significant number of half-demolished buildings.

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Ian's rating 4.5/5 Anne's rating 3.5/5

Bisbee ’17

In 1917 Bisbee, Arizona was an important centre of copper mining. The Industrial Workers of the World trade union set up a branch in Bisbee signed up several hundred members and in May put a set of demands to the mining companies. The demands were turned down and the union called a strike which began at the end of June and involved most of the miners. Two weeks later the local sheriff and company executives signed up 2,200 deputies and provided them with lists of men to arrest. The next morning 2000 men were rounded up (not all of the miners) and marched to the local baseball park and kept under armed guard. Those that weren't union members and agreed to go back to work were allowed to leave (700 did). The rest were loaded onto cattle cars and the train took them 300km out of town where they were unloaded and told that they would be killed if they tried to return to their homes in Bisbee. When asked what law he was using to justify his action, Sheriff Wheeler said no law, but he'd do it again.

This event is known as the Bisbee Deportation. Bisbee ’17 is a documentary about the centenary of the Bisbee Deportation and how the current population feels about it. It is difficult to know how representative the view expressed were but they ran the full range from unequivical support for the vigillantee action to support for the union and deportees. The centenary includes a re-enactment of the events (except that while the baseball park still exists the railway doesn't).

The documentary concentrates on trying to show the difference between the sort of men who Sheriff Wheeler signed up as deputies and those who were run out of town (lots of Hispanic, Eastern European and Italian names). This wasn't just a union busting action it was also an attempt to get rid of the "wrong sort of American".

The documentary is a very easy watch but left me with far more questions than answers: What happened to the deportees? What happened to the vigillantees? There are a couple of casual mentions of a court case but the documentary itself stops with the events of 12 July 1917. Perhaps they are planning a sequel, in the meantime Wikipedia can provide some answers.

No references are made to current politics in America.

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Ian's rating 2.5/5

Keep the Change

How do people learn how to interact with other people? Is it by imitation and seeing what works, and gradually getting better at picking the right thing to do? Is it by applying a process of logic in every situation? Most of us do it so naturally that we forget that we had to learn how at some point in our lives. Sometimes we feel like we were born knowing this stuff. Social interaction is such an intrinsic part of being human that people who have trouble with social interactions seem so alien.

In Keep the Change, David is a young autistic man who tries very hard to seem cool with his endless supply of jokes. He is supported by his rich parents but runs foul of the law by telling a pig joke to a New York policeman. The judge orders him to join an autism support group. He is utterly contemptuous of the weirdos. But finds himself paired up with the extrovertive Sarah who tells him that she finds him "really smoking hot, and so sexy".

With a cast of non-professional autistic actors (I hope they did get paid!), Keep the Change concentrates more on how these autistic people get on with each other rather than how they interact with non-weirdos. Which probably make this a more satisfying film.

It also shows New York as an onion. A little group of autistic people within the Jewish community, which, while big enough to have its own class hierarchy, is itself is a small group within the metropolis. All these groups can conduct their lives with little contact with the millions of other New Yorkers.

The film touches on the dangers of telling people that they are better than they really are and also the dangers of being honest with people who have delusions about themselves and their abilities, but it doesn't provide a solution to either issue.

And for those of us who do find dealling with other people a bit challenging from time to time, it reminds us that we can still have a life.

Did I tell you the story about the Jew who wanted a divorce because his wife joined the Police?

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Ian's rating 3/5

Thelma

Thelma is starting university in Oslo. She is from a strict, religious, rural family. So this is a culture shock. Though having an epileptic-style fit when a pretty girl sits next to her in the crowded library is an even bigger shock. The doctor who treats her is pretty sure it isn't an epileptic fit, suggesting psychogenic seizures. No-one notices the simultaneous bird strikes on the windows.

The contrast between the clean, modern Scandinavian university, the student world of Facebook and iPhones and the unnatural events make them more startling. These students even find the idea of fellow students who believe in God difficult to process. They expect things to be rational.

Thelma is a quiet, reserved girl, trying to live up to her parents' expectations and her religious upbringing, while also trying to fit in to student life. Underneath that reserved exterior there are alot of emotions wrangling for control: confusion, fear, lust, guilt. The more she tries be unnoticed the more she attracts attention to herself. It's interesting to contrast the timid Thelma with the much brasher and younger Mia in Blue My Mind though both girls are physically similar; pale, slim with long hair, placid expressions and perfect skin.

Thelma evolves from being the victim of her fits to being in control and in the penultimate scene, she strides from her family home in triumph.

There is enough ambiguity in the film to view what happens as either supernatural with Themla's telekinetic powers being successfully repressed during most of her childhood and resurfacing at university or as Thelma's imagination, dreams and unreliable guilt-ridden childhood memories.

Equally the final scene, which on the face of it feels like a cop-out in this otherwise dark, sinister Scandinavian movie, could also be interpreted in a couple of more sinister ways.

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Ian's rating 4/5

Leave No Trace

Will and Tom live off-the-grid in a forest outside Portland, Oregon. Or you could say they are camping or you could say they are homeless. Will is a war veteran who is either not keen on being around people or prefers living indoors (or both), which puts him offside with "the authorities". Tom is his "home" schooled teenage daughter. Their idyllic lifestyle is upset when the park rangers and police arrive and they get processed by the "System". The Oregan Social Services are a benign, thoughtful and considerate outfit (WINZ could learn a thing or two), but despite their efforts, it doesn't work out and the two are soon on the move again. They run into an endless series of helpful people, which make Will's reactions increasingly difficult to sympathise with.

Apart from the strong hint that helicopter noise is a trigger to send Will to his dark place, we don't learn anything about his or their backstory. The story tends to focus more on Tom than Will, showing both her love, devotion to her father and her adaptability to both their current lifestyle and to the alternatives on offer. Tom is also growing up and becoming less dependant on Will. A cynic might say that Tom is the idealised teenage girl: beautiful, well behaved, passive most of the time, resourceful, thoughtful, caring, hardworking, eloquent when necessary, not the least bit selfish and with no sign of a cellphone.

Leave No Trace tries to take no sides between people on the edge of society and modern society itself. It also shows that those at the edge of society are there for different reasons, do it in different ways and don't always get on with each other. It is also a feel-good story, which like a fairy tale, takes us a little beyond the edge of darkness but brings us safely back. As Wikipedia is keen to point out, it has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Captain Fantastic covered a similar situation in 2016, but concentrated more on the contrast between the backwoods lifestyle and modern American life and played it more for laughs.

Don't think too carefully about how Will manages to keep his crewcut looking so fresh while living outdoors.

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

Blue My Mind

Teenage years are a time of change, perhaps more so for girls than boys. It is also a time in life where identity and fitting in are important. In Blue My Mind Mia is starting a new school at age 15. Eager to fit in she steps out of her comfort zone and tries to join the bimbo clique. The clothes maketh the bimbo. Well, actually more than the clothes there is also the smoking, drinking, an overt interest in boys etc. The more she fits in with the new crowd the more distant she becomes from her parents.

She also has her first period, something that her parents haven't prepared her for*. Things go from awkward to worse as the next day 2 of her toes are stuck together, a portent for more change. So what starts as a teen angst movie develops another angle. How Mia copes with these changes is like the stages of grief: she goes through bewilderment, challenge, denial, anger and finally acceptance.

One thing that works well in this film is that the filmmaker avoids the trap of exposition. Things are left unexplained.

For me, it is difficult not to draw comparisons between Blue My Mind and Ginger Snaps from 2000. Both are movies about teenage girls coping with unnatural changes beyond their control. Blue My Mind has a lot less gore and more teenage angst. In fact, unlike Ginger Snaps, it is not really a horror film. It is also much prettier, with better camera work. In both films, the protagonist eventually embraces the changes, but Mia resists the changes happening to her for much longer than Ginger, she also has less support from friends and family.

This is one of those films where the trailer gives too much of the plot away.

* I think the first period at age 15 and lack of parental preparation were just thrown in to make other bits of the plot work.

Ian's rating 3.5/5

Birds of Passage

The Guajira Peninsula sticks out into the Caribbean Sea on the border between Colombia and Venezuela. It varies from dry desert-like conditions in the north to humid jungles in the south. It is the home of the Wayuu people. The Wayuu resisted colonization and refer to more Hispanic Colombians as Alijuna.

Birds of Passage is a story covering 20 years from the 1960s to 1980s of Raphayet who starts as a young man who with his urban Alijuna friend Moises trades coffee beans and alcohol. Raphayet falls in love with beautiful teenager Zaida at her coming out ceremony. Her mother, clan matriarch Ursula, demands an extreme dowry to dissuade the young man. But Raphayet and Moises see a couple of Peace Corps gringos who the local barman descibe as anti-communists who are really looking for cannabis. It happens that Raphayet's uncle Anibal lives in the hills and grows cannabis. A slight carreer change and soon Raphayet is ready with his dowry. Money is seductive and Raphayet and Moises continue their link in the drug trade between the Colombian jungles and America, enriching both Ursula's clan and Anibal's. But this is morality tale and there is a cost to pay. Violence, revenge and Zaida's spoilt little brother wreck havoc on both families.

There are slightly surreal elements to story. The house that Raphayet builds stands isolated in the desert and he is haunted by the ghost of his dead friend in the form of a heron.

Birds of Passage is visually beautiful and simple film. The story of how money changes relationships and can destroy subsistance cultures. While there are a few surpises, the first half is quite predictable, as is the ending.

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Ian's rating 3/5

Mandy

I'm a lumberjack and I'm Okay. Until the night some drug-crazed biker, hippy, Jesus-freaks showed up at my cabin in the woods and killed my woman.

Given how little dialogue or plot there is in this film, there are some details writer and director Panos Cosmatos thinks it is important that we know such as the character's names and that it is set in 1983. But the only name you need to know is Nicolas Cage, whose revenge rampage is what this film is all about. His transformation from a mild-mannered lumberjack living blissfully with Mandy, a new age artist/shopkeeper, to raging homicidal maniac is what we paid to see.

Mandy is a self indulgent visual orgy of 1970s and 80s imagery with an incessant soundtrack of fog horn and bass guitar. Each scene (and this film rarely moves smoothly from one scene to the next) is lit in an appropriate colour: green woods, yellows and oranges for the interior of the happy couple's cabin, blue as they sleep, red for the sky filled with oversized planets borrowed from the front cover of a science fiction novel. In addition to the occasional CGI, there are some old-fashioned animation clips to "link" things together and remind us of the dead Mandy. This film certainly qualifies for the Incredibly Strange section of the NZIFF. It seems like Panos Cosmatos was trying to create a movie for a cult following and so far he has wowed the critics.

Mandy is not without humour. The chainsaw duel with its nod to India Jones is my favourite set piece in the film.

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Ian's rating 1.5/5