The Teacher

Set in Bratislava in the 1980s, The Teacher could be subtitled "portrait of a bully and a blackmailer" because the protagonist, Maria Drazdechova, is indubitably both, and the practiced ease with which she performs those two additional roles while working as a teacher is quite startling.

Her routine is this; at the beginning of the school year, Maria introduces herself to the class and gets the pupils to introduce themselves and state what their parents do for a living while she makes careful notes.  As the term progresses she asks the parents for favours when the favour is received she tells them what the children should be studying for the next class. Those children receive good marks in class and the children whose parents don't give favours don't, whether they've got to grips with what they're learning or not. She's the school Communist party representative, which gives her extra clout.

Things start to come unstuck when it becomes apparent that three of the ablest students have parents who are the least able to do useful favours for Maria. Their consistently poor marks at school prompt those parents to make a formal complaint about Maria and there's a meeting at the school for all the parents and the head teacher. Naturally, the parents of children who are doing well, don't want to rock the boat. The meeting is the dramatic centrepiece of the film, and to our surprise [ spoiler alert ] the complaint against the teacher is upheld. Sadly for Czechoslovakian school kids, the consequence for the teacher is like that of paedophile priests last century - she gets transferred rather than disciplined.

The acting in The Teacher is superb. Zuzana Maurery who plays Maria is completely convincing and her character never misses a beat. She appears completely without conscience and feigns ignorance of her manipulative and unkind behaviour. She devotes every evening to making phone calls to parents and continuing to feather her nest. The anxious parents are also very convincing.

The drawback with this film is that it's slightly too straight and slightly too dark. While Maria's lack of self-awareness and her indefatigability is somewhat humourous, the suffering she causes isn't. The Teacher lacks the warmth of Jan Hrebejk's other films, especially Divided We Fall.

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

The Love Witch

The Love Witch opens with a glamorous young woman driving a red Mustang convertible up the Californian coast, and in voice over she tells some of her back story. The background is obviously being projected on a screen behind the car. That, the aspect ratio, the blue eye shadow and prominent cigarette unsubtly suggest the 1960s or early 1970s. The perfect make-up, the dialog and acting scream old day-time soap opera. But we are being taken for a ride here. Satire is the name of the game and a number of film and TV genres and tropes get sent up, along with renaissance fairs, harps and cake.

Elaine, the self proclaimed Love Witch is escaping from San Francisco to a sleepy small northern California with luggage that matches her coat, shoes, lipstick and car. She is looking for love, she is not into internet dating. She finds that her stare is enough to attract a man, but uses a love potion to make sure they stay attracted. Like commercial drugs there are unfortunate side effects. But Elaine is relentlessly positive and never mopes over her failures. Time to put on a new outfit and move on the the next victim man.

The plot doesn't make sense, there isn't a clear message, but it is an over the top visual feast that you'd expect from Ant Timpson's Incredibly Strange section. And it does have the best line so far in this year's film festival:

Tampons aren't gross. Women bleed and that's a beautiful thing. Do you know that most men have never even seen a used tampon?

Ian's rating 3/5

Sami Blood

What? Those wonderful Swedes are racist? Well when it comes to the Sami people, otherwise known as Laplanders, that live across the north of Norway, Sweden, Finland and the adjacent part of Russia, they suffered racism across all 4 countries.

Sami Blood is a film inspired by the director's grandmother's life story and expands on an earlier short film on the subject called Stoerre Vaerie (Northern Great Mountain). Bookended by modern segments about an old woman going to her sister's funeral, the bulk of the film is set in the 1930s and is about Ella-Marja a bright and stubborn teenage Sami girl who outgrows her one room school and decides to cross the divide between Sami life and Swedish life. While not illegal, her decision is considered wrong by both her family and almost every Swede she meets.

Ella-Marja's determination and the condescension and hostility she meets among the Swedes are the defining themes of the film. This could have been a depressing film but as none of the characters are completely good (even our heroine) and the scenes of her trying to fit in are played with gentle humour (as is the sex scene), it is on the balance an upbeat film, which should make you a little bit angry.

Ian's rating 3/5

Risk

Risk is a documentary about Julian Assange and Wikileaks. It consists of interviews with Julian Assange and some of his associates plus some fly-on-the-wall footage of Julian and others at work and it is punctuated with bits of history of Wikileaks and voice over of the film maker's views of Julian. 7 years of filming Wikileaks is condensed into 93 minutes. Because the film is covering such a long period of time it doesn't cover any aspect in detail.

The title of the film comes from a conversation where Julian Assange gives his views on the risks various people are prepared to take to try and right wrongs and go up against the powers that be. He declares that he takes a pragmatic view of what risks to take and understands if people are willing to take more risks or fewer risks than he is. The film does a good job of showing his level of paranoia and justifying it.

Hanging over the whole film is the Swedish sexual assault allegations. While there is no detail on what happened in Sweden there are some glimpses into Julian Assange's attitude to the complainants.

While Assange is the main focus of the film Sarah Harrison (who seems to act as his personal assistant) gets almost as much time in front of the camera. The other thing that gets a lot of focus is Julian's hair (which itself is almost a trademark for Wikileaks).

Ian's rating 2.5/5

Tragedy Girls

In any horror film, you need a good premise for all the blood and mayhem. Often American films only seem to require a country location and an old house but Tragedy Girls is a little more imaginative and gives a high school movie (with the requisite corridors lined with lockers, cheerleaders and a prom)  more than a touch of blood and guts. Teenagers are renowned for being self-centred, and more obsessed with social media than the rest of the planet and the central characters of  the movie (McKayla and Sadie) take these characteristics to sociopathic levels. A couple of grisly murders in their small town inspires them to start a blog called Tragedy Girls but soon they feel compelled to create more fodder for their blog - firstly by capturing the murderer and putting him to work, and later committing some murders themselves. Improbably, they don't get caught and neither do they appear to have any twinges of conscience.

As you'll have guessed, this isn't a movie that wants to be taken seriously, and the makers have played with (and added to) some classic movie tropes. There's a particularly imaginative murder in the school workshop, with circular saws and hoist chains that bring James Bond movies to mind. The girl who discovers the body drops her takeaway coffee and the coffee mixes artistically with the blood on the floor. Another murder takes place in the gym where Mykayla manages to kill one of the town s firefighters who's at least twice her size.

At one point, Sadie starts dating the local sheriff's son, and it seems like she might be putting him first and giving up her evil ways, but her relationship with Mykayla wins out and the boyfriend and most of their high school class comes to a grisly end. Watch the film, and find out how.

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

Argo

Although I created the draft for this post after we saw Argo, I find myself writing most of it three years later. Unusually, my recall of the film is good, and I remember how it made me feel, which seems like the hallmark of a good film or at least a memorable one

Argo tells a story based on actual events. In November 1979 the US Embassy is over-run and occupied by revolutionaries and the embassy staff is taken hostage. Six of the staff manage to escape, and are given refuge at the Canadian Ambassador's residence. The American Government and the CIA come up with an elaborate plan to rescue them, and the execution of the plan takes  up the rest of the movie.

Ben Affleck plays Tony Mendez, (the hero), the CIA exfiltration (isn't that a great word?) specialist who comes up with idea of giving the the six escapees a new identity - Canadian film makers who are scouting for locations for a science fiction film. Given the go ahead ("of the bad ideas we've had for this mission this is the best bad idea") he recruits some help in Hollywood to give the fake film some substance, including a script.John Goodman and Alan Arkin feature is this part of Argo, and it's pretty funny.

Armed with the script, Tony sets of for Iran and meets the six Americans and explains his plan Understandably, they're a bit dubious but realising their options are limited they agree to participate. They go out into the city, ostensibly as film crew which is a pretty tense outing but not as tense as the day they attempt to leave the country on a commercial flight. My knowledge of the original incident was sketchy but I was pretty.sure the hostages made it out of Iran. This didn't stop the edge-of-seat-tension watching the scenes at  the airport, particularly when the immigration officials attempt to ring the film's headquarters in Los Angeles.

Argo is a great watch - absorbing, exciting and very, very tense.  It did a very good job of illustrating what it would be like to be in a building that was being besieged. It also illustrates why you should have a shredder that shredder that shreds into short bits and not long reconstruct-able strands.It seems like the kind of film that should win a best picture award, and it it did.

Anne's rating 4/5

Tanna

Our last film of the 2016 film festival, Tanna was one of the best. It's a Romeo and Juliet style love story filmed on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu. Tanna is famous for its live volcano, Mount Yasur, and for still having some villages where the traditional lifestyle is practised. The inhabitants are self-sufficient, live in huts and  women still wear grass skirts and the men just penis sheaths.


In the village of Yakel, our Juliet is an attractive teenager named Wawa. Dain is our Romeo. Their romance is mostly in secret, although it doesn't escape the notice of Wawa's little sister Selin  Wawa is just coming of age, and is expected to marry someone of her parent's choosing, although she maintains she wats to marry someone she loves. The villagers have a long-running feud with a neighbouring tribe,the Imedin. Dain's parents were killed by Imedin many years before. In the film, Dain's grandfather (the vlllage shaman) is attacked by the Imedin because they think he made their crops fail. Dain itches for for revenge.

Since inter-tribal relations are at an all-time low and killing and violence are making everyone's life difficult, a council meeting is scheduled  Pigs are exchanged and dialogue takes place. Imagine Dain's dismay when Wawa is offered as a bride to the Imedin and they accept. The Imedin leave the meeting, to return tomorrow to collect the bride.

Unable to contemplate a separate future, Dain and Wawa escape overnight. Like Romeo and Juliet, they enjoy a brief period together while they are pursued both by Wawa's family (who eventually catch up with them) and the Imedin,. Seemingly persuaded to comply with the tribes' wishes they commit mutual suicide by eating poisonous mushrooms while camped out on Mount Yasur,

Despite the tragic ending, this film is so worth watching A convincing romance is always heart-warming and Wawa and Dain's enthusiasm for each other's company is endearing. A glimpse into a lifestyle completely different to our own is fascinating - it seems a very physical existence and the characters raced through the forest and up the volcano at the  drop of a hat, seemingly without raising a sweat. The children were a  particular pleasure to watch as they  played games in the forest and in the waterhole and they seemed happy, carefree and cute.

Selin

Selin is a delight and her parents struggle to get her to do what she's told, The scenery is lovely and was nostalgic for us since we've been to Tanna, climbed Mount Yasur and been to a kastom village. Take a break from your life and experience what it's like to be on Tanna - we recommend it.

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

The Lure

The band that hunts mermaids together, stays together.

Or perhaps not. The link between pop music, mermaids and Warsaw is not fully explained by Disney, but The Lure fills in those gaps in your knowledge, plus it goes into their eating habits.

The Lure is very much a musical film. It is centred around the two mermaids and the pop band they join. Not only are there musical performances at the night club (of which they are a permanent feature) but also any of the main characters may burst into a song and dance routine in any scene, rather like a 1940's musical or Bollywood film. I don't know if the songs are typical of Polish music but the lyrics invoke some crazy imagery e.g.

Holy moly, bitter tastes can be delicious as hell
Picking at love’s cracked-up shells

The story line is dream like, with scenes that don't make sense, sudden jumps and characters that don't serve any plot purpose. It feels like a bunch of amazing ideas thrown together around the basic concept of two mermaids leaving the Vistula to work in a Warsaw night club. But given that the action is centred around a nightclub it is not unreasonable that things make as much sense as you would expect from that sleep deprived, addled world. It is also a horror film with a bit of gore and some radical surgery in the second half. It is hard to pigeon hole this crazy musical horror. It is better to just let its madness wash over you and go with the tide.

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

The Clan

The Dirty War in Argentina started in the late 1960s or mid 1970s and lasted until 1983 when the military lost power in Argentina. Thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) of people were killed / "disappeared" during the period. There were also 340 concentration camps. Such an operation required lots of people. So what do those people do when the new government no longer requires their services? Arquímedes Puccio was one of those people. He and a couple of ex-colleagues decided to continue kidnapping people, this time for ransom. They kept their victims in the Puccio family home in a middle class suburb of Buenos Aires and two of Arquímedes's sons were part of the gang. To avoid the victims giving information to the police the Puccio gang routinely killed their victims once the ransom had been paid.

The Clan is a fictionalised story of the Puccio family and their kidnappings. It centres on the relationship between Arquímedes and his rugby star son Alejandro. Each needs the other. The son is a vital part of the gang and also knows too much to be allowed too much freedom away from dad, while Alejandro's life style and rugby career is facilitated by his dad's money and connections. The film contrasts family life, Alejandro's rugby career and his love life with the kidnappings and killings. The effect is to show that evil people can seem normal and live normal lives.

Guillermo Francella's impassive face and his pale blue eyes fixed on the world make an obvious villain and domineering father. His self confidence in what he is doing as father and criminal is convincing. Contrasting with him is curly haired Peter Lanzani with his lopsided grin playing Alejandro as the obviously popular rugby star son.


Arquímedes's wife and daughters seem oblivious to what is going on around them, and it would have been interesting if the film had explored their side of the story to some extent.

Arquímedes Puccio died in 2013 at age 83, having been released from jail a few years earlier.  Alejandro died at 2008.

Ian's rating 4/5

Perfect Strangers

Perfect Strangers is a dinner party movie. In case you haven't seen one, the idea is that at the dinner party some slightly outrageous thing happens, everyone gets stirred up and some dramatic revelations are made about the attendees. What's in a name (which we saw at the film festival in 2012) is a classic example. In that movie, the outrageous thing was a couple announcing that they were going to call their unborn baby Adolphe .

So, in Perfect Strangers we have a group of 30- 40-somethings ( 3 couples and a single guy) meeting for for dinner at the apartment of one of the couples.The men have known each other since they were teenagers so they're old friends. In this case, the outrageous suggestion is that everyone has to disclose to the group any activity on their mobile phone. Texts must be read out, photos must be displayed and calls must be on speaker phone. And to complicate matters slightly, two of the guys swap phones (since they have the same model) so that the unmarried one gets the nude photo on What's App at 10 pm rather than the married one.

There are some laugh-out-loud moments, but probably not enough for what should have been light entertainment. We get to know the characters slightly too well, and they are a little bit too likeable so we can't just rejoice in them getting their come-uppances, we wince at their potential suffering instead. Ultimately, the revelation of too many secrets just made me sad.

Anne's rating 2.5/5

The Daughter

Ibsen is the world's second most performed playwright (after Shakespeare). Such is the NZ education system, that he could have been a tennis player or Harry Potter character for all I knew, until I was researching for this review. The Daughter is based on the Henrik Ibsen play: The Wild Duck.

Henry Neilson (Geoffrey Rush) owns the sawmill that is a small Australian town's main employer. He lives in a huge, country house, shoots duck, has servants and is aloof. He looks out of place in modern Australia, clearly a character from an old story. Despite his failing business (he is being forced into closing the sawmill) he is planning a grand wedding to Anna (Anna Torv) his beautiful and much younger fiancee (and ex-housekeeper). His son, Christian, arrives back from USA with an American accent on a rare trip home. He has a huge chip on his shoulder and an aim to cause trouble and get up almost everyone's nose. After an initial swipe at Anna he runs into Oliver, a school chum and from then on the two of them are almost inseparable. A parallel story line involves Oliver's teenage daughter Hedvig (Odessa Young - who also starred in Looking for Grace) and Oliver's dad (Sam Neill). Eventually Christian's destructive urge goes completely nuclear.

While some characters (especially Henry Neilson) don't fit in the 21st century and Christian seems almost unbelievably vindictive, the film is still effective. The acting is superb and the plot (particularly in the second half) is like watching a train wreck looking for somewhere to happen. I couldn't tell you how closely the film sticks to the original play but while it still looks like a film of a play it is a much better adaption than most play-to-film adaptions I've seen.

I've never seen Australia looking so wet and cold.

Ian's rating 4.5/5 Anne's rating 3/5

Thithi

Century Gowda's death is the first event in Thithi and is preceded by a brief snippet of his life. This seems to consist of haranguing and insulting everyone he comes across. Century Gowda is described as a cantankerous centenarian but I'd call him a miserable old git. I think I was supposed to find him (and many of the characters) endearing, but I didn't. Century's main relevance to the plot is the five acres of farm land that he owned.

Century is survived by three generations - his son Gadappa, his grandson Thamanna and his great-grandson Abhi. The five acres technically belong to Gadappa but he's a bit of a free spirit whose favourite hobbies are drinking, smoking and playing games and he's not interested in the land. Nor is he interested in signing the land over to his son, who is chiefly interested in selling it. Abhi  leans more towards the free spirit side of the family - his hobbies appear to be playing cards and pursuing the girl of his dreams.

A thithi is a kind of post-funeral ceremomy which takes place 11 days after the death and cremation. The local astrologer says five hundred people must be invited. and and it's expected that they are fed very well. The film covers the eleven days leading up to the thithi and the family machinations that take place. Thamanna decides to fake Gadappa's death so he can sell the land. He borrows money in anticipation of the sale and pays Gadappa to disappear. He gives Abhi some of the money to buy three sheep for the thithi feast. Gadappa does a poor job of disappearing and Abhi loses the sheep money gambling on cards. I struggled to care. In the right circumstances this would be a comedy of errors but it just seemed like a bunch of mean-spirited people (nearly all the characters spent the whole movie complaining) got what they deserved. Avoid.

Anne's rating 1.5/5 Ian's rating 3/5

The Handmaiden

The Handmaiden is a film featuring deception, betrayal and control amid opulent elegance and plenty of sex. Set in 1930s Korea and concentrating on high production values, most of the action is set in the country mansion of a Korean mine owner, who is an old man pretending to be Japanese to further his social climbing (Korea was a Japanese colony at the time).

The Handmaiden starts with a plot by a young con-man to swindle Lady Hideko, the niece of the old man's dead Japanese wife, who is the heiress to a fortune in Japan (confused yet?). This con job requires an accomplice (a Korean pick pocket called Sook-Hee) to take up the job as maid to the heiress at the mansion. The first part of the film is told from Sook-Hee's point of view. This deception is not the only one operating in the film and all four leads are striving for control over one or more of the others. Sex also plays a big part in the film. The old man's hobby is collecting old Japanese pornography and holding readings for fellow fans followed by an auction of the relevant book. The young man is trying to seduce the heiress. The women also have sex. In fact the relationship between heiress and her new maid is the core of the film with the men hovering around and trying to control them.

Director Park Chan-wook enjoys playing with the audience, leading us up the garden path, undermining our expectations and drawing out the sex scenes longer than some audience members will be comfortable with. Despite the abundance of sex, Park Chan-wook also includes some of the violence and gore that he is famous for.

Trailer

Ian's rating 4/5

Chronesthesia

The urge to support the underdog and the home product can lend a rose tint to reviewing a Wellington zero budget film. Hayden Weal worked with a small cast (taking the lead role himself) and smaller crew; and makes his audience work a little harder than most directors to follow half a dozen story threads and some time travelling. But it is worth the effort as he brings all the story threads together and binds them into a satisfactory conclusion.

Initially the story feels like a directionless mess, rather like its slacker protagonist's life. But gradually the various story elements come together as Dan starts to take control. The supporting cast is divided into those that act like they exist to further the plot and those that act like bystanders that Dan has some how irritated. This adds a degree of realism often missing from other films.

Dan lives a quiet life. He works making coffee in a cafe and spends the rest of the day alone at home or running the streets of Wellington while listening to music on his headphones. Then one morning he wakes to find a confusing message written on the inside of his bedroom window. This leads him out of the rut his life has become and he discovers other people who are living lives that resemble his in one way or another. He sets out on a mission of sorts and he learns that messing with other people's lives has good and bad consequences.

Chronesthesia is, more or less, the idea that some people can remember the future (a sort of mental time travel).

Compared with other Wellington made films this one is well acted, tells a slightly unusual but simple story in an interesting way with (mostly) believable characters.  Wellingtonians can try to identify all the locations in this almost entirely outdoor film.  I hope to see it come back after the Film Festival as it deserves a similar audience to What We Do In the Shadows.

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

A Perfect Day

A slice-of-life drama, a Perfect Day is just what its title suggests - a day in the life of some aid workers in the Balkans in 1995, a day when a lot of the things that could go wrong, do.  The story centres around the search for rope to remove a body from the local well. Benicio del Toro and Tim Robbins star as the hardened long-time aid workers with Melanie Thierry playing a recent recruit. Olga Kurylenko plays a conflict evaluator. They have assorted adventures together including getting lost and having to spend the night in their utility trucks.

The film's not especially deep but does give realistic insights into potential hazards of that kind of work - lack of equipment, bureaucracy getting in the way of progress, weapons doing the talking and unexpectedly gruesome sights. The characters are likeable, the scenery is excellent, the dialogue (and indeed the film) is darkly comic. I enjoyed the recurring cow theme, the soundtrack and the journey the film took me on.

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