di A.Fitzibbon,W. De Ricker

> nuummioq di Torben Bech, Otto Rosing

> how i ended up... di Alexei Popogrebsky

> mother teresa of cats di Paweł Sala

> the company men di John Wells

> for 80 days di Garaño & Goenaga

> chloe di Atom Egoyan

mother teresa of cats
di Paweł Sala
Polonia 2010, 95'

Competition

di Alice Fitzibbon

24/30

Nearly six years ago Francois Ozon made Five Times Two (2004) and won Pasinetti Award at Venice Film Festival. For Irreversible Gaspar Noe got Bronze Horse at IFF in Stockholm four years before Ozon’s feature appears in cinemas. Both of them used parallel plot construction – telling the story from the end to the point when it was supposed to start. Francois Ozon focused on the breakdown of a relationship. Gaspar Noe was trying to discover the paths of violence. Pawel Sala, the director of Mother Teresa of Cats, recent polish film featured in the Karlovy Vary’s Competition, considers both - collapse of marriage and sadism which slowly takes it under control.
The story about Artur (Mateusz Kosciukiewicz), his little brother (Filip Garbacz) and their parents is based on true events. The director claims that a few years ago he has read an article about a decapitated woman found hidden in the room of her two sons. The boys were living with their mother’s body for several days and then run away. Sala’s film is beginning with the scene with young girl - the family flat-mate who is looking for Teresa (Ewa Skibinska). The woman seems to leave her family, because she could not reach an agreement with her older son, Artur. Yet, after five days of hopeless searching, suddenly the girl decides to enter the boy’s room as she is sure that they are not inside. The terrible smell is going out, she pushes aside cats wandering around and opens the window. After a few minutes of total stupefaction she opens the wardrobe door. The head of Teresa fell down the floor. From that zero hour the plot proceeds backwards, firstly day by day, afterwards month by month.
Pawel Sala tries to examine what happened by gradually moving into the common lives of his characters. Scene by scene he follows their daily conversations. Even if he is not going deeply into their thoughts, he marked the reactions, which made the whole picture of each person. Although the most important one is Artur, who seems to be the black sheep in the family from the early beginning. With emotional blackmail he is destroying their parents’ marriage, puts his father on the weakest position in the family and made his mother abused. At the same time he became an idol for his little brother.
Hitherto Mateusz Kosciukiewicz was a teenage girls’ idol after his appearance in Jacek Borcuch feature All That I Love (2009). With Mother Teresa… young polish actor confirmed the image made up with leading role in Borcuch’s movie even if in All That I Love he played a character who is friendly and attractive to the viewers and in Sala’s one he is highly dark and repulsive person. Yet, it is kind of rebellion in his face and moves which you cannot not believe. One of the Sundance Film Festival managing director said, that he seems to be new James Dean; he is alike River Phoenix or Heath Ledger. Moreover, his partner in Sala’s movie is Filip Garbacz – a teenage boy, awarded with Special Mention for the Best Debut Actor for Robert Glinski’s film Piggies (2009) at Karlovy Vary Film Festival before a year. “I felt that Mateusz took care of Filip as regards acting. They are both totally different. Filip is a screen animal, he has the instinct. Mateusz works in impulses, in spurts, he organically becomes the character” – claims the Mother Teresa… director.
Unfortunately for young Garbacz, in comparison with Mateusz Kosciukiewicz appearance, he became more supporting than leading actor. It seems that as the viewers he was rather observing his brother from the very beginning, listening to him and trying to discover what he is planning to do. Highly fascinated by Artur, he was the one who turned our look into the young man who’s behavior was more pathological than rebellious and imagination more sick thanextraordinary. Examining all the detail leading to the cruel event never showed in the movie is more than absorbing experience.

nuummioq
di Torben Bech, Otto Rosing
Danimarca 2010, 98'

Forum of Independent

 di Alice Fitzibbon

26/30

Every day all over again you are afraid of death. Malik (Lars Rosing) is dealing with the certainty that every step he is making leads him to the dead end. It is hardly impossible not to make story about his life pathetic and sentimental. Yet, Torben Bech and Otto Rosing, the Nuummioq directors, featured in section Forum of Independent at 45th IFF in Karlovy Vary successfully drift away from the danger of being schematic.

As long as the story about Malik may be predictable, it is keeping the viewers in suspense the same time.  In anticipation for death, at the beginning of the film Malik is told to be terminally sick, all we can do is waiting. It is supposing to turn in simply observation of the man’s reactions, distortions of his face and glimpsed of his eyes while he is looking at life passing him by. Nothing’s more false than that. Malik does not displacing the facts from his mind, he rather pushing them away from his ordinary life. He is not telling the truth to his best friend – Michael (Angunnguaq Larsen), instead he is going with him in the mountains to make commercial for their new occupation. When he tries to raise his head to look at the sky, it seems like is looking forward to hearing the sound of future. Yet, the kind of nowadays doom – his illness, is coming after him, make him remember that the future has been already written.

Malik lives with the nature, where death is natural part of life. There are no such things as coincidences there, although Malik and Michael meet the lonely woman at the lakeside the night before her death. The most exceptional part of the movie began with her sudden and inexplicable morning death. Malik finds the woman sitting next to the stone; she seems look at the sunrise. Yet, there’s no more than a few minutes when Malik realizes that she is not breathing any more.  Lonely with his discovery as he was when he had heard the news at the hospital, he covers the woman’s body with white material and lye next to her on the wet grass covering his face under his hood.

All the tension in the movie is highly connected with Malik’s feelings. Viewers are lead to the most intimate situations, which man never shares even with his best friend.  Yet, there is no pathos in Bech and Rosing’s movie, there is any easy grief. There is only love, which comes at the worst time, so it appearance is more connected with irony than anything else. However, the irony is a part of life like everything else. That’s way the directors set strength against the weakness, new love against death end. Nonetheless it could be consider as a cliché, it is the life as we may experience it. The Greenland’s stunning landscapes just marked Malik’s life to death, because it makes it profoundly noticeable.

for 80 days

di Jon Garaño, José Mari Goenaga
Spagna 2010, 106'

Another View

di Willem De Ricker

25/30

Every time she drinks coffee, she forgets how hot the cup could be. She is about sixty years old now, but even so knows that she have learnt nothing really during these years. She makes the same mistakes over and over again. She is using her bike instead of car and making childish birthday parties in hospital for her brother in coma. Every time she is falling in love like it was the first time. Moreover, in eighty days which were showed in Jon Garano and Jose Maria Goenaga 80 egunean, Maite (Mariasun Pagoaga) meets Axun (Itziar Aizpuru), her friend from secondary school to prove that calf love does not weaker with aging.
Maite met Axun when they were teenage girls in secondary school, living in times which would never let their relationship go beyond pure friendship. Yet, the most memorable scene from their common childhood (returning in few flashbacks during their adult story) is the one when girls were freely dancing in the sunny room. While Axun was wearing white modesty dress, Maite was wearing her father’s suit, sophisticated white shirt with jacket’s sleeves long enough to make her look more girlish than masculine. Altogether with natural and careless way they finish their dance in bed. Was it supposed to be kind a substitute for sexual closeness that could never occur between them that time? Yet, in Axun memories it was Maite who showed her how to kiss.
Many years’ later women meet in the hospital above their relatives’ beds. However their accidents should not be considered as a stroke of fate if we do not believe in destiny, it seems that the women’ story was a sort of never-ending one, so they renewed encounter was necessary for them. Still, even in fifty years passed they by, not many things have been changed. While they meet first time, both was immature girls, even if Maite has already knew that her relationship with Axun is something more than easy friendship. The emotional tension for years has not changed a lot, despite of women age and life experiences. In their relationship, Axun stayed this little girl to be embarrassed enough to kiss a boy or moreover to admit her desire for Maite. For years she has become a country woman and faithful wife of a man portrait by the Spanish directors as an old man, who is weak enough to open a jar by himself. With Axun they spend their days with tiring recurrence. Yet, after Axun’s daughter’s ex-husband car accident the women has begun to visit him in hospital, her boring live was suddenly contrasted with Maite’s one. This is the only one – but still a weak point of the 80 egunean.
As long the plot develops in an extraordinary story about two women falling in lesbian love in their sixties, the opposites between their words became more and more visible. Axun – a country woman and wife is juxtaposed with Maite; a modern music teacher living in San Sebastian, lesbian with photos of her lovers in her living room’s wall. Too many clichés are building the surface of their lives and relationship, which could not be fulfilled with passion and understanding. They need and want each other as the world is making with love and death, white and black. Axun and Maite are standing in two opposite positions, yet the magnetic pole in-between them is not the place where they could exist together. They belong to completely different worlds, never may mix them to make one whole space for their love. Though the relationship is not possible, the challenge women are taking to understand that issue was shown with beautiful intimacy and delicacy. With remarkable narration, the Spanish directors told a story that needs attention, because it is too secretly, too picturesque and too impressive for not being seen.

chloe

di Atom Egoyan
Stati Uniti 2009, 96'

Horizons

di Willem De Ricker

24/30

Music is about to filling the open space in our lonely hearts. Adam (Liam Neeson) is a music teacher at university. Catherine (Julianne Moore) usually just listening to the melodies composed by her son, Michael (Max Thieriot). They are all lonely. Yet, in the new Atom Egoyan’s film Chloe, featured in Section Horizons during 45th International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic it is Julianne Moore, who demonstrate how stunning loneliness could be.
After her picturesque role in Tom Ford’s Single Man (2009), where for couple of minutes she became gorgeously charming and depressed Charley standing by Colin Firth in the New Year’s Eve, in Egoyan’s feature she has turned into serious wife, working woman and loving mother. Yet, her solitude has grown up in proportion to her apparent maturity. She’s not pretending how happy she is and how easy her life could be as Charley did. Catherine is not hiding behind the luxury dress and sophisticated make-up. In one of the scenes, she’s standing in her old T-shirt and blue track suit trousers in front of the window looks just as she feels – abandoned by the people she loved and completely unattractive, old enough to be mother rather than a woman.
Catherine is suspecting her husband of betrayal. After finding text-message in his mobile phone, she realized that it had not been bad coincidence that Adam has missed his plane back home in his birthday. Miranda was the cause. Although her husband is denying Catherine’s superstitions and tricky questions, the woman become obsessed by the thought of Adam making love with young girls. Yet, it is the director of The Sweet Hereafter (1997) who really succeeds in making his viewers acquainted in his own obsessive motives taking up in his movies. Honesty is one of them, the most important one. Atom Egoyan more than usually tries to figure out how dishonesty and deceit could effectively turned each life into nightmare.
While crying in restaurant toilet, Catherine meets Chloe (Amanda Seyfried). In few minutes later it occurred that the young, attractive woman is just a call girl. Yet, equally bizarre but strong bonds springs up between women. Catherine, perfectly honest (for a change) unbosoms herself to Chloe and ask the girl to seduce her husband. She wants to know, how far he can go. But the real question is how far Catherine will go. Involved in outlandish, kind of erotically exotic and unexpected relation with prostitute, the woman is going much father that she was thinking at the beginning.
The director of Chloe is playing not only with his characters and their emotions. He lead the viewers into madness, making them watch story full of twists and turns, the relations saturated by erotic ups and downs, intimate conversation and events literally taken out from classical thriller.

How I Ended This Summer

di Alexei Popogrebsky
Russia 2010, 124'

Horizons

di Willem De Ricker

28/30

Similar landscape resolution (ref. nuummioq) used Alexei Popogrebsky in movie How I Ended This Summer (2010), awarded Silver Bear in Berlinale for two Best Actors (Grigoriy Dobrygin and Sergei Puskepalis) and for Outstanding Artistic Achievement. The film is featured in section Horizons in IFF in Karlovy Vary. Previous Popogrebsky feature - “Simple Things” was awarded in Karlovy Vary. His debut “Koktebel”, co-directed with Borys Khlebnikov had been announced as a Discover of the Year by Canne’s Critics during film festival there in 2004.

How I Ended… sets up on Czukotka, where director spend almost three months with his actors. They were shooting in old weather station built up on abandoned island of the Arctic Ocean. For the summertime Pavel Danilov (Grigory Dobrygin) is joining there Sergei Gulybin (Sergei Puskepalis), kind of an old sea wolf. Pavel’s unpretentious behavior leads him far away from close relationship with mature Sergei; boy’s irresponsibility gave a birth of conflict played in silence. Pavel starts to lie successively; the grief which motives we do not exactly know leads the boy to senseless actions. Kind of psychosis is growing between them. The station on the island became a prison, where surrealistic feel of encirclement made a stay.

Stunning photos of Pavel Kostomarov put in mind the atmosphere of Andriey Tarkowski movies, however you may also called How I Ended This Summer the perfect thriller. Empty open spaces, where human being is situated, made every single gesture more visible. Emotions growing to the enormous level or completely disperse in the misty landscape. Yet, Popogrebsky does not agree with the opinion that he was inspired by the Russian filmmaker. He claims that his aim was to talk about people not symbols; about reality, not myths. Popogrebsky wanted to examine behavior of people located in a place, where time and good known rules do not exist. He achieved it in an extraordinary way.

the company men

di John Wells
Stati Uniti 2010, 108'

Out of Competition

di Alice Fitzibbon

18/30

Nominated for six Oscars - Up in the Air (2009) directed by Jason Reitman was a story about Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), the dismissals’ head manager travelling around the country and firing the company men. Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck), the leading character in Wells’ The Company Men could be one of them.
For twelve years Bobby has been working as the sales manager for GTX Company, he has already bought a beautiful house in the suburbs of Boston and two cars. In the opening impressively mounted sequence Bobby is compared with other company men. While he is wearing jacket, Gene McClary (Tommy Lee Jones) is buttoning up his one. As Phil Woodworth (Chris Cooper) is polishing his shoes, Bobby is fastening his tie. All of them glimpse on the mirror and leaving for work. Gradually, they will lose it altogether. Instead of highly professional Ryan Bingham, Sally Wilcox (Maria Bello) will say them goodbye and good luck.
If they were characters in Reitman’s movie, surely they would hear that the new kind of life is waiting for them. Bobby would be assured that his children need his attention and for now on his family bonds would grew in strength. Gene McClary should be convinced that another youth is waiting just around the corner. Yet, everything what they all have was their jobs, polished shoes, expensive suits and friends’ respect mixed with jealousy. They like it; they live for it and breathing it in like the fresh air.
John Wells made a portrait of men who was released from the company prison and starts to suffocate with unexpected freedom they get. Phil could not go back home before six as he tries to hide that he has lost his job. Gene is running into affair with Sally (ironically?) and their every Tuesday one day stand to feel that there is still something regular in his life. All that time Bobby is trying to accommodate to the new life conditions and learn a new phrase: “We cannot afford it.” Yet, the director seems to prove that the company men could never change. He his telling a story about highly unexpected breakdown but he does not believe that the road may lead only to the dead end. Live of his characters is alike amplitude; after going up, is falling down suddenly, yet it seems never tears off. Wells has just entered their life while it starts going down. As he is leaving them, all the enthusiasm is coming back with some new opportunities and brighter future somewhere up in the skyscraper.
However many things are happening in Wells’s movie, nothing is really changing. The leading characters are put in front of challenge and made to make an effort for saving life that they are used to it. As in classical narrative the constancy is disturbed just to build it once again with the capitalism’s rules. Along with this context, Wells’ characters have turned into allegorical types of nowadays business world. They are just things which may be wanted or should be throwing out. Consistently with enthusiasm and smiling face, they should be finding their way home – their way to the business class. As long as Bobbie’s wife, Maggie (Rosemarie DeWitt) is trying to convince her husband that no matter what will happen, he has the family; Bobbie is felling more and more abandoned by the life he is fit into. As a carpenter he became much more hopeless and embarrassing than masculine as he supposed to be. There is only one way for him and he knows it. Was it the same case with John Wells? Could he choose different way of portrait the company men? More sophisticated one, more dramatic? Probably, but where is the point of complicating correctly made movie with classical narrative style and simple plot? Nowhere, so let it be as it is and prepare oneself for and average production trying to show the reverse of capitalistic way of life.

SITO UFFICIALE