Harry here with the lovely Elaine... who has been our dame in Rotterdam... She's seeing some damn fine reports and has sent in two reports today... this is Day 4, and in Day 5 we get to some good stuff. Since I've been on a phone call with a friend most of the night talking about their burgeoning sexuality... I should really just get on with the next chapter of Elaine's adventures in cinema...
DAY 4
I'm in a bit of a rush, so I'm afraid I have only two reviews for you, of films which range from fairly boring to downright terrible. I HAVE seen a few excellent movies lately ("Pulse," "Avalon," "Suicide Club," "No Man's Land" and "Dogtown and Z-Boys"), not to mention a short film which absolutely rocked the house ("Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers"), but I haven't got round to finishing my reviews of them. Rest assured I will soon make amends.
Today's theme seems to be redundancy. Forty percent of the Iranian film "Delbaran" is comprised of material no Western director would have used, while the French-Japanese production "H story" (starring Beatrice Dalle) is a string of scenes no director in his right mind would ever have considered shooting. Not surprisingly, the latter is by far the worst film I have seen at the festival so far. I didn't walk out of it (although I seriously considered it), but I did give it a 1 ("very bad") and had a hearty fit of giggles when it was finally over.
And you know what the really strange thing is? In the Audience Award polls, "H story" gets a 3.11 out of 5, even though everyone I saw voting gave it a one, and I even heard one ballot collector asking the other whether she had received anything but a one. I'm not into conspiracy theories, but I suspect some serious vote rigging here.
I DID see two acceptable films on my fourth day. Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Pulse" is the most intriguing horror film I have seen in ages, and Sinisa Dragin's "Every Day God Kisses Us on the Mouth" wasn't too bad, either. Dragin also had the honour of coming up with the best quote of the day. Just before the screening of his serial killer flick began, he said: "If you don't like the film, you can walk out of the door. Of course, I will be there, too." Which drew a few laughs.
Anyway, on to the films now. No "Pulse" review today,
but I should get round to it tomorrow.
H STORY (Nobuhiro Suwa, 2001)
At one point in "H story" someone asks Beatrice Dalle whether she is alright. Her answer is "Yeah, if I could just stop falling asleep all the time." That, I think, is the best summary of "H story" I could give you.
"H story" isn't about heroin. Nor is it about hydrogen, although it could with a stretch of the imagination be argued that it is. It is about history and why it should be left alone.
If only the makers of "H story" could have left it alone.
"H story" is a film in which Beatrice Dalle plays herself. More precisely, it is a mockumentary in which an actress plays an actress who plays an actress in a remake of a film about the making of a film. The film to be remade is "Hiroshima Mon Amour," and Dalle plays the Emmanuelle Riva part as well as her own.
You still with me?
This is, quite simply, an AWFUL film. It purposes to prove that it is impossible to remake "Hiroshima Mon Amour" in this time and age, which I don't think anyone doubted in the first place. Before it gets to that conclusion, however, it takes you through endless re-enactments of scenes from "Hiroshima," shot in garish colours in sterile, loveless surroundings, featuring a Japanese actor who speaks better French than Eiji Okada but has zero charisma, and Dalle who not only lacks the luminous quality that made Riva's performance so special, but looks plain ugly into the bargain. And not only does the film wallow in these re-enactments, quoted out of context with no reason provided for their inclusion, but it also has the indecency to fade to a lengthy black about ten times before finally grinding to a halt. Talk about putting your viewers through a cruel ordeal.
Two thirds of the audience I watched the film with left the screening within half an hour. The remaining viewers started giggling harder with every false ending. When it was finally over, everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) there awarded it a 1.
To give credit where credit is due, "H story" features one excellent scene. It is where Dalle and Hiroaki Umano practice the restaurant scene from "Hiroshima Mon Amour" and Dalle suddenly breaks down, unable to continue the scene. Her performance is so startlingly authentic here that for a moment, you wonder whether you aren't looking at a real documentary after all, and this is the real Dalle (as opposed to the actress playing Beatrice Dalle) breaking down. Then the camera makes some movements it couldn't possibly make in a real documentary, and you realise that you are watching an actress at work again.
As the above suggests, Dalle is on impressive form in
the film. However, she looks awful (think drawn and
anorexic, add junkie features, multiply by ten and you
have an approximation of the truth), and I can't for
the life of me fathom why she agreed to be in this
film, unless there is something in her love life (is
she going out with the director?) that I am not aware
of. It is a pretentious and boring piece of shit, and
one that everyone on this site should avoid like the
plague.
DELBARAN (Abolfazl Jalili, 2001)
Delbaran is a place on the Iranian-Afghan border which used to be famous for its secret trysts. In Abolfazl Jalili's ninth film (not to be confused with Majid Majidi's "Baran," which is also screening at the festival), however, it is not so much a place for illicit love as for other illicit things. The men in Delbaran play at cards (which is illegal in Iran), but more importantly, they smuggle Afghans over the border. Truckloads of them.
This is not to say that "Delbaran" is about the refugee problem. The film does not attempt to explain why people flee Afghanistan (which, by now, we all know anyway); nor does it presume to propose what should be done with them once they have crossed the border. It just makes it obvious that there should be a place for Afghans in Iran, and that police campaigns to stop them crossing the border are both cruel and useless.
"Delbaran" is a very Iranian film in that it largely consists of scenes most Western directors would consider irrelevant, such as people doing household chores and fixing cars. Every now and then, these scenes are infused with a bit of humour (particularly in the second half), but generally speaking they are too repetitive and domestic to be of much interest to the Western viewer. That said, the final half hour is fairly action-packed, which more or less makes up for the sluggish hour preceding it. The film also has some of the most impressive cinematography I have seen at the festival. Jalili not only gets all the camera angles right, but the orange hue of the desert lends his well-composed shots a very warm and poetic flavour. It doesn't make up for the fact that hardly anything happens, but it certainly makes the boredom bearable.
Elaine
