Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005)

The rest of my weekend viewing either left me cold (The Day After Tomorrow) -- literally, since it was about America freezing over -- or put me to sleep (The Notebook), although I usually like watching James Garner, so we'll give those a miss.  Instead let me tell you about the above movie which is the third in the Korean director's (Park Chan-Wook) revenge trilogy which started with "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance" and continued with "Oldboy" -- both immensely interesting films.  This one was a little more subdued, although it had its share of violence, but was beautifully filmed, exquisitely scored and forcefully acted.  The heroine has just been released from jail after serving 13 years (from the age of nineteen) for a child murder which she did not commit.  She appears to have an angelic nature but nurtures revenge against the man who put her there and made her lose her young daughter.  The movie focuses both on her years in prison together with the backstories of some of her cellmates and her plan for vengeance in the days after her release. How she tracts him down, unearths his other crimes and gets others to partake in the bloody finale is the gist of the tale, but it is also full of many other nice touches which don't necessarily further the action but which add to the richness of the scene.

Fraulein Else (1928)

I'm taking a break from the Film Festival this weekend to play a little "catch-up" with the rest of my life -- which of course does include watching the odd film or two.  It was my first viewing of the above which again was recently restored, but despite a slim story based on a Arthur Schnitzler tale it was so much livelier than the other German silent that I viewed yesterday evening (and reviewed below).  Part of this was due to an engaging orchestral score but most of it was down to the playing of the lead role by Elisabeth Bergner who was a big stage star in Germany at the time.  She and her husband (the director here) moved to Britain in the thirties, presumably to escape from Hitler, and she had a brief starry career.  In this movie she has gone to St Moritz with her friends, but receives a wire from her mother that papa is in deep financial trouble; she is asked to approach a "friend" of the family who is some kind of dirty old man.  He makes it clear that he might help in exchange for her revealing her body (or more).  She can't bring herself to this and evolves a plan which ends in her death and completely mortifies the potential financial saviour; how this would help dear papa is a very moot point.

The Chronicles of the Grey House (1925)

I was dead keen to see this German silent, not only because it had never been shown before in Britain, but also since this was the world premiere of the restored copy.  Yes, I admit, I am a completist when it comes to movies.  However it was something of a lumpen affair, despite the occasional nice architectural framing.  It was the story of two brothers fighting over an inheritance which the natural heir had jeopardized by marrying the daughter of a servant.  Big shame!  She was played by Lil Dagover -- a well-known name from silent days, but a fairly stolid presence.  It was only in the last reel where her spirit appeared to protect the son she had died giving birth to that there was much in the way of excitement.  Otherwise the completely static camera work added to the pedestrian plod.

The King (2005)

The blurb in the Festival programme made this film sound a whole lot better than it was.  It is a collaboration between the British documentarian who made the very weird "Wisconsin Death Trip" and an established Hollywood screenwriter, and stars Gael Garcia Bernal in his first English-language role -- but all, I thought, to little avail.  William Hurt is a born-again pastor in Texas who is faced with Garcia Bernal claiming to be the son of a long-past relationship.  It is not 100% definite that the latter is telling the whole truth since he swiftly impregnates the young lass who may be his stepsister and also murders her brother who may or may not be his stepbrother.  When the hypocritical Hurt acknowledges the young man as his son, things take a turn for the worse (and yes, they can get worse).  Unfortunately the ending was left wide open which was less a case of "viewer, make up your own mind" than unsatisfactory storytelling.

Lemming (2005)

I wasn't expecting too much from this French film, but found it interesting and not a little bit disturbing.  Like the previous movie of its German-born director, Dominik Moll, "Harry, He's Here to Help", unexpected events conspire to bring unforseen threats to the most placid existences.  Charlotte Gainsbourg and her husband have a loving relationship until they meet up with his boss and the latter's bitter wife, played by Charlotte Rampling. Concurrent with this, they have discovered the titular lemming in the S-bend of their kitchen sink.  What takes place thereafter is the stuff of nightmares and possession.  One can't look for logic as the film plays itself out, but one can be terrified by the characters' apparent loss of control over their actions.  My only criticism is that it was all a little too leisurely and would have benefitted by a tighter running time. 

The Girl from Monday (2004)

Hal Hartley hasn't done much of interest since 1998's "Henry Fool", so I was rather looking forward to seeing his latest effort.  While my companion thought it was good, I must confess that I was disappointed, perhaps because I am not over-keen on sci-fi as a genre.  More likely the reason is that it was shot on digital video which produced a hand-held shaky feel which I find hard to watch.  More important I thought that the storyline was fairly threadbare; the concept of a near future controlled by a huge corporation that gives consumer credits for sexual promiscuity and self-interest may be of some potential interest, but the way this played out was slack. Incidentally, Monday (where the girl was from) was an extraterrestrial planet.

The Blue Dahlia (1946)

This film has been considered a noir classic for the nearly sixty years since its release and garnered an Oscar nomination for its screenwriter, the great Raymond Chandler.  However if truth be told it has not held up all that well and is more competent than exciting.  Alan Ladd plays a war hero who returns with his two buddies to find that his wife has been unfaithful and has been responsible for the death of their son.  When she is found dead, he is the natural suspect although one knows he is innocent.  There are also two characters who might have been the guilty party, but one doesn't really believe this.  Therefore when the real killer is revealed, it is something of an anticlimax.  To some extent my main problem here is with Ladd.  He is an able and attractive actor elevated into a reasonable career by a pushy casting agent wife.  However he is so tiny that one must really suspend belief to see him beating up all the heavies (and don't remind me of Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan).  He was continuously paired with wee Veronica Lake, as he is here, to make him look taller.

Takeshis' (2005)

As I wrote yesterday I am a Takeshi Kitano fan and therefore probably better placed to enjoy his new film than a viewer who might be less familiar with his work.  I am hard-pressed to describe this simply, since it mixes fantasy with bits from previous films to form a kind of "Takeshi's Greatest Hits".  He plays himself in his Beat Takeshi persona as a Japanese icon of both violence and humour; he also plays (in his bleached Zatoichi hairdo) a convenience store clerk who dreams of success as an actor because of his resemblance. This all gets intertwined with characters from his other movies and presumably from his popular TV shows in Japan and includes traditional transvestite dancers, energetic tap-dancers and characters that  die but won't stay dead.  The would-be Kitano finds that increasing violence and bloody gun-play bring him nearer to the world of his hero, but the actor-director seems to be saying that all is illusion -- that none of this is real.  An amusing, fascinating and perplexing film. 

Beyond the Rocks (1922)

It would certainly not do to be rude about a recently discovered "lost" film; however I must confess that the above movie is more of a curiosity than a masterpiece.  Pieced together by the Netherlands Film Museum over the last few years, it was the only pairing of Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino, so its restoration was greeted with approving cheers.  Miss Swanson was 23 at the time, but playing younger (and looking about 40); she has married an older, wealthy man to support her beloved father and spinster step-sisters.  She keeps being saved from disaster by the handsome lordling eschewed by Valentino and they fall in love.  Valentino was never really much of an actor, more just a smouldering presence, but he and Swanson have precious little chemistry. 

So, yes I am delighted that this film has been found, and I hope many other lost films will surface.  I just hope some of them will be better than this potboiler.

Blood and Bones (2004)

I am a big Takeshi Kitano fan but think I prefer the films in which he directs himself to those films where he acts for another director (a possible exception to this is "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence".)  Not that he isn't excellent in everything that he undertakes, but in this very very long Japanese saga, the length of the movie (it does cover a period of about sixty years) detracts from a remarkable performance.  Mind you it is pretty hard to enthuse about a character who is totally hateful -- misogynistic, misanthropic, selfish, and just downright mean -- yet you just can't take your eyes off his bullying.  The story follows his life from his arrival in Osaka from Korea as a hopeful young man through to his death in North Korea as a bitter old man.  Despite Koreans being outcasts to many Japanese, he prospered, but at the expense of all about him.  A great performance but anything but likeable.

On a slightly different tack raised by this film, the Japanese are very prudish about showing full frontal nudity in their movies and tend to block out anything remotely pubic by either pixelating the image or having bouncing white balls over the offending bits.  In a bath-house scene in this film the blocking was done with huge shifting black shadows which was more than a little distracting.  This attitude being the case, I wonder why the action could not just as well have taken place elsewhere or whether the actors could have sported discretely placed towels.

Mean Girls (2004)

A bit of fluff that pushed Lindsay Lohan even further towards her current teen queen status.  She plays a 16-year old that was home-schooled by her folks when they lived in Africa but who goes to regular school for the first time when they return to the States.  She is an innocent in a lion's den but soon learns to differentiate between the nerds, the jocks, the weirdos and the "plastics" (the female in-crowd led by the self-serving Rachel McAdams).  When she takes up with the latter group she finds herself changing for the worse and tries to undermine the McAdams character and to steal her boyfriend.  While possibly marginally more sharply written than your average teen comedy, it was all still fairly formulaic stuff and naturally they are all far far better people by the end of the movie.

Imagining Argentina (2003)

I understand that this film was roundly booed when it was shown at Cannes and I certainly don't understand why.  Grant you it was a depressing subject, but one based on reality and it was reasonably well put together.  The setting is Buenos Aires in1976: Emma Thompson is a journalist and her husband, Antonio Banderas, runs a children's theatre group.  One afternoon the police come for her and she joins the "disappeared".  Banderas tries to find her through official channels, but no joy.  As he begins to involve himself with other relatives of the missing, he discovers he has psychic powers which enable him not just to visualise the tortures his wife is enduring but also to tell the others about their loved ones.  His theatre group becomes more political but he himself is not taken away -- his theatre associate and his teenaged daughter are (and neither survive the ordeal).  As a manifestation of sheer evil one must accept that the film paints an accurate picture of what was happening in Argentina at that time and what continues to occur even today in many other countries.  It was hardly a comfortable film to watch, but not one that should have been mocked even if one was pushed to believe Banderas' second sight.