All articles by Jonathan Romney – Page 40
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Reviews
Komma
Dir: Martine Doyen. Bel-Fr. 2006. 90mins.A mystery within a riddle wrapped in an enigma, orperhaps just your averagely cryptic existential romance, Komma is an initially tantalisingdream-like oddity that doesn't sustain its interest. A story of two traumatisedoddballs getting together in a subtly unreal Brussels, this debut from multipleshorts prize-winner Martine ...
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Reviews
To Get To Heaven First You Have To Die (Bihisht Faqat Barqi Murdagon)
Dir/scr: Djamshed Usmonov. Fr-Ger-Switz-Russ. 2006. 93mins.Narratives rarely come crisper and more to the pointthan To Get To HeavenFirst You Have To Die - and audiences rarely get taken on suchsubtly unpredictable rides. The new film from DjamshedUsmanov, the Tajik director of Angel On The Right, begins as adeceptively gentle, tragic-comic ...
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Reviews
Avida
Dirs/scr: Benoit Delepine, Gustave Kervern. Fr. 2006. 83mins.Even by thestandards of their eccentric road comedy debut Aaltra, Benoit Delepine and Gustave Kervern's Avida - described in the press notes as a 'metaphysicalcomedy' - is bizarre indeed. Starting out as a Tati-esquesilent farce crammed with off-the-wall sight gags, this wayward tale ...
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Reviews
Transylvania
France. 2006. 103mins. Director, screenplay Tony GatlifIn Transylvania cult diva Asia Argentotakes to the agitated universe of Romany film-maker Tony Gatliflike a duck to water. The latestof French-based Gatlif's ventures into the world ofGypsy and Eastern European culture, Transylvania is at once romance,road movie, ethnological celebration, and vehicle for the ...
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Reviews
Colossal Youth
Dir: Pedro Costa. Portugal/France/Switzerland 2006. 155 mins Without a doubt the most difficult film in this year's Cannes competition - where it provoked more walk-outs than any other film - Pedro Costa's hyper-austere Colossal Youth at least deserves some recognition and respect. While the film admittedly seems inert for ...
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Reviews
The Right Of The Weakest (La Raison Du Plus Faible)
Dir, scr: Lucas Belvaux. Belgium/France 2006. 116 minsA Belgian proletarian caper movie is hardly the first thing anyone expected from Lucas Belvaux, whose Trilogy, a set of three interlocking features, was an audacious formal anomaly in recent French mainstream cinema. The Right Of The Weakest lies halfway between working-class realism ...
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Reviews
The Right Of The Weakest (La Raison Du Plus Faible)
Dir, scr: Lucas Belvaux. Belgium/France 2006. 116 minsA Belgian proletarian caper movie is hardly the first thing anyone expected from Lucas Belvaux, whose Trilogy, a set of three interlocking features, was an audacious formal anomaly in recent French mainstream cinema. The Right Of The Weakest lies halfway between working-class realism ...
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Reviews
The Family Friend (L'Amico Di Famiglia)
Dir, Scr: Paolo Sorrentino. Italy/France 2006. 110 mins A generally unsurprising Cannes competition received an invigorating blast of invention with The Family Friend, a stylish, dark but sometimes perplexing third feature from Neapolitan director Paolo Sorrentino.The story of a thoroughly grumpy old loanshark, this philosophical black comedy sets itself the ...
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Reviews
Lights In The Dusk (Laitakaupungin Valot)
Dir/scr: Aki Kaurismaki. Fin. 2006. 80mins.LightsIn The Darkrepresents business as usual, more or less, for Finnish gloomsterAki Kaurismaki - albeit leavened with somewhat lessof his distinctive dry humour. This social-realist tale, with a dash of filmnoir, is about a loner whose life goes from bad to worse to worse still, ...
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Reviews
Climates (Iklimler)
Dir/scr: Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Turk-Fr. 2006. 97mins.In 2002, Turkish director NuriBilge Ceylan made his mark on the Cannes competitionwith Distant (Uzak). That, his third feature,struck many audiences as a resounding blow in favour of the great art-cinematradition of films as contemplative, thematically rich personal essays. Ceylan's growing reputation as a ...
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Reviews
Princess
Dir: Anders Morgenthaler. Den. 2006. 80mins.It's a sometimes dazzling curio rather than afully-fledged achievement, but Anders Morgenthaler'sadult animation Princess is certainlyone of the more attention-grabbing items on the Cannes menu this year. Kickingoff Directors' Fortnight, this tale of vengeance in the Danish porn underworldresembles the sort of grim material usually ...
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Reviews
Paris, Je T'Aime
Dirs: see credits below. Fr-Liech-Switz. 2006. 120mins.That largelyunloved genre, the portmanteau film, no doubt works best in specialised slots -such as that of the opener in the Un Certain Regardsection at Cannes. Fitting the bill as a light, generally celebratory sectioncurtain-raiser, Paris JeT'Aime is a postcard-like, sometimes genuinelycharming, whistle-stop city ...
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Reviews
The Unforgiven (Yongseobadji Mot-hanja)
Dir/scr: Yoon Jong-bin. S Kor. 2005. 126mins.The traumas of masculinity and themilitary life are sensitively and obliquely probed in The Unforgiven, the debut feature fromKorean writer-director Yoon Jong-bin. Despitecurrents of menace and brutality, it lies at the more contemplative end ofSouth Korea's cinema spectrum, its elliptical, two-strand structure making itakin ...
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Reviews
The Peter Pan Formula (Peterpan-eui Gongsik)
Dir/scr: Cho Chang-ho. S Kor. 2005.108mins.Teenage angst has rarely felt seemed more decorous ormore downbeat than in the hands of South Korean director ChoChong-ho in his debut The Peter Pan Formula. A moody, atmospheric coming-of-age film witha perverse streak of eroticism, it explores the emotional links betweenmourning and sexuality in ...
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Reviews
Hotel Harabati (De Particulier A Particulier)
Dir: Brice Cauvin. Fr. 2005. 94mins."Sublimely enigmatic" is one way to describe Hotel Harabati;for many viewers, "maddeningly inscrutable" will becloser to the mark. Either way, Brice Cauvin'steasing debut will keep audiences arguing long after its unexpectedly beatificending.Personably spikylead performances, a willfully fractured narrative and a defiantly provocativeattitude to viewer expectations ...
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Reviews
The Kick (Der Kick)
Dir: Andres Veiel. Ger.2006. 82mins.A severely minimalist exercise situated onthe interface between cinema and theatre, TheKick is a rigorously executed, highly disturbing combination of performanceand documentary reportage. Two performers - a woman and a man - act outstatements from a range of people involved in a real-life murder case, sheddingunforgiving ...
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Reviews
Dead Run (Shisso)
Dir: Sabu.Jap. 2005. 124mins.Aptly named, Dead Run is a morbid crawl, a tediouslyover-extended wallow in good, evil and teenage angst that manages at once to beluridly over-heated and grindingly turgid.A first literary adaptation from Sabu(Postman Blues, Unlucky Monkey), it proves a rambling and confused melodrama thatrelies largely on the spurious ...
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Reviews
Absolute Wilson
Dir/scr: Katharina Otto-Bernstein. US-Ger. 2006.105mins.Absolute Wilsonmight not be not be quite 'absolute' in the sense of 'definitive', but Katharina Otto-Bernstein's documentary is certainly anexhaustive introduction to the life and work of Robert Wilson, American theatrevisionary extraordinaire.The Texan-borninnovator has worked at a frenzied pace since his arrival on the avant-gardetheatre scene ...
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Reviews
Vitus
Dir: Fredi M Murer. Switz. 2006. 120mins.From an opening that suggests a feelgoodchildren's fantasy, Vitusturns into a much odder confection - an intelligent, spiky, sometimes movingcomedy-drama with a satirical eye turned on the Swiss bourgeoisie.Directed by Helvetic veteran Fredi M. Murer, best known for his 1985 Alpine Fire, Vitusis an ...
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Reviews
It's Winter (Zemestan)
Dir: Rafi Pitts. Iran 2005.86mins.Rafi Pitts' remarkable It's Winter is one of those films that forces you to rethink your preconceptions about Iraniancinema. Although recognisably in a taut, austereIranian mould, the film feels new in several ways. Its central figure is notjust an anti-hero but is abrasively unsympathetic; its narrative ...