Saturday, August 14, 2010

2007 Cannes Film Festival Competitors

By Maddox Penner

4 luni, 3 saptamni si 2 zile - 4 Months,3 Weeks and 2 Days is not a movie for everyone. It can be very strong for a sensible person. But, this is a challenging and fascinating movie. I said this movie is not for everyone because it has very hard scenes. But,those scenes are completely justified and the thing I most appreciated on them was the realism they show. A very strong realism that other movies do not show. So,this is also a brave movie.This film has a perfect creation of atmosphere and it made me feel I was inside that scenes. The performances are phenomenal. They are so natural that the actors do not seem to be acting. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is a spectacular film which is brave,fascinating and a challenge to the spectator. One of the best films of 2007.

Le scaphandre et le papillon - Elle France editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, who, in 1995 at the age of 43, suffered a stroke that paralyzed his entire body, except his left eye. Using that eye to blink out his memoir, Bauby eloquently described the aspects of his interior world, from the psychological torment of being trapped inside his body to his imagined stories from lands he'd only visited in his mind.

Aleksandra - Alexander Sokurov has directed some of the most beautiful visual poems I've managed to see since the films of the late Andrei Tarkovsky. His 'Russian Ark' still ranks for one of the best films of post Soviet Russia. 'Alexandra' is a tale of an elderly woman who travels by train to see her grandson,who is a soldier fighting the Russian/Chechen war. Despite the potential for graphic,bloody war scenes, the film instead focuses on the sad faces of soldiers, as well as the Chechen peoples who were not involved directly in fighting the war (but still had sons or daughters who died in battle with Russian soldiers). This is the kind of screen poetry that could never be allowed to see the light of day in pre Glanost/Perestroika Russian cinema (Soviet censorship was astringent about subject matter). What I really appreciated was the film's photography (that makes every scene look arid & devoid of colour). It reminded me of Sokurov's film 'Mother & Son' at times (with the loving relationship of grandmother & grandson depicted on screen).

Auf der anderen Seite - Nejat seems disapproving about his widower father Ali's choice of prostitute Yeter for a live-in girlfriend. But he grows fond of her when he discovers she sends money home to Turkey for her daughter's university studies. Yeter's sudden death distances father and son. Nejat travels to Istanbul to search for Yeter's daughter Ayten. Political activist Ayten has fled the Turkish police and is already in Germany. She is befriended by a young woman, Lotte, who invites rebellious Ayten to stay in her home, a gesture not particularly pleasing to her conservative mother Susanne. When Ayten is arrested and her asylum plea is denied, she is deported and imprisoned in Turkey. Lotte travels to Turkey,where she gets caught up in the seemingly hopeless situation of freeing Ayten.

Stellet licht - Johan (Cornelio Wall Fehr), a Mennonite living in Mexico, is tormented with guilt over his extramarital affair with Marianne (Maria Pankratz). His father (Peter Wall), best friend (Jacobo Klassen) and wife (Miriam Toews) know the truth, but Johan's suffering has to do with his faith, which he can't reconcile with his deeds. Director Carlos Reygadas's powerful drama won the Jury Prize at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Independent Spirit Awards.

Tehilim - Tehilim is a great film, no question about it. It is a minute of examination of the different ways in which characters react to a crisis. Though the film is small in scale it is nothing short of riveting. At the end you realize that, though the distance traveled is very small and enormous amount has happened. The lead actor, teen-aged Michael Moshonov, broods and lurks about the screen desperately searching for a focus for his anger at his vanished father. Truth seems to be Nadjari's motivation and he focuses his lens on the minutia of his characters' movements, revealing their inner struggles in a way reminiscent of Chekov. In a world overrun with films of artifice and manufactured drama it is so wonderful to discover a film that resists falsehoods and breathes truth. - 40726

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