Film Reviews by CH

Rather overlong melodrâme that meanders around the coquettish and tedious past history of a cloistered nun and her slavishly devoted and equally depressed admirer (recently returned from the Napoleonic wars.) I may give this film another go sometime, but suspect that Balzac’s book may be a better read.

Much to admire in this gloomy and dark humoured film. The mounting irritations of relatives overstaying their welcome is a theme Ceylan explored in his film Winter Sleep and he does so here in Uzak…..the claustrophobia of a sudden and unwanted domestic intimacy, the petty disruptions of banal daily routines and constant mirror of encroaching loneliness and desperate, useless orbiting of the other.

Initially quite a gripping understated  film…..but about 90 minutes in I wondered if I should definitely know by now, who this collection of malingering characters are and how relevant or irrelevant are they to the plot? I lost the plot altogether during the final blue lit cabaret scene….was everyone on drugs? Was some unseen overlord spiking their green juice? Too obscure, surreal and clever for me to follow.

This gently comic film takes its time to link one small tableau with the next scenario,, overlayed with what the French might describe as ennui or lassitude and Turks might refer to huzun (world weary acceptance of fate in all its tedium and banality). There were so many interwoven comic moments, the simple man child with his beloved nameless pet donkey, a boutique owning uncle trying to bring chic fashion to the menfolk of the town (with a single improbably busty female display mannequin and a range of clothes that seemingly fit no-one.) A grumpy Turkmen musician travels around with a photographer searching for that ideal location to create a tourist brochure and a lovelorn chicken factory worker makes a final last ditch attempt to court the object of his desire. I loved this Iranian film of closely observed tristesse and mal de coeur of daily life in the flat Borderlands.

Another bleak panorama of lost childhood in modern Russia…….this is a theme that Soviet film makers worryingly return to, time and time again. The neglect and invisibility of a young boy during a vicious divorce (where both parents have taken up with new love interests) the child disappears, we the viewers hardly notice, that like a passing shadow he is gone.

Yes a little overlong, but some brutal and searing observations are made about the annual summer coastal invasion by gite owning middle class Parisians who want the boho togetherness experience, but in this film the mounting tension between individuals and couples reaches breaking point……..(we’ve all been there). Those existential questions about the meaning of life, should personal happiness be pursued no matter what cost to others and all misery and unhappiness be avoided? When should we soldier on clutching our long held beliefs and delusions and when should we give up and accept defeat and change?

As a fan of Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Winter Sleep did not disappoint (less enthusiastic viewers than myself admitting to a sort of catatonia or hibernation throughout this long slow film) The cavelike rock dwellings of Cappodocia have been renovated to draw tourists but as winter approaches and the last guests leave, a sullen lassitude descends on the hotel initially broken by the perennial irritation of surly problem tenants with a resentful young son, who has lobbed a rock at the car window of landlord Aydin and his rent collecting agent. Aydin’s divorced sister has come to stay indefinitely and she cruelly mocks his casual air of studied erudition in his weekly column of the local newspaper. The atmosphere sours further when Aydin unwisely offers his wife (unwanted) practical advice running her local charity and from here the metaphoric snowball of simmering resentments just keeps rolling on, gathering  more and more tensions, aggravations and heated rivalries. Just like Christmas then. Marvellous !

France (much like the British and Dutch) colonised parts of Asia in the name of a crusade to bring European civilisation to the indigenous populations. The rewards were allegedly bountifully cheap land grabs, control of cheap labour, trade and new land owner prosperity. Seawall shows the follies of these Western incursions into unknown foreign territories, where farming and agriculture on this newly acquired land can be like gambling, a fools game with more losses than gains in the battle with nature. Isabelle Hupert stars as a careworn debt ridden incomer.

2 brothers under one roof in a shabby tenement block are violently divided by opposing political views and activism. The pretentious intellectual Marxist v sullen (yet strangely sensitive) thug Fascist. The atmosphere between the two boys is a seeming tinderbox of hatred, but from under the facade of eternal conflict something deeper begins to take root.

I cannot praise this collection of Iranian short films highly enough…the issue is a traumatic one, (though less bracing to Deep South US citizens) is the sanctioning of death by state or military execution. These films do not sensationalise the prequel or aftermath of execution, it does not dwell of the details of the executed but quietly observes the quotidian web of banality and the existential crises of the individuals and families who are caught in this tangled net of shame and humiliation.

If you can stay with this film you may glean a moment or two of enlightenment ( or even empathy) but mostly you will  be in a brume of bewilderment trying to follow this savage family dispute, without ever really knowing the details of who, what, where, when and how (and frankly not caring a jot.) Expect lots of slamming doors, withering looks, spat syllables, punched noses and drama queenery.

A young boy observes the disappointing disintegration of his now homeless father as they hike and hitch rides together towards a destination the father calls Koktebel on the Crimean coast. This flawed and tarnished hero used to work on big Soviet engineering projects but is now unemployed and having trouble convincing his young son that he is worth sticking with. I would put this 5 star Russian film with a trio of equally beautifully observed Soviet films I previously reviewed about the travails of childhood

Hmmm……overlong ‘thriller’ that would seem to imply that powerful businesswomen are unhinged chancers who deserve everything that’s coming to them. Really? This is a dangerous premise to be touting in 21st century. So if anyone can explain to me how I missed the point of this film I’d be glad to be enlightened. 

A 5star film that surely venerates the domestic detail of a Chekov short story, capturing a day in the life of an old War hero, his young wife and child, surrounded by a bourgeois flotilla of theatrically eccentric uncles, aunts. Are they all protecting the innocence of the delightfully precocious child from the darker reality of Soviet history? This day starts with the villagers protesting about the Soviet tanks on manoeuvre across their fields and develops a gentle slapstick comedy with the arrival at the dacha of a mysteriously disguised old man whose presence becomes the watershed reversal of the family’s fortunes……they are about to be burnt by the Sun that has protected them.

Peter Greenaway’s bawdy Jacobean country house murder mystery romp. Mossy, mischievous garden statues come to life adding rude piquancy to the tableaux. A most singular and entertainingly confusing 5 star period drama.