Well it’s been a few weeks since my last themed week, and now that I’m settled in Wellington (albeit in a temporary rented accommodation in Lower Hutt), I’ve been able to return to seeing films. Therefore this week will be loosely themed as ‘films I’ve seen in the cinema since arriving in New Zealand’. I can’t therefore promise any consistency, but it will be a fairly loose collection of random films that have been on release here recently, along with some one-off screenings (there has been an African Film Festival this past weekend, and there’s an Italian one ongoing, though it tempts me less).
Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman has written, directed and starred in a number of deadpan comedy films over the years, of which I’ve only previously caught up with one (2002’s Divine Intervention, which I appear to have liked only somewhat). However, if this film is typical, there’s a strong connection with the tradition of Jacques Tati, if not the mordant satire of late Buñuel (via a filmmaker like Otar Iosseliani, who is brought to my mind during the Parisian section particularly).
Suleiman silently observes those around him in three sections, in his home of Nazareth, in Paris and then in New York, in a series of setpieces that suggest a certain critical view of Palestinian life, and which become retrospectively clearer in a film producer’s office during the Parisian section, as the producer tells Suleiman that his work isn’t specific enough, being about the Palestinian experience but in a way that could be set anywhere — which indeed he has done with this very film. Paris is eerily quiet, but with an undertone of militaristic threat (police officers chasing a lone suspect on segways is particularly amusing, or the tanks rolling along a boulevard in the background). There’s this constant play with his themes that is often rather hilarious, if in a muted way, and the precise framing and fine acting from Suleiman in just reacting to the absurdist events around him lends his film a real piquancy.
CREDITS
Director/Writer Elia Suleiman إيليا سليمان; Cinematographer Sofian El Fani سفيان الفاني; Starring Elia Suleiman إيليا سليمان; Length 97 minutes.
Seen at Light House Cuba, Wellington, Tuesday 3 November 2020.
filmcentric 