Criterion Sunday 489: Monsoon Wedding (2001)

This film is about a wedding, as you might expect from the title, and so it’s hardly bereft of stress, or free from drama — both within the family and beyond it. There are some plotlines that go in quite dark directions, and yet all the time we’re brought back into something regenerative and vibrant, as this Punjabi family prepares to celebrate the arranged marriage of their daughter Aditi (Vasundhara Das). The film is made in a loose manner, at times not unlike a documentary, but still retaining an elegance and most importantly some rich and vibrant colours. The father tells off the unreliable wedding planner P.K. Dubey (Vijay Raaz) at one point for trying to use white for a marquee, but the film is generous enough to allow even Dubey a romance of his own. But that’s where the film is so good, leaving you with a feeling of warmth and regeneration at the end, never wallowing in the paths not taken.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Mira Nair मीरा नायर; Writer Sabrina Dhawan सबरीना धवन; Cinematographer Declan Quinn; Starring Naseeruddin Shah नसीरुद्दीन शाह, Vasundhara Das वसुंधरा दास, Shefali Shah शेफ़ाली शाह, Vijay Raaz विजय राज़, Tillotama Shome তিলোত্তমা সোম; Length 114 minutes.

Seen at home (Blu-ray), Wellington, Saturday 18 December 2021.

Women Filmmakers: Angela Schanelec

Angela Schanelec is not a filmmaker I’d ever heard of before a 2018 retrospective on the Mubi streaming platform; indeed, I’m not aware that any of her films has had a release in the UK and I imagine even festival screenings have been fairly scarce. Her profile sadly is not high enough for her latest film, I Was Home, But (2019) to have had more than one or two screenings last year, but its Ozu-referencing title certainly makes me excited to see it.

Schanelec was born in Aalen, Germany in 1962, and trained in Frankfurst in the early-80s as a stage actress (she acts too in her own film Afternoon, an image from which accompanies this post), though she studied filmmaking at the Berlin Film and Television Academy. As such, with directors like Christian Petzold, she is grouped as part of the so-called ‘Berlin School’ of filmmakers. She made her first graduate film in the mid-90s and a few other features in the late-90s before the first film I pick up below, the earliest to feature in the Mubi retrospective of her work.

Having now seen a number of her films, Schanelec feels like a filmmaker whose oeuvre I admire and enjoy as a whole, more than I do any of her individual films (but I’d probably go for Marseille, if I must pick one). Schanelec’s films have a consistent approach to the construction of narrative which is, well, a little bit vague and can be difficult to pick up: a focus on moments that are picked out, joined elliptically, with no intertitles or contextualisation. She’s a fascinating director, and perhaps part of her low profile is just that they can be difficult films to fully get into, and that will be a throughline in the reviews below. However, she’s clearly a great talent and one of the finest working German directors.

Films by Valeska Grisebach: Be My Star (2001), Longing (2006) and Western (2017)

She’s only made three feature films, but on the basis of just that work Valeska Grisebach is one of the most interesting German-language filmmakers of the last few decades. She was trained at the Vienna Film School, though she isn’t Austrian (she was born in Bremen), and is often included in the so-called ‘Berlin School’ with Angela Schanelec (whom I’ll cover later this week), Christian Petzold and others. She makes unglamorous films with non-professional actors that often resist the more florid aspects of storytelling, not a million miles from say Kelly Reichardt or Claire Denis. This perhaps accounts for why she’s been able to make so few, but those she has made are all excellent and well worth checking out (though her graduate film, Be My Star, is somewhat rougher aesthetically).

Two Early Films by Jessica Hausner: Lovely Rita (2001) and Hotel (2004)

I’m building up to another entry of my Global Cinema series on Saturday, one which focuses on Austria, and so I’m doing a themed week around German-language films directed by women. One of my favourite Austrian filmmakers has been Jessica Hausner, who probably had her breakthrough with her third feature-length film, Lourdes (2009), a film about a young woman with MS in search of a miracle in the pilgrimage site of the title, and one I saw when it came out in cinemas. However, it was her follow-up Amour Fou (2014) which really captured my attention. I think her most recent film, the English-language Little Joe (2019) which premiered at last year’s London Film Festival, is probably a little underrated as a result of the language, but it maintains a really consistently creepy tone, which her first two films indicate is something she has always been skilful at.

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It’s interesting, after seeing Hausner’s later films, to watch her feature debut and identify some stylistic continuities. There’s a stillness to the way scenes play out, an affectless quality to the acting, and underlying it all, something utterly morbid. Here though there’s an ugly visual texture which may be due to financial constraints but which is completely embraced and even feels right for the story — little tics like the quick zooms and the self-conscious acting which suggest dated and cheesy TV soaps. It makes the way the actions of the title character unfold that much more surprising, even shocking. It’s an interesting debut in any case.

Hausner’s second feature, Hotel (2004), manages to sustain — without anything graphic happening — a creepy atmosphere of dark portent, although the remote hotel setting helps with that, as does the largely still camerawork. Shots recede into darkness and corridors lead out of sight as our heroine is frequently seen disappearing into the frame (somewhat as the poster suggests). It’s all very studied, but it does work quite effectively.

Lovely Rita [classification 15]
Director/Writer Jessica Hausner; Cinematographer Martin Gschlacht; Starring Barbara Osika, Christoph Bauer; Length 79 minutes.
Seen at home (DVD), London, Monday 16 May 2016.

Hotel (2004) [classification 12]
Director/Writer Jessica Hausner; Cinematographer Martin Gschlacht; Starring Franziska Weisz, Birgit Minichmayr; Length 83 minutes.
Seen at home (DVD), London, Sunday 10 July 2016.

Global Cinema 3: Algeria – Inch’Allah dimanche (2001)

Algeria is the largest country in Africa by size (though not by population), and its colonialist history with France still looms large in culture, where a lot of its actors and filmmakers either live in or got their start in France, hence the film today is as much about being an Algerian immigrant to France, as it is about Algeria itself. Of course there are plenty of notable examples of films which deal with the Algerian War of independence from France, whether in the background as in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) or directly as in The Battle of Algiers (1966). Perhaps the best film in that respect, and certainly a key text in African cinema, is the indigenous epic Chronicle of the Years of Fire (1975), which I’ve already reviewed otherwise it would be ideal for this feature.

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People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria الجزایر
population 43,000,000 | capital Algiers (3.9m) (الجزائر) | largest cities Algiers, Oran (803k), Constantine (448k), Annaba (343k), Blida (332k) | area 2,381,741 km² | religion Islam (99%) | official languages Arabic (اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ) and Berber (Tamaziɣt) | major ethnicity Arab-Berber (99%) | currency Dinar (دج/DA) [DZD] | internet .dz

Mountainous in the north, where it borders the Mediterranean Sea, and taking in a large part of the Sahara Desert to the south, Algeria is the largest country by size in Africa and the Arab world (since the breakup of Sudan), and 10th largest in the world. Its name comes from the name of its capital, itself derived from a phrase used by Mediaeval geographers meaning “the islands” suggesting its rule by various tribes. It has been populated since deep into prehistoric times, and has been part of various dynasties and empires (include Rome’s), but can date its current existence to the Ottoman province of the 16th century. The French colonised the country starting in 1830, which continued through WW2 but came to a head in 1954; after the Algerian War against France, independence was declared on 3 July 1962. A Civil War took up much of the 1990s, followed by the rule for two decades of President Abdelaziz Boutaflika. Despite presidential elections, military intelligence remains the dominant source of power in the country (which also has a role of Prime Minister, appointed by the President).

Although under French colonisation there was cinema in Algeria, it was only with independence in the 1960s that their own production commenced in earnest. Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina was a key figure (whose major film Chronicle of the Years of Fire has already been mentioned in the intro). There was a slump in production in the 1980s and this has only started to turn around, and Francophone productions remain the most popular, though there are very few cinema screens in the country.

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Inch’Allah dimanche (2001, aka إن شاء الله الأحد)

There’s something beguilingly restful to this film about Zouina, a woman who has emigrated with her kids from Algeria to France to be with her husband in the mid-1970s, following a change in the law (and based somewhat on the director’s own experiences, it seems). The film is filled with bright, saturated colours, it has a laidback soundtrack which both suggests a France stuck in the past as well as hinting towards the future (something about the instrumental pieces suggest 80s TV to me), and it has an excellent lead actor in Fejria Deliba, who does plenty without very much in the way of words. This gentle restfulness is why the occasional eruptions of violence are so surprising and affecting — whether her fights with the older woman next door (who shares more in common with Zouina than either admits), the verbal aggression of Zouina’s mother-in-law (Rabia Mokeddem) who harbours little love for the old country, or the beatings her husband metes out from time to time, treating his wife not unlike a wayward child. The divided title of the film, which is in both French and Arabic, itself hints at how torn she is between these two cultures, and if there’s aggression from both French and Algerian characters, there’s also warmth and generosity on show too — the title refers to the day of the week on which she gets a little respite from her husband and his mother — though her search for a fellow Algerian to whom she can open up doesn’t end quite as she (and we) expect. The film gently moves through these challenges to its lead character, hinting in the end that there might be some positive resolution to the difficulty inherent in her life.

CREDITS
Director/Writer Yamina Benguigui يمينة بن قيقي; Cinematographer Antoine Roch; Starring Fejria Deliba, Rabia Mokeddem رابيع موكديم; Length 96 minutes.
Seen at home (DVD), London, Monday 5 September 2016.

Four Underappreciated Films by Hirokazu Koreeda: Distance (2001), Hana (2006), Air Doll (2009) and The Third Murder (2017)

The filmmaker Hirokazu Koreeda has been turning out warmly-received films since his fiction feature debut Maborosi in 1995. Many of them — certainly, it seems, all of the most acclaimed — are warm-hearted family dramas, whether dealing with children directly as in I Wish (2011), with parents of kids in Like Father, Like Son (2013) or with young people in Our Little Sister (2015). However in many ways that’s only half his output, as he’s also made plenty of films that don’t fit quite so neatly into this framework. I was planning on writing a post about maybe one of these, but then I realised I had a vast cache of reviews of films that really aren’t very well known by this famous director, and I wonder how many great directors could have made great films if they’d been given as many chances. For one example not even covered here, there’s his latest English/French-language The Truth (to be reviewed here later this week), but there are also these four films reviewed below: a film about terrorists; a period drama; a sex drama; and a legal thriller.

Two Experimental Documentaries by Black American Filmmakers: still/here (2001) and Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2018)

African-American filmmakers can often be found working in the documentary form — which often presents fewer financial and political hurdles than feature filmmaking — and some have made entire bodies of work, exploring complex issues of race and urban identity, often within an academic framework. This is where Christopher Harris seems to come from, and listening to the director speak afterwards, it’s evident he has thought very deeply about his praxis and about representation on film. The quiet, observant approach is reminiscent of recent documentaries in a similar vein such as Hale County This Morning, This Evening by RaMell Ross and the work of Kevin Jerome Everson in that sense of a sort of decontextualised Black present-day life, of people seen in a very specific place, albeit always laden with unavoidable historical connotations and meaning. RaMell Ross in his film is a little more playful, using intertitles to sometimes wryly comment on what is seen. And if the structure initially seems haphazard, yet I have no doubt it is very carefully put together.

Criterion Sunday 259: À ma sœur ! (aka Fat Girl, 2001)

It’s fair to say that, even from her very first film and certainly up until today, Catherine Breillat has been a rather troublesome and controversial figure, increasingly as much for her confrontational views as for her movies (for example, comments minimising the Weinstein allegations, and dismissing the #MeToo reckoning, though these appear to have been in the context of an ill-tempered run-in with Asia Argento). Indeed, Breillat doesn’t exactly fit very neatly into feminist critiques of film, or at least you get the sense that she’d certainly resist that kind of reading. For all that, she’s made some excoriating films, and none more so, I think, than À ma sœur! (released in the US as Fat Girl; apparently Breillat likes the English-language title better, but it certainly seems to change the focus of the film).

This is a work that for all its dark subject matter is really about sisterhood, and while this may suggest a sentimental point of view — and there are some lovely, supportive scenes between the two sisters Anaïs (Anaïs Reboux) and Elena (Roxane Mesquida) — Breillat was of course never going to be content to leave it at that. Instead there are some almighty power plays going on between the two (and equally between the two sisters and their parents, who are fairly detached from their daughters’ emotional states). On a family holiday, Elena falls for a handsome older Italian law student, Fernando (Libero De Rienzo), while Anaïs looks on, pouring scorn on Elena’s gullibility (when she speaks up at all) and apparently fully cognisant of where it’s all leading. All of this unfolds in long sinuous takes, whose gliding grace only seems to intensify the emotion underpinning the relationships. When Fernando wants sex, we barely get a chance to look away from his disingenuous flattery and cajolement, alternately tender and piqued, until he gets his way. In the context of all this, the ending then seems to take the film in an even darker direction, albeit with a strangely defiant final freeze frame reminiscent of The 400 Blows — not that I’d anticipate Breillat following up with an entire series about Anaïs (as Truffaut did with his character), though one can but imagine where her life takes her at this point.

Sometimes Breillat’s dark imagination, the way she plays out these sexual power dynamics (often between young women and older men) can make her films feel unsatisfactory, but in this one she seems to find a way of bringing out the humanity underlying the nastiness. The film could be dismissed as exploitational or emotionally vampiric perhaps, but it never loses sight of the people at the heart of these characters, and their capacity for enduring and reconfiguring disappointment and trauma, at which both the leads excel.

CRITERION EXTRAS:

• There’s a 5 minute behind the scenes making of featurette, which shows Breillat directing and shooting some scenes, along with a few brief interviews.
• Two interviews with Breillat are included, one at the Berlin premiere, where she gets into some of the dramas of the film, and the other in which she discusses her working methods, the actors, and the alternative ending — of which there’s footage included.
• The French and US trailers are included, which have much the same soundscape, though of course the French one includes dialogue from the film where the US one does not. The US trailer also does that thing of basically recapping the entire movie and even includes the final shot of the film.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director/Writer Catherine Breillat; Cinematographer Yorgos Arvanitis Γιώργος Αρβανίτης; Starring Anaïs Reboux, Roxane Mesquida, Libero De Rienzo, Arsinée Khanjian Արսինէ Խանճեան; Length 86 minutes.

Seen at Embassy, Wellington, Monday 16 July 2001 (then later on VHS at home, Wellington, January 2003, and most recently on Blu-ray at home, London, Saturday 10 July 2019).

Films by Moustapha Alassane: Return of an Adventurer (1966) and Two Short Films

My themed week of African cinema has seen a lot of strategies for dealing with post-colonial issues, but Nigerien (that is, from Niger) filmmaker Moustapha Alassane used the generic codes of that most American of genres, the western, to critique Western involvement in Africa. It’s witty and never outstays its welcome. Equally amusing are his shorter, animated films, most of all the glorious Kokoa (which may have been made in the 1980s, though most resources list its year of production as 2001). Needless to say, Niger isn’t currently one of the most highly-developed film-producing nations in Africa, although Wikipedia relates that it was once far more productive, with the ethnographer Jean Rouch being heavily involved in work there, followed by a number of native-born directors. Production in the last few decades has dwindled, although at a recent London Film Festival, I did see The Wedding Ring (2016) by a woman director, Rahmatou Keïta.

고양이를 부탁해 Goyangireul Butakhae (Take Care of My Cat, 2001)

Following 1955’s The Widow, there are barely any films directed by women throughout the rest of the century in Korean cinema. One of the earliest to gain any widespread acclaim was this one directed by Jeong Jae-eun (born 1969). She has largely moved into documentary filmmaking since then, but far more women have take up directing in the Korean cinema industry since.

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Every generation has its ‘state of the nation’ ‘here is how the kids live now’ type of statement film, and I guess this is it for 2001 Korea — five friends, just out of the education system, making their way in the world. Bae Doona as Tae-hee is the kind, thoughtful one who keeps the group of friends together, who goes out of her way to help others in need, and who is generally the best person in the film, especially in the way she reaches out to Ji-young (Ok Ji-young), who lives in poverty with her grandparents, and scrapes a meagre living with her art, eventually withdrawing almost completely except for the cat of the title. (Cat lovers incidentally may note there isn’t all that much of it in the film.) Take Care of My Cat may not have any big set-pieces or bold action, but it makes its quiet, compassionate way through several divergent stories and really gives a sense of these different women at a moment in their lives.

CREDITS
Director/Writer Jeong Jae-eun 정재은; Cinematographer Choi Young-hwan 최영환; Starring Bae Doona 배두나, Lee Yo-won 이요원, Ok Ji-young 옥지영; Length 112 minutes.
Seen at home (DVD), London, Tuesday 12 December 2017.