Filmfest Hamburg 2015

(Originally appeared in EXBERLINER on Nov. 11, 2015)

This year we’ve covered the film festivals in Cannes, Venice, and of course the Berlinale here at Exberliner. Was there any reason, then, to pay a visit to their younger, considerably smaller counterpart in Hamburg? Turns out there was. Cinephiles may not get the same roster of glitzy world premieres from A-list auteurs at the beautiful Hanseatic city, but the Filmfest Hamburg offers that rare opportunity to actually enjoy a thoughtfully curated programme featuring obscure arthouse hits and major award winners. Away from the stress of “See it here first!” and cushioned in the romantic chill of autumn, the comfort level of spending some days in Germany’s second largest city – and Berlin’s often-rival – getting drunk on cinematic highlights and discoveries of the year, is surprisingly high.

For those who couldn’t make it to Locarno or San Sebastián, the 23rd edition of the FFHH has scooped up a healthy sample of their competition lineup. Right Now, Wrong Then, the eventual winner of the top Swiss film festival, is a sweet, dizzyingly idiosyncratic mind trick from Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo. Telling the tale of a chance encounter between a famous director and an aspiring painter that may lead to something more – not once, but twice – the two-parter bears all his signature quirks. Although it never reaches the strange, giddy heights of In Another Country or exudes the breezy, organic charm of Hahaha, this formally daring reflection on coincidence, perception and choice does intrigue with a bold expressive form and should delight Hong-loyalists everywhere.    

Also crossing over from Locarno and later even winning the London Film Festival is Greek writer/director Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Chevalier, a wicked comedy set around six men on a fishing trip. Out of boredom the group starts to play a game where each of them devises a contest in secret and scores the others accordingly, in order to determine who among them is “the best in general”. As ambitious as it is ludicrous, the highly unusual premise picks apart modern masculinity in an often frivolous manner, hovering between broad gags and unsettling insights. While the film ultimately feels too unstructured to land any substantial, lasting impact, it may well count itself a worthy addition to the new wave of Greek cinema sparkling with conceptual brilliance à la Dogtooth or Alps.

Equally quirky, albeit more carefully mapped out is Dutch helmer Alex van Warmerdam’s comedy-noir Schneider vs. Bax. Featuring a hitman eager to get back to his own birthday party, another coke-snorting hitman doubling as a writer, an old prostitute dragged into a hit job by accident and other cuckoo characters that could have been lifted from a Coen brothers flick, it dances through an endless supply of plot twists and keeps you hooked on its deliciously macabre humour.

Not nearly as entertaining is the San Sebastián alumnus The Demons, a coming-of-age drama crossed with kidnapping thriller set in suburban Montreal. Canadian director Philippe Lesage has an eye for suggestive visuals and the nose for creepy atmosphere, but the film borders on the schizophrenic with its many subplots and tonal changes. Lacking a strong focal point to drive the whole narrative, we’re left to admire the undeniably effective camerawork and the moments of foreboding beauty it brings.
Other festival champs include Sundance winner Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, a lively, tender and, above all, seriously funny tearjerker that actually deserves both your laughs and sobs. Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon gets the healing power of comedy and delivers a refreshingly, brutally genuine take on the girl-dying-of-leukemia genre. His trio of perfectly cast actors, assisted by a terrific group of supporting players, also helps inject that air of inspired unsentimentality into the film.

While less innovative in its approach, French-Turkish director Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s Cannes hit Mustang proves to be a jolt of energy impossible to resist. Set around five sister growing up in a conservative household in rural Turkey, the girlhood drama vividly depicts the debilitating effects of female oppression and the indefatigable human need to break free. Glowingly photographed and showcasing some affecting, naturalistic performances from its young leads, the film doesn’t aim terribly high but breathes so much life it dazzles nonetheless.            

So yes, the festival tent of the FFHH appears positively modest in comparison to the Grand Théâtre Lumière, the Palazzo del Cinema or the Berlinale Palast, but it’s never about that glammed-up hoopla in Hamburg anyway. Over there by the lovely Alster river, it’s more about appreciating good movies, special movies from all over the world that might have gotten lost in the shuffle even for avid festival-goers, as well as the opportunity to exchange ideas with the filmmakers in a relaxed environment. Honestly, what joy it is to (re-)watch gems like The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien) or The Lobster (Yorgos Lanthimos) on a giant screen without the hassle of hour-long queuing; and where else do you get to speak with László Nemes (Hungarian director and Cannes Grand Prix winner for Son of Saul) at length without some demoralising journalistic jockeying? All things considered, the 90-minute ICE ride seems like an awfully reasonable bargain indeed.

Filmfest Hamburg: Kış Uykusu (Winter Sleep)

(Originally appeared in the Berlin Film Journal on Oct. 15, 2014)

Turkish epic drama "Kış Uykusu (Winter Sleep)", the winner of the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, lives up to its title in more sense than one. It's a mostly chill, sedate affair that unfolds at its own pace, it's optically often accompanied by snow or a misty white. Most importantly, sitting through the film really does feel like spending and then waking up from hibernation, as drawn out and somewhat dream-like as the experience is. Whether or not this also means it's an inspiring, enjoyable or even worthwhile time spent at the cinema is another question.

A plot summary in this case would be difficult because making up the film's hipbone-flattening 196-minute running time are actually rounds and rounds of discussions between the characters about a variety of subjects. There are expository interludes showcasing the sprawling landscape of Anatolia or its wildlife, but they mainly serve as intermissions between the talks and are thus, as gorgeous as they often look, largely superfluous from a storytelling's point of view. But talk the people in this film certainly do. The male protagonist Aydin (Haluk Bilginer) is a well-to-do hotelier and landlord who used to be an actor and is now also a columnist/ aspiring author. What first prompted the series of reflections on his part is a rock-throwing incident initiated by the young son of one of his tenants Ismail (Nejat Isler), who's behind on rent and expropriated, humiliated accordingly. A visit to the child's home expecting reconciliation not only doesn't offer the rich man closure but further aggravates the emotionally unstable Ismail who's just recently been released from jail.

From there on it's basically one prolonged scene of debate after another. Aydin discusses with his younger wife Nihal (Melisa Sözen) about the right time for charity. Aydin's divorced sister Necla (Demet Akbag) proposes the theory that not defending oneself against vice is the way to correct wrong and make right. The two women argue about self-deception, forgiveness and shame. The two siblings fight about the virtues of thinking versus doing. It's not long before one gets the feeling this is a family that can just sit around the breakfast table and find the tiniest cause for a major philosophical discourse. Meanwhile the themes of their elaborations can't be easily embedded in an organic whole and the thought processes themselves often follow a loose, stream-of-consciousness logic, so they can come across as pretty arbitrary, ostentatious, even banal. At one point a character accuses another of watching too much soap opera, which sounds like an unintentionally accurate attack on the film's overly stretched and immoderately dramatized writing.        

Paradoxically enough, the one thing that most conceivably justifies the awarding of the Palme d'Or, a hypnotic pull of the film that lulls you into a meditative trance, stems most likely also from the ceaseless conversations. The constant outpour of words, as random as they might seem individually, and especially the implied stringent commitment to critical thinking on their writer's part, give the picture not just the obvious air of cultivation, but an internal grandeur, a serious-minded majesty. Aggregately this intense communication of ideas stimulates and appeases the human need to be understood much in the way of Richard Linklater's "Before..."-trilogy, although to those allergic to too much dialogue in movies, this would probably seem like Céline and Jesse on steroid duking it out on every existential issue there is, in short, an interminable torture.

The fineness of the filmmaking itself here is beyond doubt. Shot predominantly indoors, the camera placement is precise in its evocative choice of angles, its movement slight but graceful, The exteriors, whether of railway swept by blizzard, graveyard covered in fog or housing nestled within rocky topography, are not only beautiful to look at, but provide via their contrast to the dimly lit living quarters a vivid reminder of the tirelessly contended theme of good versus evil. Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan is an elegant storyteller with many things to say. His determination and patience to let it all out in one go might well prove too hardcore for the general movie-going public, but if one needs any proof that he could also shoot concise, emotionally poignant scenes without resorting to a dictionary's worth of vocabulary, one must look no further than a scene late in the film where Nihal pays a visit to Ismail's house to make an unexpected offer, where the most interesting exchange probably takes place through camera and body language.  

Acting-wise, everyone in the principal cast is solid, led by an assured but brilliantly weary Bilginer. Playing someone who has fought his whole life to get to where he is, he shows an ease in countenance and an unapologetic conviction in mentality that's very persuasive. Sözen and Akbag may not be as compelling, inherently limited by more confined character arcs, but they both bring repose and intellect to their roles that make their eloquence, if still affected at times, not all-out preposterous. Wit even less screen time but nonetheless impressive is Isler, whose pained glances, pregnant with indictment, are part of the reason why the aforementioned scene with prominently few lines works so well.

In all, "Winter Sleep" is a technically refined, well performed chamber piece featuring certifiably chatty characters who rub bubbles out of anything and everything. Its intentions are admirable, but with an unrealistically wide aim and a compulsively verbal approach, the desperation a viewer feels when he checks to find there are still hours on the clock is also very real. However elevated the language and tasteful the execution, you know there's a problem with a movie this high-minded when every time the clueless Japanese tourist turns up to make lighthearted, grammatically incorrect chitchat in between perfectly penned speeches, all you feel in the dark is grateful.  

Venice Film Festival: Im Keller (In the Basement) / Sivas

Austrian provocateur Ulrich Seidl's "Im Keller (In the Basement)" is an ably made, gleefully disturbing documentary about what people do in the secrecy of their homes. The premise is fascinating, a fact you recognize as soon as the camera follows a middle-aged woman down flights of stairs and into a world that she prefers. A primal sense of curiosity and a dread of what's to come drive the picture accordingly. For his part, Seidl has certainly found people with quite "unusual" hobbies to share, and they're all candidly laid out without a trace of embarrassment or judgment. In fact, it's the calm, explanatory banality of the presentation- visually sparse, aurally vacuum- like a masochist neutrally counting the blows she receives on her bottom, that makes the experience unsettling. Streamlined, clear-eyed, appallingly open-minded, it's all kinds of incorrectness made ready to consume. Ultimately though, I don't think the movie reveals so much as merely demonstrates what we humans are capable of. And it's not a pretty sight.

Set in the brutal world of dog-fighting, Turkish writer/director Kaan Müjdeci's feature debut "Sivas" is a sporadically thrilling but overall unfocused and emotionally lacking drama. Shot on hand-held camera that's agile in a sharp and not nauseating fashion, the film successfully captures life in rural Turkey by picking up vivid particulars and especially shines in the handful of canine fight scenes. Using classily composed panoramic views of the battles as well as breathtaking close-ups of the animals at work and the people caught in bloodlust, these sequences sparkle with speed and ferocity, throwing you right in the middle of the action. Elsewhere the film doesn't quite work, as none of its many plot points- the child-dog relationship, the coming-of-age story, the social, political critique- is given enough treatment to count. Young lead actor Dogan Izci is adorable but doesn't really get to stretch any acting muscles here.