Life, death, sex, and magic vie for views at the Vancouver International Film Festival

    1 of 1 2 of 1

      Picking out what to see at the Vancouver International Film Festival (September 30 to October 15) can be overwhelming. To help you decide, here’s the second batch of the Straight’s VIFF capsule reviews. For more screening information and updates, visit the VIFF's website.

      ANPO: Art x War (U.S./Japan)
      Some striking, disturbing art has emerged out of ANPO, the American-Japanese Joint Security Pact—and those works are this doc’s highlight. The agreement has poisoned relations, allowing the U.S. to retain military bases there ever since the Second World War. Linda Hoaglund talks to artists who have protested American presence and aggression, and though the director is clearly biased on the issue, the art is staggering. Think meticulous photos of the scorched clothing left from Hiroshima victims, or painted depictions of a woman shot for recovering shell casings near a base. Ranks with several strong visual-arts films at VIFF this year. Granville 7, October 3 (6 p.m.); Pacific Cinémathèque, October 4 (1:15 p.m.)
      > Janet Smith

      The Arbor (U.K.)
      This experiment should please those familiar with England’s notoriously difficult Yorkshire dialect. Clio Barnard came up with the inspired idea of telling the story of the late Andrea Dunbar, West Bradford’s only world-class playwright, by having the barely fictional characters created by this working-class antihero enunciated by her unseen friends and relations, then performed by professional actors. Recorded interviews were used in this way too. The end result is fairly impressive (although subtitles would have been nice). Granville 7, October 7 (7 p.m.) and 8 (12 p.m.)
      > Mark Harris

      The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (Romania)
      This film is as brilliant as it is boring. Even more remarkably, the brilliance and the boredom are inseparable. This is because this faux autobiography is made up almost exclusively of tendentious archival footage, the celluloid propaganda that tried to convince ordinary Romanians that they lived in the best of all possible worlds. No torture chambers here. Just a relentless assault on the truth and good taste. Granville 7, October 6 (2:15 p.m.) and 11 (8:30 p.m.)
      > MH

      Back to the Garden, Flower Power Comes Full Circle (U.S.)
      A goodhearted look at the back-to-the-land movement, where it went in 1980s Washington state, and where it could go now that the American Dream is over. Seattle filmmaker Kevin Tomlinson, who nicely updates vintage interviews, says a lot by not taking on too much about going off the grid. Granville 7, September 30 (3:20 p.m.) and October 1 (6 p.m.)
      > Ken Eisner

      Born to Suffer (Spain)
      Sure to be a VIFF hit, this delightfully droll comedy of bad manners masquerading as Christian goodness centres on a 72-year-old matriarch who turns her back on the baffled nieces she raised. Instead, she promises everything to her somewhat simple-minded housekeeper—if she will marry the old lady! Sharp twists and a great script keep this one ticking right to the end. Granville 7, October 7 (12 p.m.), 9 (9:15 p.m.), and 11 (12 p.m.)
      > KE

      Cities on Speed: Bogota Change and cities on speed: Mumbai Disconnected (Denmark)
      Two modern megalopolises are contrasted in these two hour-long films made for Danish TV. Where Mumbai, choking on car traffic and temporary decision-making, gets the chaotic, multiple perspectives it needs, Bogotá focuses on two outsize personalities who changed the face of Colombia’s capital. Granville 7, September 30 (2:30 p.m.); Pacific Cinémathèque, October 6 (1 p.m.); Vancity Theatre, October 8 (9:30 p.m.)
      > KE

      The Counsel (France)
      Cédric Anger’s tale of a lawyer caught in a tangled mob net has its tense moments and stylistic flourishes, but in the end the material is just too familiar, and the personalities too undeveloped, to raise more than passing interest. It feels like its own remake. Granville 7, October 9 (6 p.m.) and 10 (2:10 p.m.); Park Theatre, October 14 (4 p.m.)
      > KE

      Dear Prudence (France)
      In this tale of an adolescent’s skewed reaction to her mother’s death, new filmmaker Rebecca Zlotowski appears to confuse opaqueness and overbearing close-ups with a recognizable point of view. In the lead role, young Léa Seydoux’s face conveys something but not enough to fill even 76 minutes with rewarding actions and insights. Pacific Cinémathèque, October 7 (1:45 p.m.); Granville 7, October 10 (6:20 p.m.) and 15 (11:40 a.m.)
      > KE

      Defiant Brasilia (Brazil)
      This nonnarrated vérité doc focuses on one neighbourhood with a nickname closer to Stubborn Brasilia than what the English title implies: a politicized nature that’s foreign to poor Brazilians more concerned with survival than change. Still, the Recife residents who were relocated from a crumbling beachfront to an anonymous cement project display an affable resilience that does grab your quiet admiration. Vancity Theatre, October 7 (9:45 p.m.); Granville 7, October 9 (12:40 p.m.) and 12 (9:30 p.m.)
      > KE

      The Desert of Forbidden Art (Uzbekistan/U.S./Russia)
      The best in a standout array of visual-arts films at VIFF, Desert tells the stranger-than-fiction story of the world-class Nukus Museum set up in the middle of the parched far reaches of Uzbekistan. After the Communist revolution, when authorities started destroying art and sending artists to gulags, Igor Savitsky gathered up the best works of the Russian avant garde and took them secretly to this bleak, hidden corner of the Soviet Union. The documentary is full of twists, from intrigue about artist informants to visits from both the Kremlin and art-collector private jets. Highly recommended for anyone who loves art or cares about the freedom to make it. Granville 7, October 9 (3:20 p.m.) and 10 (6 p.m.); Pacific Cinémathèque, October 14 (10:45 a.m.)
      > JS

      A Drummer’s Dream (Canada)
      Top drummers, including Dennis Chambers, Raul Rekow, and Horacio “El Negro” Hernández, wow each other and some lucky students in this inspiring—and seriously toe-tapping—doc from John Walker, who shot this workshop in rural Ontario with the childlike delight these musicians ask for and deliver. The vivid sound recording doesn’t hurt. Granville 7, October 4 (6:30 p.m.) and 6 (3 p.m.)
      > KE

      Family Affair (U.S.)
      Are some acts unforgivable, or can amends be made even for the ugliest abuses? The Colvard family is about as dysfunctional as they come: filmmaker Chico Colvard shot his sister in the leg with a gun at age 10; his mother later disowned her children; and, worst of all, the father regularly sexually assaulted Chico’s three sisters from a young age. So why, early on in Colvard’s film, is Dad, who has never apologized, enjoying a family Thanksgiving with his daughters? Chico is as stupefied as any right-thinking person would be, and his unforgettable documentary is his disturbing, deeply personal journey to understand the history that led to this uneasy reunion—the complexity of familial love in the face of trauma. Don’t expect easy answers. Granville 7, October 6 (12:20 p.m.); Vancity Theatre, October 11 (9:30 p.m.)
      > JS

      Himalaya, A Path to the Sky (France)
      Filmmaker Marianne Chaud takes you up the treacherous, snowy paths to a remote Himalayan monastery, where eight-year-old Kenrap has spent the past three years—and will probably stay for the rest of his life. The film is a feast for the eyes, with the young monks’ pointy orange hats and purplish-red robes playing off the snow-powdered cliff sides. The vérité documentary is largely anthropological, as Kenrap and his friends haul bundles of wood on their backs or help cook giant pots of noodles in a kitchen cave carved out of the cliffs. It’s meant to celebrate their simple, philosophically happy existence, but you can’t help feeling pangs when this still-small child visits home, catches the mumps, or even calls the director “mummy” when he’s about to slip on the ice. Granville 7, September 30 (12 p.m.), October 8 (2:50 p.m.) and 14 (9:15 p.m.)
      > JS

      If I want to Whistle, I Whistle (Romania)
      It’s hard to believe, but Romania has cranked out yet another hot young director. Florin Serban’s If I Want to, I Whistle is a prison drama that is every bit as gripping and formally inventive as last year’s Police, Adjective. The emotions are as raw as broken teeth, and the camera, like the script, is always surprising. One of this year’s must-see features. Granville 7, October 7 (6:45 p.m.) and 9 (11:40 a.m.)
      > MH

      In the Shadows (Germany)
      Germany isn’t famed for its fast-paced police procedurals, but this one is actually pretty good, largely on account of its focus on a terse but charismatic man-of-all-crimes. Only rarely does director Thomas Arslan run out of steam. Granville 7, October 5 (11 a.m.) and 8 (9 p.m.); Pacific Cinémathèque, October 10 (1:45 p.m.)
      > MH

      Ito: Diary of an Urban Priest (Finland)
      On its own, the biography of a young boxer turned Buddhist priest—who splits his time between bartending and ministering to the troubled people of Tokyo—would be fascinating. But documentary filmmaker Pirjo Honkasalo raises the subject matter to a spiritual level, artfully framing every shot and setting it to a haunting soundscape. Ito plays the priest’s quiet, philosophical discussions off the throbbing, soulless city at night. Listening to the extended, hushed confessions of a man describing his father’s last days, of a mother who murdered her husband, and of the priest himself, the film becomes a deep meditation on the frailty of our own mortality—but never in a heavily religious way. Granville 7, October 11 (11 a.m.), 14 (8:45 p.m.), and 15 (12:40 p.m.)
      > JS

      Leap Year (Mexico)
      Mónica del Carmen gives a stripped-naked performance, literally and figuratively, in a film that slowly transforms from the mundane to the disturbing. Most of the movie centres around the lonely subject in her cramped big-city apartment, where she spends her days working at her computer and her nights bringing home one-night stands. There’s little talking; one of the first lines is, tellingly, her latest pick-up saying “Will you pass me my pants?” But as our subject crosses off each day of February on her calendar, her sexual transgressions grow more extreme, and slowly we find out why she’s on such a seemingly self-destructive mission. Gritty and unblinking, with larger messages about modern Mexico. Granville 7, October 2 (12:15 p.m.), 12 ( 9 p.m.), and 13 (4 p.m.)
      > JS

      Mamas & Papas (Czech Republic)
      There’s something reassuring about knowing that the utter torments of struggling to have children, coping with them, or losing them happen all over the world. In Alice Nellis’s uncompromising, cleverly nonchronological drama, a loving couple suffers the indignity of fertility treatments; a successful doctor is wracked with grief and guilt over the death of her young daughter; and a pregnant grocery clerk knows instantly there’s no way she can afford to keep her baby. Adoption, ovulation sex, crowning heads, life, death, and a bit of magic: it’s all here in brutally honest acting and directing in this Prague slice of contemporary life. Granville 7, October 11 (6 p.m.) and 14 (2:30 p.m.)
      > JS

      The Man Who Will Come (Italy)
      The pastoral style of the Taviani brothers and Ermanno Olmi inflect this mountain tale, which aestheticizes the horrors of Nazi occupation to somewhat numbing effect. To the extent that events are seen through the eyes of a largely mute little girl, there is rough, misty-dawn poetry here, but the filmmakers rely too much on the nobility of lined peasant faces to provide a reason for this story to be told yet again. Granville 7, October 1 (12:15 p.m.) and 4 (11:40 a.m.); Park Theatre, October 12 (9:30 p.m.)
      > KE

      My Words, My Lies—My Love (Germany)
      The fest’s dumbest title hides a smart and funny feature, starring up-and-comer Daniel Brí¼hl as a gormless waiter who impresses a bookish gal pal by publishing a book he found in an old drawer. When the novel takes off, so does their affair—until the arrival of an old mooch who claims to have written the thing. Sharp stuff, with some good digs at the (fading) world of publishing, but I’d love to see that Big Movie Moment chopped off the very end. Granville 7, October 9 (9 p.m.); Park Theatre, October 11 (3 p.m.)
      > KE

      The Neighbor (U.S./Iran/Canada)
      Dance is a metaphor in Naghmeh Shirkhan’s slow but affecting portrait of two lonely Iranian immigrants. The older Shirin teaches traditional dance from her homeland but straps on heels and engages in the strange intimacy of tango at night—straddling two worlds. She’s drawn to the neighbour that lives across the hall of her generic North Van apartment building, realizing that the young Leila is leaving her little girl at home alone while she goes out with her new boyfriend. The rewards here are subtle, but you’ll find yourself wanting to see if these two sad, lonely women can fill the gaps between their old culture and the new. Granville 7, October 3 (6:30 p.m.), 4 (3:15 p.m.), and 11 (1 p.m.)
      > JS

      Philosophies of Life (International)
      Technically accomplished but intellectually empty, most of these calling-card shorts belong on film-school grad reels, not in a festival. If you can make it through the rest, there are three strange, dreamlike statements: the black-and-white, Prague-shot “The Goldfish”; Brazil’s “Heaven Garden”, about revenge and reconciliation in the favela; and “The Activist”, which loudly questions where American dissidence has gone. Granville 7, October 3 (9:15 p.m.); Pacific Cinémathèque, October 5 (12:30 p.m.)
      > KE

      Poetry (South Korea)
      Forgetful and prone to moments of poetic pondering, elderly Yang Mija demands patience—and so does Lee Changdong’s film. Mija cares for her ungrateful teenage grandson, Wook, and works as a caregiver for an elderly disabled man. When Wook gets into trouble, the plot becomes contrived: he may be to blame for a girl’s suicide. But actor Yun Junghee lives and breathes the part of a senior coming to terms with some pretty ugly issues late in life and escaping through poetry. Granville 7, October 3 (6 p.m.) and 4 (12:45 p.m.); Park Theatre, October 7 (8:45 p.m.)
      > JS

      In Israeli doc Precious Life, a Palestinian woman’s sick baby grabs the nation’s attention while her neighbourhood is shelled.

      Precious Life (Israel)
      There’s a surplus of musical sweetening in this documentary record of an Israeli reporter’s polite involvement with a Palestinian woman whose sick infant captures the imagination of the country—but not enough to keep the army from shelling her neighbourhood in subsequent panic attacks. The story is personal, but what you come away with is this: Hamas and the Likud are locked in a moronic death dance while civilians on both sides of that horrid wall look on in confusion and regret. Granville 7, October 3 (6:45 p.m.) and 4 (12:20 p.m.)
      > KE

      The Princess of Montpensier (France/Germany)
      Bertrand Tavernier’s latest might be based on a Madame de Lafayette novella, but the veteran filmmaker shoots it like an Alexandre Dumas swashbuckler (more specifically, La Reine Margot). Aristocrats, castles, religious warfare, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, lots of passionate yearning, even more bodices ripe for ripping—if you go for this kind of thing, you should like The Princess of Montpensier a lot. Park Theatre, October 2 (6:30 p.m.); Granville 7, October 5 (12:30 p.m.)
      > MH

      Revolucion (Mexico)
      Brass bands, angry peasants, and stubborn donkeys wend their way through 10 stylized and symbol-laden shorts by such figures as Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal, with mixed results. The tone of mordant disappointment as the centenary of the Mexican Revolution draws near is set by the opening black-and-whiter, depicting how hard the tuba player in a peasant orchestra must practise for a performance that never happens. Granville 7, September 30 (1 p.m.) and October 5 (9:30 p.m.)
      > KE

      Ride, Rise, Roar (U.S.)
      A straight-ahead documentation of David Byrne’s 2008 tour, this film is a delight for anyone interested in popular music, modern dance, or the magic of stagecraft. All those elements are revealed in fascinating rehearsal sequences and backstage patter delivered with openness and good humour. Oh, and the songs are pretty great too. Granville 7, October 4 (9:30 p.m.), 10 (2:30 p.m.), and 12 (6:40 p.m.)
      > KE

      Rubber (France/U.S.)
      When was the last time you saw a horror movie where the monster started out looking like a single segment of the Michelin Man before mutating into something even less scary? Or where a ringmaster sheriff negotiated the nature of reality by allowing himself to be painlessly—but not bloodlessly—shot? Or where the audience should really stick to popcorn? A perfect metafictional reflection for those who love rampaging bunnies and oversized tomatoes with a grudge. Granville 7, October 4 (2 p.m.), 8 (12 a.m.), and 14 (9:30 p.m.)
      > MH

      Rumination (China)
      The Cultural Revolution was one of the major events of the 20th century, but Xu Ruotao reduces this epic tragedy to a feud between mainly eccentric characters in a geographical nowheresville. Most of the buildings in this unnamed community appear to be unfinished, and the establishing shots tell us absolutely nothing. What a perfect metaphor for the Red Guards’ high-minded—but bloody-handed—failure. Vancity Theatre, October 6 (6:45 p.m.) and 7 (1 p.m.)
      > MH

      September 12 (Turkey/Germany)
      It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it. This is no standard history of the 1980 coup that put Turkey under an iron fist that still clenches today. Visual artist Ozlem Sulak gathers intimate witness accounts from people on all sides on that fateful day. But she edits their voices over long takes of each person doing intricate work: rolling dough, fixing a violin, building a model boat. Her formal experiment ends up telling the human cost—one that led to jailings, interrogations, and the loss of an incredibly liberal era—but showing the resilience of the victims. Vancity Theatre, October 8 (4:30 p.m.) and 10 (7 p.m.)
      > JS

      Snap (Ireland)
      At first, this brutal Irish descent into abuse feels like a stagey actor’s exercise. In one of the film’s many structural contrivances, a documentary crew has come into Sandra’s home for an interview and she is dramatically, bile-spittingly recounting her side of a hideous incident that has turned her into a media pariah. But that story—about something that her teen son did to a toddler, eventually revealed in flashback—goes to places that no one can be prepared for. And snap! You’re hooked. Granville 7, October 4 (6:30 p.m.) and 5 (12 p.m.)
      > JS

      Snow White (France)
      Unfortunately, the big screen is the only place Vancouverites are ever going to see a ballet this lushly staged. In French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj’s dark and erotic version of the fairy tale, dwarves rappel down walls, mirrors come to life in orgiastic ecstasy, and the king and queen rise eerily on suspended thrones. The dance is classic, but the fresh take is avant-garde (complete with costumes by Jean Paul Gaultier). For balletomanes who can’t cough up the fare to Paris. Vancity Theatre, October 1 (7 p.m.) and 8 (11 a.m.); Granville 7, October 6 (6 p.m.)
      > JS

      Tainted Love (International)
      Sick, twisted stuff abounds in this alternately funny and disturbing collection, which emphasizes shorts from down under, the U.S., and Central Europe. Highlights include Hungary’s wistful “Model”, about beauty and illness, and the Czech Republic’s “Love Birds”, about the sacrifices lovers sometimes have to make. The squeamish are advised to leave right before the final “Recollection”, a bit of gory serial-killer nonsense obviously made as an industry calling card. Granville 7, October 7 (9:15 p.m.); Pacific Cinémathèque, October 9 (3:30 p.m.)
      > KE

      Transfer (Germany)
      A clever idea is badly executed in this futuristic tale, which finds rich people harvesting the (still living) bodies of poor Africans in order to extend their own neocolonial lives. The best part has two couples, young and old, increasingly aware that they are inhabiting the same space. But lousy dubbing and a weak resolution rob Transfer of any real impact. Granville 7, October 6 (9:15 p.m.) and 7 (1:15 p.m.)
      > KE

      Turn it Loose (U.K.)
      Sixteen guys, 12 hours of B-boy battling in Soweto. The dance action, with the stylized slo-mo and angles, would make this record of the international Red Bull BC One competition recommendable on its own. But the stakes are so high for the competitors—an Algerian immigrant from the ghettos of Lyon, a Senegalese breaker who practises in a derelictindustrial building—that the documentary is engrossing on a human level, too. Off the hook. Granville 7, October 5 (1:15 p.m.); Pacific Cinémathèque, October 8 (7 p.m.)
      > JS

      Two Indians Talking (Canada)
      This well-named item never strays far from its theatrical roots, and the palaver between two cousins—one college-educated, one stuck on the rez—is considerably smarter than the boy-girl stuff that happens briefly in the middle. In any case, the young actors are excellent and the insights well-considered. Granville 7, October 6 (9:15 p.m.) and 8 (12:40 p.m.)
      > KE

      Vespa (Hungary)
      A coming-of-age road trip that’s not all rosy, Vespafollows a young Roma country boy who finds his way to Budapest to claim the title bike that he won through a candy wrapper. But a kid with a nice new Vespa is vulnerable in desperate times and a tough place, and it’s fair to wonder if he’ll ever make it home. Nicely shot, with natural acting. Pacific Cinémathèque, September 30 (7 p.m.); Granville 7, October 4 (3:20 p.m.)
      > JS

      Wagner & Me (U.K.)
      In this well-crafted BBC doc, Stephen Fry wryly dissects his lifelong fascination with Richard Wagner’s music. The film also deals with his revulsion at the composer’s darker side, and at where that was taken in the 20th century. Great behind-the-scenes opera footage as well. Granville 7, October 7 (6 p.m.), 11 (3:45 p.m.), and 13 (2:50 p.m.)
      > KE

      When We Leave (Germany/Turkey)
      Among non-Muslims, so-called “honour killing” is second only to female circumcision when it comes to evoking moral outrage. Vienna-born director Feo Aladag juggles this red-hot potato with an impressive mixture of courage and grace. She is ably helped in this endeavour by star Sibel Kekilli, who plays a well-intentioned Turkish immigrant daughter whose decisions nonetheless call down nemesis with the ineluctability of a Greek tragedy. As convincing as it is heartbreaking. Granville 7, October 4 (6:15 p.m.), 5 (3:30 p.m.), and 13 (11:40 a.m.)
      > MH

      Comments