Straight Critics Review 40-Plus Flicks From The Vancouver International Film Festival

10 ON TEN (Iran) In which Abbas Kiarostami reflects on his inimitable way of making movies. A must for independent filmmakers everywhere; a matter of taste for everyone else. Pacific Cinémathí¨que, September 26 (12:30 p.m.) and Granville 7, September 28 (6 pm..) and October 1 (10 p.m.) * Mark Harris

THE 10TH DISTRICT COURT (France) A sequel to Raymond Depardon's previous Caught in the Act (1994), the documentary The 10th District Court: Moments of Trial provides the fascinated viewer with yet another inside look at the mechanics of the French justice system. Very few true criminals present their case in the night court where they are judged, and precisely because of this they collectively compose an extraordinary mosaic of ordinary folks (mainly nonwhite, almost all male) who have somehow put a foot wrong. Granville 7, September 26 (6:20 p.m.) and 30 (2:20 p.m.), and October 1 (6:40 p.m.) * MH

ARISAN! (Indonesia) This feel-good romantic comedy about closeted guppies and unfulfilled yuppies is no worse than similar fare from other parts of the world; it's no better either. Granville 7, September 26 (3 p.m.) and October 7 (9 p.m.) * MH

BAOBER IN LOVE (China) Day-Glo romanticism meets neon folly in this Betty Blue--like riff on a lopsided relationship between a plodding sane businessman and a magical madwoman that, despite the hallucinatory lustre of just about every shot, somehow doesn't add up to very much. Ridge, September 23 (7 p.m.) and Granville 7, September 27 (4 p.m.) * MH

BROTHERS (Finland) Deceptively simple, Brothers is about what happens when a somewhat callous older sibling realizes that his recently estranged kid brother has a fatal disease and seems to be running away from family and friends. Because the teenager has fled to Estonia, causing the brother to cross borders to search for him, it can also be seen as a subtle commentary on the relationship between Europe's healthier countries and their more traumatized neighbours, although director Esa Illi doesn't underline this or any other notion. Ridge, September 30 (9:45 p.m.) and Granville 7, October 6 (11:30 a.m.) * Ken Eisner

CHANNELS OF RAGE (Israel) Israeli rappers Subliminal (a right-wing Jew) and Tamer Nafar (a Palestinian nationalist) lay out the basic arguments fuelling the Middle East crisis while somehow remaining something like friends. The gravity of the situation and the transformative power of art (even the gangsta-imitating type) are underscored by shifting events behind them over a long period, as the latest uprising and security measures kick into high gear. Granville 7, September 26 (8:45 p.m.), and October 4 (9:45 p.m.) and 6 (1 p.m.) * KE

CHINESE RESTAURANTS: ON THE ISLANDS (Canada) Director Cheuk Kwan decided to check out the Chinese diaspora by visiting selected restaurants in francophone Mauritius, anglophone Trinidad, and Hispanic Cuba. All the restaurant families profiled in this doc have adapted to local languages and traditions with surprising ease, although in Cuba, the once-substantial Chinese community has dwindled to almost nothing. Even there, however, the mood is more upbeat than down, reflecting a willingness to confront new challenges that is the cornerstone of the will to survive. Granville 7, September 27 (12:30 p.m.) and October 7 (7:15 p.m.) * MH

DELUXE COMBO PLATTER (Canada) Undigestibly mawkish and trite, this steaming trayful of cinematic leftovers may have the worst script of anything you'll find at the fest. Somebody's idea of an empowering "comedy" finds a padded-out Marla Sokoloff, from The Practice, as a small-town girl trying to get noticed by a local stud muffin (Barry Watson). Monika Schnarre is dreadful as a developer with Sapphic inclinations, although she's not as bad as Jennifer Tilly, playing a (gasp) dumb waitress with a bad Southern accent and a heart of pure hairspray. Some of the interplay between Sokoloff and Watson is kind of sweet, in an obvious sort of way. Ridge, September 30 (7 p.m.) and Granville 7, October 4 (11 a.m.) * KE

DIAS DE SANTIAGO (Peru) Although he's nowhere near as antisocial, and he's much more attractive to women, the hero of this neorealist drama is basically a Peruvian Travis Bickle. Somewhat predictable in places, Dí­as de Santiago is nonetheless more than redeemed by Josué Méndez's dynamic directorial style, informed not by the usual hyperkinetics but by a deep sense of moral integrity. Cesare Zavattini would doubtless approve. Granville 7, September 26 (2 p.m.) and 29 (10 p.m.), and October 1 (7:30 p.m.) * MH

FLOWER AND SNAKE 4 (Japan) Defenders of this dark tale about a bankrupt businessman who barters his bride to a perverted yakuza to get himself out of debt might enlist the aesthetics of surrealism, the theatre of cruelty, and the cinema of transgression to justify their choice. With equal predictability, detractors of Flower and Snake 4: Rope Magic could point out that its vicious misogyny would not, under ordinary circumstances, even be tolerated at the Pussycat or the Venus. I almost side with those who would rather be wrong with the Village Voice than right with the Reader's Digest, but in this instance the social conservatives have the stronger case. Granville 7, September 27 (2 p.m.) and 28 (9:30 p.m.) * MH

THE FOREST FOR THE TREES (Germany) One of the best examples of the new digital revolution in German indies, this thornily realistic drama follows an increasingly off-kilter young woman as she takes a teaching position in a new town and manages to alienate almost everyone around her. In particular, she forms an unhealthy attachment to a more glamorous neighbour. As the teacher becomes more unhinged, you realize that displacement and loneliness can drive even (especially) idealists to despair. The digitally shot effort's strange ending is meant to be taken metaphorically--I hope. Granville 7, September 24 (7:30 p.m.) and 25 (3 p.m.), and October 2 (6:40 p.m.) * KE

THE GIFT (Italy) If you can accept The Gift as a rather enigmatic slice of rural life wherein people with Renaissance faces walk through medieval streets on their way from the supermarket to the village witch, you will probably warm to this diffuse, almost silent drama. If you cannot, you must dismiss it as just another exercise in empty pictorialism. Granville 7, September 24 (10 p.m.) and Pacific Cinémathí¨que, September 26 (10 a.m.) * MH

LE GOUT DES JEUNES FILLES (Canada) Dany Laferrií¨re is one of this country's greatest writers, but up until now no cineaste has done justice to his oeuvre. John L'Ecuyer's brilliant re-creation of the Haitian-born author's semifictional account of coming of age at the end of Papa Doc Duvalier's nightmare regime is alternately magical, touching, and terrifying. Laferrií¨re wrote the sensitive script and delivers the eloquent voice-over narration. Granville 7, September 30 (6:20 p.m.) and October 2 (noon) * MH

HARI OM (India/France) This unusual road movie follows the meanderings of a disaffected French beauty (Camille Natta) and her mob-hunted rickshaw driver (Vijay Raaz) as they provide the audience with the opportunity to observe the architectural and topographical splendours of Rajasthan. Although the characters frequently behave in an annoyingly stupid manner, Hari Om has heart as well as eye candy, and this prompts us to forgive it a lot. Granville 7, September 24 (6:20 p.m.) and the Vogue, September 26 (3:30 p.m.) * MH

HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON (Switzerland) Because of his recent death, Henri Cartier-Bresson, the man whom many regard as the greatest photographer of the 20th century, has generated interest that is space-shuttle high. Heinz Bí¼tler's approach, subtitled The Impassioned Eye, is modest and restrained but, because his subject's career was so integral to the pivotal events of the recent past (the rise of Communism in China; the death of Mahatma Gandhi), the result is thoroughly satisfying. Pacific Cinémathí¨que, September 23 (7 p.m.) and Granville 7, September 25 (4 p.m.) * MH

HIJACKING CATASTROPHE: 9/11, FEAR AND THE SELLING OF AMERICAN EMPIRE (USA) A devastating critique of the Bush claque's long-range plans, this hourlong doc deals with 9/11 as a gift from Allah to the neo-cons, who never expected to enact their wild-eyed schemes with so little resistance. Morality aside, the film also confronts the immediate--and painfully ironic--consequences of such an ill-conceived empire: the collapse of the U.S. economy and gradual loss of influence around the world. Pacific Cinémathí¨que, September 23 (4 p.m.) and Granville 7, September 24 (9:30 p.m.) * KE

I LIKE TO WORK (Italy) Roberto Benigni muse Nicoletta Braschi gets a literal workout here as a mild-mannered single mom who finds herself increasingly harassed and humiliated at work when she dabbles in trade unionism. Actually, she hasn't even done anything to raise her corporate bosses' ire; they are simply in the process of downsizing, and pushing women around is always on the to-do list. Even so, the movie offers a gritty kind of inspiration, if just short of the Erin Brockovich sort. Granville 7, September 23 (6:40 p.m.) and Ridge, September 26 (1 p.m.) * KE

I, CURMUDGEON (Canada) Alan Zweig (you know him and love him from his cranky-collectors' movie, Vinyl) has a gloriously agonized time talking to people (ranging from Fran Leibowitz to Harvey Pekar and Mark Eitzel) about their bad attitudes. What starts as a cautionary screed against letting bitterness rule your life turns out to be something of a celebration of the power (and powerlessness) of naked-emperor screeds in general. And if you don't find that amusing, the hell with you! Granville 7, September 29 (6 p.m.) and October 1 (10:30 a.m.) * KE

IMELDA (USA) There's more to Mrs. Marcos than shoes, as revealed in the compelling doc detailing the rise, fall, and irrepressible rebirth of the Philippines' first lady, who started out modelling herself on Jackie Kennedy but soon headed into the territory of Marie Antoinette (without ever losing her head). This well-told tale is surprisingly sympathetic to the increasingly plasticized Imelda; in fact, it gives her the means to describe her own particular brand of self-delusion without ever recognizing it herself. Granville 7, September 26 (6:40 p.m.) and October 5 (4 p.m.) * KE

INCIDENT AT LOCH NESS (USA) Werner Herzog's quixotic side comes in for a gentle ribbing in Zak Penn's would-be documentary about the German director's trip to Scotland and his attempt to unlock the "enigma" of Nessie. Initially, you don't know whether to laugh or snore through the very realistic steps of setting out on a low-budget cinematic adventure, but by the time the crew's "sonar expert" strips down to her red-white-and-blue bikini, you have a pretty good idea. Weirdly enough, though, this Incident has its philosophically stirring moments, too. Granville 7, September 24 (9:15 p.m.) and 26 (2:20 p.m.) * KE

THE ISLAND (Italy) Because Italy
has made rather a lot of movies about everyday life in rough fishing villages on Mediterranean islands of late (Respiro et al.), The Island can seem a little too familiar at times. Still, if you go for that kind of picturesque, sentimental thing, director Costanza Quatriglio certainly knows how to deliver the expected experience. Granville 7, September 25 (7:30 p.m.) and October 5 (2:20 p.m.) * MH

IZO (Japan) There are two things we know about Miike Takashi, the hardest-working man in Japanese show business. The first is that he has talent; the second is that he makes far too many films far too fast. Izo shows signs of both tendencies. The central figure is a vengeance demon, born over and over again, who kills everyone he dislikes and who dislikes virtually everyone. The director mocks everything from politics to religion in a story that pushes nihilism about as far as it can go in a deliciously atemporal, mock-incestuous fashion. On the other hand, many scenes feel rushed, and the slapdash and the inspired are equally common, a typically hybrid Miike result. Granville 7, September 25 (9 p.m.) and 30 (3 p.m.), and October 1 (9:45 p.m.) * MH

LET'S GET FRANK (USA) What may appear to be just another political biopic turns out to be a fascinating portrait of an era, as well as of a unique public servant. Massachusetts representative Barney Frank, the first openly gay member of Congress and himself embroiled in a sex scandal 10 years earlier, became a point man for the Democratic side of the impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton. Intercutting his own story with highlights of the House hearings and his TV appearances at the time, the film shows how humour and honest common sense can at least puncture the pomposity of even the most venal political machine. Granville 7, September 23 (1:40 p.m.) and 25 (7:15 p.m.) * KE

LIFE RUNNING OUT OF CONTROL (Germany) Touched upon in The Corporation and other recent docs, the subject of genetic engineering, especially as it affects our food supply, is the subject of this absorbing, if scary, German film. It is narrated in English, and significant portions were shot in Canada. Granville 7, September 30 (6:45 p.m.) and October 6 (1:40 p.m.) * KE

THE LIMB SALESMAN (Canada) Set in a future ice age--the snow is polluted and pure water is more valuable than Dom Pérignon--this cowriting effort for Ingrid Veninger and Anais Granofsky (starring the former and directed by the latter) is enigmatic to a fault. And it's plainly preposterous in its futuristic vision of mutants, weird medicine, and a doctor who restores absent appendages while needing a new heart himself. If the well-designed film is finally too underpopulated, and underwritten, to be fully convincing, it still casts a mood that gets under your skin. Granville 7, October 1 (9 p.m.) and 3 (2 p.m.) * KE

THE MACHINIST (USA/Spain) A dark exercise in Memento-like paranoia, The Machinist features the egoless and highly emaciated Christian Bale as a factory worker who hasn't slept in a year--for reasons that are only gradually revealed. Meanwhile, he's going lethally mad, even as director Brad Anderson drives us nuts trying to figure everything out. Our patience is rewarded, as long as we're not too resistant to stylized misanthropy leavened by brief moments of free-floating humanity. Granville 7, September 24 (12:30 p.m.) and 26 (9:30 p.m.) * KE

MALE FANTASY (Canada) Vancouver filmmaker Blaine Thurier's second outing in the land of low-budget, gender-war preoccupations finds him exploring what happens when your average guy (your average guy with mental problems and a geeky mustache) encounters the disjuncture between his idea of being with women and the real thing. It takes a while to get used to the film's willful primitivism--the acting is variable, to say the least--but Thurier (also a member of the New Pornographers) gets into stuff about relationships that everyone else ignores. Ridge Theatre, September 28 (9:30 p.m.) and Granville 7, October 4 (2 p.m.) * KE

THE MISSING (Taiwan) Tsai Ming-Liang executive-produced this movie for his favourite actor, so it's not surprising that Lee Kang-Sheng's directorial debut should so strongly resemble the work of his mentor. The Missing is full of beautifully composed shots and impossibly long takes, and is thoroughly imbued with high-tech postmodern anomie. Because it's also a film that explores the tragedy of Alzheimer's disease, a more straightforward approach might have been in order. Granville 7, September 23 (7:30 p.m.) and October 4 (noon) * MH

MOTORCYCLE DIARIES (Brazil/USA/
Argentina/Chile/Peru) Talk about multinational. Central Station director Walter Salles's first venture into the Spanish language re-creates the eye-opening, eight-month trip through South America that galvanized a young Che Guevara and his more worldly pal Albert Grenado (respectively, Gael Garcia Bernal and Rodrigo De la Serna, who is actually related to the real Che). If the film is ultimately a little too respectful to be great cinema, or great politics, it's still a highly enjoyable evocation of a bygone era. Vogue Theatre, September 25 (9:30 p.m.) and Granville 7, September 27 (1 p.m.) * KE

MY BEAUTIFUL GIRL, MARI (South Korea) If this film is anything to go by, Hayao Miyazaki has a competitor at the apex of Asian anime in South Korea's Lee Sung-Gang. My Beautiful Girl, Mari is, despite its dreadful title, one of the most beautiful children's features ever to be filmed or drawn. Granville 7, September 28 (6:40 p.m.), and October 1 (2 p.m.) and 7 (6:20 p.m.) * MH

THE NOMI SONG (Germany) In the androgynous '80s, Klaus Nomi was a minor figure in a glam firmament led by David Bowie and other, more complete heroes--if just for one day. But the transplanted, and strangely transparent, German (real name: Klaus Sperber) was a classically trained cabaret artist cut off from his own place and time, and that disjunction makes his brief fling with fame that much more interesting in retrospect. The well-assembled doc could have dropped about 10 minutes near the end, but it's fun almost all the way through. Granville 7, September 30 (8:45 p.m.) and October 7 (3 p.m.) * KE

OR (MY TREASURE) (France/Israel) Late Marriage's Ronit Elkabetz plays a hard-bitten prostitute and single mother whose teenage daughter is gradually drawn into the life she's struggling to avoid. The tough-minded film paints a portrait of Tel Aviv's dark underbelly, although it's not without humour. In the end, though, most of its observations about the commodification of sex (and love) are pretty obvious. Granville 7, September 23 (10 p.m.), 26 (11 a.m.), and 27 (9:30 p.m.) * KE

REGULAR OR SUPER: VIEWS ON MIES VAN DER ROHE (Canada) Every festival film has a target audience, and this TV-length look at the works of the most successful Bauhaus visionary to have worked in North America is aimed squarely at architects, architecture students, and lovers of modern architecture (haters, too, probably, since the movie takes pains to show why van der Rohe's "glass boxes" were in a class by themselves). Pacific Cinémathí¨que, September 27 (1 p.m.) and October 2 (7 p.m.) * MH

SCHULTZE GETS THE BLUES (Germany) When a fat, middle-aged, unemployed Bavarian miner wins an accordion contest and gets a free trip to Texas, his new love of zydeco music alienates him from his oompah colleagues and takes him on a journey into the swampy unknown of black American music. The early sections are beautifully observed and marked by real compassion for aging fellows who find themselves at sea in the new Germany. But director Michael Schorr doesn't know quite what to do with Schultze once he gets to Texas, and for every surreal moment of culture clash there are several wasted opportunities. Granville 7, September 23 (2 p.m.) and 25 (9:30 p.m.) * KE

SEARCHING FOR THE WRONG-EYED JESUS (Great Britain/USA) You think you know Christianity? Well, you don't quite know the potent mix of sin, soul, and southern music until you've travelled through the Bible-thumped mud dumps of Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida with alt-country hero Jim White in a borrowed car covered in duct tape, or "Alabama chrome", as it's called here. Between the tales told by crazed preachers, sharp-eyed writers, and toothless bar hags, there are performances by the likes of Johnny Dowd, the Handsome Family, and David Johansen. God almighty, it's good--and weird. Granville 7, September 23 (7 p.m.) and 25 (1 p.m.), and October 5 (9:45 p.m.) * KE

SORCERESS OF THE NEW PIANO (Hong Kong/Singapore/U.S.) Nominally focusing on Hong Kong pianist Margaret Leng Tan, this wide-ranging doc is really interested in the piano as a locus for developments in twentieth-century music, drawing a line back through Tan to John Cage, George Crumb, and other innovators. Some of Evans Chan's digital filmmaking is rather amateurish, however, and the biographical information, when he occasionally comes to rest on his subject, is often more interesting than the musicological stuff. Granville 7, September 24 (8:45 p.m.) and 26 (10:30 a.m.) * KE

SUND@Y SEOUL (South Korea) Ripped from the headlines, as they used to say, this fleeting set of vignettes lays bare some extremes of behaviour (from chat-room teens to adulterous cops and ambivalent turtle collectors) in South Korea's biggest city. Oh Myung-Hoon has such a strong eye for composition and telling gestures that you have to regret it when the film runs out of steam after about an hour, suddenly shifting tone into hotel-room claustrophobia and then an abrupt finish. It's a good hour, though. Granville 7, September 30 (10 p.m.) and October 1 (noon) * KE

TINTIN AND I (Denmark) Georges Remi, known to the world's consumers of comics as Hergé, has attracted a lot of ink over the past decade (including a full-length biography by Pierre Assouline, and a number of extremely critical polemics) but not much celluloid. Tintin and I picks up some of this motion-picture slack. The film's theoretical selling point--a four-day interview that the creator of Tintin gave to a young journalist in 1971--is not really its strongest card. What really makes this movie swing is the way in which director Anders Hí¸gsbro Ostergaard manages to turn cartoon panels into virtual holograms. The results are both beautiful and technically amazing. Pacific Cinémathí¨que, September 27 (7 p.m.), and Granville 7, October 1 (2:20 p.m.) and 5 (6:40 p.m.) * MH

TOUCH THE SOUND (Germany/U.K.) Top Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie is a woman of many marvels, and this top-flight doc, from the fellow who made the hit Rivers and Tides, does his subject the service of making her deafness the least compelling aspect of her personality. Articulate, innovative, and always intensely physical, Glennie is seen in a variety of contexts--a crumbling castle, a train station, on a Manhattan rooftop--banging away with great musicians of many stripes. Granville 7, September 24 (2:20 p.m.) and 25 (6:40 p.m.) * KE

TURBULENT WATERS (Canada) Slavery might be dead on land, but it seems to be alive and well on the briny. According to filmmakers Malcolm Guy and Michelle Smith, the fact that 2,500 mariners die each year is not the most serious of seafaring problems. The number one complaint, rather, is getting paid at all, never mind well. After seeing this movie you'll never look at "flags of convenience" in quite the same way again. Granville 7, September 29 (8:45 p.m.) and October 1 (1:40 p.m.) * MH

WALL (Israel/France) How could a people who survived ghettos and death camps ever want to surround themselves with concrete and barbed wire? That's the unspoken question behind the questions asked of people on both sides of Israel's new "security barrier". Simone Bitton, who speaks both Arabic and Hebrew, keeps her camera on this hideous and deadly new artifact while voices are heard off-screen. This formal effect is a bit wearying, but it perfectly conveys the dehumanizing effect of the wall to all parties. Granville 7, September 23 (3:20 p.m.) and October 5 (8:45 p.m.) * KE

WINTER SOLSTICE (U.S.) A note-perfect family study that never stoops to TV sentimentality, Winter Solstice stars Anthony LaPaglia as the single father of two grown sons just about ready to leave their suburban New Jersey nest. Allison Janney plays a somewhat goofy new neighbour who finally unlocks the secret of what happened to the man's marriage. No melodrama, though, just a keen, measured eye for people with pain they actually want to get past. John Levanthal's acoustic-guitar score is a definite plus. Granville 7, September 23 (9:15 p.m.) and 25 (11:30 a.m.) * KE

WOMAN IS THE FUTURE OF MAN (South Korea) The course of true love runs neither straight nor linear in this semicomic triangular romance from Hong Sang-Soo, a director who is as brilliant as he is exasperating. Granville 7, September 28 (2:20 p.m.) and 29 (6:40 p.m.) * MH

YOUR NEXT LIFE (Spain) The Basque countryside seems a remote and forbidding place in this sharply drawn tale of two sisters who rebel, in different ways, against a father who is even harsher than the landscape. When a chance mishap with a nuttier neighbour drives Dad into hiding, the older girl's loyalty is tested--especially when the son of the troublesome neighbour shows up and spots her hidden beauty. The movie loses its way right at the very end, but it builds enough carefully wrought goodwill by then that it doesn't matter much. Granville 7, September 24 (11 a.m.) and Ridge, September 29 (9:30 p.m.) * KE