Day: January 6, 2016

By Joe Bendel. You might call this Romanian style tomb-raiding. Instead of ancient crypts, Costi’s unemployed neighbor invites him to help plunder his own family history. If Adrian’s grandfather really did bury something in his backyard on the eve of the Communist nationalization, the two men hope to find and split it. Of course, that will be a big “if” in The Treasure, Corneliu Porumboiu’s wry comedy of manners and bureaucracy, which opens this Friday in New York.

Facing foreclosure on his flat, Adrian offers Costi a deal. If he can pay the eight hundred Euros necessary for a professional metal detecting service, they will share the proceeds of everything they might find. Based on his late grandfather’s cryptic words to him, Adrian is absolutely convinced there must be something there, sort of how George Bluth, Sr. would say “there’s always money in the banana stand.”

For a mild mannered government office worker like Costi, eight hundred Euros represents a considerable investment. Just taking time away from work to schedule the appointment arouses his supervisor’s suspicions, in an absurdly droll scene that could very well be a defining example of Porumboiu-ism. However, Cornel offers them an off-the-books special behind his boss’s back. For half the price, he agrees to meet them with the gear in Islaz, the site of the 1848 democratic uprising. However, they must be secretive about their scheme, because the government is entitled to claim anything deemed to have national cultural significance.

Given the discreet, severely reserved nature of Porumboiu’s style, you might not realize in-the-moment how much lunacy unfolds during The Treasure. It has the heart of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World, but the tone of Porumboiu’s “greatest hit,” Police, Adjective. However, whenever a supposed authority figure saunters into the frame, the absurdity that follows is impossible to miss. The toxicity of the Communist era also lingers over their best laid plans, like an annoying ghost.

Deceptively stone-faced, Toma Cuzin slowly but surely brings out Costa’s endearing everyman qualities. Adrian Purcarescu, Porumboiu’s filmmaker colleague, whose own metal-detecting exploits inspired the film, is uproariously neurotic as his namesake. Similarly, real life metal-detector Corneliu Cozmei is a pitch perfect Droopy Dog foil for the resentful Adrian. Their caustic bickering is wickedly droll and acutely realistic.

That is also pretty much true of Porumboiu’s film in general. It is as understated as a Stephen Wright monologue, but it builds to an uncharacteristically satisfying conclusion. This is not just Porumboiu’s most accessible film, but perhaps the most reachable and diggable film to be broadly associated with the Romanian New Wave. Highly recommended for sophisticated palettes, The Treasure opens this Friday (1/8) in New York, at the IFC Center.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted January 6th, 2015 at 9:56pm.

By Joe Bendel. Who produces better films, feminists or anti-colonialists? Supposedly, a prominent Swedish feminist filmmaker and her grungy Argentine colleague will be joining forces to co-direct a typically co-financed, festival-only kind of film, but nobody is working in concert on this shoot. Every kind of -ism and all sorts of international film production conventions are skewered in Alejo Mouguillansky & Fia-Stina Sandlund’s self-referential many times over The Gold Bug, or Victoria’s Revenge, which screens during the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Neighboring Scenes: New Latin American Cinema film series.

Moguillansky, playing himself, is about to start co-directing an explicitly feminist film with the Swedish Sandlund, funded with hipster European grant money. The idea is to make a bio-treatment of Swedish feminist author Victoria Benedictsson. However, unemployed actor Rafa convinces his colleagues to make a film about failed radical Leandro N. Alem instead, because he has come into possession of a map to buried treasure outside the city of Alem.

Frankly, the town has nothing to do with Alem besides being named in his honor, but that hardly matters. Caught up in his enthusiasm, Moguillansky calls Sandlund to convince her to make the eleventh hour switch (swapping one Nineteenth Century suicide for another), shamelessly playing the colonialism card. He can bamboozle the European producers, but Sandlund remains dubious. Presumably, since she is stuck at a feminist conference in Miami, she will be powerless to stop them. However, like Charlie on the phone to the Angels, the heard but never seen Sandlund will exert a powerful force from the shadows (remember the second part of the title).

Of course, the meta-meta film isn’t called The Gold Bug for no reason. Just as in Poe’s story, the map is only one clue to the treasure’s location. There is also a cryptogram to be cracked. Naturally, this will require a lot of madcap running around. Unbeknownst to Rafa and his cronies, two women on the crew, acting with Sandlund’s counsel, are conspiring to grab the treasure for themselves. There is also an incomprehensible anti-colonialist, supposedly feminist film to be made—not that they have a script to follow.

Obviously, Gold Bug follows in the tradition of chaotic movie-making films, like Day for Night and Irma Vep, but it has distantly sharp satirical edge. When Moguillansky and Sandlund were thrown together as part of some grant-writing, international financing deal in real life, the concept grew out of the absurdity of their situation. Frankly, they expose a lot of the sausage-making of multinational “prestige” filmmaking for ridicule.

Sandlund’s frosty voiceovers are absolutely hilarious and Moguillansky delivers some of the film’s best lines as the (hopefully) fictionalized version of himself. As Rafa, Rafael Spregelburd (recognizable from The Critic) deftly balances raging insecurity and manipulative game-playing, which probably comes naturally to many actors. In fact, the entire ensemble seems to have a collective talent for rapid-fire cross-talk.

Gold Bug was co-written by Mariano Llinás, who wrote and directed the utterly brilliant Extraordinary Stories (not to be confused with Extraordinary Tales or Wild Tales). We can easily see his Russian doll influence in the narrative digressions and intriguing historical flashback interludes. It might be too clever for its own good, but anyone who has seen an unwatchably pretentious film at a festival and wondered how it got produced may find their answers here. Recommended for cineastes who do not mind a little metaphorical ox-goring, The Gold Bug, or Victoria’s Revenge screens Thursday (1/7) at the Walter Reade, as part of this year’s Neighboring Scenes film series.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on January 6th, 2015 at 9:55pm.

By Joe Bendel. Somehow, elderly British upper crust ladies and gents can be either reassuring or wickedly scary, depending on the context. Perhaps they are merely products of their idyllic or macabre country manors. Regardless, the tradition of British gothic horror continues rather nicely in Simon Frith’s Eva’s Legacy and Joss Maines’ The Wager, which both screen as part of short film blocks at the 2016 Idyllwild International Festival of Cinema.

Eva’s Legacy will be a human interest story. At least that is what the reporter who has come to interview her thinks. The heirless titular Eva has announced she is bequeathing her grand family home to a children’s charity. It seems appropriate, since the estate once sheltered several children from the chaos of the London blitzes. Eva vividly remembers one little boy in particular . . .

Frith has assembled a lovely setting and classy British cast for what feels like a proof of concept short. Frankly, it seems like Legacy is just getting started when it ends (but it is far worse when a film feels like it has been over long before its credits roll). Frith controls the build-up nicely, maintaining a vibe not unlike the under-appreciated Dominic West film, The Awakening. Sue Morley is subtly mysterious as Eva and Elizabeth Twells makes an effectively contemporary gothic heroine. It would be nice to see this one expanded.

In contrast, Maines’ The Wager is more self-contained, but it is even more satisfying for genre fans. It sort of plays like the Hammer Horror version of the favorite Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode, The Man from the South. After fleecing two associates in a not-so friendly game of cards, Peter, their wealthy host, offers the financially desperate younger man a fateful bargain. If he can spend a night in a reportedly haunted room of the old dark house, he will forgive all his debt and throw in all the takings from their game. Needless to say, it will be easier said than done.

The atmosphere of The Wager is wonderfully Hammer-esque and the house’s backstory is appropriately sinister (eerily evoking Abelard and Heloise). As Peter and the other old-timer Harry, Ian Hogg and Stephan Chase look they could have been wizards in the Harry Potter franchise or apprentices of Peter Cushing and Sir Christopher Lee, which is a very good thing.

Both Eva’s Legacy and The Wager are impressively produced, suitably British supernatural horror films. They represent a lot of talent contributed by their respective casts and crews, so they are easy to recommend for genre fans. The two shorts would screen well together, but they are in separate programs at this year’s IIFC, with the former screening this Wednesday (1/6) and Saturday (1/9) and the latter screening Friday (1/8) and Sunday (1/10).

Posted on January 6th, 2015 at 9:55pm.