Movie Reviews – Page 364 – LFM: Libertas Film Magazine

LFM Review: The Portuguese Nun

nun45 — Leonor Baldaque in "The Portuguese Nun."

By Joe Bendel. For his latest film, Eugène Green did not set out to adapt The Letters of a Portuguese Nun, the scandalous epistolary romance now attributed to the Comte de Guilleragues, but he plays a director shooting such a project. Yet, even that film-within-a-film is highly unorthodox in Green’s oddly spiritual The Portuguese Nun (trailer here), which opens this Friday at the Anthology Film Archives in New York.

Julie de Hauranne is a Portuguese-French actress fluent in her mother’s language, but making her first trip to Lisbon for Denis Verde’s avant-garde re-working of The Portuguese Nun. There will be no dialogue and few scenes of her together with her co-star. Instead, they are filming the visuals that will accompany their pre-recorded voice-overs. Those rather easy set-calls allow her plenty of time to explore the city. In doing so, she makes a fleeting, but perhaps deep connection to D. Henrique Cunha, a would-be aristocrat disgraced by his family’s connections to the Salazar and Caetano regimes. She also meets Vasco, a veritable street urchin and becomes fascinated with a real Portuguese nun, Sister Joana, who prays nightly at the candlelit Nossa Senhora do Monte Chapel, a place where the spirit could move even an avowed atheist.

If nothing else, Nun will convince viewers Lisbon is a spectacularly beautiful city. The word “picturesque” just does not cut it—not even by half. Its architectural splendor is perfectly matched by a soundtrack of exquisitely sensitive fados. These things are particularly noticeable since Green seems determined to keep the audience at arm’s length from the on-screen drama.

Rarely do Nun’s verbal cadences ever approach anything realistically conversational. Instead, there is a distinctly recitative quality to the dialogue, which Green emphasizes all the more by regularly directing his cast to deliver their lines straight into the camera in self-conscious close-ups. Though de Hauranne is frequently in motion roaming through the city, the film often feels static, like a series of frozen tableaux. Despite the sparkling sheen of Raphaël O’Byrne’s cinematography, Nun has the rigid formality of medieval paintings. Appropriately, it also takes questions of religious faith just as seriously.

Though one suspects the “North American born,” French-naturalized Green leans somewhat to the left, there are absolutely no cheap shots taken at Catholicism in Nun. Instead, meeting Sister Joana is a transformational experience for de Hauranne. In an exchange one could never find in a Hollywood film, the saintly Nun explicitly connects faith and love with words that are powerful, because they are spoken with humility. Likewise, instead of being a snarky Bill Maher, the worldly actress’s questions elicit heartfelt responses, because they are meant in good faith, so to speak.

Frankly, Nun is a strange film to get a handle on. At times, Leonor Baldaque is so deliberately inexpressive as De Hauranne, she could be mistaken for a bad CGI effect. Though essentially playing himself, Green is nearly just as stiff when appearing as Verde. Conversely, Diogo Dória’s turn as the haunted Cunha is deeply compelling and fundamentally humane, while Ana Moreira radiates piety as Sister Joana.

In terms of method and tone, Nun almost approaches experimental filmmaking, yet it has a romantic soul and a respect for the transcendent faith of Sister Joana that borders on genuine reverence. It also shows unexpected flashes of sardonic wit. Clearly, Nun is intended for an exclusive, self-selecting audience, yet it has moments of arresting beauty well beyond the sights and sounds of Lisbon. It would surely baffle multiplex audiences several times over, but the elusive Nun is highly recommended to the stylistically adventurous. It opens this Friday (10/22) in New York at the Anthology Film Archives.

Posted on October 21st, 2010 at 9:55am.

Taiwan Film Days in San Francisco: Monga

By Joe Bendel. Forces from the Mainland have their eyes on Formosa territory. It is a familiar story, but in this case it is the Chinese syndicate looking to dislodge the traditional Taiwanese neighborhood triads in Doze Niu’s Monga, which opens the San Francisco Film Society’s Taiwan Film Days this Friday at the Viz Theater.

In the 1980’s, nearly every densely packed block of Taipei’s Monga neighborhood has its own triad, like the Temple Front Gang. It is here that the fatherless Chou Yi-Mong finds a sense of belonging. Recruited after standing up to a pack of bullying classmates, Chou (a.k.a. Mosquito) makes fast friends with Boss Geta’s son Dragon Lee and his three running mates. The fab five fight like unit, though they know the rules of the streets dictate they might eventually find themselves rivals. Frankly, Mosquito often does not understand why they are brawling, but the friendship is real. It is even realer than real for Monk, who is devoted to Dragon in quite a suggestive way.

Of course, the nature of their camaraderie is such that betrayal is inevitable, especially with the Mainlanders looking to move in. Indeed, the young gang princes find themselves caught up in a power struggle between those who want to maintain local control of organized crime, like Boss Geta, and those who want to cut a deal with the Northern triads, most notably including Grey Wolf, mysterious old flame of Mosquito’s mother.

Though Monga was selected by Taiwan as its official foreign language Oscar candidate, it is a highly commercial film (in a good way). Energetically mixing teenaged coming of age angst with gritty street level gangster power games, it pretty much has all the elements. There is even young love, street smart as it may be, when Mosquito falls for Ning, a beautiful young prostitute often demeaned for her nearly invisible birthmark.

Monga features a number of young Taiwanese television and pop-stars who likely brought a built-in fan base to the film in the ROC. However, they are well suited to their roles, particularly Ethan Ruan as the intense Monk. Mark Chao also seems to appropriately grow into the role of Mosquito, while the haunting Chia-yen Ko projects a fragile vulnerability as Ning. Yet, the silver coiffed Niu might even upstage his young cast, appearing as the intriguing Grey Wolf.

With generous helpings of Big Brawl style street fighting and unapologetically tear-jerking romance, Monga has something for a wide array of Asian cinema devotees. Thoroughly entertaining, it deserves a productive life on the festival circuit and even a shot at specialty distribution. It should be a crowd pleasing opener for SFFS’s Taiwan Film Days when it screens at the Viz Cinema next Friday (10/22).

Posted on October 18th, 2010 at 10:55am.

Idiot in Exile: The Ghost Writer

ghost12 — Kim Cattrall and Ewan McGregor in "The Ghost Writer."

By David Ross. Defenders of Roman Polanski say in effect, “Great artists give the world so much that they deserve the right to engage in a bit of pedophilic sodomy.” The Ghost Writer (2010) should discomfit this chorus. You can argue that great artists should stand above the law, but you can’t argue that Polanski is anything like a great artist these days. With The Ghost Writer, the elderly roué sinks into the second childhood of incompetent left-wing conspiracy mongering and leaves you wondering whether you’ve overestimated him all along. How bad is The Ghost Writer? I remember once wandering into my dad’s kitchen and taking a big swig of milk from the carton and my mouth filling with rancid cottage cheese. The Ghost Writer is the filmic equivalent.

The plot – something like the Manchurian Candidate in reverse – is a snitty little exercise in historical distortion (I won’t bother with the usual spoiler warning because there’s nothing to spoil). Ewan McGregor plays a ghostwriter hired to help a recently retired British prime minister (Pierce Brosnan) write his memoirs. While investigating the mysterious demise of his predecessor, McGregor discovers that the prime minister’s wife is – what else – a CIA mole. This explains the brainless and biddable prime minister’s otherwise incomprehensible support for America’s War on Terror. In the end, the prime minister is assassinated by the forgivably deranged father of a British soldier killed in Iraq, and McGregor is murdered by the CIA before he can breathe a word of his secret (I hadn’t noticed that the CIA was this competent – well done, men, keep up the good work). So we now have a Tony Blair assassination fantasy to complement Hollywood’s bevy of Bush assassination fantasies (see here). Just in case we somehow miss the analogy to the Bush-Blair axis of evil, Polanski throws in a Condi-esque secretary of state, a Cheney-esque vice president, and a confused sub-conspiracy that links the CIA to a Halliburton-like defense contractor (it’s called Heatherton or something).

Polanski’s demonization of the the CIA is leaden and mechanical and ultimately unwatchable; the entire film has the air of the liar sullenly brazening out his lie. Give guys like Michael Moore and Markos Moulitsas some credit – they at least bring a zany bounce to their programmatic misunderstanding of the world. Polanski does not even bother to make his film superficially credible. Why does his retired PM live in a concrete bunker on a remote island off the coast of what – Maine? I hadn’t noticed that the graying lions of European politics make a beeline for Yankee fishing villages, nor have I noticed much Brutalist domestic architecture round Bar Harbor way. I suppose Polanski filmed these scenes in Sweden or Norway, having no clue and not caring what New England actually looks like. And, of course, it takes McGregor only twenty-four hours to unravel a CIA conspiracy at the heart of the Atlantic alliance that the anti-American world media has somehow missed over the previous twenty-five years. How does he do it? Google! By gum, that’s clever. Why didn’t someone else think of that?

There is a weird autobiographical subtext to the movie, by the way. The Blairish PM can’t return to Europe because he’s been indicted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court. Polanski, of course, can’t return to America, having helped himself to a drugged thirteen year old. The Ghost Writer is Polanski’s fantasy of a world in which celebrity pedophiles can cross borders and neocons – the real bad guys – can’t. In my own opinion, the International Criminal Court should bring charges against directors who invent listless alternate realities vaguely meant to confuse and propagandize. For punishment, they might be set down in the desert with only their broken moral compasses to guide them back to civilization.

For more CIA derangement syndrome see here.

Posted on October 17th, 2010 at 10:06am.

Mad Men Season Four, Episode 12, “Blowing Smoke”

“If you don’t like what they’re saying about you, change the conversation.”

By Jennifer Baldwin. When you’re blowing smoke, you’re lying, B.S.-ing, kissing ass. We blow smoke all the time – at work, in our relationships, in our families. In advertising, you’ve got to blow smoke in people’s eyes in order to get them to buy the product. In the business world, when it comes to your clients, you almost have to blow a little smoke to keep everybody happy. Blowing smoke implies a certain kind of magic, like a magician’s trick, where everyone knows they’re being lied to, but they let it go because they’re enjoying the spell. The problem is, you can’t blow too much smoke, or everybody wises up and the spell is broken.

You have to blow a little smoke when you’re a kid too. In this episode, Sally’s blowing smoke, both at her mother and at her psychiatrist, Dr. Edna. She’s found a way to get them off her back, to make them think she’s a good little girl again. I’m still not sure if Sally is sincere with Dr. Edna, or if she’s just learned how to play the game, but she’s definitely trying to put smoke in her mother’s eyes.

Midge, our favorite beatnik chick, has returned – and she’s blowing smoke as well. Midge just “happens” to run into Don at his office building and invites him over to her place to meet her husband and “maybe” buy a painting. Her story works for a little while; she gets Don to her apartment. But after her heroin-addicted husband spills the beans, Don realizes he’s been had. Midge and her husband are just a couple of junkies who need money to get high. He helps Midge out, but not after realizing he’s got smoke in his eyes.

Of course, Don’s trying to blow some smoke too. With SCDP falling down around him, he’s got to schmooze and placate and woo any client he can in order to keep his agency afloat. But Don’s no account man; he’s creative. He doesn’t understand the “business man” approach to things, the financial side that guys like Lane have hardwired into their bespeckled DNA. He goes after Heinz Beans, Vinegars, and Sauces way too hard; he’s got the whiff of desperation about him. His kind of magic doesn’t work in a restaurant business meeting. He’s creative, he doesn’t know how to handle accounts. Don’s blowing too much smoke at potential clients and where there’s smoke, so the client thinks, there’s fire.

Dr. Atherton’s meeting with Phillip Morris might seem like the solution, until, once again, Don realizes (much like in the situation with Midge) he’s been snookered. The Phillip Morris people were just blowing smoke, just using SCDP as a way to get a better deal with another agency.

Atherton says that SCDP — and Don specifically — are best at working with a cigarette company. “You’re a certain kind of girl and tobacco is your ideal boyfriend.” This is what people have been saying about Don and his agency. SCDP has been all about “blowing smoke” – blowing smoke at the public for years to get them to buy Lucky Strike cigarettes. Sterling, Cooper, and the rest of them have been “addicted” to the smoke of cigarette money for too long.

ken-roger-lane-faye — Ken, Roger, Lane and Faye.

But Don’s sick of desperately kissing ass with potential clients like the guy from Heinz; he’s sick of letting other companies like Phillip Morris B.S. him. He’s sick of being that “certain kind of girl” who’s made for tobacco. He’s done with smoke. His new strategy is to be the agency that sees clearly, that shoots straight, that “stands for something.” It’s a way of “changing the conversation,” as Peggy suggests. He’s rebranding the agency. His New York Times full-page ad is a gamble, a creative risk. It’s that perfect kind of advertising B.S. that doesn’t feel like B.S. because it has the whiff — not of desperation — but of confession, of truth.

Not that Don’s suddenly turned crusader against the health ills of cigarette smoking. But he has turned against the “addiction” of being hitched to a tobacco company. It’s no coincidence that he meditates on Midge’s “Number Four” painting before penning his open letter to the public. Midge can’t stop using heroin as Don suggests; it’s got too strong a hold. Don realizes that fear has got too strong a hold on his company – fear that they’re a cigarette agency that might not land another cigarette account.

But as Don realizes, they’re afraid because they’re addicted to the security and the money that a cigarette company can bring. The honesty behind the ad, the thing that makes it so powerful and so dangerous, is that it’s Don’s confession that he’s not going to play scared anymore.

Of course, it’s a stunt, as Peggy slyly, jokingly points out. But it has the potential to work because it’s too reckless and fearless to feel like a “stunt.” It’s too foolhardy to seem like a trick or a lie. It’s just another ad, but instead of blowing smoke in people’s eyes, it’s blowing the smoke away. Don is the master of reinvention. SCDP doesn’t have to change their name or start over. They just have to change the conversation.

Some other quick thoughts:

• Betty needs so much help! Poor woman. She has major trust issues (who can blame her?) and it’s in an episode like this, even as she’s being a witch to Sally, that I feel sympathy for her. I hope Dr. Edna can help her. I actually think Betty could be a pretty cool chick and a good mom if she could just work through all her myriad of issues.

• Don showed quite the charitable heart this episode, what with giving Midge all the money in his wallet and paying Pete’s share of the money to keep the company afloat.

• Bert Cooper’s departure cracked me up: “Get my shoes!” Then, shoes in hand, he bids farewell to the baffled underlings.

• Jared Harris’s delivery of that line about making sure fired employees don’t steal any staplers or tape dispensers – “They do disappear” – was perfect. I love his performance on this show.

• Also, in Lane Pryce news, apparently a swift whack of Father’s cane works wonders for reuniting a man with his wife and son. Farewell to the Playboy Bunny, it seems.

• And finally, Mad Men continues its streak of showing hippies and counter-culturals in a bad light. First season, it was Midge’s pretentious beatnik loser friends getting put in their place by Don. Last season, it was the hitchhiking draft dodger who clunked Don over the head and robbed him. This season, it’s Midge and her playwright hubby as con artist junkies who guilt Don into giving them money. Maybe that’s why Joyce and Abe and the rest of Peggy’s BoHo friends feel so false as characters – they’re not con artists or drugged-out junkie losers!

This week’s Closing Credits Song: “Trust in Me” by the divine Etta James

Only one more episode left, and of course, the Mad Men promos manage to reveal nothing whatsoever!

Posted on October 15th, 2010 at 9:16pm.

LFM Mini-Review: Better Dead Than Red

By Jason Apuzzo. THE PITCH: Ex-CIA operative Bruce Willis reunites with fellow Agency veterans Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich (?) and Helen Mirren (?!) to take on a ruthless band of CIA bureaucrats, defense contractors and a murderous U.S. Vice President – all while trading gunfire and inane, TV-level banter.

THE SKINNY: What does one say about a film that climaxes with the ‘heroic’ shooting of: a female CIA official, a U.S. Vice President, and a defense contractor (played with smug brio by Richard Dreyfuss)? Red is an ugly, puerile, unfunny, ham-fisted pastiche of every straight-to-video/garbage action film ever made during the 80s-90s – except this particular film is lacquered with a sickening anti-Americanism that most of those films lacked. Only attend this film if the idea of watching Bruce Willis mug at the camera for two hours sounds appealing to you, and your politics are somewhere to the left of Édgar Ramírez’s.

WHAT WORKS:

• The cameo by Ernest Borgnine.

• Absolutely nothing else.

WHAT DOESN’T WORK:

• Watching Bruce Willis mug at the camera for two hours, acting as if we’re back in the late 80s and there’s still something manly and charming about him.

• Depicting the CIA as more murderous and amoral than the KGB, Al Qaeda and the Waffen SS combined.

• Watching Richard Dreyfuss – looking bloated and with a fake tan – preen and strut in a snarky caricature of an American defense contractor, when really he looks like a guy who should just be pushing a broom at a Miami deli.

• Watching an American Vice President – with ambitions for even higher office – depicted as a murderer of women and children, a self-absorbed swine who uses the CIA as a personal assassin squad. Not even Biden deserves that.

BOTTOM LINE:

My understanding is that a new technology has been developed whereby celluloid film prints can be recycled into polyester clothing. My strong suggestion would be to use the 3,500 or so existing prints of Red to clothe the children of Guatemala – assuming they don’t mind wearing polyester. If not, it seems to me that the film could perhaps be re-printed onto soft tissue rolls, and used for other purposes.

One final point: with ‘Hollywood conservatives’ like Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone so eager to knock their own country in this way, who needs Hollywood liberals?

Posted on October 15th, 2010 at 4:09pm.

LFM Review: Letters to Father Jacob

By Joe Bendel. To be fair, the evangelical film industry here in America is still in its infancy, but it would behoove Christian filmmakers to look to Finland for inspiration. Submitted last year as the Scandinavian country’s official foreign language Oscar contender, themes of Christian faith and redemption are front and center in Klaus Hӓrö’s Letters to Father Jacob, which opened this Friday in New York. [See the trailer here.]

As Letters begins, one might think it’s a film noir. About to be released on a pardon she never requested, the hardboiled Leila Sten does not want anyone’s help. Yet as the dramatically lit prison official explains, a compassionate retired priest has offered her a job helping with his correspondence. Blind but profoundly devout, Father Jacob receives letters asking for his prayers from spiritually ailing people around the country. At least, he does until Leila arrives.

Naturally, his simple piety and do-gooder mentality initially irk the callous Leila, even though the depth of his faith and commitment are unimpeachable. The film builds towards a redemptive crescendo of reconciliation, but director Hӓrö never engages in cheap theatrics along the way. Instead, Leila’s gradual change of heart culminates in a relatively quiet, but truly honest pay-off.

As the title Father, Heikki Nousiainen truly transcends the shopworn kindly old country priest stereotypes with a performance of genuine pathos and humanity. Though it is a less showy role, Kaarina Hazard is quite accomplished as the surly Sten, deftly delivering the film’s emotional knockout punch. Indeed, they both have the look of real flesh-and-blood people who have seen a lot of life’s pain and struggles.

Like recent evangelical films, Letters is a deeply religious work – yet as cinema, it is fundamentally character driven. It is also not afraid to look into the darkness and doubts lingering in its characters’ souls. Hӓrö helms with a sensitive touch throughout, exhibiting tremendous sympathy for the polar opposite protagonists. A handsome production, Tuomo Hutri’s warm cinematography strikingly captures the verdant surrounding environment while Kaisa Mӓkinen’s sets look dank yet appropriately sheltering.

Deceptively simple, Letters is a subtly powerful film. Elegantly crafted and legitimately moving, it is definitely recommended to all art-house cinema patrons not already too cynical to appreciate its sincerity. It is now playing in New York at the Cinema Village, and will expand to Los Angeles this week.

Posted on October 11th, 2010 at 11:45am.