The annual Waterton French Film festival had an interesting line up. On tap was Tony Gatlif’s excellent Exiles, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s A Very Long Engagement, the 2005 oscar nominated Chorus and a collection of Quebec movies. I was only able to watch two Quebec movies but they both turned out to be excellent choices.
1) Memories Affectives (Directed by Francis Leclerc): Rating 9/10
Another alternate title for this movie is ‘Looking for Alexander’. This movie won three major awards at the 2005 Canadian movie awards and rightly so. It is a very well done movie. Roy Dupuis plays Alexandre Tourneur, a man who suddenly awakens from a long term coma. Tourneur is declared physically dead and when someone pulls the plug on his life support system, it suddenly brings him back to life. He has no idea who he is or anything about his past. His wife, who was on the verge of leaving him, suddenly changes her mind and starts feeding false memories to her husband. Tourneur’s daughter has another version for her father and he tries to believe her version of their relationship as well. In the meantime, a police inspector is trying to investigate the incident which led to Tourneur’s accidental coma. As Tourneur tries to piece his life together, he finds out some very interesting things about this past. The best part of the movie is that we arrive to the conclusion at the same time as Tourneur does. And not everything is answered in the end, we actually have to figure some things out for ourself.
An excellent movie and the best part, it is MADE in Canada.
2) Camping Sauvage (Directed by Andre Ducharme, Guy Lepage, Sylvain Roy): Rating 8/10
Guy Lepage was in attendance to present this movie. This is a movie packed with typical Quebecois humour and that means it might not go down too well with everyone. So either one will love this movie or find it pointless. I for one, loved it.
Pierre-Louis (Guy Lepage) plays a strict by the rules stock broker who can never resist correcting someone’s grammar or proper French pronunciation. One day he witnesses a hit and run accident – a hummer runs over a pedestrian and drives off. Pierre-Louis immediately calls the police on his cell phone. As it turns out his anonymous call to the police is not so anonymous. The arrested hit-and-run person finds out who put him in jail and goes out looking for revenge. Pierre-Louis’s car is blown up and well that strikes fear in him. The police offer to give him a different identity as part of their witness protection program. In his disguise, Pierre-Louis is sent to live in a trailer park. But the trailer park is no ordinary place either. A series of hilarious characters live there and well, Pierre-Louis is not very safe. The park is located next to a biker gang hideout and the hit-and-run perpetrator was the head of a biker gang himself.
Documentaries:
1) Based on a True Story (International doc directed by Walter Stokman):
Rating: 7/10
This is a directory made about the real incident which inspired the 1975 movie, Dog Day Afternoon. The Sidney Lumet directed movie starred Al Pacino Sonny ‘Dog’ Wortzik, a man who had robbed a bank to pay for his lover’s sex change operation. The entire bank robbery turned into a 12-14 hour hostage crisis and a media fiasco. But was the Hollywood version the true story? This is the question that Dutch film-maker Walter Stokman set out to answer when he wanted to make his movie. However, Stokman’s task is made difficult because the real Sonny is not easy to work with. Sonny wants a lot of money for his version of the truth and he threatens and even abuses Stokman along the process. Stokman pieces an interesting movie with clips from the Hollywood flick, real media footage of the incident, Sonny’s phone calls talking of the incident and interviews with some of the hostages/police officers involved.
2) Janela Da Alma (English Translation, Window of the soul): Rating 7/10
Joao Jardim and Walter Carvalho have made a very off beat documentary which tries to ask and answer questions about reality, perception, images, and along the way leave the viewer with more questions and some eye opening views. There are interviews with a very learned group of people: Jose Saramago offers his views about reality and how he was inspired to write his famous novel, ‘Blindness’; Film-makers Wim Wenders and Agnes Varda are also interviewed extensively.
Foreign Flicks:
1) The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972 movie directed by Luis Bunuel):
Rating 7/10
A movie about nothing. Ok, not really. A movie about dreams and fantasies and nothing else. A set of friends want to have a dinner party but for one reason or another all their attempts at dinner are thwarted by them waking up from a dream or having their dinner interrupted by an incident involving death. After some time, it is quite easy for the viewer to figure out which sequence is a dream, which is a fantasy and what is ‘real’. Along the way are elements from other Bunuel movies – the hint of terrorism lurking around every corner, characters playing multiple roles and changing identities. It is a fairly interesting movie.
2) Contempt (1963 movie directed by Jean-Luc Godard): Rating 7/10
A very talented cast grace this movie – Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance, Fritz Lang to name just a few. Loosely based on Albert Moravia’s book, it is an abstract movie which is to be enjoyed on a warm summer day. I didn’t totally enjoy every frame but it was worth seeing.
Hollywood:
1) Mr. and Mrs. Smith: Rating 7.5/10
Angelina Jolie steals this movie, whereas Brad Pitt recycles his character from Ocean’s 11 and The Mexican. The dialogue is interesting along with the story line -- two spies married to each other yet are unaware of each other’s identities. What sinks this movie is the last 20 minutes of action. Ofcourse, since it is a summer movie, action is a requirement. But if all that action was stripped away, it would be a much better movie. Alternatively, if all the dialogue was taken away, then we could have had a loud annoying movie.
2) Spanglish (Directed by James L. Brooks): Rating 7/10
Only if the movie was not so long, it might have been much better. It is a interesting movie, clichéd as it may be, but not a bad watch. Another tame quiet role for Adam Sandler and an English debut for the charming Paz Vega (Sex and Lucia). In a nutshell: a cultural coming of age meshed with troubled American household story. The weakest part is the overall structure of the movie – that the entire story is an actual essay submission to Princeton. Oh and Tea Leoni’s role as Sandler’s wife is a bit drab.
Bollywood:
1) Kaal (Directed by a former factory and sugar production): Rating 4/10
The only reason this movie does not get a zero rating is because of the technical merits. The movie is shot neatly and the editing is good. But the acting is terrible, the script pathetic and the direction non-existent. This is shameful even by Bollywood standards.
2) D (another Ram Gopal Varma factory movie): Rating ?
Very poorly scripted and laughable even by the factory movie standards. Calling this movie a prequel to ‘Company’ is a joke.
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