VIFF Days 6 and 7

Just a couple of quickies today as I head out the door for more.

The Class (2007, Estonia, Ilmar Raag)

A really darkly disturbing drama out of Estonia much in the same vein as Gus Van Sant's Elephant, The Class is likewise purportedly based upon actual stories culled from students in the Estonian school system. And if so, Estonia has some serious work to do, because The Class left me punished and battered, bruised and huddled in a corner.

The problem is, The Class does not shine a light upon the problem of bullying in the school system so much as it rubs our faces in the gleeful cruelty of teenagers. Little attempt, hell, pretty much none at all, is made to establish some socio-economic or psychological context for all of the bullies' behaviours; it is merely accepted as standard teenage behaviour, and innate and unalterable urge to exclude and ridicule. As such, the victims debasement is then cast in the light of some sort of tragic inevitability, as the result as some essential flaw in the human character that is not worth knowing because it is unknowable and unalterable. So, despite all the brave performances here, particularly by the young victims Joosper (Pärt Uusbergand is particularly impressive) and Kaspar (Vallo Kirs), since we are presented only with a cartoon version of evil, we cannot really get invested in the story enough to feel that we have been asked to examine or question anything essential about humanity.

It is just a little ironic that in a story about the effects that bullying has upon its victims that I should leave the film feeling totally bullied myself.

Hank and Mike (2007, Canada, Matthiew Klinck)

The Odd Couple meets Donnie Darko. Okay, not really, the only element of DD that resides inside the goofy slapstick silliness that is Hank and Mike is that both films feature dudes in bunny suits. At least in Hank and Mike you KNOW that the intended effect is comic.

Hank and Mike play Easter bunnies who've just been downsized and must figure out how to continue to live in the lifestyle to which they've grown accustomed. And since that lifestyle is already pretty close to the bone, it is hardly surprising that the lads soon find themselves at the end of their fiscal rope, which is when desperation and hilarity ensue.

Hilarity might be a bit of an oversell, but the film is pretty funny in an absurd kind of way. The notion that an entire corporation could be built around a "second tier" holiday like Easter is pretty amusing, as are the lengths to which the suits will go to continue to punch up their bottom line, but the film rises and falls on the amusement factor of our two leads, two lovable losers from opposite ends of the personality scale who somehow manage to overlook their many differences to embrace their common fate. Sometimes the gags are great, othertimes lame, but there are enough of them, and the two leads consistently entertaining even in the lulls, that we are able to embrace the film's many rises and falls of comic fortune.

Day Five VIFF














The Tracey Fragments (2007, Canada, Bruce MacDonald)

I will admit to a certain grudging respect for some of the technical aspects of The Tracey Fragments, as director Bruce MacDonald's multifoliate split screen approach, reminiscent of Mike Figgis's Time Code, and the bundles of cameras he uses to film a single scene, borrowing the approach of Lar Von Trier in his anti-Dogme Dancer in the Dark, seems to be at loosely inspired by the themes of the story in question. Further, some of MacDonald's compositions within compositions are visually arresting, and the mosaic of imagery is at times aesthetically quite pleasing, reminiscent of a work of stained glass. More importantly, you can make the argument that MacDonald's use of multiple split scenes throughout the vast majority of this film's running time is defensible in that the title character is in dissolution, shattered by her dysfunctional family life, her role in the disappearance of her younger brother, the grotesque bullying she receives at school and the delusional relationship she has with the kid in school. Just as Tracey disintegrates into fragments, so too does the screen.

Yeah, yeah I get it. Unfortunately, the story and characters do not prove quite engaging or substantial enough to hold the stylistically distracting story together. Even Ellen Page, who is quite a compelling and dynamic performer, cannot pull us through this story with her. And the split screen, which might have a thematic applicability, undermines the narrative's ability to maintain our interest, as it constantly pulls us out of the story and reminds us that this is more of an exercise in stylistic excess than a tale worth telling. In fact, the few times that MacDonald stopped messing with all the jazzy split screen it was positively refreshing. Those scenes stood out in much the same way that the few seconds of motion in La Jetee burn themselves in the minds of any viewer of Marker's great film. The difference is La Jetee is positively riveting through its entire running time, whereas MacDonald's film only seems endurable when he stops playing his film school games.

Day Two/Three VIFF













Adam's Apples (2005, Denmark, Anders Thomas Jensen)

Along with Beauty in Trouble, this is the treat of the festival so far, a tar-pitched comedy about the reformation of a Neo-Nazi, played with suitable menace by the bald-pated Ulrich Thomson, who as part of his community service is released into the custody of a relentlessly optimistic preacher named Ivan (Mads Mikkelson) in a small and remote Danish town.

What begins as a fairly predictable renovation project becomes something considerably meaner, as Adam takes it upon himself to break the preacher's Christian viewpoint by any means possible, including some rather severe beat downs.

Ivan refuses to bow or break, turning all forms of opposition in on themselves by simply refusing to believe they exist. Ivan's delusional cheerfulness only further enrages Adam, who finds unlikely alliances in the preacher's other charges, Khalid, an Afghan thief who dreams alternatively of committing acts of terror and getting back home, and Gunnar, an obese sex offender and compulsive thief. This unholy trinity of reprobates prove to be a marvellous comic concoction, while Ivan's resolute refusal to accept anything but the most cheerily Christian of outlooks creates a seemingly endless succession of endlessly entertaining conflicts.

The performances are spot-on, as all play this darkly funny material as if they are in a deadly serious Shakespearean drama, highlighting the situation's absurdities and asking us to consider how much our reality is shaped by our preconceptions, beliefs and, yes, faith. Adam's Apples is a real treat, a delicious concoction of Danish wit and wisdom that was penned and directed by the author of the likewise wise and hilarious Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself, Anders Thomas Jensen. If Jensen keeps this up, he just might find himself tagged as the Danish Kaurismaki.










Intervention (USA, 2007, Mary McGuckian)

Well, it had to happen eventually. I found a film that not only grated on me, that not only irritated me, but that I also actively disliked. Every festival has these moments, no matter how hard you study this in advance, and try to make sure you are seeing the pick of the litter, things fall through the cracks. The centre (of my attention, at least) cannot hold, and all hell is loosed upon the world.

The film tells the tale of a handful of addicts in recovery (and their loved ones who come to visit) at a rehab clinic in the New Mexico desert. It is also the story of the married therapists, played by one of my favourite actors, Colm Feore, and one of my least, Andi Macdowell, whose marriage seems to be unraveling as quickly as the nerves of their agitated patients.

And while the film has certain cinematic qualities that help to distinguish it from garden variety movie of the week type tripe, including a washed out and bloodless colour palette that matches the setting well, and some cleverly designed camera flourishes, the style of the film never really builds into a comment upon or an enhancement of the film's substance, because ultimately there is very little there there. The film has a hollow core, which might explain why it so quickly falls in upon itself.

It does not help that the central couple (other than the therapists) are self-involved, narcissistic, emotionally stunted fools, or that Jennifer Tilly is called upon, as one half of that couple (Rupert Graves is the other), to attempt to act--never a good option if you want to have a credibly dramatic film. It also does not help that the film attempts to parallel the collapse of this couple's marriage with the disintegration of the marriage of the therapists. While we are given all sorts of details about the patient's failures, the film devots very little screen time to and invests very little emotional energy in the therapist's marital woes, so it is hard to feel terribly moved one way or another by its passing. The film just limps along to its lame and unconvinging conclusion, one emotional climax after another falling flatter than a New Mexican vista.

Okay, so I exaggerate, but I do so for effect. Specifically, I do so to cleanse my bile ducts, and to warn any of you out there, dear audience, not to make the same mistake as yours truly. Save yourself the trouble, and don't intervene; Intervention is a lost cause.











Cowardice (Canada, 2007, Marc Gisaillon)

Cowardice is a film that fails for several reasons. It is unable to engage as either fish (film noir) or foul (murder mystery). It offers very little in the way of cultural insight despite using the milieu of Quebec's Quiet Revolution in the early 1960s as backdrop.

The film is purportedly based upon actual events, namely the 1962 disappearance of a 15 year old girl in rural Quebec, and the subsequent police investigation. Among the primary suspects in the film's protagonist, Conrad, a gravedigger whose marital dissatisfaction makes him an easy target for seduction. Once seduced, Conrad is easily lead into a disastrous kidnapping plot, and his life quickly spirals out of control from there.

Conrad's meekness and subservience in most matters is intended, it appears, to be a commentary upon the position taken by Quebec's old guard towards the role of La Belle Province within the Canadian confederation, while the more assertive, violent and destructive approach taken by his fellow conspirators is meant to reflect the arrival of a new presence in Quebec, at once exciting and extremely dangerous.

Unfortunately Cowardice does not really do much with this political allegory, choosing instead to fall back on the tropes of the film noir and murder mystery genres, unable to convincingly deliver on either of these fronts. It doesn't help that the lead actor has basically two expressions, morose and confused, and that none of the characters proves to be worthy of our concern by the time the film arives at its inevitably violent conclusion. Finally, while the cat and mouse game played by the detective as he tries to break through Conrad's implacable facade is meant to make us think of the similar approach taken in Crime and Punishment, the comparison proves a large part of the film's undoing, for Conrad is no Raskelnikov and Gisaillon is no Dostoyevsky.