CINEMANIA:

VIFF Day 9

Amal (2007, Canada, Richie Mehta)

Stories and films set in India have an immediate appeal to me. The vibrancy of the culture, an unlikely melange of just about all of the world's great faiths and peoples, and the palpable sense that this is a world consistently on the edge of chaotic dissolution, yet always able to pull itself back from the abyss, creates a universe that has within it implicit tensions between order and anarchy, faith and reason, sensuality and metaphysicism that fascinates me.

All of which is to confess that I was already predisposed to like Richie Mehta's Amal before I settled into the seat. Imagine my disappointment if Amal had not delivered the goods.

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.

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.

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.

Victoria Film Festival 2008 Edition:

Day One

Bab 'Aziz (2005, Tunisia, Nacer Khemir)

Bab 'Aziz is a road picture that starts strongly, begins to drift in the Tunisian sands through a substantial portion of its middle section and threatens to lose its way as well as its audience, only to pull it back together in the final moments of the closing act.