“Linha De Passe”

Day 4 on the Rivera, and I still have not found my ticket. I will, however, update this as more reviews come streaming in. This is only a round up of a few reviews. Films include 24 City, Linha De Passe, Boogie, It’s Hard Being Loved By Jerks, Better Things, with The Chaser, Tokyo Sonata, Wolke 9 (Cloud 9) and Je Veux Voir as well.

In Competition:

“24 City” by Jia Zhangke

Derek Elley, “Result is far more accessible than Jia’s previous two pictures, with moments of genuine emotion by the real-life interviewees. But technique of interweaving name actors into the docu fabric smacks of auteurism for the sake of it, and pic says nothing new or revealing that hasn’t been said in countless other movies and docus.”

Dan Fainaru, “The latest chapter in Jia Zhangke’s chronicles of modern Chinese history is certain to reinforce the director’s status as an international arthouse icon.”

Mary Corliss, “24 City is eloquent testimony to a China that is vanishing with each swing of the wrecking ball. But the memories of the workers in their factory microcosm, and telling documentaries like these, keep the past alive, so that later generations will know what once was, and what’s been lost.”

“Linha De Passe” by Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas

The film is about four brothers who try to reinvent themselves, each looking for a way out of Brazil, the film’s backdrop, which is out of control.

Deborah Young, “Linha de passe is a far more successful film [than Foreign Land], both as a drama and in depicting the reality of growing up poor without no future in sight…. Comparisons to Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers are inevitable, but without name actors in the cast, this is not going to be as easy a commercial ride as Salles’ cultish The Motorcycle Diaries.”

Ty Burr, “Oy, what a movie to start Day 5 with. An expertly filmed slice of Sao Paulo kitchen-sink realism, it tells of a family of poverty-stricken brothers who between them represent the many aspects of Brazil’s soul: soccer, sin, Jesus Christ, etc. Also bleak, bleak, bleak. Salles can really make movies, and he just lovingly ground my face in this one.”

Jonathan Romney, think the film is “a down-to-earth alternative to the more romantic and stylistically flashy films (City of God, Lower City, Berlin winner Elite Squad) with which Brazilian cinema has been identified lately. Very much in the mode of Salles’ 1998 breakthrough Central Station, Linha de Passe offers a compelling cast and a narrative fail-safe - the travails of a tough mum and her unruly brood - that should give it modest but significant international appeal.”

Un Certain Regard:

“Je Veux Voir” by Joana Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige

Howard Feinstein, “The film-making couple of [Joana] Hadjithomas and [Khalil] Joreige, who proved their imaginative skills with the 2005 Lebanese-set fiction A Perfect Day, succeeded in making it happen. And brilliantly.”

Alissa Simon, “An uneasy mix of scripted scenario, improvisation and surprising reality, pic professes to want to show destruction wrought during Lebanon’s 2006 summer war through the French star’s eyes, but seems more concerned with capturing her image as she’s trundled about…”

Dwayne Byrge, “Ali G wants to know: Will a new cutting-edge fragrance emerge from the adventure; will Mid-east peace talks be spurred by the appearance of an international star amid the ruins, will her hoop ear-rings inspire Hillary Clinton to spruce up her pants-suit ensemble; will the trek inspire reality-show producers to launch Paris Hilton into Darfur?”

“Wolke 9” by Andreas Dresen

Ray Bennet, “The 30-year itch proves to be pretty much like the seven-year version in German director Andreas Dresen’s Cloud 9, a cautionary tale about infidelity that suggests the temptations and pleasures are the same but so may be the consequences,”

Derek Elley, “Wisely, pic doesn’t spend any time leading up to or justifying the coup de foudre between Inge and Karl: crux of the story is her decision whether to go with a relationship that has revived her spirit or stay in one that is safe but predictable,” I love the way they always say pic….”Only the ending seems dramatically over-contrived compared with the downplayed material to that point.”

Ty Burr, “Sure, you have to be willing to watch old people have sex,….A lot of it. Fairly explicitly, too. Which, in a culture that says only strapping youth and firm skin can and should be contemplated, makes Cloud 9 something of a rebel yell.”

“Tokyo Sonata” by Kurosawa Kiyoshi 

Derek Elley, “Though there’s nothing here that hasn’t been dealt with in other Japanese movies, pic benefits considerably from its pitch-perfect performances - especially [Teruyuki] Kagawa as the diminutive, wild-eyed paterfamilias, and the graceful [Kyoko] Koizumi as the wife in desparate need of companionship,”

Tom Mes, “A two-year break later, the arrival of Tokyo Sonata seems to confirm the impression. The story of a salaryman who keeps up appearances to his family after he has been laid off, it is entirely devoid of anything vaguely supernatural….Yet it is without doubt the most terrifying film Kiyoshi Kurosawa has ever made.”

Directors’ Fortnight:

“Boogie” by Radu Muntean

Jay Weissberg, “Playing on themes similar to Old Joy, Muntean uses his cool yet sympathetically observational eye to chart the distance between a responsible family man and his long-lost buddies who have yet to grow up - problem is, auds are aware that the guys are losers long before the protag. Though more universal in theme than the helmer’s superior The Paper Will Be Blue travel is unlikely to be widespread outside fest berths.”

Ty Burr says the film “is the first New Romanian film I’ve seen in a while that didn’t utterly bowl me over; it’s perfectly okay without breaking much new ground…. The scenes between the three pals and the prostitute have a tawdry honesty, and Anamaria Marinca (the discovery of 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days) is believably worn down as Boogie’s wife, but where films like 4 Months or The Death of Mr Lazarescu use grubby realism to accrete powerful meaning over the long haul, Boogie just feels like, well, a long haul.”

Daniel Kasman, “Surprisingly, like most latter-day realism, it has the same intention as those most artificial of Hollywood films: to make the spectator unaware they are watching a movie,..But so what? In the cinema, the quotidian is never just quotidian, but the regular is just that. And so Boogie proceeds, and once we’ve guessed its rhythm and intonation, gives no discerning reason why any five minutes of it is any more or less interesting than any other five minutes. So congratulations, by effacing the sense of filmmaking and entering the every-day, here’s a movie that is indeed everyday.”

Out of Competition:

“The Chaser” by Na Hong-jin

Justin Chang, “Drawing both white-knuckle tension and moral anguish from a maddening succession of red herrings and wrong turns, Na Hong-jin’s overlong but accomplished debut feature has been a runaway hit at home, and should chase down plenty of offshore bookings before its eventual US remake by Warner Bros.”

Dan Fainaru, “Na Hong-jin’s promising but over-long debut is reminiscent of Bong Joon-ho’s highly-regarded Memories of Murder and may possibly achieve similar returns,…What it lacks in subtlety, it makes up for with plenty of action and wild chases which propel it towards a predictably gory climax.”

Glenn Kenny, “For it is the hammer violence, at the picture’s beginning and end, that helps sickeningly sink what could have been an engaging hybrid of Detective Story and The President’s Last Bang…. Without giving too much away, the last twenty minutes had my seatmates and I muttering ‘Jesus!’ over and over.”

Special Screenings:

“It’s Hard Being Loved By Jerks” by Daniel Leconte

Todd McCarthy, “While placing the action firmly in the context of the anti-Western terrorist attacks in New York, Madrid, Bali, Amsterdam, London and elsewhere, the film focuses intently on the cartoon scandal, which flared only in 2006, the year after the drawings were initially published in Denmark,…The verdict is heartening if not surprising by the time it comes.”

Lisa Nesselson, “Freedom of speech and freedom of the press versus religious grievances are explored to edifying effect in It’s Hard Being Loved By Jerks,…This dense, Daniel Leconte-directed documentary boasts eloquent protagonists, high stakes and a certain measure of suspense: will the values of a secular democracy whose law on free speech dates back to 1789 trump broader fears of upsetting Islamic fundamentalists?”  

“Better Things” by Duane Hopkins

Jonathan Romney, “Austere in the extreme, Better Things is shot in a vein (perhaps ‘vein’ isn’t the best word) of poetic realism, Hopkins displaying an intuitive knack for stitching together allusive chains of images. It’s certainly fated to be dismissed by some as the latest chapter in the history of British miserabilism, but Hopkins is a director with an introspective subtlety uncommon in UK filmmaking. Better Things proves the Brits can make Belgian art films as well as anyone - and I hope you realise that’s a compliment.”

Fabien Lemercier, “From the skilful changes in rhythm to the editing and the aesthetic effects of the natural light, Hopkins reveals an originality and talent that the future will no doubt confirm.”

Jason Solomons, “It’s a painful portrait of a fractured Cotswolds community, though not the one on the postcards. Hopkins’s version is a world of teenage heroin addicts shooting up and driving too fast down country lanes, and sad, elderly folk staring out of windows.”