All articles by Jonathan Romney – Page 38
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News
International Film Festival Rotterdam 2007
36th International Film Festival Rotterdam in numbers(2006 numbers in brackets)367,000 Visitors to the festival (358,000)2,940Festival guests (2,814)1,960International festival guests: 1,960 (1,788) 841CineMart guests (850) 495Journalists attending (476)390Attending film-makers (379) Award Winners VPRO Tiger AwardsLove Conquers All (Tan Chui Mui, Malaysian)The Unpolished (Die Unerzogenen) (Pia Marais, Germany)Bog Of Beasts (Baixio Das ...
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Reviews
Scott Walker: 30 Century Man
Dir: Stephen Kijak. UK. 2006. 90mins.A great enigma of modern music sheds a few layers ofopacity in Stephen Kijak's revealing documentary Scott Walker: 30 Century Man. With a challenging new record recently issued, thereclusive, sporadically active American-born singer is seen at close quarters,while collaborators and assorted music notables, including executive ...
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Reviews
Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer (Parfum: Die Geschichte Eines Morders)
Dir: Tom Tykwer. Ger-Fr-Sp. 2006. 140mins.Tom Tykwer pulls out allthe stops with his sumptuous English-language adaptation of Patrick Suskind's novel Perfume,making for a daring and imposing achievement that is likely to leave audiencesstunned and somewhat exhausted rather than truly dazzled.With its dark tone, wilfullymorbid subject matter and antipathetic protagonist, it ...
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Reviews
Demented (Le Dernier Des Fous)
Dir: Laurent Achard. Fr. 2006. 96mins.A stark corrective to the tradition of lyrical Frenchfilms about the tender joys of growing up in the country, Laurent Achard's Dementedis a Gothic but soberly-executed melodrama about childhood as hell. Based on anovel by Canadian writer Timothy Findley, Achard'sfilm gives us a child's-eye view ...
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Reviews
First Love (Hatsu-Koi)
Dir: Yukinari Hanawa. Jap. 2006. 114mins.Teenage rebellion, social history andtrue crime merge together in tenderly anaemic fashion in First Love,based on a quasi-autobiographical novel by MisuzuNakahara. The first feature in 10 years by Tokyo Skin director Yukinari Hanawa, First Lovehas struck a slight chord with audiences in Japan - where ...
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Reviews
Inside Paris (Dans Paris)
Dir/scr: Christophe Honore. Fr. 2005. 92mins.Up-and-coming French auteur Christophe Honore shows a surprisingly light touch with Inside Paris, the follow-up to hissombre, sexually challenging Georges Batailleadaptation Ma Mere. A thoughtful butlightly-executed, often ebullient, family drama with distinct stylistic nods toearly 1960s nouvelle vague, Inside Parisboasts engaging performances all around, especially ...
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Reviews
Transe
Dir/scr: Teresa Villaverde. Port-Fr-It. 2006. 126mins.There are the seeds of a coherently harrowing drama about European sex traffic in Teresa Villaverde's Transe, but you have to dig deep to find them. Part road movie, part abstract essay and - as the title suggests - part free-floating hallucination, the latest film ...
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Reviews
Komma
Dir: Martine Doyen. Bel-Fr. 2006. 90mins.A mystery within a riddle wrapped in an enigma, orperhaps just your averagely cryptic existential romance, Komma is an initially tantalisingdream-like oddity that doesn't sustain its interest. A story of two traumatisedoddballs getting together in a subtly unreal Brussels, this debut from multipleshorts prize-winner Martine ...
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Reviews
To Get To Heaven First You Have To Die (Bihisht Faqat Barqi Murdagon)
Dir/scr: Djamshed Usmonov. Fr-Ger-Switz-Russ. 2006. 93mins.Narratives rarely come crisper and more to the pointthan To Get To HeavenFirst You Have To Die - and audiences rarely get taken on suchsubtly unpredictable rides. The new film from DjamshedUsmanov, the Tajik director of Angel On The Right, begins as adeceptively gentle, tragic-comic ...
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Reviews
Avida
Dirs/scr: Benoit Delepine, Gustave Kervern. Fr. 2006. 83mins.Even by thestandards of their eccentric road comedy debut Aaltra, Benoit Delepine and Gustave Kervern's Avida - described in the press notes as a 'metaphysicalcomedy' - is bizarre indeed. Starting out as a Tati-esquesilent farce crammed with off-the-wall sight gags, this wayward tale ...
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Reviews
Transylvania
France. 2006. 103mins. Director, screenplay Tony GatlifIn Transylvania cult diva Asia Argentotakes to the agitated universe of Romany film-maker Tony Gatliflike a duck to water. The latestof French-based Gatlif's ventures into the world ofGypsy and Eastern European culture, Transylvania is at once romance,road movie, ethnological celebration, and vehicle for the ...
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Reviews
Colossal Youth
Dir: Pedro Costa. Portugal/France/Switzerland 2006. 155 mins Without a doubt the most difficult film in this year's Cannes competition - where it provoked more walk-outs than any other film - Pedro Costa's hyper-austere Colossal Youth at least deserves some recognition and respect. While the film admittedly seems inert for ...
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Reviews
The Right Of The Weakest (La Raison Du Plus Faible)
Dir, scr: Lucas Belvaux. Belgium/France 2006. 116 minsA Belgian proletarian caper movie is hardly the first thing anyone expected from Lucas Belvaux, whose Trilogy, a set of three interlocking features, was an audacious formal anomaly in recent French mainstream cinema. The Right Of The Weakest lies halfway between working-class realism ...
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Reviews
The Right Of The Weakest (La Raison Du Plus Faible)
Dir, scr: Lucas Belvaux. Belgium/France 2006. 116 minsA Belgian proletarian caper movie is hardly the first thing anyone expected from Lucas Belvaux, whose Trilogy, a set of three interlocking features, was an audacious formal anomaly in recent French mainstream cinema. The Right Of The Weakest lies halfway between working-class realism ...
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Reviews
The Family Friend (L'Amico Di Famiglia)
Dir, Scr: Paolo Sorrentino. Italy/France 2006. 110 mins A generally unsurprising Cannes competition received an invigorating blast of invention with The Family Friend, a stylish, dark but sometimes perplexing third feature from Neapolitan director Paolo Sorrentino.The story of a thoroughly grumpy old loanshark, this philosophical black comedy sets itself the ...
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Reviews
Lights In The Dusk (Laitakaupungin Valot)
Dir/scr: Aki Kaurismaki. Fin. 2006. 80mins.LightsIn The Darkrepresents business as usual, more or less, for Finnish gloomsterAki Kaurismaki - albeit leavened with somewhat lessof his distinctive dry humour. This social-realist tale, with a dash of filmnoir, is about a loner whose life goes from bad to worse to worse still, ...
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Reviews
Climates (Iklimler)
Dir/scr: Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Turk-Fr. 2006. 97mins.In 2002, Turkish director NuriBilge Ceylan made his mark on the Cannes competitionwith Distant (Uzak). That, his third feature,struck many audiences as a resounding blow in favour of the great art-cinematradition of films as contemplative, thematically rich personal essays. Ceylan's growing reputation as a ...
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Reviews
Princess
Dir: Anders Morgenthaler. Den. 2006. 80mins.It's a sometimes dazzling curio rather than afully-fledged achievement, but Anders Morgenthaler'sadult animation Princess is certainlyone of the more attention-grabbing items on the Cannes menu this year. Kickingoff Directors' Fortnight, this tale of vengeance in the Danish porn underworldresembles the sort of grim material usually ...
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Reviews
Paris, Je T'Aime
Dirs: see credits below. Fr-Liech-Switz. 2006. 120mins.That largelyunloved genre, the portmanteau film, no doubt works best in specialised slots -such as that of the opener in the Un Certain Regardsection at Cannes. Fitting the bill as a light, generally celebratory sectioncurtain-raiser, Paris JeT'Aime is a postcard-like, sometimes genuinelycharming, whistle-stop city ...
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Reviews
The Unforgiven (Yongseobadji Mot-hanja)
Dir/scr: Yoon Jong-bin. S Kor. 2005. 126mins.The traumas of masculinity and themilitary life are sensitively and obliquely probed in The Unforgiven, the debut feature fromKorean writer-director Yoon Jong-bin. Despitecurrents of menace and brutality, it lies at the more contemplative end ofSouth Korea's cinema spectrum, its elliptical, two-strand structure making itakin ...