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All articles by Lee Marshall – Page 56
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Reviews
No Rest For The Brave (Pas De Repos Pour Les Braves)
Dir: Alain Guiraudie. France-Austria. 2003. 105mins.Self-taught director Alain Guiraudie's first film to break the 60-minute barrier is the live-action, rural French answer to Waking Life, Richard Linklater's animated, urban American dream spiel. In both films we are plunged straight into the metaphysical dilemmas of a group of predominantly male alter ...
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Reviews
La Meglio Gioventu
Dir: Marco Tullio Giordana. Italy. 2003. 366mins.Marco Tullio Giordana's new film, which follows two Italian brothers between 1966 and 2002, is remarkable for three reasons. Firstly, it is just over six hours long. Secondly, it does not drag and is a compelling weave of micro and macro history. And thirdly, ...
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Reviews
The Silence Of The Forest (Le Silence De La Foret)
Didier Ouenangare and Bassek Ba Kobhio's slight tale has been billed as the first ever Central African film, says Lee MarshallDirs: Didier Ouenangare, Bassek Ba Kobhio. Central African Republic-Cameroon-Gabon. 2003. 91minsMore a consciousness-raising gesture than a piece of cinema, pure and simple, The Silence Of The Forest is a slight, ...
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Reviews
The Island (L'Isola)
Dir: Costanza Quatriglio. Italy. 2003. 102mins.A coming of age film set on Favignana, an island off western Sicily known for its tuna fishing traditions, The Island (L'Isola) is so relentlessly charming and so ravishingly shot that one can almost forgive a lack of dramatic backbone. Dealing with themes that arise ...
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Reviews
Crimson Gold
Dir: Jafar Panahi. Iran. 2003. 96mins.The triumphant march of Iranian cinema continues apace. After Samira Makhmalbaf's At Five In The Afternoon won the jury prize in the main competition at Cannes comes Crimson Gold, Jafar Panahi's fourth feature, which picked up the Un Certain Regard jury prize. Set in present-day ...
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Reviews
Shara
Dir: Naomi Kawase. Japan. 2003. 100 minsThe third feature by Japanese director Naomi Kawase, Cannes competitor Shara is set, like Suzaku (a Cannes Camera d'Or winner in 1996) and Hotaru (2000), in the director's home province of Nara. Like the previous two, it deals with themes of separation, the continuity ...
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Reviews
Niki&Flo
Dir: Lucian Pintilie. France-Romania. 2003. 98minsVeteran Romanian director Lucian Pintilie has crafted a fitfully amusing, occasionally absorbing fable of slow disintegration around a fragile story of a father who feels increasingly lonely and alienated as his children leave home, one for the afterlife and the other for the US. Mixing ...
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Reviews
Today And Tomorrow (Hoy Y Manana)
Dir: Alejandro Chomski. Argentina-Spain. 2003. 86minsOne of the most talked-up films at Cannes, the Un Certain Regard entry Today And Tomorrow turns out to be a watchable, non-judgmental, low-budget portrayal of a young woman's descent into prostitution in post-slump Argentina. Given the hype surrounding the director - who is the ...
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Reviews
Purple Butterfly
Dir: Lou Ye. China. 2003. 126minsAfter the Cannes Competition screening of Purple Butterfly, the long-awaited third film from Chinese director Lou Ye, some of the best critical minds of our generation - plus the present reviewer - stood outside the Salle Bunuel, arguing about the plot. Everyone had a slightly ...
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Reviews
The Brown Bunny
Dir: Vincent Gallo. US. 2003. 118minsA theory began circulating in Cannes after the press showing of The Brown Bunny, Vincent Gallo's astonishingly self-indulgent second film as director (and producer, and scriptwriter, and... see the credits below for more details). The theory was that the whole thing was actually a wind-up ...
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Reviews
Reconstruction
Dir: Christoffer Boe. Denmark. 2003. 89minsAfter sowing its wild oats, Dogme has settled down and started a family. Christoffer Boe, one of the first products of this post-Lars generation, is not so much concerned with stripping cinema down to its basics as with manipulating its shimmering surface. The first full-length ...
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News
Cecchi Gori returns to production
Beleaguered Italian media mogul Vittorio Cecchi Gori, whose production, distribution and exhibition empire recently fell apart in a morass of bad debts and corruption charges, is back. At a Cannes press conference, the carefully-coiffed helmsman of the Cecchi Gori Group, created by his father Mario, claimed that he has been ...
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Reviews
Present Perfect (Passato Prossimo)
Dir: Maria Sole Tognazzi. Italy. 2003. 89minsFive friends meet up in a country house somewhere outside Rome over a long winter weekend. Each has unresolved relationship problems, some have problems with each other, and memories of other weekends in the same house hang in the air like distorting mirrors. More ...
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Reviews
The Heart Elsewhere (Il Cuore Altrove)
Dir: Pupi Avati. Italy. 2003. 107mins.The Heart Elsewhere (Il Cuore Altrove), Pupi Avati's sentimental period drama set in 1920s Bologna, has its good points, notably the emergence of Neri Marcore - so far known mainly for his appearances on Italian TV comedy shows - as a serious actor but it ...
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Reviews
Say It In My Own Words
Say It In My Own Words (Dillo Con Parole Mie)Lee Marshall in RomeDir: Daniele Luchetti. Italy. 2003. 108minsDaniele Luchetti scored a minor hit in 1995 with the classroom comedy drama La Scuola and followed it with the intermittently interesting Piccoli Maestri (1998), about a group of students caught up in ...
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Reviews
It's Raining Cows (Piovono Mucche)
Dir: Luca Vendruscolo. Italy. 2003. 95 mins.Films about the disabled tend to fall into two camps: either they are 'you can do it!' Hollywood schmaltz-fests; or so rigidly worthy and politically correct that they end up boring the audience. This little Italian gem, however, which mixes able-bodied and handicapped actors, ...
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Reviews
A Big Girl Like You (Une Grande Fille Comme Toi)
Dir: Christophe Blanc. France. 2003. 91mins.This insider study of a mixed-up adolescent girl identifies so utterly with its main character that it risks appearing as stroppy and directionless as she is. But in the end there is something mesmeric about the camera's obsession with the face of first-time, pulled-off-the-street actress ...
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Reviews
Pater Familias
Dir: Francesco Patierno. Italy. 2003. 94mins.For really vibrant Italian cinema, it is not a bad idea to look away from the industry hubs of Rome and Milan. Naples, in particular, has built a healthy homegrown scene around such directors as Mario Martone (L'Amore Molesto) and Antonio Capuano. Newest boy on ...
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Reviews
The Suit (Shik)
Dir: Bakhtiar Khudoinazarov. Russ-Ger-It-Fr. 2003. 95 mins.The latest outing by director Bakhtiar Khudoinazarov is, essentially, about three country lads fooling about, telling unlikely stories and occasionally becoming maudlin or lovestruck. Charming in its own small way, it is unlikely to have the impact of 1999's Luna Papa on the international ...
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Reviews
Seville South Side (Poligono Sur)
Dir: Dominique Abel. Spain/France. 2003. 106mins.Flamenco is fertile territory for a DV documentary crew with a mission to go beyond the tourist cliches. And this is what French actress-turned-documentarist Dominique Abel and a fast-moving group of technicians headed up by cinematographer Jean-Yves Escoffier (Good Will Hunting, Nurse Betty) have done ...