SLIFF 2009: Jerichow

2008 // Germany // Christian Petzold // November 18, 2009 // Theatrical Print (Landmark Plaza Frontenac Cinema)

Christian Petzold's lean, sordid little thriller positions itself as a successor to the works of Hitchcock and Wilder, but its most direct ancestor is The Postman Always Rings Twice, to the point that Jerichow might be regarded a near-remake. Here the Frank Chambers part is a penniless Afghan war veteran, Thomas, played with a distinctly Germanic heat by the chiseled Benno Fürmann (also appearing in North Face at this year's Festival). Recruited into the employ of snack bar entrepreneur Ali (Hilmi Sözer) through the sort of happenstance that seems endemic to noir, Thomas inevitably hooks up with the boss' wife, Laura (Nina Hoss), a ragged blond who seems like more trouble than she's worth. Petzold's script is admirably sparing and suitably tense, especially given that the bulk of story's action occurs in sun-kissed daylight. The film is resolutely focused on its core conflict, barely permitting any characters other than its three principals to intrude. Its main sin is that it's a film in search of a purpose. At bottom, Jerichow is a skillful retread of territory that's already been extensively explored, and Petzold doesn't bring anything fresh other than some unconventional (but not unexpected) twists in the third act.

SLIFF 2009: One Day You'll Understand

2008 // France // Amos Gitai // November 17, 2009 // Theatrical Print (Landmark Plaza Frontenac Cinema)

Amos Gitai's camera tightly frames his characters in his Holocaust-cum-family drama, One Day You'll Understand. The film flirtis with a claustrophobic atmosphere, yet it remains distractingly distant from the unfolding events. In its slackest moments, Gitai's style exhibits no feeling other than idle curiosity, a odd flaw given the intensely personal character of the story. That story centers on the prying of Victor (Hippolyte Girardot) into his family's muddled history, which thrusts together Catholics and Russian Jews in Nazi-occupied France with predictably tragic results. Unfortunately, his elderly mother Rivka (a magisterial Jeanne Moreau, one the film's bright spots) is reluctant to speak of the past. The film's primary problem is that in trying to weave together two substantial thematic threads--the veiled character of post-WWII Jewish identity in France, and the challenges of birthrights--Gitai fails to give either a sufficiently rich treatment, and the results feels fumbling and hollow. A late scene, wherein Girardot wanders his mother's flat as it is dismantled for its valuables, plays as a pale echo of Summer Hours. One Day You'll Understand lacks the focus, grace, and delight for character and space that made Olivier Assayas' film an exquisite exploration of a mundane subject.

SLIFF 2009: 24 City

2008 // China // Zhang Ke Jia // November 16, 2009 // Landmark Plaza Frontenac Cinema

It was only last year that Zhang Ke Jia's sad, sedate, occasionally whimsical little masterwork, Still Life, landed on American shores. And here we are again with another difficult, gorgeous film, 24 City, that continues to express both Jia's profound affection for his countrymen and his ambivalence towards China's modernization. Here Jia adopts a blended documentary-fiction approach, wherein his camera explores the ruins of an munitions complex as it is transformed into luxury high rises, and interviews former factory employees and actors posing as employees. Even more than Still Life, 24 City is a film enamored--in a mournful sort of way--with the industrial and post-industrial spaces of China, echoing Jennifer Baichwal's ominous and beautiful documentary, Manufactured Landscapes. The wondrous enigma of Jia's talent is evident here, manifest in his blending of cool observation and authentic, piercing emotion. Grave and challenging, 24 City is a testament to the director's novel vision, a succesion of sensory pleasures that prods expectations. Oddly enough, perhaps the most perplexing aspect of the film is its "Ocean's Twelve moment": the use of Joan Chen to portray a women who is known for her resemblance to Joan Chen.

SLIFF 2009: Crude

2009 // USA // Joe Berlinger // November 15, 2009 // Theatrical Print (Landmark Tivoli Theater)

Director Joe Berlinger has had a uneven career--from the definitive West Mephis 3 documentary Paradise Lost to the bafflingly ill-considered Blair Witch 2--but he's never produced a work of socially-conscious agitprop like Crude. While the film hews to the general tone of slicker docs like The Corporation and Food, Inc., Berlinger has a much tighter focus. Specifically, Crude follows the fifteen-plus-year lawsuit that has pitted Chevron-Texaco against the native peoples of Ecuador allegedly poisoned by the company's drilling wastes. Strictly as a vehicle for raising awareness about a critical Third World environmental battle, Crude is absorbing and grimly presented stuff, with Berlinger avoiding the smugness or breeziness that plagues many progressive Issues Documentaries. Content to let his subjects speak for themselves, the director presents the story without narration, adding only title cards to explain factual tidbits. Accordingly, Berlinger can be forgiven the romantic character his rough style lends to this David-and-Goliath conflict, and even his dewy delight when celebrities such as the President of Ecuador and Sting get involved in the fight. Ultimately, the plaintiffs couldn't ask for a more straightforward, concise statement of the political, cultural, and emotional dimensions of their case than Crude.

SLIFF 2009: Amreeka

2009 // USA // Cherien Dabis // November 15, 2009 // Theatrical Print (Hi-Pointe Theater)

Triteness wins out over heartfelt sentiment in Cherien Dabis' take on the Immigrant Experience Film, Amreeka, a by-the-numbers celebration of tolerance, love, perseverance, etc., etc., etc. Here the immigrants in question are divorcee Muna (Nisreen Faour) and her teen son Fadi (Melkar Muallem), Palestinians who journey to small-town Illinois where they settle in awkwardly with the Westernized family of Muna's sister (Hiam Abbass, whom I adore... but Christ, can we give another Arabic actress a shot, please?). Amreeka hits all the standard indie drama and comedy notes, but its approach is graceless and its insights insufficient to warrant a retreading of such familiar territory. The narrative is tightly constructed, but utterly predictable, and the messaging is so overwarmed--Racism sucks! Family is important!--as to be off-putting. Faour, who fills Muna with eager-to-please earnestness and anxious confusion, is likable enough, so much that the film's best moments of humor come courtesy of her, while those at her expense just seem mean-spirited. The film's occasional wit enlivens its otherwise bland turns, but next to a keenly observed marvel like In Between Days, or even Sundance darlings like The Visitor and Frozen River, this is tired stuff.

SLIFF 2009: Lake Tahoe

2008 // Mexico // Fernando Eimbcke // November 14, 2009 // Theatrical Print (Landmark Plaza Frontenac Cinema)

In recent years, Latin American auteurs have apparently been paying attention to Asian film-makers such as Zhang Ke Jia and Tsai Ming-Liang, tossing out those directors' affection for surrealism, and delivering a new Spanish-language Cinema of Patience (to coin a term), a mode exemplified by challenging works such as The Minder and Los Muertos. With its static camera work, lengthy shots, and cut-to-black punctuation, Lake Tahoe fits comfortably within this current. It goes without saying that Eimbcke's deliberate and often slyly funny film, which chronicles twenty-four hours in the life of a Yucatan youth, is not for everyone. The remove that Eimbcke establishes from his subject lends Lake Tahoe the tone of an uneventful slice-of-life snapshot, but a moment's consideration reveals that for Juan (Diego Cataño), this single day is remarkably pivotal. He may be a bit of a cipher, but, the film's style notwithstanding, his story is an identifiable mini-odyssey about indignities, opportunities, and reversals. The result feels a bit slight, but Eimbcke admirably maintains a mood that is both biting and yet warm-hearted. Lake Tahoe's aesthetic might be stripped-down Weerasethakul, but its worldview is distinctly Coen, transplanted with emotional authority to a dusty Mexican town.