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Let’s finish up this review of the 2011 AFI European Union Showcase. And it may even be relevant if one of these films pops up in the Oscar discussion.
Bullhead (Rundskop), Belgium, dir: Michael R Roskam
Going in this looked like a crime thriller with an unusual setting: black market bovine hormone dealers in Belgium. How can such a premise be ignored? But it turns out our ‘roided-up bull is no cow but Jacky, a pumped up enforcer in the hormone mafia. The film ends up being a thoughtful and stylish rumination on manhood.
A childhood incident left Jacky with a mangled set of male equipment. He uses steroids to become seriously bulky but the side effects of the steroids and his intense feelings of inadequacy combine to cause some major inner turmoil. He’s emotionally and socially stunted, which doesn’t help when some hormone deals go wrong leading to the police and some rival dealers closing in.
Matthias Schoenaerts won the Best Actor award at the AFI Fest in LA a few months back and it’s very well deserved. He’s a muscled ball of rage and indecision. Belgium also chose to submit this film for the Foreign Language Oscar over the Dardenne-helmed festival darling The Kid with a Bike which is certainly the correct choice. I’m not a raging fan of the film. It has a great character and some interesting ideas, plus it can be oddly funny (boy do the Flemish and Walloon halves of Belgium hate each other). But the story is less compelling than hoped and it sort of peters out. I’m not expecting it to score an Oscar nod. Still, it’s an interesting and thoughtful ride. B+.
Black Thursday (Czarny Czwartek), Poland, dir: Antoni Krauze
In December 1970, Polish workers in Gdansk and the surrounding areas went on strike to protest rising prices and stagnant wages. When the Communist government demanded they return to work, shipbuilders were met at the shipyard gates with tanks and machine guns which subsequently opened fire. This led to several days of riots.
Maybe to a Polish audience a film about Black Thursday makes perfect sense as a major event in the country’s recent history. For an outsider that knows little about the specifics of the incident, the film as structured is an effective warning of authoritarian government. Some of the details didn’t quite connect for me, particularly the political wrangling, but the film still makes a powerful statement. It centers its narrative around one worker and his family then zooms out to events as a whole when warranted. As the violence progresses and his family sits at home worried about his fate, we worry with them. And when workers pile a body of a slain comrade onto a door and carry him around town as a martyr while the police take shots at the crowd from a hovering helicopter, we’re down in the chaos with them.
I think the filmmakers set out to make a film about an event in their nation’s collective consciousness. But for the rest of us we can look past the specifics (and ignore the confusing bits) and feel the terror of what it’s like to oppressed. Poland didn’t submit this film for the Oscars, choosing instead a Holocaust drama that is supposed to be terrific. But if it had gone with Black Thursday I think it would have had the chance to do well in the competition. A-.
Tales of the Night (Les Contes de la Nuit), France, dir: Michel Ocelot
We’ll finish with the last film I saw during the festival, an animated film I tacked on at the end because I’m a sucker for animated films. And this one came with an interesting looking animation style from a director who’d made a mini-splash a few years back with Azur and Asmar.
Alas, that style is not interesting enough to overcome a boring narrative. The film tells six short stories, each set in a different historical period and geography (Medieval times, Ancient Egypt). They are simple fables or fairy tales set around a framing device of a young acting troupe bringing the tales to life on a stage in Paris. Each of the stories is quick. The bad ones therefore pass quickly, but none of them get enough time to develop into something interesting.
Ocelot’s animation style turns the characters into black silhouettes set against layered backdrops. It’s interesting enough, but doesn’t provide enough visual stimulation when the narrative falters. I believe the film was released in 3D in France, which may have helped by giving the picture some depth via each flat layer of background. D+.
As I move on to part two of my AFI European Union Showcase round-up, I come to three films where I struggle to understand the point. I suppose this is something I ponder a lot. I’m never sure it’s a fair question since I don’t find myself thinking this during an entertaining action flick. But, to some extent, all of these left me wondering, “why?”
The Poll Diaries (Poll), Estonia/ Germany/ Austria, dir: Chris Kraus
This coming of age story, which I actually enjoyed, left me wondering what the young heroine has learned, save that sometimes people are shitty. Oda von Siering – who would group up to become poet Oda Schaefer – lives in Estonian Russia with her father and step-mother on the verge of World War I. Her step-mother comes from old German money that is mostly gone and the family lives in a dilapidated mansion on stilts over the water. Her father is a doctor and keeps hundreds of gruesome samples. When she arrives at the mansion from Germany she brings him a gift of some Siamese twin fetuses in a jar.
Over the course of the film, her parents’ relationship becomes strained, Russia and Germany move ever closer to war, her father works to achieve some sort of recognition from other doctors, and Oda hides an Estonian rebel in her father’s workshop. It’s an eventful year, but not one that seems to be full of lessons, except that life can kinda suck, maybe? It doesn’t even really set up Oda’s future as a poet, though the Estonian rebel does encourage her to write. Maybe someone more familiar with her work will draw some parallels.
At least it’s a fairly interesting story set in a fascinating time period. The relationship between the German family and the local Russian soldiers is interesting. A review I read claimed it would be a shoo-in for an Art Direction Oscar, which I dismiss because generally to win an Oscar your movie must be released in the US and people have to actually see it. But beyond those minor details, I see what the reviewer means. The crumbling sea-straddling mansion and the laboratory filled with gross specimens are a production designer’s delight. B.
We Have a Pope (Habemus Papam), Italy, dir: Nanni Moretti
I was much less forgiving with the pointlessness of this next film. At Cannes this got the reputation as the Papal King’s Speech with good reason as it follows the plight of a reluctant Cardinal elected Pope. When he has a crisis of confidence a psychiatrist is brought in to try to help him out and convince him to accept the position.
The early parts of the film are quite strong. The opening scenes portraying the dramatic election are engrossing. The tone turns lighter as the psychiatrist comes in and the film is a laugh riot for about twenty minutes. But soon the new Pope has escaped the Vatican where he wanders around and has aimless discussions with regular folk. The psychiatrist is left to hang out with the rest of the Cardinals. In one particularly pointless sequence he organizes a volleyball tournament.
Early on it seems like it will be a humorous film with a powerful explanation of a crisis of faith. But by the end it’s totally run out of steam and we barely know any more about any of the main characters. D+.
Innocence (Nevinnost), Czech Republic, dir: Jan Hřebejk
In this film the existential question doesn’t arrive until the end. For the vast majority of the film it’s an interesting story about an accusation of sexual abuse. When respected doctor Tomás is accused of forcing himself upon a teenage patient, his family and the police (and the audience) are unsure of what to believe. It’s one of those stories where the truth is a malleable concept and it does it pretty well. It’s been done better in other films, but it’s still pretty interesting.
But once that mystery gets resolved in a surprisingly definitive manner considering the ambiguities earlier in the film, the plot totally goes off the rails with further revelations that are neither interesting nor particularly related to the rest of the film. The final twenty or so minutes are awful and killed any of the goodwill I had for the film. D+.
Goodness, the 24th AFI European Union Film Showcase in Washington, DC flew right by and I fell way behind on my comments. But maybe that’s appropriate as I found little that either struck me strongly positively or negatively. Mostly good stuff, but nothing really great.
Some of the films in the festival are in the hunt for the Foreign Language Oscar. Others may receive commercial releases or have been hitting the festival circuit. Some we’ve been hearing about since Cannes. And maybe someone will stumble upon my thoughts and I can steer them towards a good film or away from a bad one.
The Jewel (Il Gioiellino), Italy/France, dir: Andrea Molaioli
The first film I saw at the fest was also one of my favorites. The Jewel is a telling of the fall of Parmalat, the Italian food multinational that collapsed amidst widespread fraud a few years back. The company’s name and specific details were changed for the film but there can be no doubt of the inspiration.
The film is rather disjointed. The first half or so focuses on CFO Ernesto Botta, a loyal but cranky servant to the family-run firm even as his status as a non-relative limits his rise and forces him to share an office with a young ruling family niece just out of business school. His increasingly bizarre dealings with the company’s bosses reveal something is going wrong with the firm while he becomes personally entangled with the niece. It all leads up to Botta needing to decide if he is going to go off the cliff with the firm or blow the whistle.
But once Botta chooses his path he becomes a secondary character as the film morphs into a slick montage of the company’s further descent into fraud and the bosses continuously double down on their involvement. Both parts are quite good but the shift in the middle is a bit jarring. I could see the film choosing one style and sticking to it or concurrently focusing on both Botta and the firm as a whole, but the abrupt shift in the middle doesn’t work.
Still, it’s quite entertaining. Toni Servillo is excellent as Botta and Teho Teardo’s score of strings mixed with electronic elements is a knockout. I stayed through the credits to hear it all. Teho also composed for 2009 Best Makeup nominee, the incomprehensible Il Divo, and I loved the music there too. I guess this guy is talented. B+.
Long Live the Family (Rodina je základ státu), Czech Republic, dir: Robert Sedláček
Now we move into the part of the program about Eastern European families on the run from the law. In Long Live the Family, the police are closing in on Libor for embezzling from his Prague financial firm. He packs up his family and makes a break for it all the while telling them they’re going on vacation.
He’s guilty and he knows the police will catch up. But he flees out of shame, out of a desire for one last burst of freedom, and, strangely, out of desperation borne out of a mid-life crisis. The film has nice enough family moments and introspective looks into Libor’s character. His wife’s growing understanding that something has gone awry develops nicely. But most of the film indulges Libor’s middle aged whining. A visit to family friends devolves into him and his friend drunkenly discussing their affairs and fairly pathetic regrets about how their lives didn’t pan out like they had hoped when they were younger. Libor has a great family and a successful career (supplemented by his embezzlement proceeds). The fact that he committed a crime and is now fleeing from the law takes a backseat. Things may have turned out better for you if you didn’t steal a bunch of money, pal. D+.
Outbound (Periferic), Romania, dir: Bogdan George Apetri
I think I’m just in the bag for new Romanian cinema. There’s no great reason I should have liked Outbound except that I enjoyed its aesthetic.
Matilda gets a day pass from jail to attend her mother’s funeral. Instead, she embarks on a series of errands meant to culminate with her fleeing the country with her son. The result is an episodically structured film with each segment focusing on her meeting with someone: family, exes, bosses, and her son. Truth be told I can’t claim any of these episodes are entirely compelling from a plot perspective, but they do elicit a conflicted portrait of Matilda. She’s our protagonist but she’s quite unlikeable, spitefully sparring with good and bad acquaintances alike.
While the camera does linger on its subjects, the shots do not last an especially long time like in other Romanian new wave films (4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days). The strong visuals help bring us into Matilda’s world, enough that I didn’t entirely mind the meandering plot. C+.
The Kid with a Bike (Le Gamin au Vélo), Belgium/France/Italy, dir: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
The Dardenne brothers are Cannes darlings but I think they’re just not for me. I’ve only seen two: The Kid with a Bike, which has been hitting the festival circuit since this year’s Cannes, and L’Enfant, which won the Palme d’Or in 2005. Both are inconsequential tales of lower-class life in Belgium that left me disinterested.
11-year-old Cyril lives in a group home. His father has abandoned him, though he has yet to accept it. He meets Samantha, who agrees to take him in on weekends. But he’s not an angelic kid. His heart is mostly in the right place but he yearns for affection (understandable given his background) and is prone to lashing out. He rides his bike a lot and makes some mistakes. To me, it kind of pointlessly meanders. Cécile De France, who I enjoyed in Hereafter, is also good here as Samantha. C-.
It’s time for the third and final part of my round-up of the films I saw at the 2011 AFI Latin American Film Festival in the Washington, DC area. Also see parts one and two.
No Return (Sin Retorno), Argentina/Spain, dir: Miguel Cohan
Clubbing wasn’t the gritty morality tale I was expecting, but No Return sure fit the bill! After a hit and run death in Buenos Aires, police zero in on a suspect: Federico, a young family man (and ventriloquist!). But, while Federico is not totally blameless, he is not the killer. Matías, a teenager from an upper class family, is the true culprit. His panicked reaction to the accident has him claiming he was carjacked.
The film spends some time with Federico and his legal troubles as he slides from incredulous assertions of innocence to bitterness. The victim’s father plays a role in publicly shaming Federico and forcing the prosecutor’s hand. The film really shines when focusing on Matías and his family as they continuously double down on their cover-up and justify it to themselves. The strain, conflicted emotions, and intense guilt of the situation are portrayed beautifully.
The plot does sort of go off the rails a bit at the end, but even so the film is quite effective and had me totally riveted. The performances are top-notch across the board. It’s not the most pleasant film to sit through, but if you’re in the mood for something a bit difficult this is a very good choice. A-.
Miss Bala, Mexico, Gerardo Naranjao
If there’s one thing that the drug wars in Mexico have given us it’s the ability to use the prefix “narco-” in front of any word. Well, great ready for much narco-tinged discussion this Oscar season as this narco-thriller gets a major push to bring the Foreign Language award back to the narco-torn country of Mexico. Not that I particularly liked it. I just know that everyone else seems to.
Stephanie Sigman plays Laura, a Tijuana youngster who aims to compete in the Miss Baja California competition. But she attends the wrong party and crosses paths with a drug cartel. Soon she is an unwilling participant in the cartel’s activities, running errands and even doing its bidding in the beauty pageant.
Over the course of a few days, Laura is thrust into a slew of violent situations. The action sequences are sort of the standard movie shootouts with the nice twist of always keeping the focus on Laura. Rather than showing an entire battle, we see Laura stumble, flee, and hide.
This strict point of view also may be part of what disappointed me. I found a bunch of the cartel content quite hard to follow. I suspect that’s on purpose as we only know what Laura knows and she’s swept up in a much larger force of which she only sees a small part. But the result is that I didn’t end up caring. This made the thrills less thrilling and the tension less tense. So I could watch and enjoy the scenes but never felt invested.
I doubt confusion over plot points was the sole reason I was left cold but I can’t really explain any other factors. I’ll actually be interested to see it again in case I was just having a bad night or something. Everyone else seems to love the film and it’s sure to make a splash as Mexico’s submission for this year’s Foreign Language Oscar. I hear Fox is giving it a large commercial push later in the year as well. B-.
Blackthorn, Spain/France/Bolivia/USA, dir: Mateo Gil
Making a sequel to a classic film is an invitation for derision. Thankfully, of the commentary I’ve seen on Blackthorn, a sequel to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, not much of it has devolved to the lazy criticism of questioning the point of its existence. I think that if you believe you have an interesting take on classic characters, go ahead. But just know that comparisons are inevitable and it’s a hard bar to clear.
So let’s just judge Blackthorn on its own merits: which is that it’s sort of meh.
Blackthorn imagines a world where Butch Cassidy survived the raid at the end of the original movie and has been hiding out in Bolivia for a few decades. He decides it’s finally time to head home and sets off, just to have his journey interrupted by a Spaniard on the run after stealing from a local mining bigwig. The pursuit takes the pair through the Bolivian landscape, through valleys and across desolate deserts.
The Bolivian setting gives it a slight air of exoticism, but it’s really quite similar to what you’d expect an American Western to look like. The story is decent though not especially compelling. The film really shines in a couple of scenes, such as a protracted chase across an expanse of salt flats. But I’m not really sure this movie needed to feature Butch Cassidy. I admit I haven’t seen the first film so maybe I don’t have the best perspective, but it seems like the narrative would be fine with new characters. Flashbacks to the younger outlaws during the time of the first movie and soon after don’t help the film at all and the reintroduction of a character from the first film in Blackthorn’s third act only serves to convolute things. Consequently, forging it as a sequel seems a little gimmicky.
The AFI calls it a Bolivian film for the purpose of its festival, but much of it is in English and the star and (I think) much of the financing are American. It is playing in limited release in America this fall. Outreach to Oscar bloggers suggests the studio is trying some sort of Oscar push for lead Sam Shepard, but there’s no way that’s happening and it’s for the best. B.
This ends our coverage of the AFI Latin American Film Festival. It was a pretty good year and maybe slightly better than last year. And now my attention shifts to another AFI fest, this one the AFI European Union showcase which includes some Oscar contenders and Foreign Language category submissions. Stay tuned!
It’s come to my attention that my Spanish translation of this blog’s title has been wrong since my first post for the 2010 festival. Now that I have corrected it presumably people will actually start reading! Moving on to part two of my coverage of the 2011 AFI Latin American Film Festival. See part one here.
All Your Dead Ones (Todos Sus Muertos), Colombia, dir: Carlos Moreno
You always run the risk with a foreign film of something getting lost in translation. Sometimes literally: slang, a turn of phrase, or joke that fits perfectly in the original language might not have an appropriate translation. A lyrical line in one language can lose its beauty in another. But films also are designed with an audience in mind and they rely on that audience having certain knowledge. A joke about a stereotype won’t work if the audience doesn’t already know the stereotype. A cultural reference relies on the audience knowing the culture.
I think some of All Your Dead Ones gets lost in translation.
A farmer awakes one morning to discover a pile of bodies in his field. He dutifully hops on his bicycle to go to town and report the murders. It’s election day in the state and the politicians, policemen, and officials he meets have little interest in a massacre except to figure out how rid themselves of the problem. Eventually the mayor and some policemen make their way to the farm where they hatch a series of absurd plots to take care of the nuisance.
Many of the farm scenes turn into long, drawn-out episodes filled with uneasy silence. My sense is that they are meant to be tense, presumably because the officials’ intent to cover up the bodies could pose some danger to the farmer and his family. I did not feel this tension. To me they were nothing but long, boring scenes and I think this is where the translation problem comes in. A Colombian audience would have an understanding of the local social and political situations. The filmmakers wouldn’t have to do anything special as the audience would provide its own tension to an awkward showdown between police and lowly farmer.
On the other hand, I found the police more bumbling than threatening. I know of Colombia’s recent history of paramilitary and rebel atrocities, but there’s nothing in an encounter between a farmer and the police that would seem fraught with danger to me.
At least this is how I read it. Maybe it is meant to be kind of boring instead of tense. D.
Hermano, Venezuela, dir: Marcel Rasquin
It’s not often you get a movie that falls into the cliches of not one but two genres. In Hermano, Venezuela’s submission for last year’s Foreign Language Oscar, we get treated to a story of Daniel, a boy growing up in the Caracas slums trying to stay out of trouble while leading his soccer team to the city championships.
There is an interesting foundation to the story in Daniel’s family. The film opens with what he calls his “birth”: when he is discovered in a trash heap by a mother and her young son, Julio. The film skips ahead to when the boys are teens and the family’s interactions are sweet and interesting. The brothers are close and make a great team on the soccer field, but their status as legitimate and adoptive sons always remains just under the surface. Julio is also involved with the neighborhood’s crime syndicate, which Daniel tries to avoid but cannot always.
Hermano is one of those films where every character is allowed to have one emotion at a time and always feels that emotion very strongly. First I am sad but now I am very angry at you and now I love you. It undercuts the appeal of the family’s unique bond. It also checks all the boxes for a poor child trying but not always succeeding to avoid trouble movie and a sports movie, including the usual implausibilities of the latter.
Still, it’s hard to be too annoyed with the film as it is amiable enough. The story kept my attention even if it didn’t always grab me emotionally. Some scenes are thrilling and the limited look into contemporary life in Caracas is welcome. C-.
The Last Commandant (El Último Comandante), Costa Rica/ Brazil, dir: Isabel Martínez
Sometimes you see a movie that isn’t at all what you expected. This was my experience with The Last Commandant. The plot revolves around a former Sandanista commander in the Nicaraguan civil war who surfaces in Costa Rica decades after the war’s end. Judging from what I read about the film, I expected something related to the war’s aftermath and the social and cultural rifts that linger.
It turns out it’s a character study of an asshole. Our commander is just an asshole who didn’t care about the war, didn’t care about his wife, doesn’t care about his former soldiers he encounters, and doesn’t care who he has to screw over to get what he wants. And what he wants is the money to open a cha-cha-cha studio, a dream he’s rather pathetically pursued for years.
Interestingly, the film starts as a story about his former wife as she searches for him before entirely shifting to the commander himself. So this film wants to defy all sorts of expectations!
It’s a somewhat interesting movie that kept my attention even if it didn’t thrill or move me. It’s Damian Alcazar’s lead performance that makes it good enough to mildly enjoy. Movies about assholes can wear on the viewer and Alacazar brings enough of a pathetic air and even some humor to push the film over the line. C.
Clubbing (De Caravana), Argentina, dir: Rosendo Ruíz
Juan attends a concert in Cordoba to take some photos of a music icon. While there he meets Sara and she goes home with him but she steals his camera. He tracks her down to find that she works with a drug dealer who only promises to return his camera once he does some work for him, thrusting Juan into lower-class and criminal worlds he was unaware of in his previously high-class life. Sounds like a gritty crime drama with shifty morals and character-testing predicaments, right?
Maybe at this point I should mention that besides Sara and drug dealer Maxtor, the third member of the crime ring is a sassy but very sweet transvestite named Penelope who wants to open a spa. And that Juan doesn’t really mind his criminal errands. In fact, he rather enjoys his excursions into the criminal underworld. Juan and Maxtor become friends while Juan pursues Sara. It turns out the whole thing is very low stakes. The only real conflict is friction with Sara’s ex-boyfriend who is a competitor both in business and love.
So what’s the point then? It becomes something interesting by the utter bizareness of it all. The characters have interesting and random conversations, especially driven by Maxtor and Penelope. They’re often about nothing important but are still amusingly strange. Rodrigo Savina as Maxtor stands out with his earnest but manic investment in these discussions.
All told, a movie that modestly succeeds by riding its bizarre characters even as the plot fizzles. Not too shabby. C+.
The blog has been ignored for the last month as most of us traipsed around Europe. But now we’re back and we’re kicking off with some film festival coverage! No, not Telluride or Toronto or New York or Venice, but…
Just like last year, I’m on the scene for the 22nd annual AFI Latin American Film Festival at the AFI Silver theater here in the DC area. These little local festivals are great for sampling some new films outside the usual ones that get commercial releases in the US. My choices don’t always work out, but I’ve found some terrific films over the years.
Many of these films you’ll never hear from again. But some will receive US releases and others may well factor in this year’s Foreign Language Oscar race. I’ve also visited some dark corners of the internet looking for guidance when picking what I want to see out of a film festival catalog. Perhaps I can steer a random Googler with a catalog to her own hometown festival to some winners (or warn her away from the losers).
The Mexican Suitcase (La Maleta Mexicana), Mexico/Spain, dir: Trisha Ziff
This documentary featured as the opening night selection for the festival. In 2007, a box of negatives from photos taken during the Spanish Civil War was unearthed in Mexico. The film dives into their progeny, leading to discussions of the war, the photographers, and the nature of photography as art and journalism.
The box contains work from Robert Capa, David “Chim” Seymour, and Gerda Taro, three photographers who lived among the Republican soldiers and helped pioneer modern war photography. All three eventually lost their lives in war zones. Several very famous photos from the Spanish Civil War came from them.
It turns out the negatives made their way to Mexico on the same route many of the war’s losers did: they crossed into France, where former Republican soldiers waited in concentration camps before a sympathetic Mexican government granted them asylum. The negatives ended up with a Republican general and then buried in his daughter’s closet.
The film switches among several threads. A story of the late stages of the war and the years after it forms a narrative backbone with discussions of the photographs filling in much of the content. While I was watching I couldn’t help but think that the filmmakers were tackling too much. There is the discussion of the photographers’ innovations, their relationships with each other, and the way their work has been viewed as a one block of work instead of by three distinct journalists. There is also the discussion of the discovery: who found the negatives, their journey to exhibition, and whether their appropriate home is in Mexico. And there’s all the coverage of the war in general.
This broad range of topics is necessary because no part on its own is enough for a feature length film. But at least they flow into each other nicely. I do think an interest in the Spanish Civil War or photography would be necessary to enjoy the film. I am interested in the former so I found it sufficiently interesting, though a few of the more technical photographic discussions tried my patience. B.
Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within (Tropa de Elite 2 – O Inimigo Agora É Outro), Brazil, dir: José Padilha
The first Elite Squad played the DC Film Fest in 2008. I was on a favela – Brazilian slum – film kick at the time after seeing and loving City of God. Not that the kick has necessarily waned since as it’s still strong enough that I went to see the sequel even though I didn’t care for the first. The original followed the travails of a paramilitary branch of the police department that took on tough assignments in Rio’s dangerous slums. The officers find their convictions tested by corrupt cops and moral quandaries. It was meant to be one of those tales where we wonder if the ends justify the police’s ends, but I thought it was too much flash over substance.
The sequel takes several of the original’s main characters and does so much more with them.
Nacimiento, the commander from the first film, has moved up in the world. Now he wears a suit, in charge of part of the state’s security apparatus. He has terrific success pushing the gangs out of many of the city’s favelas. Unfortunately they are replaced by corrupt cops and organized crime. This thrusts us into a world where politicians, cops, and criminals combine to form a pervasive and corrupt system. When Nacimiento realizes what has happened, and its violence hits too close to home, he fights back.
What makes Elite Squad 2 so good is that it starts with terrific action sequences and makes them mean something through its well-developed characters and social conscience. It feels like an intense exposé in the guise of an action film (but don’t worry, I wouldn’t say it ever gets preachy). It’s absolutely engrossing and tugs on the emotions. I left the theater thrilled.
Elite Squad 2 is Brazil’s Best Foreign Language submission for the upcoming Academy Awards. I wonder if sequel aversion will hurt it in this category even though it’s a terrific film, upstages its predecessor, and isn’t reliant on viewers having seen the first. I would be quite excited to see it nominated. It will also receive a US commercial release in November. A.
Of Love and Other Demons (Del Amor y Otros Demonios), Colombia/Cost Rica, dir: Hilda Hidalgo
I probably should have known better on this one. Gabriel García Márquez is a writer I think I enjoy more in concept than in practice. His languid pace projected on a silver screen is a killer.
When Sierva, a teenager in colonial Colombia, is bit by a mad dog, she is sent to a convent to be exorcised, as it was believed at the time that rabid dogs transmitted demonic possession. The young priest assigned to her case begins to think there’s nothing wrong with her, though the long periods of isolation seem to be making her a bit mad. They begin a tentative, very slow, very uninteresting courtship.
Some reviews I read said the slow pace works because there’s so much beautiful imagery on screen. I respectfully beg to differ. The camera finds plenty of little moments to linger over, but they are not beautiful nor interesting enough to make up for the plot. This movie pretty much sapped me of energy for the rest of the day so potent was its lethargy. It doesn’t get much worse than that. D-.
Okay, okay Film Fest DC has been over for months so let’s get this over. Plus I put a largely anonymous documentary from the Fest on my first half top five list and it’s worth discussing.
This last post will cover the two documentaries I saw at the 2011 Film Fest DC. Conveniently, they are my most and least favorite films of the festival.
Armadillo, Denmark/Sweden, dir: Janus Metz
People may say it’s too reductive, but it’s true: Armadillo is the Danish Restrepo. There’s nothing wrong with that because both are terrific films. Seeing one doesn’t diminish the power of the other. Both follow the tour of duty of a group of soldiers in Afghanistan where the filmmakers get unbelievable access. One battle in Armadillo takes the Danish soldiers into a nearby town, battling Taliban along fences and irrigation ditches. The battle rages all around the camera. The footage is so real and so immersive, if I didn’t know better I might think it was staged.
Several of the soldiers become the stars of the movie, including a leader, a more reserved youngster, and a soldier full of bravado who can’t wait to go and kill some Taliban. The story takes an interesting diversion from Restrepo when the latter man continuously brags about the enemies he killed at close range. When news reaches home about potential atrocities committed by the soldiers, we have an front-and-center view of the reactions of the unit, not to mention our own perspective of what happened since the battle was all caught on film in its full, bloody chaos.
Besides the episode above, Armadillo differentiates itself from its American cousin by more prominently portraying the futility of the Afghan war. The unit fights over the same small area of land, just to have more Taliban come and attack again. The locals are caught in the middle. There’s a certain theatricality to the routine of it all. The soldiers walk through the village. The townspeople file out so the fight can begin. The fight happens. The soldiers return to base. Repeat. The soldiers pondering the point of the war and their involvement are particularly interesting given their nationality.
Director Metz also gives his film a delightfully artistic touch. Beautiful shots of soldiers blowing off steam lit by flares in the dark Afghan night makes for a wonderful segue between chapters.
Armadillo received a brief U.S. theatrical release, but as best I can tell has no DVD release date set. It is available to stream on Amazon. I was entirely engrossed by this film and it’s well worth checking out. A.
Nostalgia for the Light (Nostalgia de la luz), France/Germany/Chile, dir: Patricio Guzman
I tried to see it at last year’s Latin American Film Festival, but it withdrew. I was so happy to see it on the Film Fest list this year. Oh, Past John. You poor, misguided fool.
This documentary is set in the harsh Atacama desert of northern Chile. These days it is one of the world’s major copper producers and its clear skies make it a major destination for astronomical observation. During the Pinochet regime it was also the location of slave labor and death camps. Nostalgia for the Light attempts to reconcile the region’s contrasting history, that a place that is a window to the heavens where man contemplates his place in the universe can also be the location of such awful human cruelty. Where the dry desert preserves remains of natives and murdered dissidents while scientists examine waves that have taken millions of years to reach earth.
The result is a ponderous and excruciatingly boring existential meditation. The problem doesn’t lie with the thesis or story, such as it is, but the execution. We do meet interesting people, including astronomers, philosophers, former dissidents, and family members of disappeared prisoners who comb the sand for bone fragments. But Garcia has too light of an editorial touch and too often lets his subjects ramble on into mumbo jumbo instead of focusing on the insightful bits. Whatever points he wants to make get lots in the slog.
The visuals are no better. Many of the voice-overs are accompanied by long shots of unimpressive night sky or barren desert. At least I had the subtitles to read to keep me engaged with the screen. I don’t know how fluent Spanish speakers would survive. Every transition is a quiet shot that lasts many times longer than it needs to. As viewers, we anticipate the rhythm of editing. A landscape shot between scenes should last a couple beats. Here it could go on for 15 or 20 seconds for no apparent purpose.
I have never attended a film with so many walk outs. Unbelievably it had a small commercial release here, though I can’t find box office figures for it. I know it was playing in DC the week after the film fest. Not that it matters; you shouldn’t see it. D-.
This finally concludes our Film Fest DC coverage. The fest was just so great we needed three months to cover it all. See our other coverage here: John’s look at the genre films and the more arty choices, plus Jared’s take on what he saw.
My recap of April’s Film Fest DC (belatedly) continues with the more serious films. Films that intend to have meaning, explore themes, and/or push outside the usual boundaries of cinema. Some succeed very well. Some succeed at being boring.
Since my colleagues don’t like films where films don’t go boom frequently or deign to move at a pace slower than “breakneck,”* I will identify the Grouch that would hate each film the most.
Julia’s Disappearance (Giulias Verschwinden), Switzerland, dir: Christoph Schaub
I think if someone made Another Year for a wider audience and set it in Zurich, the result would be Julia’s Disappearance, a wonderfully thoughtful and amusing film about aging and youth. Six stories intersect in one Swiss night. The titular Julia rides the bus to meet her friends at a restaurant for a dinner celebrating her 50th birthday. A gentleman her age catches her eye, but his eyes instead wander to a young woman in a revealing dress. An older woman next to Julia quips that at some age women become invisible.
While that older woman goes to her friend’s 80th birthday party at a retirement home, Julia bails on her friends and strikes up a flirtatious conversation with a German businessman at a bar. Meanwhile, her three sets of friends bicker and make sly observations about getting old as they wait for the guest of honor to arrive. Finally, some teenage girls on the initial bus decide to steal some sneakers for a boy they like.
Julia’s Disappearance doesn’t have the level of authenticity of Another Year, but that’s because it’s played more for laughs. The conversations are full of snappy dialogue. It does feel like movie dialogue that real people wouldn’t say, but who cares when it’s so humorous and insightful. Of the four major story threads, the one among the waiting friends in the restaurant is the best. A married couple, a gay couple with a sizable difference in age, and a bachelor growing forgetful in middle age spend their time ragging on each other and other patrons who are chasing youth through a doctor’s scalpel.
I might have done without the teenagers’ subplot, which feels a little superfluous, but Julia’s playful night with the stranger businessman is a delight and the older woman’s birthday party devolves into some amusing physical comedy. It’s not without its contrivances, but it’s infused with charm while holding back on the sentimentality. The result is a very enjoyable and intelligent film. A
Grouch who’d like it the least: Adam. Too talky.
The Hostage of Illusion (Rehén de ilusiones), Argentina, dir: Eliseo Subiela
This movie is the cinematic equivalent to claptrap. The director was in attendance at my screening and a Q&A followed. Audience members kept asking questions about various themes they picked up in the film and each question astounded me further. “You saw that??? The whole thing’s nonsense!” is what a more confident John would have yelled.
The synopsis provided an interesting premise: an author afflicted with writer’s block is haunted by his previous characters who want him to continue their stories. That could have made for a clever story indeed. It also only lasts one scene. The rest of the film follows the author as he embarks on an affair with a crazy woman.
And that’s really all there is to it. There’s no good reason for their attraction as best I can tell. He likes that she’s young, cute, and will sleep with him. She likes him because… she’s crazy? I don’t know. She has some manic and depressive episodes, he frets, the end.
You may find yourself wondering some of the same things my audience asked of the director. What if the woman is herself one of his characters haunting him? So what? What point is a question if it’s totally inconsequential? What if Superman was a Nazi? Who cares? D
Grouch Who’d Like it the Least: Brian, who’d probably be most offended at how unimportant it all is. I have a sneaking suspicion Jared wouldn’t even hate it all, given that it’s somewhat of a romcom with a version of a manic pixie dream girl.
I Am Slave, UK, dir: Gabriel Range
I was having second thoughts walking into this. It seemed unlikely that this drama about human trafficking wouldn’t turn into a manipulative mess. But boy was I wrong. It’s an entirely effective film that earns its emotion.
Malia is kidnapped from her south Sudanese village as a girl and pressed into service at a rich family’s home in Khartoum. Later she is shipped to another family in London. As she grows up a servant, her father travels through the country looking for her.
The greatest service of this film is addressing the tricky “whys” of human trafficking: why doesn’t she run away? Why doesn’t she fight back? The physical restraints are somewhat minimal. It’s the psychological torture that prevents Malia from doing anything. Her masters tell her that she is worthless, that no one outside will help her, that they will kill her family if she leaves. From our perspective as western viewers, we know these threats to be baseless. To a girl yanked away from the Sudanese countryside at the age of 12, the threats are her prison. She runs away once in London, just to come back. I hope viewers will understand this from Malia’s point of view and not grouse about why she didn’t just leave.
The film also does well to not become preachy or manipulative. The villains are not particularly cartoonish. They’re just housewives who fill similarly subservient roles for their husbands and they are even capable of some kindness. It’s a film that relies on its grounded realism to get its point across. The ending packs a powerful emotional punch and it’s a good sign that the only noteworthy criticism I have is that it should have been longer. A
Grouch Who’d Like it the Least: Adam. All this anti-slavery talk is just leftist mumbo jumbo. If she didn’t want to be a slave she should have learned a marketable skill.
The Names of Love (Le nom des gens), France, dir: Michel Leclerc
I’ve learned that “comedy” doesn’t always mean what I think it means when it comes to French films and film festivals. That didn’t bode well for The Names of Love, billed as a “witty and politically pointed romp of a romantic comedy.” And it gets worse: one of its significant themes is what it means to be French in modern France.
And yet, would you believe me when I say it’s delightful? And very funny? It’s populated by zany characters, none of which are realistic but all are entertaining. At the center is the unlikely love connection between Arthur, an awkward government scientist, and the free-spirited Bahia, an avowed leftist who sleeps with conservatives to convert them to her cause. They bicker and fall for each other and, while it’s not totally believable, it’s sweet enough.
A lot of zany things happen, some of them a little more serious than others. I guess more than anything it touches on themes of identity the most, but there’s a lot going on here, even including some Holocaust discussion. I can’t say it always works, but parts that hit wrong move along quickly. And even if the characters are cinematic creations, they at least have some real problems. B+
Grouch Who’d Like it the Least: Adam. French mumbo jumbo
Black Bread (Pa negre), Spain, dir: Augustí Villaronga
If Pan’s Labyrinth has taught us anything, it’s that the cruel era after the Spanish Civil War was a time with a lot of… surrealism. And if you’re in the mood for some supernatural Fascist barbarism, give Pan’s a look instead.
In a small Catalonian town, the young Andreu has his life upended when his father must flee the authorities and he goes to live with his grandmother and extended family. The plot revolves around a search for a spirit who may have killed the man Andreu’s father is accused of murdering. There’s a convoluted conspiracy involving some powerful Fascists and various other troubling things Franco’s thugs pull off.
But, honestly, the plot doesn’t matter because it devolves into a dreary slog. It’s never terrible but it lost me about a third of the way through. The supernatural elements never work and I can’t say the real world ones add up to much either. And the ending is pretty dumb. I don’t recall where, but one review I read said the main lesson Andreu learns is that adults can be pretty awful. Sounds about right and also sort of inconsequential. D+
Grouch Who’d Like it the Least: Jared. Boring. I think Brian would at least get something out of the history and Adam would appreciate that some lefties get killed real good.
*Their retort would surely be that I’m a snob. But they are dumbheads. So there.
I always look forward to John’s posts on film festivals, and this year continues to justify that stance. I was able to see a bunch of the films with him this year, so I figured I’d share what additional comments I could. I’ll start off with the film I got to that John didn’t, then the one film I saw with he that he hasn’t recapped yet (I hope I don’t steal your thunder!) and then I’ll build on what John wrote for the films we saw together.
Outrage (Autoreiji), Japan, dir: Takeshi Kitano
I don’t know very much about Japanese cinema, so I can’t comment on Kitano’s previous work, other than that I’ve read he started out as a successful stand-up comedian and segued into gangster films for awhile. I did recognize him, as I’m sure many other people my age would, from his roles in Battle Royale and the TV show “Takeshi’s Castle” (which, of course, was used for MXC)
Anyway, Outrage is a Yakuza movie about warring families/clans (apologies if nomenclature is incorrect) who operate within a larger group of clans. About a half hour into the film, it becomes clear that the movie is really about who is going to kill who, and how twisted the death scene will be.
My fundamental problem with the film, and I’m not entirely certain to what extent it is a cultural thing, is that it felt like so much of the movie dealt with the bureaucracy of the Yakuza. The guy at the top would order a kill, or imply that he wanted a kill. His second in command would relay that order to the appropriate head of family, sometimes changing it slightly. The head would pass on the order to his second in command, or perhaps ignore it. The second in command passed it on to his henchmen, sometimes, who would execute the kill. And then the information would go back up the chain a similar way. Rinse and repeat. Like the bloodiest game of telephone ever.
The other problem is that we don’t really get to know the characters. And few of them have any sort of distinguishing characteristic. So it is hard to care too much when they get offed.
Some of the kills were cool. But I wouldn’t recommend to see the film just on that basis, there are plenty of movies with better death scenes, I think. It isn’t a bad film, though, and if you are a mob movie fanatic or completist, it is probably worth your while. C
Grouch who’d like it the most: If the film actually pulled off what it intended to, Adam. As is, maybe Brian.
The Names of Love (Le noms de gens), France, dir: Michel Leclerc
As I mentioned, I really do look forward to John’s recaps and I’m curious to hear his thoughts on this film. But as a romantic comedy with a subplot involving Jewishness, well, this movie was probably a little more up my alley.
Superficially, The Names of Love exhibits many of the hallmarks of the traditional romantic comedy. Jacques Gamblin is your straitlaced leading man. He’s a government official in charge of investigating avian deaths, does stuff by the book, and you can tell he is goody-goody because he wears glasses. Sara Forestier is your impossibly attractive free-spirit of a leading lady. They meet cute, get together, break up, and I won’t reveal the end.
But the film is much more layered than that. We learn at the beginning (through flashbacks that are (500 Days of Summer by way of Amelie) that Forestier is the daughter of an Algerian father who came to France after the war and married a hippie. We also learn that she was sexually abused as a teen, something the family tries to avoid talking about. Gamblin is the son of two very staid technophiles who always get into better, but failed products (e.g. Betamax). His immigrant grandparents were victims of the Holocaust, something the family tries to avoid talking about.
I bring all that up because in many ways the movie is about how so much of who we are is where we come from, whether we embrace it (as she does) or hide it (as he does). But counter to that, the film is also about not letting where come from determine who we are. There’s also a minor political bent to the film as she employs the tactic of sleeping with members of the opposite political party, in order to eventually persuade them to join her side. And he continually votes for a losing candidate.
The film is also quite funny at times. It has, hands down, the funniest Holocaust humor you’ll see all year. Being French, the film is also maybe a touch more risque than our romantic comedies generally are. But the nudity actually has a legitimate purpose here. One other than establishing how crazy hot Sara Forestier is, I promise. B+
The Robber
Honestly, I didn’t even think the action scenes were all that great. An interesting premise, to be sure, but it never gets beyond that. As John pointed out, we never really get to know the main character’s motivations. Which was a problem to me, since finding out why and how he became a world class marathoner and bank robber were the primary things I wanted to know as the film played on. I’m not saying this needs a Michael Bay remake or anything, but I could see the film being a lot more successful when done by an American writer and director who could put in some more interesting heist scenes and trim out the German nihilism. C
Transfer
John nailed this one. It deals with the kind of sci-fi I love, but fell into the trap of films I often describe as being like a TV pilot: it started creating the beginnings of an interesting world and brought up tons of questions. The premise isn’t that unlike Dollhouse, for example, especially second season. As John said, to be more successful, the movie really had to focus in on the questions it wanted to tackle. And I know it sounds weird, but the dubbing really was distracting. B-
Home for Christmas
OK. When you hear something like Love Actually, what do you think? Probably something along the lines of a light, breezy, fun movie with a bunch of interconnected scenes. Right? I think that’s fair. OK. The very first scene of Home for Christmas ends with a child in the crosshairs of a sniper. In any case, I disagree pretty strongly with John, here. I didn’t think the film did a good job at all of eliciting emotions. And when it did, it used rather cheap ploys. It it a dark, dismal, drab tale. Which can be fine, but this film never got past the surface of anything. Two things I think Love Actually does well is tie the storylines together enough that it makes sense all the different threads were part of the same movie, and make each thread self-sufficient and interesting enough that it could stand on its own. This movie does neither. None of the stories go anywhere and they certainly don’t end up together. D
Another Film Fest DC has come and gone and this year I did it up right, squeezing twelve screenings into nine days. The DC fest concentrates on international offerings rather than domestic indie films. These run the gamut from overseas blockbusters (Aftershock, the most expensive and successful movie in China’s history, was featured) to smaller, artsier films.
Last year I divided my post-fest recap into genre films that one could imagine finding commercial release in the US had they been filmed in English and the more art house pictures. I liked that divide and no other option for splitting up the films revealed itself this year, so today I’m starting with the genre flicks. Action, sci-fi, crime dramas, and Chrimassy dramedies find their place here with commercial success and sizable budgets in their homelands.
Jared joined me for a few films this year and he can chime in on the one he saw. Otherwise I’ll continue to identify the Grouch who’d like these entertaining films the most (and later we’ll discuss who would hate the most the more thematic artsier films that actually make you think).
The Robber (Der Räuber), Austria/Germany, dir: Benjamin Heisenberg
Andreas Lust plays Johann, the title robber, a newly-released ex-con who combines his loves of running and bank robbery. He trains in his cell and comes out of nowhere as a contender in the Vienna marathon. But many of his training runs involve taking a train (or hijacking a car) to another city and holding up a bank.
The running and robbery scenes are beautiful. They are artfully constructed and help us feel the serenity Johann feels in his runs and the adrenaline rushes in his crimes. That rush is in fact what appears to motivate him in both of his endeavors, but that’s all we really get to know about him. Johann is a blank slate and we see little of his motivation beyond the idea that both activities thrill him.
This lack of development is particularly troublesome when it comes to a relationship he has with a woman he apparently knew before his jail sentence. It means we don’t understand why they are together or even if he cares about her and we don’t care about Johann’s fate. At 90 minutes it doesn’t overstay its welcome by much, but beyond a few well constructed action scenes I can’t recommend much. C
Grouch who’d like it the most: I’m not sure any would like it much but I could see Brian enjoying it.
Transfer, Germany, dir: Damir Lukacevic
Here is a film that has a terrific premise but still manages to be half-baked. A new technology allows the minds of the old and infirm (and rich) to be transferred to young, healthy bodies. An elderly German couple tentatively tries it out and two attractive Africans are their hosts. The catch is that the hosts wake up and once again have control of their bodies for a few hours per day while their guests sleep.
You can imagine the philosophical issues such a technology might present. The problem is this movie does too and gives a half-hearted attempt at all of them. How do the hosts and guests learn to live with each other? They can sort of feel each other and communicate in writing. What sort of racial issues arise when old white Germans get implanted in young black Africans? Did the hosts truly give up their freedom under their own free will? What happens when your other halves have sex, fall in love, and even get pregnant?
Whenever the film starts to present an interesting point, it veers off to explore something else. The consequence is every theme gets short shrift. I wish it had been reined in thematically or perhaps lasted longer as it only clocks in at 93 minutes. Though, truth be told, none of this was treated very expertly. For example, the feelings the hosts and guests have for their other halves seems to vary wildly. One moment the host male is saying his guest is an interesting guy and the next he’s trying to escape.
I must point out one technical aspect and that is some very distracting dubbing. The host Africans are played by black American actors and they are clearly speaking in English. The German is noticeably dubbed and it sounds dubbed, like a cartoon voiceover. At times I found myself paying more attention to the dubs than the rest of the movie. C+
Grouch who’d like it the most: I think Brian would get the most out of the intriguing premise while having less of it ruined for him by how much it falls short.
Easy Money (Snabba Cash), Sweden, dir: Daniel Espinosa
First, marvel at how awesome that Swedish title is. Snabba Cash? That is delightful.
This is a pretty straight-forward crime story. Joel Kinnaman (now on AMC’s “The Killing”) plays JW, an ambitious college student that gets a taste of the good life through some classmates he wants to impress. He falls in with a gang of criminals that is about to up their game significantly by smuggling drugs into Sweden. In doing so they are trampling on the territory of the incumbent Serbian gang and reprisals ensue.
It’s rife with cliches but they never feel particularly burdensome. One Serbian gangster receives custody of his daughter and it makes him want to leave the crime life. JW, for his part, gets over his head pretty quickly and through him a standard “crime doesn’t pay” parable plays.
The film is nicely but not overly stylish. It’s also not terribly thrilling or emotionally resonant, though the climax does somewhat succeed in both regards even if it’s not very surprising. It mostly avoids boredom but a love story and JW’s envy of his richer classmates are introduced and then mostly forgotten. The look at Swedish crime life gave it some novelty for me. An English version of this same movie might end up forgettable, like a We Own the Night. B-
(It has now come to my attention that a remake is in the works, supposedly starring Zac Efron and Rachel Weisz, directed by Daren Aronofsky. Very interesting. On the other hand, news on the project within the last year seems slim and I’m still waiting on a Mark Wahlberg-led remake of last year’s Film Fest DC fave Reykjavik-Rotterdam.)
Grouch who’d like it the most: I think Adam would thoroughly enjoy this crime story.
Win/Win, Netherlands, dir: Jaap van Heusden
This drama set in the world of finance intrigued me but also worried me going in. The catalog promised a hot shot protagonist burdened by the pressure and moral quandaries of the industry. The potential for the film to turn into a brash anti-capitalist screed concerned me. But what I didn’t expect was to be bored.
Oscar Van Rompay plays Ivan, our savant, who is discovered by the firm bigwigs after leaving stock tips on post-its around the office. His rise at the firm and the gradual cracking of his shy exterior are actually quite entertaining. As time goes on his work becomes less fulfilling, helped by the professional and personal downfall of a coworker he has been befriended.
But here’s the issue: there doesn’t seem to be any special reason for his sullenness. He mopes around the city and considers blowing his career, but why? He works a lot, but it looks like he does it because he likes it has a knack for it. The job doesn’t present any specific ethical issues. The worst seems to be that several of his coworkers are kind of dicks, but they’re not terrible. More intense than anything.
So what’s the point? I guess I’m glad it didn’t turn into a ham-fisted treatise on our economic times, but at least that would have had some meat. I know this post is supposed to be about films that, with a language change, could be seen in US multiplexes, but I think for Win/Win to work here it would need a good scandal or something and that would be welcome. D
Grouch who’d like it the most: Adam would dig the business plot the most, but perhaps would also hate Ivan’s career malaise the most.
Home for Christmas (Hjem til jul), Norway, dir: Bent Hamer
This Christmas dramedy alternately warms and breaks the heart. A half dozen story lines intersect in a small Norwegian town on Christmas Eve. There’s a bum going home, a doctor with a struggling marriage, a man juggling a wife and a mistress, and a dad trying to see his estranged kids.
Some of these stories are cozy Christmas stories and some are dark. I don’t think it does anything new and exciting, but the emotion is well-earned and appropriate. The gloomier parts probably disqualify it from the Christmastime rotation of feel-good films, but it’s a good reminder about how the holidays are not happy times for everyone. And sometimes you just want a sadder Christmas movie, you know? Like how my favorite part of Home Alone is when Kevin has that talk with his scary neighbor in the church and finds out he’s a lonely man who misses his granddaughter. It’s a stray poignant, sad moment and Home for Christmas delivers similarly.
Also, there’s a bizarrely graphic sex scene near the beginning. It’s totally strange and incongruous. B
Grouch who’d like it the most: I’d definitely say Jared, but I saw it with him and I know he wasn’t fond of it. I think his problem was that I mentioned I heard it described as “Norwegian Love Actually” and it’s definitely not as cheery as that film. Still, I think it’s more up his alley compared to the other guys.
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