The Counterfeiters

The Counterfeiters is an engaging and well-told story with pretty good acting, cinematography, and editing. It does a good job being simultaneously intimate and encompassing as well as tender but cruel. It has sad parts but does not try to be a tear-jerker.

Some parts of the plot seem implausible (such as the discovery of one inmate's children's passport photos--coincidentally together). In one case where an inmate receives a letter about his wife's death, it seems almost impossible and unnecessary for the plot even as the writer apparently chose to add dramatic tension. Finally, I was curious that the characters, many of them from different areas of the diaspora, did not speak more Yiddish when they were alone together. For many of them, it would have been their first language.

Holocaust films blanch at the idea of portraying the event as happy and therefore choose muted tones or even black and white. The desaturation in this film, however, seemed a little overdone and created a sense of artifice that distracted from that in the film and brings attention to the artifice of the film. This distracts from the viewer's emotional investment in the film or its characters. I am not saying that it should have been done in the colors of, say, The Constant Gardener, but perhaps the limit has been reached. Also, there was one place in the barrack yard where the hand-held camera effect and shaky zooming detracted rather than added to the look of the film.

Still, The Counterfeiters is definitely well-made and certainly worth seeing.

Happy-Go-Lucky

On the surface, this is a pretty mindless film about a pretty strange and not necessarily likable character. Basically, it takes Poppy and Zoe two hours to go boating, making them infinitely faster than Céline and Julie.

Poppy is Mike Leigh's answer to Amélie, cute and upbeat. Yet, Mike Leigh being Mike Leigh, she is simultaneously really funny and unabashedly annoying. The characters that she meets are only sometimes likeable. Many of them are pretty unredeemable. Poppy is way too upbeat about the little bully in her class being "okay". In fact, she is too upbeat about everything including her apartment that contains possibly the most ugly lamp that I have ever seen.

Yet, the film raises interesting questions. The most important and lingering one of these is, did they buy those stockings in every color or did they leave one out?

Kiss of the Spider Woman (brief review)

I am never sure if I should love this film or not; on this viewing, I was ambivalent. For one, I wonder about this essentially Brazilian production of an Argentine story with its Argentine director and two American actors in the lead. I used to think this gave the film the quality of being set anywhere (Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Vietnam, Angola) in a time when there were so many conflicts and political prisoners (not so different from our current time, perhaps). Now I wonder, why put a white U.S. American actor in the lead? How much does it take away from his performance if Milton Gonçalves has to spit out his lines in English? If this takes place in Anywhere, does it detract from that and ultimately exotify the plot if the supporting actors all speak in thick accents? I do think it distracts; I do not think it was worthwhile to have the film in English if Babenco wanted to cast Gonçalves or Fernando Torres. On the other hand, I think the exiled Babenco wanted to make a film about his two countries and, by extension, his own experience. In that kind light, he maybe succeeded more than I let on.

That said, I did like the way that the film was done; the colors, lighting, and intimacy generally worked. At least, they would have worked had I not been distracted by the character of Molina.

Each time I see this film or the play version, something else strikes me. This time, it was William Hurt, who frankly bothered me. I guess I just didn't like his performance; he seemed like a straight guy in girly clothes who didn't quite know what to do. I was also bothered by the character; I cannot remember if that was how Puig wrote him or not. At any rate, it did not work and brought down the whole film.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (impressions)

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly does a much better job with an entirely interior story than I would have thought possible. This is done largely through camera work that is at times beautiful and at times inexplicable; it occasionally shifts to shots that seem to be from the protagonist's point of view but are impossible at points when he cannot move his head. Furthermore, the shaky hand-held camera effects in some of the flashbacks made no sense to me and were more jolting than effective. Also jolting were a couple of songs on the soundtrack including those by U2 and Ultra Orange & Emmanuelle; they just did not fit the feel of the film.

At any rate, it is definitely in the top tier as film goes but it is far from perfect.

Tropa de elite

Tropa de elite is a very violent film about the BOPE, or elite police troops in Rio de Janeiro. The film tries to have a textured and complicated story, knitting a complex web of stories that stretch from the favelas through a local police precinct and to the BOPE, sending out tendrils through well-meaning university students who are involved in an NGO and smoke plenty of pot. In the end, not one character is redeemed although we are supposed to have some understanding of both Nascimento (brilliantly played by Wagner Moura) and André (André Ramiro).

When the film was released in Brazil, I read with interest the controversy that it raised. Critics didn't know where to fall; the police, of course, hated it. I myself was ambivalent. There is a style that has developed in recent Brazilian cinema that involves voiceover and a certain kind of editing or zooming into images that is bothersome. Daniel Rezende is responsible for a number of these films (including City of God) although I tend to think the choices belong to the directors as this was not such an evident style in Motorcycle Diaries or O ano que meus pais sairam de férias. At any rate, this trend is getting a little worn; it was fun in O homem que copiava and City of God and still okay in the City of Men miniseries but I think Brazilian directors need to move on.

Another thing that bothered me was a bit more nebulous. I guess I thought that the attempts at making a textured portrait still sunk into stereotypes and few grey areas. This was partially because the only character who was somewhat developed was Nascimento himself; everyone else was a type.

In any case, it is not a terrible film but certainly not my cup of tea.

My Blueberry Nights (mini-review)

The movie starts out promising; during the first segment, it fits pretty comfortably with other Wan Kar Wai films except that Jude Law plays Tony Leung Chiu Wai and pails of steaming noodles are replaced by blueberry pie.

The plot goes downhill quickly, however, as we follow Norah Jones across the United States and the story gets decidedly more American. It becomes just another middling indie film with the look of a Wan Kar Wai film. That is to say, it maintains the beauty of 2046 or Kar Wai's segment in Eros while devolving into a mediocre story line.

I had the same problem with Constant Gardener, which was one of the most cinematographically beautiful films that I had ever seen but that bothered me with its LeCarre-esque plot (when it got to the credits, I discovered that it was based on a LeCarre novel). This pattern of excellent directors from outside of the United States making glossed-up English-language films that have the directors' trademark looks without the substance is rather troubling. Why can't they just make their own films?

A bunch of mini-reviews of films

Moro no Brasil
I was admittedly skeptical. I mean, my stomach churns when I watch another documentary (or feature film) by a foreigner who "discovers" Brazil. Usually, that person does not speak Portuguese and has really learned very little about Brazil or Brazilians (let alone the many Brazils).

Although I thought the opening segment of the film was a bit strange, I was hooked in the northeast. I wondered why I hadn't bought a few dozen strange percussion instruments at the feira in Caruau and was ready to go back. Actually, I am always ready to get back to Pernambuco, but this was just fuel.

The Rio part was actually really fun and I loved how Kaurismaki didn't try to pretend that the film captured all of Brazilian music but rather that this was some pretty awesome stuff that he had run across. This segment in particular served as a nice complement to the Paulinho da Viola documentary, Meu tempo é hoje.


Bill Monroe: Father of Bluegrass Music
Not a great or particularly artful documentary, but it is great fun if you love music or have a fascination with buckdancing (Emmylou does it). John Hartford pretty much hosts, which is great if you are a bit of a music wonk because John was a walking encyclopedia of old time music (especially fiddle tunes).


Cocalero
Cocalero is a fine, journalistic account of Evo Morales' road to the presidency of Bolivia in 2005. I was glad that it gave some of the opposition's viewpoints while still focusing on the figure of Morales and his circle of campaigners and supporters.

There is nothing very profound about the film; it is more of a document of what happened. This said, it would be a very useful teaching tool to demonstrate how populism actually work and how populists from the proletariat rise to power, often through unions.


La vie en rose
Surprisingly, this was a pretty good biopic. Sure, we were drug around Edith Piaf's life, but the script wove different points together fairly effectively by juxtaposing different moments. I think this was helped by the fact that the juxtapositions were not always the obvious ones that you often see in film scripts.

The acting is, of course, the dealmaker in the film. Without Cotillard's performance, it would have been a pretty mediocre film.


Real Women Have Curves
I saw the play years ago and was pretty excited to see the adaptation. Unfortunately, the acting was terrible and it seemed like they altered the plot in ways that just weakened the story....