Daniel Garber talks with director Gaspar Noé about his new film Love (in 3-D) at #TIFF15
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Murphy is an American in Paris. On New Year’s Day he awakens from a sexual dream to find himself miserable and hungover. He is married to a woman, Omi, he barely knows and father of 
an accidental baby named Gaspar. He retreats to his one private space, an old VHS box. Inside are the only items that still connect him to his one true love, raven-haired Electra: a stack of stereoscopic photos and a piece of opium. And 
after a desperate, panicky call from Electra’s mother, he lies back, takes the opium, and retraces what happened to their Love.
LOVE is also the name of a new movie about sexual romance, passion and loss, as seen through the eyes of Murphy, a young American filmmaker and two European women, Electra and Omi. The film was made by the legendary Gaspar
Noé, known for his mind-blowing movies Enter the Void, Irreversible and I Stand Alone. It had its Canadian premier at the Toronto International Film Festival, and is opening in Toronto today. I spoke with Gaspar on location (some background noise) at TIFF15 in September. He talked about actors Aomi Muyock’s hair colour, Klara Kristin’s electricity, Karl Glusman’s looks, Dustin Hoffman, Douglas Sirk, Winston Churchill, himself, intimacy, sperm, “Gaspar Julio Noe Murphy”, Wild Bunch, Irreversible, tunnels, circles, the colour red, psychedelic images, Enter the Void, a fourth dimension, humidity, old movies… and more!
Photos by Jeff Harris
TIFF 13: Sex + Violence. Movies Reviewed: Tom on the Farm, R100, Moebius
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.comand CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, documentary, genre and mainstream films, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
Hollywood knows: sex and violence = bums in seats. But they also know that you have to keep it fresh and new. So this week I’m talking about three movies that, in very different ways, explore topics of sex, violence and the power dynamic between the two.
I’m looking at three movies playing at TIFF, one from Quebec, one from Japan, and one from Korea. One’s about a city boy who falls prey to an domineering farmer; one’s a businessman who falls prey to a gang of dominatrices; and one’s a family who fall prey to their own morass of escalating horribleness.
Tom at the Farm
Dir: Xavier Dolan
When Tom (Xavier Dolan) drives out to the country to read a eulogy for his young lover, Guy, he thinks he’ll be gone after the funeral. He agrees to spend the night at his mother’s house, even sleeping in his bedroom. But, in the middle of the night, he is attacked by a mysterious man. It’s Frank (Pierre-Yves Cardinal), the homophobic older brother of his late lover. He threatens Tom if he tells Agathe, his mother (Lise Roy), that Guy was gay, or that he was his lover. Tom is forced to pretend Guy had a girlfriend, thus erasing his own status. But it doesn’t stop there.
Frank is a domineering, abusive bully. He’s also much bigger and stronger than the diminutive Tom. Soon, Tom is put to work milking cows, dressed in Guy’s old clothes. Frank dismantles his car, and chases him down when he tries to run away. He’s trapped. Tom finds himself falling into the role of Frank’s submissive younger brother, regularly punched, kicked and threatened with death. Sexually frustrated Frank channels all blame onto Tom. And Tom has a mental shift where he finds himself sexually attracted to Frank and accepts any physical and mental abuse as his own fault.
What is Frank’s problem anyway? Why doesn’t he have any friends? What’s his hidden secret? And will Tom ever come to his senses and get the hell out of there?
This is Xavier Dolan’s 4th film, and the first one based on someone else’s play. This one’s a weird, captive-of-a-redneck horror story, with lots of pyscho-sexual overtones. I like it. It’s not perfect: Tom’s sudden transformation from city boy to hick seems too abrupt; and if he really feels threatened, why doesn’t he just call 911? But Frank and Tom’s abusive relationship – the core of the movie — seems disturbingly real. And Dolan’s careful filmmaking and precise editing leaves you with a chilling feeling at the end. It reverberates in the windmills of your mind long after it’s over.
R100
Dir: Matsumoto Hitoshi
Katayama (Omori Nao) is a shy milquetoast guy who sells mattresses for a living. His wife’s in a coma, so he takes care if his six year old son. He wants nothing more than to listen to Beethoven’s 9thSymphony. But, to escape from his daily stresses, he turns to leather- clad dominatrix for temporary relief. But his life changes dramatically when he signs an unbreakable one- year contract. He will experience the ultimate thrill – never knowing when or where a dominatrix will appear to shock and humiliate him. In his workplace bathroom, on the street, in front if his kid.
Soon enough, it has taken over his life, with hitherto unknown sexual kinks inflicted on him. There’s the Queen of Voices who terrifies Takayama by perfectly imitating his comatose wife’s voice at inopportune moments. And even a queen of spit, who orchestrates elaborate performances punctuated by huge amounts of saliva, shot at 
him from across the room.
Can he escape from all this craziness? And does he really want to? You can tell when he reaches a new level of submission and humiliation when his face is distorted and animated ripples of contentedness flow outward from his mind.
Meanwhile, every so often, the movie switches to the dull people producing this film, sort of a meta-movie-subplot, trying to make a movie with the ultimate restricted rating. R14, R20, refers to the age when you can view a film. This movie, they say is so dirty you have to be R100 to watch it.
I dunno. It has its funny parts – very funny parts — but it gets more and more extreme in its absurdity, as the movie goes on, until it really make no coherent sense whatsoever. It’s just a shaggy dog story, with a ridiculous — but still funny — ending.
Omori Nao is excellent as the nerdy anti-hero. Director Matsumoto Hitoshi is a dry, stand-up comic, part of the Japanese duo Downtown. If you’re into cheap-and-silly Japanese BDSM/leather/comedy, then this is the movie for you. Otherwise…
Moebius
Dir: Kim Ki-duk
A father, a mother and their teenage son live in South Korea. Dad has an affair with a woman who has a small convenience store down the street. Mom (and son) find out. Mom goes ballistic, and grabs a dagger she keeps hidden beneath a heavy Buddha’s head. Dad fights her off, so she breaks into her son’s room instead, and cuts off his penis. When he tries to get it back, she swallows it, and runs away. (That all happens in the first few minutes of this movie.)
Husband and son are forced to live without a Mom, and without one penis. Dad researches the internet for bizarre ways to help his son achieve orgasm, including rubbing a a pumice rock on your foot until it bleeds. Will dad cut off his own penis to give to his son for a penis transplant? Or will the son chop one off a random 
stranger? Who deserves Dad’s ex-girlfriend? Father, son or both? And will they learn to accept being stabbed in the back… literally? (I really do mean literally.)
OK, this is one of the weirdest movies around. It’s filled with rape, incest, violence, alterna-sex, repeated dismemberment (of a particular member – that one), and more. It’s told as a sort of a pantomime: no one speaks throughout the whole film. But its set up like a fable or a storybook, with each scene passing swiftly to the next. It deals with revenge, retribution, repentance but in a very simplistic way. Also interesting is the mother and lover are played by the same actress wearing different wigs and makeup. It’s not funny or cute, just non-stop, extremely repetitive violence. But, I have to say, it was really well made for what it is.
But what is it? Apparently, Kim Kiduk the director, felt his scripts had been stolen by his interns. I’m guessing here, but maybe the whole movie was his thumb in the nose to the powers-that-be in the Korean film industry. Who knows? Am I glad I saw it? I guess I am – it is unique and unusual (although, structurally, it’s like all his movies with a simple, symmetrical, yin-and-yang plot).
I saw R100 at TIFF, immediately – I mean immediately, five minutes later — followed by Moebius, a double- feature like no other. See these two if you dare. You will never forget them.
Tom at the Farm, R100, and Moebius are all playing at TIFF. Go to tiff.net for tickets.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Run Silent, Run Deep? Movies Reviewed: La Pirogue, Lovelace
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies forculturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, documentary, genre and mainstream films, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
People leave their homes for different reasons. Some people are tied down by their pasts, held back by their parents. They’ll never succeed unless they can break free. Others are content, but feel they’ll missing out on something better, their destinies unfulfilled, unless they move away. But the grass isn’t always greener…
This week, I’m looking at two movies about people who go out into the world to seek a better life, but find their new world may be worse than what they left behind. One’s a realistic drama from Senegal about a journey across deep waters; the other’s a US biopic, about a movie called Deep Throatthe
La Pirogue
Dir: Moussa Touré
Baye Laye (Souleymane Seye Ndiaye) is a fisherman who plies the waters off Senegal looking for the next catch. He has a pretty good life, with a beautiful wife, and a nice home. He even dabbles in sponsoring fighters at public matches. He goes on fishing trips for weeks at a time in his long, wooden boat. But there’s hasn’t been a good catch for ages.
In walks a sleazy, but rich, local entrepreneur. He needs a ship captain to ferry a fishing boat to the coast of Spain. It’ll only take a week – much shorter than his normal trips. But this is no pleasure cruise. Baye’s pirogue – a deep, wooden canoe – won’t be hauling seafood. The cargo will be two dozen hopeful migrants.
He refuses. It’s illegal, dangerous, and immoral. But there are crowds of men in a
corrugated shack on the beach, all waiting for him to take them to Europe. Young men want to experience western culture, up close. Join a world cup football team, or just buy an iPhone. A disabled man needs to buy a prosthetic limb Others have family, lovers or jobs waiting for them there. He finally agrees, when he discovers that his fishing navigator — and even his own brother – are going to Spain the next day, with or without him. And so begins the journey.
But there’s trouble from the start. A stowaway leads to talk of mutiny. And ethnic tensions emerge: There are national splits – with Fulani refugees from Guinea who have never been the ocean; battling ethnic groups who don’t speak a common language; and devout Muslims – contrasted with their sophisticated, hard-drinking cousins. The pirogue itself is built for piles of fish not crowds of people.
As tension builds, they gag a panic-stricken man with only a chicken to keep him company. Someone breaks the ceremonial bottle. And another pirogue they encounter in the ocean does not bode well for their future. Things reach a crisis after a big storm washes away the GPS and disables one of the engines. Without much fuel, or even drinking water left, they are faced with a dilemma. Do they continue toward Spain? Or do they let the tides take them to Brazil?
La Pirogue is a good story, well told and nicely shot. For once, there’s a movie told by the migrants themselves. Director Toure takes a few stylistic leaps, everything from the excellent opening in a public square, to an unusual (and oddly mannered) sex scene. And I love the complex rhythms of Salam Diallo’s music. Worth seeing.
Lovelace
Dir: Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman
It’s the early 70s in Florida. The sex and drug revolution is happening, man! Everyone wears loud clothes and listens to wooka-wooka music. Men battle each other for the worst facial hair combos and the biggest collars. Even the fonts are fat. (In the opening credits, the movie title gets an erection.) In the midst of all this is young Linda (Amanda Seyfried), a cute, freckled girl with dark curls. Her conservative and Catholic parents (Sharon Stone, Robert Patrick), had whisked Linda down south to hide her pregnancy. They want to bring her up right and whip her back into shape. She just wants a tan.
Soon enough, Linda meets the much older Chuck (Peter Sarsgaard) a bartender with ambition. They marry, and before you know it, Linda is Linda Lovelace, the star of Deep Throat. This is a porn movie about a woman who can only reach an orgasm by giving head who meets a man with a large penis. All these topics were very taboo at the time – oral sex was never openly discussed. Suddenly, the film is a crossover hit (this is when porn was still watched in movie theatres) a blockbuster, a cultural meme before the term existed. Even the Watergate whistleblower – the man who brought down the Nixon government – called himself “Deep Throat”.
She rises to the top, with instant stardom and notoriety. There are scenes of 
porn in-production, meeting celebs like Hugh Heffner, and the glamour of talk shows and Hollywood life. It’s a campy, over-the-top look at those wacky, zany days of porn. Except it’s not.
Halfway through, the movie does a complete about face. Suddenly it’s a deadly serious drama, based on Lovelace’s autobiography: how she was raped at gun point, forced to do abominable things, kept under close watch by her evil husband Chuck. She does an extended tell-all to daytime TV host Phil Donohue.
So does it work? Combining these two very different feelings within one movie? In a word, no! In fact it fails miserably. This is one of the worst movies of the year, a painfully awful mistake.
How could so many famous stars – Adam Brody, James Franco, Hank Azaria, Eric Roberts, Juno Temple – make such a monstrously bad movie? Seyfried plays Lovelace well, and doesn’t lose her way, but Sarsgaard is unbelievably bad as Chuck. Just dreadful. (And what’s with actors throwing phones? Denzel in “Flight”, Sarsgaard in this movie? – it’s a sure sign an actor is losing it and the movie is going to suck.) Even the directors – who made that excellent documentary bio of Harvey Milk – what were they thinking?
Lovelace is like a two course meal – first a stale Hostess Twinkie… closely followed by a plate of excrement. It’s like a slapstick look at the Rwanda massacre. Watch it at your own risk.
Lovelace is playing now, and La Pirogue opens today at the TIFF Bell Light Box in Toronto (check your local listings.)
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website,culturalmining.com
Daniel Garber talks with the SOSKA SISTERS about their new film AMERICAN MARY
Hi, This is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com CIUT 89.5 FM.
Who says Canada is dull and boring, never weird or whack? Wasn’t me… We have lots of strange things here (and I’m not just talking about our crackhead Mayor). But I rarely see movies as weird as a new horror film opening across Canada today.
This is a story about a medical school student named Mary (Katherine Isabelle) who is planning to become a surgeon. But she’s flat broke — can’t even make her rent. So she brings her resume to a local strip bar and offers her services. But, to her surprise, the skeezy characters there need her mind and her hands more than her body — she’s put to
work as an underground
secret surgeon.
Soon she’s a sought-after figure within the body-modification set. And when something terrible happens to her, she quits medical school and seeks revenge in her new guise as a regular Bloody Mary. But the police are on her trail….
The movie is called American Mary, and was written and directed by the famous / notorious identical-twin horror-meisters the Soska Sisters. (This is the second feature by the team who brought us the cult favourite Dead Hooker in a Trunk.)
I speak with Jen and Sylvia Soska about American Mary, horror, genital mutilation, women in film, evil twins, body modification, feminism, and more… (Warning: this unedited podcast contains adult language and subjects that may not be suitable for all listeners.)
December 9, 2011. Couples. Movies Reviewed: Shame, Salsa Tel Aviv, Carnage
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies, for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, genre and mainstream movies, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
Couples. I think you know that phenomenon – all these people you used to know as individuals who suddenly turn into half of a couple, beginning right about now. They are easily spotted, what with their matching Christmas sweaters and pompom-ed toques. Who start talking in the We form instead of the I? I’m sure you know some of these “couples”.
Well this week I’m reviewing three films — three case studies — that deal this strange anthropological phenomenon – couples – at various stage of their development, their habitat, their migratory patterns, and their means of reproduction. One where the a camera was placed inside a nest and all coupling was filmed in detail — and their state of coupling is continual, but short, efficient, and then it’s gone; another where a member of the species migrates from Mexico, and accidentally inhabits another couple’s nest; and a movie where a couple of couples initially peacefully coexist, but soon run the danger of tearing one other’s heads off.
Shame
Dir: Steve McQueen
Brandon (Michael Fassbender) is a successful, young-ish ad exec who lives in a swank New York apartment. He can pick up women without even trying, and seems to have an insatiable need to sleep with a different woman each night. His extremely douche-y boss (James Badge Dale) known for his awful old pick-up lines, takes him along as a wing-man to pick up bars using awful pick-up lines, but Brandon is always the one who gets the lucky. And if not, there’s always prostitutes or porn. The one thing he can’t have, though, is any commitment or responsibility – they’re an instant killer, and he’ll do anything to avoid them.
Well in comes his estranged and needy younger sister, Sissie (Carey Muligan), who 
totally messes up his desired (though shallow and meaningless) lifestyle when she moves into his shag-pad. Her presence unnerves him, and sends him on a increasingly desperate cycle of depravity in his relentless quest for sexual and emotional satisfaction. Will it lead to some (pardon the expression) climactic event? Although they seem to have some kind of ominous backstory from their childhood making them so screwed up, it’s their present-day lives that are crucial.
Shame is a disappointing movie. It seems to be a moralistic look at sexual depravity 
and its consequences, but where it doesn’t even seem all that depraved. None of the characters are very likeable. And while there’s almost constant full frontal (and back-al) nudity, it’s not very erotic, more detached, mechanical, cold. While aesthetically and visually it’s great, with its long takes, off-centre and partially obscured close-ups, and while it’s a generally watchable – I didn’t want to walk out or anything – it left me as cold as the characters seem to be, with an implied moral tsk-tsk about the consequences of sexual indulgences.
Salsa Tel Aviv
Dir: Jorge Weller
Yoni (Angel Bonani), a bumbling botany professor who acts like a young Cary Grant, meets an equally awkward novice nun, “Victoria” (Angelica Vale) at a Mexican airport. They end up sharing a hotel room when a flight is cancelled. Afterwards, they find themselves together again on a flight to Tel Aviv (he’s heading home, she abroad). A Spanish speaker, he helps her through customs. Later his uptight fiancée Dafna (who won’t even kiss him unless he’s sucking a mint) takes him to a Salsa studio where she takes dance lessons. There he meets Vicki who seems very familiar to him. The nun’s habit was just a disguise. She used it to sneak into the country and meet her macho, deadbeat, salsa-
dancing boyfriend who left her behind in Mexico with their kid. Vicki/Victoria and Yoni end up in a series of increasingly suggestive situations. She knows about his fiancée, but he knows nothing about her life. Is a romance developing between Vicki and Yoni? Or will they each stick with their respective mates?
Salsa Tel Aviv is a light rom-com about culture-crossed relationships. It’s 90% Spanish, 10% Hebrew, with the main roles — and the director as well — originally from Latin America. Uruguayan-Israeli Bonani, a former model, looks the part, but seems to be just starting in his acting career. Vale, a telenovela superstar in Mexico, is right in her element, doing lots of physical comedy (usually sleepy, drunk, confused or tongue-tied) as well as a competent romantic lead. Nothing spectacular, nothing very original, just a cute, classic romantic comedy.
Carnage
Dir: Roman Polanski
Penelope and Michael (Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly) invite Nancy and Alan (Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz) to have a talk. You see, their 12 year old sons got in a fight, with one of them hit the other with a stick, so they decide have a civil, community-minded discussion, outside of lawsuits and recriminations. They’re all educated, sophisticated and rich professionals in NY City.
Penelope is committed to resolving the issue; Nancy as well, but she’s feeling sick; Michael is taking the easy way out, avoiding confrontation; while Alan, a corporate lawyer, is barely there – spending most of his time sending messages and talking loudly into his cell. When caffeine and alcohol are added to the mix, things begin to degenerate. What starts as a nice talk (filled with mildly hidden feelings of antipathy) gradually unravels into a psychological cesspool of anger, spite, and bitterness. Like in Luis Bunuel’s Exterminating Angel, they can’t seem to leave that apartment – they seem psychologically trapped in their escalating fights.
This short film (79 minutes), a drawing-room comedy based on a one-act play by 
Yasmina Reza, is a very funny and acerbic look at how grown-ups act and what lies just beneath its surface. It doesn’t do much that a live play can’t, except maybe close-ups — It’s basically a filmed play — but who doesn’t want to see an entertaining play with four famous actors they like?
Shame is now playing, Salsa Tel Aviv is on for one show only this Sunday afternoon as part of the Chai, Tea and a Movie series at the Sheppard Cinema, check TJFF.com for details; and Polanski’s Carnage opens in two weeks — check your local listings.
Also opening this weekend: Paul Goodman Changed my Life, a new documentary about the influential counterculture figure of the 60’s — a bisexual, anarchist, writer, philosopher — starts tonight at the Royal; Brooklyn Boheme plays tonight at Toronto Underground cinema; and some really fun Japanese movies, including Linda Linda Linda about a highschool girls’ rock band, and Always: Sunset on 3rd St. 2, a nostalgic sequel to last year’s flic about the residents of a struggling postwar Tokyo neighbourhood are playing for free at the Royal this weekend, courtesy of Toronto’s Japan Foundation.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies for CIUT 89.5 FM, and on my web site, Cultural Mining . com.
Sept 9, 2011. TIFF it! I Am a Good Person, I Am a Bad Person, Melancholia PLUS TIFF
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies, for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, genre and mainstream movies, helping you see movies with good taste, and movies that taste good, and what the difference is.
If this is your first listen to my show from U of T, or maybe you just arrived in Toronto for the first time, or if you’re an alien that just landed from another planet, and if you saw me a couple days ago standing on a streetcar with my back stiff, one hand posed dramatically in the air, the other supporting the back of a nineteen year old women, you might wonder… what’s going on and what’s he doing on a streetcar. And that’s a good question, and one that could only be asked in a place like Toronto.
You see, each year, right about now, a strange confluence of people meet and interact in the city’s downtown for about a week, making for some very strange and wonderful combinations. Because, right now, TIFF, the Toronto International Film Festival, is opening its curtains and lighting up its screens and walls right across the city. So what that means is some three hundred movies from around the world – including countries like France, Japan, China, India, Russia, South Africa, Germany, Scandinavia, Italy, Latin America, and The US, Australia, Canada and The UK – in a dozen different genres are being shown, both to people working in the film industry, who want to buy sell or publicize their pictures, and the general public, who want to see the films and take in some of the glamour and excitement of seeing World and North American premiers of this and next year’s best movies.
There are red carpet entrances to many of the screenings, and usually a director — and often actors, writers and production staff – stay after the fill to answer questions from the audience. What started as a place where Torontonians could watch films that had already played in Berlin, Cannes, Venice, gradually turned into a festival that eclipses most of the others as the most important one in North America, and vying for the title internationally. It also has a spanking new building where many of the films are being shown called the Tiff Bell Lightbox, (on King St between Peter and John) which is really an exciting place to be. Strangers talk to each other – something that’s not usually done in straightlaced Toronto – about movies, about what they’re seeing, about what’s good and what sucks. A couple years ago I was chatting candidly with the woman beside me, and then she got up and sat on the stage to interview filmmaker of the movie we had just seen. I won’t reveal any names, but lets just say she’s had a bit of trouble with a Broadway musical involving a superhero. Yeah, her.
Anyway, while all the people converging on the downtown around the Lightbox and the Hyatt on King St West, I was on my way there, when I saw the other group involving huge numbers arriving from around the globe – the “freshers”. First year Unoversity students at one of the city’s many universities and colleges. They’ve taken to wearing ugly coloured T-shirts with strange electro-designs and unreadable slogans (I guess they’re all in-jokes) as they shout unrecognizable chants as the rush around in huge groups following the orders of some tuff girl with a megaphone.
Then they offer to sine your shoes, or play the tuba, or just stand, dazedly staring off into space as they are surrounded by others in the Wrong Coloured T-shirt! So, there I was making my way to the TIFF press office when I was swarmed by a bunch of freshers who implored I pose pretending to be a ballet teacher (Me? Not bloody likely!) giving a lesson on a streetcar, pose for a snap, and then all of them rushing away for the next task on their scavenger hunt.
So, freshers, I implore you all – task number 379 is to stand in a rush line at one of the TIFF screenings and then tell your friends about the movie you saw. And TIFF goers? Skip one reception and attend a beer pong party instead, just for one night. See what happens…
OK, here are some of the movies I’ve seen so far, and what better way to begin TIFF than with a meta-movie about an avant-garde filmmaker taking her film on the film festival circuit.
I Am a Good Person, I Am a Bad Person
Dir: Ingrid Veninger
Ruby (Ingrid Veninger) is a Yoko Ono-style experimental artist who has made a movie called Headshots, which is basically a series of close-ups of men’s penises. She’s about to leave Toronto with her disaffected daughter Sara (played by her real daughter Hallie Switzer) to show the film at a series of European film festivals. But before she leaves, she gives her husband what is probably the most un-erotic depiction of a blowjob ever on film. Headshots indeed.
Sara ends up acting like the disapproving mother while Ruby, (with her cinched-back hair and
fake glasses) is desperately trying to get laid, be cool, and find satisfaction amongst the cold, bored audiences at the festivals. Finally, it’s too much. Sara heads off to Paris to stay with her aunt, leaving her nervous mom to face Berlin alone. Both of them carry secrets burning inside, and they have to work up the courage to face them before they meet up again.
While lacking the sweetness of young love present in her last film, Modra, I Am a Good Person… makes up for it in this meta-film satire that skewers both art films and film festivals without straying too far from Veninger’s great, hyper-realistic style. This movie’s a fine way to start up that festival feeling.
Melancholia
Dir: Lars Von Trier
Justine and Claire are Yin&Yang sisters. Blonde, beautiful and talented Justine (Kirsten Dunst) is an advertising copywriter who just got married, but managed to show up late for her own wedding party. The dark, shy, anglo-french-sounding Claire (Charloote Gainsbourg) sometimes really hates her sister, but feels a need to nurture her, heal her, to bring her back to life.
Because Justine is depressed, and feels her life Is a sham. Despite the grand wedding banquet — beside an 18 hole golf course, complete with sandtraps and, strangely, a telescope — her divorced parents are embarrassing, her boss is relentlessly bugging her for a tag line, even at the wedding, and her husband’s a naïve hick who thinks he can cure her by showing pictures of apple trees. But Justine’s life is much grander than all of this.
You see, she can feel that the errant planet Melancholia is heading for earth and may destroy everything in just a few days. Even riding horses won’t cure her. Claire’s optimism is also slipping away as the planet moves closer and closer. Will the world end? Or will Melancholia swerve away?
I dunno. After last years shocking movie Antichrist, Von Trier’s depiction of the meaningless of modern lives feels funny, but that isn’t enough. What should have been a pre-apocalyptic psycho-drama felt slow, repetative and drawn out. It’s hard to carry a 2 hour movie using a one-trick-pony.
TIFF runs for the next ten days: Tickets are still available — for more information, go to tiff.net .
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies for CIUT 89.5 FM, and on my web site, Cultural Mining . com.
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