Boxing Day Releases

With Boxing Day right around the corner, cinema aficionados are gearing up for some of the most awaited films of the year. Director Wes Anderson (The Life Aquatic…) returns to his favoured themes of family and love with The Darjeeling Limited, a gently comical story of three estranged brothers uniting for a train journey across India. Tinted by the real life experiences of co-writers Anderson, Jason Schwartzman and Roman Coppola, Anderson carves his most emotionally grounded offering to date, whilst still maintaining his signature eccentricities. Julie Delpy (Before Sunrise/Sunset) meanwhile steps behind the camera to both direct and star in Two Days in Paris, where she plays a verbose, borderline-hysterical Parisian who brings her cynical, arrogant, French-hating American boyfriend (Adam Goldberg) home for the weekend. Delivered with all the verbal frenzy of a Gilmore Girls episode, there’s something delightfully endearing about the film (perhaps because of Delpy’s effortlessly likeable nature), despite her self-conscious narration and the film perilous dance on that thin line between comedy and tragedy. And the musical biopic receives yet another make-over in I’m Not There, where Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger and Cate Blanchett all recreate different images of Bob Dylan through interweaving narratives. For all that it’s trying to do, the film doesn’t really do anything all that well, coming off as extremely self-conscious and with some narrative strands decisively more interesting and well-developed than their half-baked counterparts.

Ratings: 8.5, 8.0, 6.9

And, as cinemas around the nation brace themselves for the onslaught of post-Christmas cinema releases, Perth prepares for some more local surprises. The Luna Outdoor season gets going with its second film, Buddha’s Lost Children, a documentary about Thai boxer-come-monk, Khru Bah, who now devotes himself to assisting struggling hillside tribes throughout Thailand’s impoverished borderlands, and to taking in homeless or lost boys, in order to give them another chance at life. There’s a very intimate feel to the unfolding storytelling, as we are gradually drawn into the community’s daily workings, the lives of the young boys and the karmic life philosophies of Khru Bah himself. The filmmaking is solid, sprinkled with exquisite cinematography and some genuinely thought-provoking interviews. While it may be slower paced and less exciting than other ‘inspirational’ documentaries making the rounds at the moment, Buddha’s Lost Children remains an interesting, if not enthralling, portrait of a hidden community.

Rating: 7.5

PIAF’s Film Festival also introduces two new films for the new year. I Served the King of England is the Czech comedy that will soon be lighting up the Sommerville auditorium. It sees Czech actor Ivan Barnev become a cross between Charlie Chaplin and a weasel (sneaky, yet somehow endearing), as he plays the ingratiating Jan Dite, a waiter hoping desperately to become a millionaire in wartime Czechoslovakia. Despite its trailer suggesting nonsense absurdity, there is actually a gripping narrative weaving through all the more unbelieve images that cross the screen (monetary note wallpaper, a pool for naked Aryan women and a waiter who upturns the tables of his clients, to mention a few), whilst these surreal interludes help to spice up the film as whole.

Rating: 8.1

Meanwhile, Moliere welcomes 2008 at Joondalup Pines. No doubt inspired by the success of Shakespeare in Love, director Laurent Tirad presents a speculative take on how the famous French playwright may have gained inspiration for his most famous play, Tartuffe. While the film could have suffered under the confines of its period setting, and what many have criticised to be a poor casting choice Romain Duris as Moliere), the screenplay has obviously taken many of its comedic cues from the playwright it celebrates, rendering the end result fresh and genuinely funny, as well as just that little bit touching. This, combined with the perfectly tuned performances of the supporting cast (especially Fabrice Luchinni and Laura Morante as the wealthy couple who welcome Moliere into their home with mixed results) cements the film as one of the Festival’s most notable highlights thus far.

Rating: 8.6

Eagle Vs Shark; Hunting & Gathering; War/Dance

There is little need to extrapolate upon the success Napoleon Dynamite, and the way in which this film’s particular brand of ‘geek-humour’ rippled through pop culture, inspiring a whole breed of people who insist on quoting lines to the point of banality, the proliferation of a particular slogan shirt, and, apparently, this recent New Zealand comedy flick. In Taika Cohen’s Eagle Vs Shark we meet Lilly (Loren Horsley), a pathetically weak yet well-meaning fast-food worker, in love with Jarrod (Jemaine Clement), a mulleted, baselessly arrogant electronic store clerk. After proving herself worthy through an impressive video game performance, Jarrod is soon asking Lilly out, standing her up, excusing himself with the excuse over “I’m just so complex,” and eventually taking her with him to visit his hometown, in a trip that gives him a chance to finally avenge his high school nemesis and Cohen a chance to play Lilly off against Jarrod’s dysfunctional family. At no point along this journey does Cohen shy away from blatant ND references (nam-chucks, ‘liger’-esque sketches and that trademark flat delivery all make an appearance). Cohen’s only attempt at an original edge is her effort to look further beneath the surface, but this is largely manifest through self-consciously poignant asides that do little to rectify the situation (and significantly also feel reminiscent of a million other indie flicks along the lines of Garden State). There are some delightful moments (including Cohen’s stop motion sequences, the film’s cute final scene and admittedly the entire character of the amiable Lilly), and, certainly, if it had been released three years earlier then the film would no doubt be a cult classic. As is, though, it is not worth watching this one more than once, because you’ve already seen it all before to start with.

Rating: 7.3

Adapted from a 600 page novel by celebrated author Anna Gavalda, Hunting and Gathering marks the first time that veteran French filmmaker Claude Berri (Jean de Florette, The Housekeeper) has looked towards a younger generation for his subjects. The film tracks the lives of three, vastly different 20-something year-olds over the course of a year, as they are unexpectedly thrust into a shared living space. Philibert (Laurent Stocker) is a kind-hearted, stuttering aristocrat temporarily looking after a large, regal apartment for his wealthy family, Franck (Guilaume Canet) is his temperamental housemate and Camille (Audrey Tautou) is their lost and lonely neighbour, who Philibert takes under his wings after she develops the flu. There are some touching moments (particularly thanks to Philibert) and the performances are all impressive (especially Francoise Bertin in a gracious turn of Franck’s grandmother Paulette), but on the whole the film suffers slightly from the stilted feel of inadequate adaptation. The narrative jumps through developments with an awkward swiftness, the story’s romantic plotline feels like it must have been drastically simplified and, although Berri did make many changes to the original novel, he did not inject enough structure into the story’s flowing narrative to make it feel like a movie rather than an extended episode of television drama. This is a sweet movie, but it just doesn’t pack a punch, or the melancholic flavour one could have expected from this director.

Rating: 7.0

This Monday, the US/Ugandan documentary War/Dance opens at Joondalup Pines for PIAF’s Lotterywest Film Festival. Gifted with an extraordinary story and some colourful interview characters, War/Dance is a compelling look at the poverty stricken Achioli tribe in northern Uganda, where a class at the Patonga refugee camp primary school has been asked to compete in a nationwide music and dance competition in Kampala. The students, many of whom are orphaned, have seen the atrocities of war first hand, and lived amongst conflict their entire life. By focusing on three outspoken class members, we learn of their unbelievable individual sufferings and the potential of music and passion to provide relief in amongst the darkest circumstances. Like some sort of cross between sweet innocence of Mad Hot Ballroom and the powerful emotion of Born Into Brothels, this documentary is compelling and, ultimately, deeply affecting.

Rating: 7.9

vier minuten; outsourced

Next Monday (10 December), Sommerville replaces The Dinner Guest with Four Minutes (Vier Minuten) – a highly taut German character study. This film follows the elderly piano tutor Traude Kruger (Monica Bleibtreu), as she struggles to impart some musical knowledge onto Jenny (Hannah Herzsprung), a gifted but traumatised inmate at the woman’s penitentiary. Though the two women are divided by age and by experience, a potent, almost electric, relationship develops between them, forcing them both to come to terms with the weight of their pasts as they titter perilously between sanity and hysteria. And far from diverging into a sloppy fairytale about the transformative power of music, Four Minutes remains captivating in its complexity; positioning music simultaneously as the interest that unites the woman, and as the force that divides and torments them. Get ready for another darkly enthralling offering from Germany, propelled by a powerful soundtrack and two near-flawless performances.

Rating: 8.0

Meanwhile, at Sommerville’s sister cinema, Joondalup Pines (located at ECU Joondalup), the PIAF film seasons gets started with Outsourced – a cross-cultural romantic comedy set against the backdrop of call centre chaos. The zaniness begins when Todd Anderson (Josh Hamilton) is forced to swap his comfortable Seattle office cubicle for a dingy building in the middle on the outskirts of an Indian city. Here, his new job to educate Indian telemarketing staff in the art of sounding American. More cynical cinema-goers will be frustrated by Todd’s extreme cultural ignorance, as well as by the unrealistic and somewhat simple romance that develops between him and the vivacious Asha (Ayesha Dharker), one of his staff members. Nonetheless, there’s something quite delightfully humorous about this brazen culture clash (nothing beats the comedic impact of a cow nonchalantly wandering through an office), and there is relief to be found in other moments of the film, when the scriptwriters’ demonstrate an astute ability to portray those more nuanced cultural differences, and inevitable cultural similarities.

Rating: 6.9