DIRECTED BY Cristian Mungiu
STARRING Anamaria Marinca, Laura Vasiliu, Vlad Ivanov
In Romanian, with Greek subtitles.
Romania 2007 113 mins.
GONE BABY GONE ****
DIRECTED BY Ben Affleck
STARRING Casey Affleck, Michelle Monaghan, Ed Harris, Amy Ryan
US 2007 114 mins.
Looks like it’s festival season. It happens every year, and every year we struggle to work out how the local film scene – normally placid verging on catatonic – can bring forth so many titles in a mere couple of months, like those (possibly apocryphal) exotic trees that flower once every 100 years then promptly die, exhausted by their labours. How does something like “Francophonie 2008” – a month-long program of films either in French or projected with French subtitles – even turn up in Nicosia, which is neither in France nor a former French colony? And what about “Cyprus Film Days” (CFD), that mad week in late February when cinephiles suddenly scrambled to keep up with desirable titles, two or three a night, juggling work and family to accommodate precious one-off screenings? Just as well the scene is about to relapse into its usual inertia; this pace would kill us if it carried on all year.
Festival season runs from New Year’s to Easter – and it’s not over yet, with a couple more to come before tents are folded. March 19-23 are the dates for “Views of the World”, the Nicosia Documentary Film Festival (www.cyprusdocfest.org) – and of course there’s the European Film Festival, organised by the Friends of the Cinema Society, mostly in Nicosia with a few one-off screenings in Limassol and Paphos. This is already underway, the first of nine titles being 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days which screens tonight, next Friday and Thursday the 27th (Greek subtitles, alas). Sharp-eyed buffs will spot a touch of festival-overlap, because 4 Months also played CFD two weeks ago – but if any film deserves a second shot it’s this one, winner of the Golden Palm at last year’s Cannes, topper of many a critic’s Top Ten list.
Actually, 4 Months looks slightly out of place in the European Film Fest. Unlike the Ministry of Culture (which financed CFD), the Friends of the Cinema are a going concern, hoping at least to break even – and their slate includes mostly crowd-pleasers, from repeats of well-known hits (Atonement, El Greco) to feelgood fare like the Oscar-winning Irish musical Once and triumph-of-the-spirit tearjerkers Sophie Scholl and The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly. Both of those will leave you with a lump in your throat; 4 Months, on the other hand, will leave you with a cold empty feeling in the pit of your stomach, a void that’s hard to pinpoint but may be described as ‘It certainly sucks being a helpless, na?ve young woman seeking an abortion!’. Closely followed by: ‘Especially in 80s Romania under Ceaucescu!’.
That’s the setting and that, in a nutshell, is the plot. Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) is pregnant – very pregnant, as per the title – and her friend Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) undertakes to help with the messy (and illegal) process of back-street abortion. Most of the film’s best moments come in the early scenes, showing the everyday tensions and hassles of life under Communism. Finding a hotel room where the deed can be done – secretly, of course – entails long negotiations with surly hotel clerks. There are lines for food, no gas after 8 o’clock, no guests in the rooms after 10 o’clock – and everywhere bureaucrats and petty functionaries (not to mention cops) ask for your ID card. Director Mungiu, who plans a whole series of films to be set in the 80s (sardonically called ‘Tales From the Golden Age’) gets a strong sense of place: grey skies, rubble-dotted streets, clothes on clothes-lines in tiny balconies, black markets in Western cigarettes and video tapes. Fear is everywhere, from the bus conductor prowling for ticket-less intruders to the devious abortionist himself, who’s called (ironically) ‘Bebe’ and exploits the girls’ trepidation.
So why isn’t 4 Months a masterpiece? Some people claim it is, but in fact there’s something inelegant about the movie. Mungiu either does too little or too much: his visuals aren’t especially fluid or memorable, and when he goes for an effect – like a single five-minute shot of Otilia sitting stock-still at the dinner table, family chatter eddying around her – it feels like an effect. The film is hard-hitting (there’s a graphic image of the aborted foetus) yet dramatically low-key; I also found Ms. Marinca a rather inexpressive heroine, though Vasiliu is poignantly pathetic as the fragile Gabita and Vlad Ivanov (firm, soft-spoken, apparently reasonable) makes a wholly convincing monster. In the end, though, it barely matters if you like 4 Months. It won the Golden Palm, won Best Film at the European Film Awards, got pundits buzzing about a Romanian Revolution and caused uproar after it was passed over for an Oscar nomination (“It’s just inconceivable to me that it wasn’t included,” admitted Mark Johnson, chairman of the nominating committee for the Foreign-Language Film Oscar.) If you care about films, you have to see it.
You also have to see Gone Baby Gone, which comes as quite a surprise. This is the directing debut of Ben Affleck, whose acting career has floundered in the quicksand of sub-par movies (Jersey Girl? Daredevil?) and ‘Bennifer’ jokes. It gets worse, because the film – based on a book by Dennis Lehane, who wrote Mystic River – deals in lurid and sensationalist material. Its setting is a rough Boston neighbourhood that plays like a working-class freakshow – white-trash shouting-matches, morbidly obese women on every street corner, close-ups of barflies with bulbous noses – and its plot revolves around child-abduction, which is why it hasn’t been released in the UK due to concerns over the Madeleine McCann case (though the two are quite dissimilar). It’s a little bit tawdry to see Affleck delve into dirt and grime in an effort to shed his pretty-boy image.
That may be true; yet the film grips like a vice, from the early scenes of sobbing relatives talking to the TV cameras to the final, haunting shot, several plot-twists later. The twists don’t always convince, and there’s one scene (with a gunman in a restaurant) that flirts with absurdity – but Affleck keeps his nerve for a powerful final dilemma, and the performances he elicits are uniformly superb. Maybe his celebrity helped in that regard, making the actors feel protected: Ed Harris in particular – who, for all his greatness, often acts like he’s holding something back – lets it all out here, dropping the shield of protective cool in a reckless performance that’s close to terrifying. Amy Ryan (Oscar-nominated) is even better, playing one of the worst Mums in movie history with perfect modulation: her Helene is neither Evil nor a Victim – just limited and stupid, like a million other people.
Gone Baby Gone is actually a film noir in modern dress. We have a private eye (Casey Affleck, Ben’s more soulful brother), a set-up, a quest – and even the exact same ending as The Maltese Falcon (1941), professional duty triumphant, only with romantic-love clich?s replaced by the equally tired mantra ‘for the sake of the children’. “Kids forgive,” says Harris bitterly; “Kids don’t judge. Kids turn the other cheek. And what do they get for it?”. On the evidence of this week’s films, they get snatched by sickos in blue-collar Boston and crudely aborted by callous Romanian quacks – yet the films themselves find art and drama in the sufferings of the weak and vulnerable. How can that be? Forget it Jake, it’s festival season.
NEW DVD RELEASES
Here’s our regular look at the more interesting titles released on DVD in the US and UK over the past few months. Some may be available to rent from local video clubs, or you can always order over the Internet: dozens of suppliers, but http://www.amazon.com (for US) and http://www.play.com (for UK) are among the most reliable, if not necessarily the cheapest. Prices quoted don’t include shipping. Note that US discs are ‘Region 1’, and require a multi-region player.
NEW FILMS
BLACK SUN: “One of the boldest, most beautiful and haunting films to have appeared from anywhere” according to the ‘Daily Telegraph’! Hugely acclaimed quasi-documentary, visualizing the world from a blind man’s perspective – the man in question being French artist Hugues de Montalembert, blinded by a mugger 30 years ago. Extras include a (rather pretentious) booklet on the film. [UK]
PRIVATE FEARS IN PUBLIC PLACES: Masterly semi-comedy from French director Alain Resnais (adapting Alan Ayckbourn). Generous extras, including interviews with Ayckbourn and some of the cast members, though apparently a poor video transfer. Beware! [UK]
I DON’T WANT TO SLEEP ALONE: Heavy but hypnotic drama from Taiwanese master Tsai Ming-Liang (working in his native Malaysia), one of seven films in the ‘New Crowned Hope’ series. No real extras. [US]
BLAME IT ON FIDEL: Little girl grows up in the 70s with militant-Left parents; cute French comedy-drama, extras including the usual making-of featurette and deleted scenes. [US]
OLD FILMS
KILLER OF SHEEP (1977): Life in the ghetto, shown with humour and humanity: a great film, long-lost due to copyright issues, finally on DVD along with ‘My Brother’s Wedding’ (1983) and a passel of short films by the same director, Charles Burnett. Watch it and be astonished. [US]
HELP! (1965): It’s the Beatles, in a truly zany comedy about an Oriental cult wanting to kill Ringo (!); 2-disc edition includes a “missing scene” and various featurettes. Songs include ‘Ticket to Ride’ and ‘You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away’ as well as the title-track. Great stuff. [US]
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977) (Ultimate Edition): Three different cuts of Steven Spielberg’s aliens-on-Earth saga: the original theatrical version, the 1980 ‘Special Edition’ and the 1998 ‘Director’s Cut’, each slightly different (the Special Edition is the only one that peeks inside the alien mothership)! All this plus a 100-minute documentary on the film, an interview with Spielberg, and more. [US]
CHINATOWN (1974) (Special Collector’s Edition): Neo-noir masterpiece, with Jack Nicholson as sardonic detective J.J. Gittes, though this ‘Special’ Edition doesn’t have much except a lengthy documentary on the movie. [US]
PAYROLL (1961): British crime drama about a daring heist, a forgotten B-movie that still works very well; no extras, not even a trailer. [UK]
SOCIETY (1989): From the days before computer effects … Splendid cult thriller, culminating in an orgy of latex creatures. [UK]
GRANGE HILL, SERIES 1-4 (1978-81): Vintage seasons of long-running kids’ series, pure nostalgia for UK viewers of a certain age. No real extras. [UK]
