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New film by Bas Devos out 7th June from New Wave Films

The story revolves around a Romanian construction worker in Brussels, Belgium who is considering going home until he encounters a Chinese specialist in moss. This unexpected connection between two wondering souls sparks the possibility of new beginnings for both in this 

The film was winner of the 2023 Encounters at the Berlin Film Festival and Best International Film at the 2023 Galway Film Festival

The film takes its time in bringing the two people together - they have a brief encounter about half an hour into the film, but the true connection does not take place until nearly an hour into proceedings. The attention to detail and our maintaining of attention upon the two leads is partly down to the restrained and nuance both convey. Stefan Gota has such an expressive face in the same vein as Matthias Schoenaerts, one that can be vacant yet also say so much with his presence alone.  Liyo Gong provides a performance of assuredness and calm nature.

The film, reminded me of Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem 'Nature' where Emerson relays about the essence of transcendentalism and gaining a divinity through nature, you can only understand reality through studying nature. Both of these souls like for instance Bob and Charlotte in Lost in Translation, are seeking answers in this mystery of life and find each other in this fleeting moment.

However, the star of the show is the director Bas Devos, a deliberate and methodical director, who is able to film wonderful images and allows the film time to breathe and not rush proceedings, much like the moss which as the forefront of the narrative for both of our protagonists.  These things take time.

But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile. In the woods, is perpetual youth - Ralph Waldo Emerson

The film is about connection and finding a place in this world that you can call home, when faraway from the first one; it will remind you of films you have seen before and yet is unlike anything you may have seen before. Reminiscent of the Dardennes naturally, a smidgen of the methodical technique of Tarkovsky and yet something of its own making and minute uniqueness.

Here is released by New Wave Films on Friday 7th June, my thanks to them for the review opportunity.

Glory

GLORY (SLAVA, Bulgaria, 2016)

Winner of the Best International Feature at the Edinburgh Film Festival in 2017, the Bulgarian feature Glory written and directed by Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov is released in selected cinemas on Friday 5th January.

Telling the story of a lonesome train track engineer, Tsanko Petrov (Stefan Denolyubov) who on his rounds discovers millions of lev. Instead of pocketing the money for himself, Tsanko reports the money to the authorities and he is heralded as a hero and rewarded by the Ministry of Transport for his efforts with a watch. That does not work.

Tsanko is handled in a PR effort by married woman Julia Staikov (Margita Gosheva) who in a brief spell of bad press for the train industry sees an opportunity to make a good story, the only problem is Tsanko suffers from a debilitating stutter and stammer.

Julia is an ambitious woman hell bent on succeeding no matter the cost to integrity putting pressure on her married life with hen-pecked husband, Valeri (Kitodar Todorov) as they attempt IVF treatment for their first child.

At the ceremony, when Tsanko is to be honoured, Julia removes his beloved watch from his wrist for the merits of the ceremony; following on the PR department misplace his watch which he wishes to be returned. What follows is a tale of irresponsibility and arrogance, in an attempt to belittle the hard working labour force with the brute corruption of ministry position.

Shot by Krum Rodriguez utilising hand-held cameras and close to medium shots for the majority of the film, the film is a window into a world of behind the scenes back-baiting and how government laughs at the lower classes, such as when Julia and her team first see the footage of Tsanko laughing at his inability to talk clearly.

The film is a slow burn as most European language films are but there is a power to the performances in the honesty of their portrayal; Denolyubov plays Tsanko as a mild man in a crazy world stuggling to be understood, and Gosheva adds a femme fatale tinge to Julia yet has the power to convey panic such as when she reads a paper in a press conference, her eyes have character.

The ending confrontation between Tsanko and Julia is heart pounding fraught with tension, with a bittersweet ending for Valeri who is happy in his own world whilst his wife does her usual damage limitation.

Grozeva and Valchanov have crafted a morality tale for the these fraught times of frustration and lack of trust in ruling bodies, which can translate well to Western Europe from our Eastern European neighbours.

Glory is distributed by New Wave Films on Friday 5th January.

Nostalgia for the Light

Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzman returns with another documentary this time that is at times both deeply personal and yet extremely political.

Nostalgia for the Light is set about the Atacama desert in Chile; where the inhospitable climate and high altitude made it ideal for the building of an observatory which was opened in 1977.  The message of bringing the universe closer to home shows an aspirational tone of the South American nation.

Yet in the same vicinity there is a dark undertone, during the General Pinochet dictatorship used the desert for the Chacabuco Mine prisons were people opposed to the regime would be taken to concentration camps and ultimately killed.  Later bodies were left in mass graves in the Atacama.  Now widows and families scavenge the harsh terrain for any trace of loved ones that may remain; this tone of desperation is in stark contrast to the aspiration and hope for attainment of the universe.

Guzman is an intelligent filmmaker and is keen to mark the distinction between the sky and the ground; giving both stories an equal platform.  Guzman's interview with one widow, Violeta Barrios, is particularly wrenching in its honesty.

Clearly the notion and metaphor of astronomy is a clever one; many of those interviewed state how Chile needs a telescope to look into the ground of the desert to find its past; whereas the telescope itself is something looking towards the future.

Guzman shoots with a good eye when he looks upward, showing scenes of great mystery and magic in the stars whilst giving a look of another world on the Chilean landscape.

A film that although the notion of a documentary may not appeal, it is certainly a film that values the time and commitment.

Nostalgia for the Light is out on Friday 13th July on limited release and is distributed by New Wave Films

The Nine Muses

John Akomfrah, the director of this pristine film, was once a member of the Black Audio Film Collective in the 1980s.  Their most famous work was Handsworth Songs (1986) which explored the experience of the immigration through the extensive archive available; whereas the former work mixed archival footae with that of the urban present, the new work The Nine Muses mixes the archive with that of stunning landscape cinematography of the vast, empty Alaska.

The Muses who provide the film's title and its nine chapters - Calliope (Epic poetry), Clio (History), Erato (Love), Euterpe (Music), Melopmene (Tragedy), Polyhymnia (Hymns), Terpsichore (Dance), Thalia (Comedy) and Urania (Astronomy) - were the product of a union between Zeus and Mnemosyne, the personification of memory.  This new film, is a film about memory and how the different kinds of memory - personal, institutional, cultural - all have an effect whether good or bad on each other.

There is no narrative voiceover overhead, removing the 'voice of God' factor you sometimes get in films that deal with archive footage.  Instead the voices we hear are all from borrowed texts of canonical works like that of Shakespeare, Dante, Joyce and most tellingly Homer's The Odyssey. Akomfrah, who admits to watching near to a thousand hours of archive footage in preparation for this work, handles with great sensitivity the material which deals with immigrants on the move and arriving at a new home. 

Whilst the archive footage deals with movement - people running, people driving, immigrants on boats or trains.  The footage in Alaska is very still and meditative, it depicts a hooded figure in a coloured hooded jacket (either blue or yellow) who stands with his back to the camera.  His face is not seen by us leaving us with no characteristics with which to judge them by, rendering him an everyman to the audience. 

The person stands still in reflective mood, looking out across the landscape in contemplative fashion looking at the last possible place to emigrate to.  Alaska looks like the end of the world or a place after a terrible disaster, also it has the feeling that has the person been abandoned here with no chance of immigrating.  Even in a moment of stillness, the person can think of nothing but moving.

The Nine Muses is distributed by New Wave Films, whom I thank for the review disc.  They also reviewed Le Quattro Volte (the goat film from last year), whilst this film does not have the critical acclaim and festival exposure of Frammatino's work, yet this is a work that is both poetic and mesmeric.  The release may be minimal but the exposure and acclaim it receives will nonetheless be positive.

The Nine Muses is out on limited release from Friday 20th January.

Eccentricities of a Blonde Haired Girl - DVD review

The 102 year old film-maker de Oliveira, so often making films that push the limits of cinema occupancy, has seemingly found a spring in his ageing feet. 

Adapting a short story from Portugal's most famous 19th Century author Eca de Queiroz, and in so adapting a short story has given it a fleeting 64 minute running time contemplating young love and the curve ball it can throw you at the end.

Utilising the device of having Macario (Ricardo Trepa) recite the story of the events that have happened in the previous few months , to a female passenger on a train as he exiles himself from Lisbon, allows the flashback to have its place and be the truth and reality de Oliveira strives for. 

The flashback is broken up only when Macario feels it necessary (unusually his travelling companion finds it hard to look at him seemingly), to elaborate as to why he fell head over heels with Luisa (Catarina Wallenstein, in her first lead role), a girl on the other side of the street from his office veranda - and only ask for her hand in marriage once he has his own finances in order (considering he is an accountant you think he would have). 

This is a film of its time, with characters mentioning the economic climate and Macario referring to himself as 'poor as a bank'.

The pacing of the film is coupled with the effective editing of a skyline from day to night and vice versa to connote the changing of time and Macario's recollection of the story. 

While it can be admired that old-fashioned romantic notions are attempting to be introduced into this 21st century, the yearning for formality and chivalry will inevitably come back and bite you on the behind - and when it comes to beautiful women in film, the men are usually suckers (like Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity or Jack Lemmon in The Apartment) for a girl with nice hair and who will flash a smile, even if the ulterior motive is under the surface.

The twist at the end can be construed as abrupt, but in the twists of life and love nowadays it is more ideal to think of it as appropriate.  It is certainly appropriate to marvel at the determination of de Oliveira to still be making films that are attentive to detail and distinguished in its execution.
Eccentricities... is distributed by New Wave Films (http://www.newwavefilms.co.uk/) and is available for £15.99RRP on DVD and is certified U.  It is released on Monday 13th June.

Le Quattro Volte

The long awaited sophomore feature from Italian, Michelangelo Frammartino, is released on Friday 27th May; and his second feature after 2004's Il dono (The Gift).  First screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010, the film is unclassifiable, not tied to any genre specifically but undoubtedly the best cinematic use of goats in film history.

The film's title can be translated as the 'four seasons' or the 'four turns' but is based upon the ideas of animism and reincarnation.  As Frammartino states in the production notes, "Man is made of mineral, because he has a skeleton; he's a plant, because he has blood flowing through his veins like sap; he's an animal, because he has mobility; and he's also a rational being. So in order to fully understand himself, a man has to understand himself four times."

The film follows a goatherd - and to quote a Sound of Music - he is a lonely one at that, he works tirelessly and only for the goats, he drinks water with dust mixed in with it, to tend to a tickling cough but it is given to him by the church - the tradition being that it translates as dust being a little particle of God, and dust is the first thing you can see in the light - as you head for heaven. We are witnessing the final days of an elderly man.

But it is the goats who are the stars of the show in this instance, and once the old man passes on, we are greeted with the birth of a kid goat - the film follows the kid on its first steps, before it rests by a fir tree.  It then renders its gaze on the tree through the seasons, before it is felled and re-erected in a village for a festival, then chopped into logs and entombed in another scarazzo.

This mise-en-scene is familiar to doyens and followers of the 'slow cinema' so prevelant in European cinema under the watchful auteur eye of Bela Tarr mostly and endorsed by such directors as Abbas Kiarostami.
Whilst the documentary eye of Frammartino is all encompassing, the necessity of these long takes where nothing happens is actually a narrative requirement and part of its development.

Not to say it is all slow and monotonous, Frammartino works a wonderful sight gag into the mix that has to be seen to be believed.

Shooting on a landscape close to the director's home, the film has his indelible thumbprint upon proceedings although it does need to tip its hat to the work of James Benning who gave us 13 Lakes, a director who can take inanimate or non-human objects as the basis for narrative focus and tell a convincing story in the process.

Frammartino does something more than that; he gives us a film that is poetic, spiritual, theological and strangely uplifting at the same time, that is without noting how beautiful the film looks with its sweeping vistas and landscapes, photographed by Andrea Locatelli. A film that is both surreal and real, rational and theoretical, it is a hidden gem and bares to be seen by an audience wider than the typical arthouse crowd.

Two In The Wave - DVD review

Emmauel Laurent's insightful documentary charts the rise of French cinema's two brightest stars Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard as they gave fresh impetus to their nation's cinema in the form of the Nouvelle Vague, or the New Wave to give it it's English translation.

Starting in 1959 with the Cannes premiere of Les Quatre Cents Coups (The 400 Blows), Truffaut's triumphant debut feature, the film shows how Godard responded in kind with Breathless (1960); how the two men were shaped by their cinema going youth, how their journalistic freedom at Cahiers du Cinema in Paris helped define them as filmmakers and then slowly how their friendship disintergrated without it being resolved before Truffaut's premature death in 1984.

The film uses a voiceover by Antoine de Baecque - a prolific cultural historian - who lends a sense of gravitas and appreciation to proceedings, he is helped by the use of film extracts from both Godard and Truffaut, archive interviews and perhaps most perplexingly, a young actress turning pages of vintage magazines as the voiceover tells us what she is looking at.

This is where the documentary falls short; with such a distinctive subject matter and with a brilliant conflict of interests between the urbane Truffaut and rebellious Godard taking place there were surely stories aplenty to share here. For instance, this is the first time I realised the backstory to the triumphant 400 Blows screening was that Truffaut, being critical of the Festival in his famous magazine the year before, had been banned from Cannes so making his film premiere sweet revenge. This type of information was not taught us at film school, it was a common belief that Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, Rohmer et al, all just picked up a camera and went guerilla like Godard did for Breathless.

However, looking back on these films you get the sense that Truffaut had a sense about what he was doing with 400 Blows and the way it was shot gives it that one foot in the authentic cinema, and one foot in the new wave owing to the depicition of youth - a polished rebellion if you will.

Whilst the documentary may serve as reliant in academic circles and film classes seeking background information on such established directors, much like that actress (Isild Le Bosco) turning the pages of archives, there is a whole lot more to be learnt from reading books, especially Richard Brody's Godard biography Everything is Cinema (2008) and for Truffaut seek out the Interviews with Hitchcock (1954).

Two in the Wave is released by New Wave Films on DVD and Blu-Ray and is out now.