Reviews

In 1966, Senegalese author Ousmane Sembene was among the first Black Africans to shoot a feature film with LA NOIRE DE... ("Black Girl"). It deals with the plight of Diouana (Mbissine Thérèse Diop), a Senegalese girl who is hired on as a nanny by a French expat family in Dakar. Initially she is elated to have work, and moreover, work for the country's white elites. After the family returns to France and takes Diouana with her, she finds herself nearly a prisoner, as what should have been an ordinary job with some dignity to it becomes menial drudgery far beyond the initial agreement.

Though the plot is a straightforward drama, Sembene also lends the film a metaphoric dimension to confront the enduring legacy of colonialism in the newly independent Senegal, the desire of some Africans for revenge against their erstwhile colonial rulers, as well as political tensions within Africa's ostensibly representative democracies. These elements are, however, so subtle that many viewers without a knowledge of the immediate post-colonial era may miss them.

Yet with its 55-minute running time that awkwardly falls between a short and a typical feature, LA NOIRE DE... does feel slight. It is shot at a level of quality comparable to any French film of this era (some awkward jump cuts and bad dubbing aside), but it can be seen as a mere tech demo for the more ample, ambitious films that African directors would go on to make in subsequent years.

IN THE REALMS OF THE UNREAL is a 2004 documentary film by Jessica Yu introducing the life and work of Henry Darger. A major figure of "outsider art", Darger's work was only discovered after his death when his landlords found thousands of pages of text and paintings in his room. Through his long life, he was known to his few friends and associates only as a janitor in a local hospital. Secretly, he wrote a massive manuscript chronicling the rebellion of girl slaves in a fantasy world, painted with watercolors of the heroines and battles.

Yu has chosen three main narrators for the documentary. A little girl (Dakota Fanning, even) narrates Darger's biographical facts, while excerpts from Darger's autobiography are reads by an old man (Larry Pine), and texts from his fantasy epic are read by some fellow with a radio play delivery. In addition, we find interviews with people who knew Darger. Kiyoko Lerner, his landlady and now the caretaker of his legacy, is of course featured, as are some of his neighbours and an altar boy from his church. While everyone reports him to be an odd fellow, Yu avoids the controversial issue of Darger's mental health, preserving the ambiguity of whether he was mad or a mere eccentric. Similarly, the relation of Darger's work to sexual frustrations or the possibility of sexual abuse as a child are left out. But this is a mere introduction, and it's reasonable to expect the viewer to move on to other sources for contentious matters. My only real complaint is that Yu is not always content to let Darger's paintings speak for themselves. Rather, she has animated certain of Darger's scenes, which I feel distorts the paintings to a degree. While I think the film does not deserve a one-star rating for this as another reviewer awarded it, it is troubling.

Nonetheless, all in all this is a fine presentation of a remarkable figure. And if Darger's intrigues you, I'd recommend also discovering Adolf Wolfli, a Swiss madman whose life and work resembles Darger in several years.

Based on a Karen Blixen story, BABETTE'S FEAST is a heartwarming tale of generosity in 19th century Denmark. As the film opens, we are introduced to Martine and Philippa, daughters of a charismatic preacher in a tiny Jutland village. Dedicated to their father's work, they turn down the courtship of a Danish officer and a French musician. Decades later, the musician sends them Babette, a refugee from the destruction of the Paris Commune, in the hope that the sisters can shelter her and employ her as a maid. When she wins an annual lottery, Babette decides to put on a feast for her employers, but no one expects the depths of selflessness she goes to.

BABETTE'S FEAST is entertaining enough, and it gives an idea of just how dull and messy life in Jutland was at this time. The details of the feast will make you salivate and dust off the French cookbook, and certainly the ending will make you say "Aww" in spite of how clumsily it's put on film. Otherwise the acting isn't too revelatory, and the humour is pretty basic (the same joke is even used twice). I once read a professional review that this doesn't aim much higher than an average television movie, and I'd have to agree.

300, the 2007 story of the three hundred Spartans who held off a massive Persian offensive in Ancient Greece, proved a disappointing film. In spite of my Classics degree, I won't complain about the divergences from recorded fact. The film is clearly meant to be a fantasy on historical themes instead of a faithful account of the event. Rather, what irked me was the hammy dialogue. There were the tropes of recent Hollywood battle scenes: warriors on the good guys' side defending themselves with little exertion as they trade silly quips about how they've got each other's backs. A queen gives an address to a council that is all melodrama -- are we back in George Lucas' "Star Wars" prequels?

Having enjoy SIN CITY, which had a similar green-screen approach, I thought that 300 would be worthwhile at least on the basis of its special effects, but alas it wasn't. For one, the cinematography is claustrophobic. All outdoor scenes but one were filmed with a green screen, but these digital backdrops add no depth. Even when supposedly standing on the Greek coast under a big sky, everyone seems like they are just standing around in a fairly small room. Also, the fight scenes seem primitive considering that this film followed years after THE MATRIX RELOADED.

The little I can recommend 300 for is the variety of demonic monsters and exotic costumed assassins that fill the Persian army. As I said, this is a fantasy on historical themes, and the additions are often interesting. Still, I had a hard time sitting through the whole film.

In the aftermath of the Soviet invasion and civil war, hundreds of thousands of Afghans fled across the border with Iran. There they struggled to survive, offering themselves as day labourers at exploitive wages, harassed by officials and just ignored by the bulk of Iranian society. Mohsen Makhmalbaf's 1987 film BICYCLERAN ("The Cyclist") is an allegory for the Afghan refugee experience,

Nasim (Moharram Zaynalzadeh) must pay the hospital stay of his ailing wife and bring up his son Jomeh (Mohammad Reza Maleki), but even backbreaking labour as a well-digger doesn't pay the bills. When a local business learns that Nasim once rode a bicycle for three nonstop, he offers the desperate man the chance to save his family: ride a bicycle for a week in a makeshift circus ring.

Makhmalbaf communicates Nasim's lack of humanity by giving him very few lines. Most of the film consists of arguments among the gamblers and local politicians who stand to profit or lose from Nasim's act, as in the background he circles around and around and around. This film would already be heartrending if it were a straight-up tale, but Makhmalbaf makes it even more poignant with a light dusting of magic realism.

Though less elegant than some of his later films like NUN VA GULDOON (released internationally as "A Moment of Innocence"), this is a memorable film and it's easy to see how it established Makhmalbaf's reputation internationally. Iranian cinema holds many delights, and this is one of its triumphs.

LAST HIPPIE STANDING is a 45-minute documentary by German filmmaker Marcus Robbin about the counterculture scene in Goa, India. It juxtaposes the first hippies here with a later generation of travellers who came for the rave scene.

One of the positive features of the documentary is its inclusion of handheld camera footage that shows us how the first travellers here looked and spent their time. In contemporary interviews three figures represent the hippie community of the 1960s and 1970s here. Goa Gil came to India in 1969, after seeing the collapse of Haight-Ashbury, and developed the Goa Trance style of dance music. His friend Swami William came for spiritual enlightenment. The third figure interviewed is the late Cleo Odzer, a ditzy scion of a wealthy New York family who came in the 1970s. Her 1995 book Goa Freaks: My Hippie Years in India was a tell-all that, though it documented some of the troubling aspects of the hippie community like hard drug use, angered many of her peers. Those sorts of revelations are absent here, and indeed we just get from her some general remarks that Goa was a great place, a perfect den of hedonism. I found her portions tiresome, but since so much of the Super 8 footage is from her, I suppose we ought to be grateful for her participation.

The contemporary scene was documented in the winter of 1999-2000. Robbin captures footage of tourists in the market and at raves on the beach. There is also an interview with Francisco Sardinha, then chief minister of Goa, who says unabashedly that he does not want hippies, but rather wealthy tourists who can pump a lot of money into the local economy.

When this documentary was made, it juxtaposed historical footage of Goa with what was then contemporary. For audiences watching today, the documentary is doubly historical. The rave culture depicted in 1999 has now been more or less eradicated from Goa, with noise laws bringing an end to psychedelic parties on the beach. Plus the overpopulation and pollution has made the place less idyllic. When I visited Goa exactly a decade after the making of this documentary, all I found was mainstream clubbing like you'd find in any Western city and some incredibly filthy beaches. To a large degree, Sardinha got his wish. The documentary ends with Goa Gil and Swami William at the Berlin Love Parade musing on the gloabal impact of Goa hippie culture. That's pretty much played out too.

I found LAST HIPPIE STANDING interesting, but far too short. There are other areas that could have been explored, such as the changing demographics of the counterculture there (I find the rise in Israeli post-army tourism in India a fascinating phenomenon) and the transition from hippies playing guitars and flutes to the electronic dance music that is Goa Trance. It's hard to recommend tracking this down unless you are really obsessed with the overland trail and subsequent tourism in India.

In THE BROTHERS SOLOMON, John (Will Forte) and Dean (Will Arnett) are two siblings brought up isolated in the Arctic by their widower father (Lee Majors). Returning to civilization as adults, they are baffled by the dating scene. Hilarity is meant to ensue when their father lapses into a coma and they decide to fulfill his dream of a grandchild before it is too late. Unfortunately, THE BROTHERS SOLOMON is one of the most notable bombs of the last few years, and you're unlikely to find it a worthwhile experience.

The camaradery between the two brothers is similar to DUMB AND DUMBER, but laughs are even fewer. The maturity level here is so low--among the sparse gags is a lot of bathroom humour--that one might believe this film intended for a less than adult audience, but any plot where artificial insemination has a key doesn't seem likely to target a young demographic. I got this movie because I enjoyed Will Arnett's work on ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT and in an infamous Human Giant sketch where he plays a hyperbolic pervert ultimately killed by a sex machine. His acting here is similar to ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT, and may not be all that great, but he's so much better than Will Forte, one of the most unversatile and unlikeable comedians ever cast on Saturday Night Live.

Just as the first film adaption of the Fantastic Four, the low-budget production of 1994, was made only to keep a hold on the rights and was never intended to be seen, I really wonder if THE BROTHERS SOLOMON was produced to give some secret boost to the parties involved even if it were a box office flop.

In the 1960s Sweden underwent an enormous social upheaval, which brought it from a rather rigidly stratified and staid society, which cinephiles might have seen in Ingmar Bergman's earliest films, to a place where the old sexual taboos collapsed and angry class war broke out just like in some other Western European countries. The Swedish filmmaker Vilgot Sjöman decided to reflect those changing mores (and possibly spur some further more-changing himself) with his pseudo-documentary project I AM CURIOUS. He developed a script through a great deal of improvisation and then shot enough footage to release it as two films: "Yellow" in 1967, and "Blue" the following year (these titles refer to the colours of the Swedish flag). This review treats both of them.

The main actress of these films was 22 year-old Lena Nyman who plays... Lena Nyman, a 22 year-old drama student already well into sexual exploration and political commitment. From the home she shares with her alcoholic father, she runs what she calls the Nyman Institute, keeping an enormous collection of files and wandering around Sweden with a microphone to record the reactions of Swedes to provocative questions like "Does Sweden have a class system?" and (to holidaymakers returning from fascist Spain) "What do you think about Franco?". She has tumultuous relationships, mainly sexual, with suave yuppie Börje (Börje Ahlstedt) and idealistic bohemian Hasse (Hans Hellberg). The films have another layer, however, where we see Vilgot Sjöman coaching his actors and establishing a sexual relationship with his lead actress -- but even this layer is fictional. One really admires everyone, director and his actors alike, for being able to play fictional versions of themselves at two different levels.

The two films have a yin-yang relationship, covering roughly the same themes but in different proportions. Yellow is more about political engagement and non-violence in the context of the Cold War, and it attacks the hypocrisy of the Swedish left (which had become entrenched and no longer a force for social change) and the monarchy. That film is set mainly in Stockholm and deals with Lena's home life. Blue, on the other hand, explores the themes of religion and the prison system, and more of it is set in the countryside where we hear some of the attitudes of rural Sweden as opposed to the capital.

Upon their release, these films (especially Yellow) were attacked as pornography, and Sjöman as a letch (even though it was the real-life Nyman's idea that there be a subplot where the director seduces his lead actress). However, the sex and nudity here is not titillating at all, rather it is simply one of the many sociocultural themes that Sjöman wanted to present and as unsexy as any real documentary. Furthermore, Sjöman was really no letch at all - among countercultural artists, he may have been ahead of his time in confronting the possibility that the new permissiveness wasn't just female liberation, it was also men finding it easier to coerce women into sex by accusing them of being uptight if they didn't put out, something which didn't occur to many 1960s idealists until the next decade. Another way in which Sjöman critically examines the New Left is by charting how those who preach non-violence could be very cruel in their interpersonal relationships with friends and family.

I had seen only Yellow a few times and was prepared to consider this only a four-star deal, highly interesting as documentary material about 1960s Sweden, but missing something that truly moved me. However, getting a DVD set and finally seeing Blue provided that moving experience; it is quite impressive how Sjöman made the two films interlock with just enough overlap to make it a convincing whole. There's also some latent humour that becomes clear only on seeing both.

George Sluizer's 1988 film SPOORLOOS (The Vanishing) is the story of a murder and the search for the killer, but it's not a whodunit for the audience at any rate. Just after Saskia (Johanna ter Steege) disappears at a French rest stop while vacationing with her boyfriend Rex (Gene Bervoets), the audience sees the long chronicle of local chemistry teacher Raymond Lemorne (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu) preparing to carry out a murder of some random woman. As the film rises towards a climax, we follow Rex's obsessive hunt not for justice and retribution, but for simple understanding of what happened to his love. It is that unquenchable curiosity to know the very details, to indirectly share Saskia's fate that drives Rex forward on a dark quest. SPOORLOOS is widely known for its twist ending, and I'd recommend avoiding spoilers before you watch the film. I myself was spoiled, but still, Rex's doom was played very different than I imagined.

Rex is something of a one-dimensional figure who exists purely to carry out the philosophical conundrum that is the plot. Lemorne is the truly detailed character, even if I find some of his motivations hard to swallow. Donnadieu plays him convincingly - I really came to despise this character. It is interesting that his initial attempts to abduct a victim, though played buffoonishly to a rather comic soundtrack, don't lighten the mood (as in, say, the black comedy of Edward Gorey), but rather make us squirm even more.

Though the twist ending makes this film memorable, and Donnadieu and, to a lesser extent (for she has little screen time) Steege's acting is fine, I wouldn't rank SPOORLOOS so highly. The cinematography is plain, and there's little re-watch value. Still, this is worth seeing once.

Sergio Leone's THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY is a classic Western film. Clint Eastwood is the Good, aka the Man with No Name, a taciturn wanderer who follows his own sense of justice. His opposite is Angel Eyes (Lee van Cleef), the Bad, a brutal mercenary who kills anyone who stands in the way of making ready cash. The film's comic relief is Tuco (Eli Wallach), the Ugly, a Mexican bandit wanted in several states who ends up inadvertently doing some good turns. At the height of the Civil War, as Union and Confederate armies battle each other in the West, these three men vie for an abandoned cache of gold coins.

The film is especially memorable for its pace and cinematography. The opening scene, for example, juxtaposes closeups of anxious faces with vast panoramas of the Western landscape, and 10 minutes passes before a single word is said. It's like Tarkovsky transplanted to a vastly different setting. That's not to say it's all so serious, though. In a sense the film is a "two buddies on the road" movie, with Tuco the wisecracker and Eastwood's character the straight man. It is also a war film, with Leone apparently sparing no expense in presenting a realistic image of hundreds of men charging each other on the battlefield. This is not among the greatest films I've ever seen, but it's very well-made.

Because this is a "spaghetti Western", an effort in the genre realized by a joint Italian-Spanish production team with American lead actors, the film has some curious qualities. Because of the use of locals, all the faces of Civil War soldiers are so clearly Italian, even though Italian immigration into the US picked up only later. The Mexican bandit Tuco is played by a Polish Jewish actor from New York, and furthermore Leone mocks the character's Catholicism in a way that Americans of the era would, although the faith would be in no way foreign to his Italian audience.

Released in 1986, Aki Kaurismaki's VARJOJA PARATIISISSA (Shadows in Paradise) is one of the Finnish filmmaker's earliest efforts, and it stands as one of the most idiosyncratic romantic comedies of all time. The painfully shy Nikander (Matti Pellonpää), a garbage man, means the moody Ilona, a supermarket checkout girl. The film tracks their bumbling attempt to establish a lasting relationship: dates that end as soon as they've begun, a romantic getaway where they each retreat to separate hotel rooms, and rare conversations which employ the absolute bare minimum of words. Nikander's best and only friend Melartin (Sakari Kuosmanen), whom the garbage man only recently met through a spell in jail, gives some needed encouragement.

The film's soundtrack is rooted in early rock-and-roll, though unlike later Kaurismaki films where the characters seem to be living in a 1950s bubble, all the action takes place in contemporary Helsinki. I've criticized Kaurismaki's vision of Finland in other films, but VARJOJA PARATIISISSA does, in my opinion, accurately depict the collection of gloomy, taciturn binge drinkers that are the Finns.

VARJOJA PARATIISISSA is an early work and doesn't show the confidence of later efforts, but it's still quite entertaining, its leads and their struggles extremely charming, and I would recommend the film. Certainly the performances of Pellonpää (in a typical Pellonpää role) and Outinen (who seemingly reinvents herself in every film) will prove quite memorable.

DR BRONNER'S MAGIC SOAPBOX is a documentary on the life and thought of Emmanuel Bronner (1908-1997), the German immigrant who made the soap popular with 1960s counter-culture and now alternative people everywhere. Dr. Bronner infamously covered his soap labels with rambling statements in tiny print, preaching the unity of mankind in an "all-one-god religion". This is an individual with a fascinating story, well worth a documentary film. He left Germany before the Holocaust (in which his parents perished), worked as a chemist before being hospitalized in Elgin Asylum, and escaped to California to set up the now-famous soap brand. In the 1940s, he had two sons which grew up in foster care, since their father considered his spiritual calling much more important than a couple of children. Jim and Ralph eventually reconciled with their father and inherited the company.

Filmmaker Sara Lamm has assembled video footage of Dr. Bronner and carried out interviews with his employees and acquaintances, as well as everyday Americans who love his soap. She also follows Ralph (the current owner of the company) as he travels the country, telling stories about his father and turning people on to Dr. Bronner's Soap. While other interviews focus on Dr. Bronner's history of mental illness, Ralph speaks of his father as an eccentric and perennial non-comformist.

Ralph has also tried to emulate his father's sense of idealism, albeit not his religious ideals, and some attention is given to his philantrophic endeavours. It is heartwarming that this head of a multi-million dollar business is so ready to help those he encounters, but I feel that there's too much attention on Ralph's kindness to people in the street, and insufficient attention to the structure of the company. Ralph mentions in passing that it's something of a cooperative endeavour, but we don't really get details.

Still, except for that quibble, I enjoyed this film greatly. It certainly puts the bizarre labels on the bottles into perspective, and makes you muse on the thin line between incapacitating madness and an eccentricity that still spurs a man on to great things.

The three films that Ingmar Bergman produced at the close of the 1950s -- DET SJUNDE INSEGLET, SMULTRONSTAELLET and JUNGFRUKAELLAN -- tower so high in his output that one might forget that these were not his only productions of the era. ANSIKTET ("The Face", released in English-speaking markets as THE MAGICIAN) from 1958 is one of his lesser-known films.

In mid-19th century Sweden the magician Albert Emanuel Vogler (Max van Sydow) goes from town to town promising people cures for their ailments and performing magic tricks, including what was the sensation of the time, hypnosis. He is joined by his tout (Aake Fridell), his "ward" Mr. Aman (Ingrid Thulin) and his "grandmother" and the troupe's maker of patent medicine (Naima Wifstrand). After fleeing the law after a performance in one town, they pass through the forest and enter another community. Here they are detained by the authorities, so that the physician Vergerus (Gunnar Bjornstrand), the consul Egerman (Erland Josephson) can decide a wager on whether Vogler's tricks are real spiritual powers or scientifically explainable illusions.

While ANSIKTET should not be overlooked for fans of Bergman, I think it's fair that the film is not ranked among Bergman's greatest achievements. Characterization is pretty slim -- we get no idea of why Vogler and his companion chose this life, and Vergerus is so shallow that Gunnar Bjornstrand seems wasted. And had the film ended three minutes earlier it would have been one of Bergman's more powerful conclusions, but instead we get a completely unexpected happy ending that just seems lame. Much of the middle part of the film depends on sex jokes that are funny at times, but I suspect anyone who knows Bergman's great output will continuously be thinking that he's capable of so much more than this.

Still, ANSIKTET does have a generally thought-provoking dramatic arc, and some moments will prove memorable. I especially admired the battle between Vergerus and Vogler and the magician's breakdown (funny how his temperment appropriately changes with his clothes in this scene).

IVAN'S CHILDHOOD, released in 1962, was Soviet director's Andrei Tarkovsky first feature film. An adaptation of a short story by Vladimir Bogomolov set in World War II, its protagonist is a 12 year-old orphan (Nikolai Burlyaev) on the Eastern Front whose small size allows him to scout German positions undetected. Ivan's missions have been useful to the army, but officers Lt. Col. Gryaznov (Nikolai Grinko), Capt. Kholin (Valentin Zubkov) and Lt. Galtsev (Evgeny Zharikov) would like very much to send him to a military academy to get him away from the front, especially as the final offensive against the Germans is imminent.

The action in the film plays out between two of Ivan's ventures across the river Dniepr into German-held territory. It depicts the difficult life of the soldiers at the front and the destruction that war brought to the Soviet village whose damaged buildings now host the army. Ivan's back story is revealed elliptically through comments among the soldiers, dream sequences or flashbacks. A subplot involves Kholin's disturbing attempts to seduce Nurse Masha (Valentina Malyavina) and, in stark contrast to earlier Soviet treatments of the war, suggest that in wartime one's own fellow soldiers can just as dangerous as the enemy.

As far as Tarkovsky films go, IVAN'S CHILDHOOD is still an immature work. You'll find nothing of the slow, almost ritualistic pacing that marks his later films, and this comes in at a compact 90 minutes. Still, a few shots (tracking shots of a wall, Ivan flipping through a book of religious art) seem like mature Tarkovsky in embryo, and the prominent use of religious iconography (crosses, fresco) is already here. Vadim Yusov's cinematography is memorable, with its several "layers" of view in certain shots, and the prominent framing of shots with broken timber beams that seem to hinder the characters. I was however very disappointed that at the end, the film segues into basically a Soviet anti-German propaganda film, complete with archival footage of the Soviet capture of Berlin. It is like some completely different filmmaker took over.

When it starts off with the eccentric and shy Kay (Karen Colston) falling in love with the handsome Louis (Tom Lycos), Jane Campion's 1988 film SWEETIE promises a romantic comedy. When Kay's mentally ill sister Dawn (Genevieve Lemon) drops in, the film develops in a very different direction. Some element of comedy, very black humour, remains but overall the film is a family tragedy.

The tragedy is that this disturbed young woman nicknamed "Sweetie" is simultaneously a victim of her own illness and an unwilling aggressor against her family, who feign love and acceptance but clearly would like to do without her. The strongest aspect of the film is Lemon's performance, one of the best screen portrayals of mental illness since Bergman's IN A GLASS DARKLY. Something I appreciate more on repeat viewing is that the background to this family drama is left ambiguous. That said, I would not list "Sweetie" among my favourite films: it is overall well-made and memorable but not quite at the level of effusive praise.

KO TO TAMO PEVA is one of Yugoslavia's film classics. It was shot and released in 1980, but it looks back to a tragic era in the country's history: the opening titles announce that what we will see takes place on 5 April 1941, a date that any Yugoslav at this time would recognize as the day before the German invasion. In a non-descript countryside, a bus stops for a motley crew of passengers all headed for Belgrade. They include a grizzled old WWI veteran (Milivoje "Mica" Tomic), a dandy hoping to audition at a caberet (Dragan Nikolic), a germanophile who may well be a spy (Bata Stojkovic), and a newlywed couple (Slavko Stimac, Neda Arneric). Also on board are two gypsies (Miodrag and Nenad Kostic) who periodically comment on the action in funny musical interludes. Driving the bus is cranky and sly old man Kstic (Pavle Vuisic) and his manchild son Misko (Aleksandar Bercek).

So much of the Yugoslav cinema tradition up to this point had consisted of state-approved World War II films repeatedly underscoring how the brave Yugoslav Partisans beat the Germans through every patriotic Yugoslav banding together regardless of their backgrounds and differences. KO TO TAMO PEVA upsets this tradition, depicting its cast as a squabbling bunch of cantankerous, greedy, and venial types, every man for himself. Yet, in spite of their dislike for one another, the Serb passengers manage to join together at least to beat up the gypsies. (This is a grim counterpart of the old joke popular in the USSR that "friendship of peoples" -- one of the values proclaimed by the Communist Party -- refers to when e.g. Russians and Georgians join together to beat up some third ethnicity.)

As the bus makes its way to the big city, the passengers encounter a series of absurd obstacles a la William Faulkner's novel "As I Lay Dying": a funeral, the bus driver's impromptu barbecue, and the Yugoslav army detaining them as suspected spies. It seems like they will never reach Belgrade. But when they do finally make it to the capital, the audience has a surprise in store.

The extremely high rating given to this film is mainly due to Serbs and other former Yugoslavs gushing about a beloved classic, perhaps more than it deserves. For viewers outside Yugoslavia, few are likely to get all the references and humour, and so one will probably be so impressed as those reviewers giving this a perfect 10. Still, KO TO TAMO PEVA may be worth seeing for cinephiles abroad. Much of the comedy does come through. Furthermore, the work of the former Yugoslavia's most internationally acclaimed filmmaker, Emir Kusturica, riffs on some of the gags here. Indeed, the screenplay for this film was written by Dusan Kovacevic, who would eventually collaborate with Kusturica on UNDERGROUND, and KO TO TAMO PEVA presents a similar view of the Balkan mentality as a lot of riotous eating, drinking, and dancing as in Kusturica's films.

Paris's then-brand-new Orly airport and the still novel phenomenon of air travel form the backdrop for Francois Truffaut's 1964 feature LA PEAU DOUCE ("The Soft Skin"). Pierre (Jean Desailly) is a French publisher who has established an enviable successful bourgeois life and home, married to Italian wife Franca (Nelly Benedetti) and with a little girl. But on a trip to Portugal for a conference, Pierre gives into a fling with his stewardess Nicole (Françoise Dorléac). They struggle to keep their affair secret, and Pierre is torn between a desire to fully give himself to his mistress, or hang on to his family life.

LA PEAU DOUCE is essentially a study in how adultery is no fun at all. The initial thrills that Pierre gets from bedding the vivacious young Nicole are soon effaced by the sheer difficulty and annoyance of keeping all their arrangements secret, and the awkwardness of their relationship when they can never be public about it. Through long shots on faces by cinematographer Raoul Coutard, the film depicts the awkwardness of two people nervous they are going to be caught out at any moment.

Truffaut made his name as a key figure in the French New Wave and his first several films maintain a zany, deliberately provocative style. LA PEAU DOUCE marks a turn in his career towards more conventional filmmaking; you'll find here little of the brashness of prior work like "Shoot the Piano Player" or "Jules et Jim". One might detect here an affinity with the carefully composed work of Hitchcock; certainly the close of LA PEAU DOUCE takes us towards conventional thriller territory.

Ultimately this is not one of Truffaut's best films; it is entertaining enough on a single viewing, but there is a real lack of rewatch value here. Yet for fans of the Sixties, the film has considerable appeal as a snapshot of what French society thought about air travel and their new Orly airport. (Truffaut's chum Jean-Luc Godard in his "Une femme mariee" of the same year, was also fascinated by Orly and what it represented.)

The original title of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1974 film "Fear Eats the Soul" is deliberately ungrammatical German: ANGST ESSEN SEELE AUF "Fear Eat Soul". That is due to one of the two protagonists we meet: Ali (El Hedi ben Salem) is a Moroccan immigrant working in Munich. He toils as a car repairman and has learned some very basic German, but he has been hindered from assimilating to German and fully learning the language by both lack of time and a German society that deliberately keep his kind at arm's length. But one night at a pub, he meets by chance Emmi (Brigitte Mira) a 60-something widow. They dance and Emmi falls in love with this tall, dark, and handsome stranger who makes her feel feelings again after so many years. Ali's own thoughts and motivations remain more mysterious, but he too seems to have been wracked with loneliness, and he recognizes in this woman two decades his senior a soulmate. The result is initially a very idiosyncratic romantic comedy.

Sadly, as an opening title of the film reads, "Happiness is not always happy". The flip side of this couple's burgeoning love is the suspicion, jealousy, fear, and hatred that Emmi and Ali encounter from the citizens around them. Emmi's neighbours gossip and disparage her for bringing "trash" into their block of flats; Emmi's adult children reject her new partner; and the local grocer refuses to serve Ali. The drama of the film is Emmi and Ali's attempts to weather this storm of social rejection and make their relationship work. Some small hope remains in a handful of Munich people who see nothing wrong with this couple.

The acting here is memorable. El Hedi ben Salem was not a professional actor. In fact, he was one of Fassbinder's lovers, the two met in a bathhouse in Paris. Yet El Hedi ben Salem's awkwardness on screen actually fits his role perfectly, because Ali is ill at ease and unsure of what to do in this foreign land he has immigrated to. Most of the strong acting demands are placed on Brigitte Mira, a veteran of German film and television for decades, and she pulls this off marvelously. So much poignant emotion of a woman ruing the racism of her peers, or alive with love again after years of solitude, are expressed purely through her eyes, which Fassbinder often emphasizes with long camera takes. Fassbinder himself appears as Emmi's son-in-law (married to Emmi's daughter played by Irm Hermann, a stalwart of this director's productions), and though he gets little screen time, Fassbinder's facial expressions and sardonic dialogue are delightful.

Yet, in spite of its curiously heartwarming romantic pairing and touching plot about two lovers against a cruel world, ANGST ESSEN SEELE AUF is not a perfect film. In the latter part of his film, Fassbinder seems uncertain of his point. In a bitter turn, he upends the romance we had become used to for a much more pessimistic view of human relationships where the original theme of racism and intolerance seems forgotten, or at least firmly pushed aside. He then ends the film at an arbitrary point, as if unable to come up with anything more conclusive.

Nonetheless, this is a classic film and worth seeing. One can also appreciate just how well Fassbinder anticipated here the cinema of Aki Kaurismäki with its characters who are "losers", the cold stares of onlookers, and the awkwardness of it all.

Jim Jarmusch's 2016 film PATERSON is a study of everyday life in a small American city. Its title refers on one hand to its setting of Paterson, New Jersey, much less known abroad than other towns in the state but a surprising number of prominent Americans hailed from there and it was eulogized in an epic-length work by the poet William Carlos Williams. On the other hand, Paterson is coincidentally the last name of our protagonist, a thirty-something bus driver played by Adam Driver.

The film is a day-by-day account of one week in Paterson's life and in fact each day is rather the same: Paterson wakes up, kisses his wife (played by Golshifteh Farahani), goes to work driving the bus, comes home, eats dinner with his wife, takes the dog for a walk, and has a beer at the local bar. Yet Paterson also has an unusual hobby: for some time he has written poetry during each day's lunch break, and he has filled a small notebook with poems that his wife calls wonderful, but which he has never shown to anyone else.

There is a plot to Paterson, that is, an increasing of tension and a sudden and jarring climax, but overall Jarmusch is not aiming for any grand and intricate storytelling here. Instead, he is intentionally trying to capture the quiet music of one ordinary person's existence. Or should I say, two ordinary people's existence, for the film sympathetically captures this couple's marriage. Their relationship is a simple, uncomplicated one of trust and mutual understanding. Paterson is extremely fortunate to have this, as events around him show. (The script is by Sara Driver, Jarmusch's partner of decades, and one might see the film as a hymn to their own special relationship.) Many viewers are likely to find this heartwarming, while other viewers in more fraught marriages might burn with jealousy at Paterson and his wife's incredible harmony.

Those familiar with Jarmusch's earlier work know that he has always liked to show a great deal of urban blight before the camera, such as vacant lots overgrown with weeds and graffitied walls. For Jarmusch, these backdrops supposedly served as a counterweight to the typical Hollywood depictions of the USA as all glitz, and it helped to underscore the bohemian qualities of his characters. Yet this blight surprisingly absent here. Paterson, New Jersey is instead shown as a clean and fairly prosperous town. Its residents, regardless of socioeconomic status or race, are depicted as rather content people.

In fact, at regular points in the film Jarmusch depicts interactions between whites and African-Americans or between gays and straights as if celebrating our new modern era when all those old divisions don't matter any more. This is definitely the most optimistic film that Jarmusch has ever shot, but this utopian vision does come across as a little heavy-handed and one feels that Jarmusch is overlooking pressing social issues that continue to hold many people back. Watching this film, I couldn't help but protest that this gentrified setting is not all of America, just a privileged few.

Still, in spite of the film's flaws, the depiction of married life and the way that poetry is worked into the story is very moving, and I do feel this is worth watching, at least for established Jarmusch fans or those comfortable with indie cinema.

For those who first discovered Ingmar Bergman's work through the internationally acclaimed masterpieces of the late 1950s, there can be a reluctance to go too far back in time before that. After all, weren't the Swedish director's earliest films journeyman efforts where he did not have much control over the filmmaking process, and he had not yet found his distinct style? I, at any rate, get a feeling like this from his 1952 picture "Summer with Monika". I was delighted however, to find that the even earlier "Summer Interlude" to be a strong film. While shot in 1950, it fully anticipates Bergman's mature career.

As the film opens we are introduced to Marie (Maj-Britt Nilsson), a successful ballerina in Stockholm who is however visibly unsatisfied and emotionally distant from those around her. As she takes a ferry out to the Stockholm archipelago, the film switches into flashback mode and we learn the whole story of what made her what she is. Thirteen years before, while still a student and on summer holiday at the family cottage, she had a brief fling with Henrik (Birger Malmsten). This was a romantic -- and very nearly sexual -- awakening for them both, and Bergman depicts it with all the wistfulness of an adult looking back on the heady days of youth, just like the film's protagonist. Yet summer does not last forever, and events move in a direction that prevents the two from staying together.

As I said, this is already mature Bergman in some of its concerns: belief in God and dissatisfaction at God's silence, interpersonal relationships and the feeling that people wear a mask when dealing with others, and of course the fleeting nature of the bright and warm Nordic summer. I will not however call this one of Bergman's very greatest films. The ending, after we return to the present day from the flashback, feels wrong somehow, the rhythm suddenly jarring and Bergman's point inchoate.

Yet overall this is a satisfying picture to sit through, and there are many details to appreciate. Nilsson's acting is ultra-coquettish, and the sexual frankness on display here is surprising; this is in fact more daring than "Summer with Monika", a film with a wider such reputation internationally. The supporting roles by Georg Funkquist and Renée Björling as middle-aged friends of Marie's family lend the film more depth; their failed marriage is a moving counterpoint to the heady passion of the young lovers.

When Leos Carax's film POLA X premiered in 1999, it was seen then as part of the New French Extremity movement, with critics and audiences picking up on its unsimulated sex scene. Yet that forms only a brief few minutes of quite ample film. Two decades on, audiences of today ought to look past the sensation and appreciate the film for what it really has to offer: a convincing contemporary take on Hermann Meville's psychological novel PIERRE, and the way Carax interweaves Melville's structure of 19th-century wealthy elites with harrowing references to contemporary France, Bosnia and the plight of Balkan refugees.

The son of a deceased diplomat of some note, Pierre (Guillaume Depardieu) lives in splendor in rural France, in a manor house with his widowed mother (Catherine Deneuve). Things are going well for young Pierre: a novel he has written has become a bestseller and he is engaged to the lovely Lucie (Delphine Chuillot). But then he encounters a mysterious woman named Isabelle (Yekaterina Golubeva) who tells him in broken French that she is his half-sister, born to Pierre's diplomat father and an unknown Balkan woman. Isabelle is in fact less a character and more a spectral presence that haunts Pierre's life. Intrigued by this otherworldly creature, Pierre gives up his privileged existence and enters into a vividly depicted bohemianism that brings about his physical and mental decline.

POLA X prefers to tell its story more through visceral images than dialogue. In fact, the dialogue is deliberately stilted, allowing the film to dip in and out of its basis in Melville's 19th-century novel. So much of the story of Pierre's decline is told through the bucolic idyll of the first half of the film and the brutal squalor he later chooses. This imagery is so strong that even if POLA X feels somewhat too tentative about itself to rank as one of the all-time greatest films, it has haunted this viewer's thoughts since watching it.

Another nice touch of POLA X is the close way in which Carax worked with the composer of the film's score Scott Walker, who was then fresh from his acclaimed album TILT. When Pierre leaves home after meeting Isabelle, he enters into a bizarre community of artists in an industrial setting, who seem to be hiding sinister plans behind their avant-garde work. It is here that Walker's score goes from the subdued strings of the first half of the film into brasher, more aggressive sounds. Carax has set things up so this music is both diegetic and non-diegetic, part of the outside narration of Pierre's psychological decline and contemporary political strife as much as the film's action itself.

Mohsen Makhmalbaf had gradually won acclaim in his native Iran and eventually stood among the foremost representatives of Iranian cinema, but starting in the late 1990s he began to shoot abroad, keen to make films more daring than what his country's censors would allow, and in search of themes that, underneath the exotic locale, might have some universal meaning.

SCREAM OF THE ANTS, shot in India in 2006, is one of these. An Iranian married couple goes to India in search of a "perfect man" whose guidance the wife's meditation teacher recommended. The wife (Mahnour Shadzi) believes in India's spiritual promise and that its poor multitudes are happier than those with money. The husband (Mamhoud Chokrollahi) is a skeptic, who finds it hard to swallow claims of divinity and believes India's poor masses would benefit from a communist revolution.

The film tracks the pair through a series of poetic scenes that are more Makhmalbaf's fantasy of India than any claim to documentary realism. The subcontinent is wildly mixed, for example, with a Tibetan monk wandering the deserts of Rajastan. One can understand Makhmalbaf's lack of interest in grappling with Indian culture as it is, because the tension between the two married foreigners is where the drama really lies. Nonetheless, the "profound spiritual wisdom" that they finally receive in this exotic country, which must have stemmed mainly from Makhmalbaf's own imagination, is pretty cheap and cliche. As the couple reaches the climax of their journey in Varanasi along the Ganges, it is actually a German man (who dropped out of European society to become a seeker in India) who has the role of describing Indian religion. This makes one wonder if Makhmalbaf simply couldn't find any Indians willing to help because his overall approach was offensive to them.

Another flaw of the film lies with its acting, or rather the lack thereof. Makhmalbaf's brand of cinema is extremely tolerant of wooden delivery, perhaps because the characters are often speaking in English which native Iranian audiences wouldn't always understand. Yet when the dialogue is already risible with these fortune-cookie insights, the actors delivering it in such a stilted fashion simply makes these scenes in the film repugnant to English-speaking viewers.

SCREAM OF THE ANTS is overall a misstep, but it still holds some interest for cinephiles who have seen other Makhmalbaf films. Some of the poetry and humor here is engaging, even if it is not much. Also, this is a surprisingly sexually daring film, with female nudity, something which I mention not to exhort viewers to prurience but rather because it is interesting that this director now wanted to explore these areas.

In the 1960s, the director Michaelangelo Antonioni left his native Italy for a series of a films abroad. BLOW-UP, shot in 1966, captured Swinging London at the dawn of the Sixties counterculture when radical new fashion and music served as the nexus of youth innovation. But as Antonioni moved to the United States and began shooting ZABRISKIE POINT, ultimately released in February 1970, he now captured a counterculture that was tougher and politically radical, with Black liberation movements and university students advocating in-your-face or downright violent methods for effecting social change.

In southern California, a young man named Mark (Mark Frechette) flees a university sit-in after shooting at one of the riot police besieging it. A young lady named Daria (Daria Halprin), who works as a secretary for a large real estate developer building out in the desert, is driving to Phoenix for a meeting. They cross paths when Mark, who proves to have some training as a pilot, steals a light plane from an airfield for a little joyride. He buzzes her car for laughs. When he finally lands, Daria quickly overcomes her fear at this aerial taunting and falls for him. They spent an afternoon together in the desert, at the eponymous point in Death Valley. Yet while these two young people in love enjoy this brief splendour far away from it all, they must eventually return to civilization, and then things come to a head.

ZABRISKIE POINT was a critical failure when it was first released, and I was expecting to dislike it. However, the film's flaws are few and, among everything else the film offers, forgivable. One of those flaws is the acting during the relatively brief portion when the two leads meet. Frechette and Halprin are extremely photogenic and fashionable -- it's hard to believe they weren't established Hollywood bombshells, but rather amateurs and they had actual counterculture credentials. However, as much as they provide the film visually in moments they appear alone, during their brief time together they have zero chemistry and the dialogue they exchange is delivered clunkily.

The other flaw is the characterization of Mark: by the end of the film, Daria has seen things that stir her to anger and lead her to question the conventional society in which she works. However, the script (a collaboration between Antonioni, longtime collaborator Tonino Guerra, and Sam Shepherd) never explains why Mark is so bent on destruction. The audience just feels that he's a delinquent with emotional problems, and that makes it difficult to sympathize with him.

Yet in spite of those weaknesses, this is not at all an unenjoyable film. Forget the stupid interaction of Mark and Daria. Instead, just soak in Antonioni's visual poetry as captured by cinematographer Alfio Contini. The Italians must have been delighted by what they found far away from their native land. California of this era is revealed in all its peculiar grandeur, both the urban sprawl of Los Angeles (already utterly hostile to pedestrians) and the unforgiving but strangely beautiful desert. Most of Antonioni's trademark mise-en-scene from the Italian films is preserved here in this foreign location. Unexpected, however, is the savage ending -- sometimes dubbed "the violent scene" -- where the film makes its strongest blow against complacent bourgeois culture. One wonders if Antonioni had seen Jean-Luc Godard's 2 OU 3 CHOSES QUE JE SAIS D'ELLE, with its capstone unveiling of consumer products, and thought "I can one-up that." The result is a feast for the eyes.

It's curious too how the passage of time can endow a film with poignant resonances beyond what the filmmaker could have intended. Antonioni shot this film in 1968-69 when the counterculture was a brave new world, but audiences today will see it as a vivid document of a past now half a century gone, and the thought that all this colour, idealism, fashion and design is long dead smarts.

Antonioni's loose trilogy consisting of L'AVVENTURA, LA NOTTE and L'ECCLISE might be the best introduction to this filmmaker, but I am glad I have explored his other work, and while ZABRISKIE POINT is notably flawed compared to its predecessors, it has haunted my thoughts in the weeks after I screened it, and that says a lot to its credit.

In Aki Kaurismäki's 2016 film TOIVON TUOLLA PUOLEN ("The Other Side of Hope"), the Finnish auteur continues a theme he explored in LE HAVRE from five years earlier: refugees fleeing to Europe and forced to survive when heartless officials and some locals are against them. While that earlier film was shot in the comparatively exotic setting of the eponymous French port, TOIVON TUOLLA PUOLEN returns to Kaurismäki's familiar stomping grounds of downtown Helsinki.

The film consists of two converging plot lines. In one, the aging salesman Wikström (Sakari Kuosmanen, a longtime member of Kaurismäki's acting stable) leaves his wife, wins a lot of money in a poker game, and decides to open a restaurant. In the other, the Syrian refugee Khaled (Sherwan Haji) arrives in Helsinki after fleeing war-torn Aleppo and wandering across half of Europe, but he is worried about his sister that he got separated with along the way. Wikström and Khaled eventually meet and become friends -- or the closest thing to friends that Kaurismäki's exaggeratedly cold and morose Finns can get to each other. Before that, however, the Wikström plot line serves to inject some humour, albeit of an extremely deadpan sort, into a film that, though Khaled, explores the depressing lives of refugees who are shuffled from one center to another and forced to wait for their cases to be processed.

For three decades now, Kaurismäki has made all his films to a very distinctive template that virtually never varies. Its characters speak a minimum of dialogue to each other and show little expression on their faces. The sets are drab in colour and deliberately anachronistic, with gadgets, vehicles or clothes from the 1950s alongside computers and mobile phones from our time. At some point, a band will appear on stage playing oldies rock, blues, or Finnish tangos as the characters look on.

TOIVON TUOLLA PUOLEN doesn't stray from that template either. Still, the script has enough fresh moments to it that it will feel worthwhile even to longtime Kaurismäki films who have sat through this template many times before. Some of the humorous bits are laugh-out-loud funny, but overall this does feel like a darker film than most of the director's work. It is ultimately a choked, restrained cry of rage at the way that refugees are treated, by a Nordic society that prides itself on fairness, equality and charity. While Kaurismäki is roughly on the left politically, several of his films have attacked the Finnish welfare state for its opaque bureaucracy and its reduction of human beings to mere papers in a government file. This film continues that critique by depicting the refugees, who come from many countries but manage to band together to lend each other help, as the sort of neighborly solidarity that Kaurismäki prefers to faceless bureaucracy.

I personally wouldn't find this the best introduction to Kaurismäki. His earlier film MIES VAILLA MENNEISYYTTÄ ("The Man Without a Past") depicted with more meat on its bone a down-on-his-luck man lost among bureaucracy, while the über-idiosyncratic romantic comedy VAROJA PARATIISISSA ("Shadows in Paradise") is one of Kaurismäki's best achievements in deadpan humour. Still, TOIVON TUOLLA PUOLEN seems to tell a story universal enough to pull on everyone's heartstrings and is worth seeing.