FILMS PLAYING AT THE 2010 SEATTLE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
ALREADY SEEN

For films currently seen at 2010 SIFF with up to date commentary please click here. 

AN ORDINARY EXECUTION (Une exécution ordinaire) (d. Marc Dugain)
Moscow, 1952.  The film follows a female doctor who has magnetic powers in her hands to relieve pain in her patients (somehow here this unlikely talent seems very realistic).  This is the year that Stalin's iron-fisted tyranny was scheduled to end with his death.  And this film takes us on a slow building, dread-filled trip into the Kremlin for a unique fly-on-the-wall view of the corrosive effects of absolute power on one lonely, frightened, talented doctor terrorized into treating in secret the dying dictator (played in a powerful, convincing performance by André Dussolier).  The film belongs to Marina Hands, however, whose stoic acting style as the beset doctor is perfectly matched to Stalin's steel.  This isn't an easy film to watch, its slow pace threatens boredom.  But as a character study and a realistic historical drama, it certainly held my interest.   ***

ANGEL AT SEA  (d. Frédéric Dumont)
Louis is a bright, happy 12 year old French kid living with his parents and older brother in Morocco.  His father, the always reliable actor Olivier Gourmet, while succumbing to bi-polar clinical depression confides to his loving, favorite son a terrible secret which no 12 year old should ever have to hear.  It amounts to mental child abuse, and I noticed a lot of audience members leaving the theater, probably in disgust at the father's behavior.  It so happens that when I was in college my own father started to exhibit serious bi-polar symptoms, so I can attest to the realism of this film.  But I wasn't an impressionable 12 year old then; and my heart broke for this boy played by the enormously talented young actor Martin Nissen.  This is one tough to watch film; but it expresses its truths with remarkable fidelity.  *** 1/4

BACKYARD (El Traspatio) (d. Carlos Carrera)
In the late 1990s the Mexican border town of Ciudad Juárez, across the river from El Paso, experienced a series of rapes and murders of women.  This well made, gritty, based-on-a-true-story procedural is about the gradual realization that serial murders are occurring; and follows the efforts of one courageous woman cop to overcome systemic inertia and corruption in the pursuit of the culprits.  The wide screen production is first class slick.  If it all seems a little predictable, maybe it's because I watch too many similar tv procedurals like Criminal Minds and CSI.  But kudos for acting to Ana de la Reguera as the beset cop and Jimmy Smits reprising his character in Dexter (I do watch too much tv).  *** 1/4

THE BIG DREAM (Il grande sogno)  (d.  Michele Placido)
Placido is telling his own story as a student in 1968-9 involved with the worldwide youth revolt, in this case in a Madrid university.  The film suffers from being the nth iteration of this theme, and is rather diffuse and a little hard to follow.  But the actors are attractive; and there is a certain ring of truth to the story.  Maybe Placido was too personally involved to hone his script to perfection.  ** 1/2

BRIDE FLIGHT  (d. Ben Sombogaart)
Sombogaart made one of the best films of the last decade, Twin Sisters, and this film proves that that film was no flash in the pan.  This is the film that Baz Luhrmann's Australia could have been (only in this case it would have been about New Zealand.)  It's the story of a planeload of immigrants on the KLM plane which won the 1953 race from London to Christchurch, centered on one man and three women with whom he interacted.  The film successfully manages two time lines:  the present day when the three women get together at the funeral of the man (a successful vintner played by Rutger Hauer in the present day and sexy Waldemar Torenstra in the '50s story), and the flashback to the formation of their rocky relationships.  This is romance and melodrama taken to the highest level, wonderfully acted and photographed in wide screen which captures New Zealand and an era perfectly.  Sure, it's a little soap opera-ish...but the story had some original twists and turns which took it out of the ordinary.  *** 3/4

BROTHERHOOD  (d. Nicolo Donato)
This is a Danish film about a cult of neo-Nazi skinheads who beat up on gays and Muslims.  A closeted gay ex-soldier joins their ranks despite all, and a passionate gay affair with one of the committed members ensues which wrecks havoc.  I had the feeling of having seen all this before (eg. Danish hyper-violence as in the Pusher trilogy); but the film was well acted enough to hold my interest.   ** 3/4

CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH (d. Lu Chuan)
Rumor had it that this was the film China should have submitted to the Academy this year rather than Forever Enthralled.  Actually, there's no contest in my mind.  City of Life and Death is an epic masterpiece of which time will only enhance its reputation. Shot in stark black & white, with a huge cast and jaw dropping scope, the film graphically presents the conquest (and let's not mince words) rape of the Chinese capitol Nanking by the Japanese in 1937-38.  But, and this is the crucial but, it does it in a completely unexpected way, mostly from the point of view of the Japanese soldiers...and with a strangely neutral politic which replaces wholesale castigation with a humanistic, if ultimately unforgiving, point of view.  I must present the caveat that personally I can't give this film the **** that it probably deserves.  I had problems watching it:  for one, throughout the film I, as a Caucasian, had difficulty separating the Chinese from the Japanese.  And in spots my attention flagged, maybe from emotional overload.  But I don't wish these personal quirks to affect my overall feeling that this is one hell of an important, timeless film, reminiscent visually of some of the great past war epics from classic filmmakers like Dovzhenko, Eisenstein and Kurosawa.  *** 1/4

THE DANCER AND THE THIEF (d. Fernando Trueba),
This Spanish film is an off-center caper flick with an intriguing twist.  Ricardo Darin continues his run of great roles playing a famed safe cracker, just released from a Chilean prison after a general amnesty, determined to go straight.  Also released from prison at the same time is a charming young rogue (bright, new Argentinian star-to-be Abel Ayala) who has something on the prison warden which makes him a marked man; but who also is his unreleased cellmate's messenger with a plan for a daring heist in which he attempts to involve Darin's character.  Sub-plots abound, especially one involving Ayala's character's infatuation with an orphan girl with a gift for ballet (the "dancer" of the title).  The film is an interesting character study and something of a preposterous wish fulfillment fantasy, yet charming and easy to watch.  *** 1/4

DONKEY (d. Antonio Nuić)
A dysfunctional extended family reunite in their bucolic village home at the tail end of the Serbo-Croatian war.  Very gradually, almost glacially slowly, past secrets are revealed.  The animal of the title, a cute little donkey tethered to a tree and ostensibly for sale, is both incidental to the plot and the fulcrum of the resolution of much of the tensions which divide the family.  This bleak film, shot in muted tones, represents the dark side of country family gatherings. ** 1/2

FAREWELL (L'Affaire Farewell)  (d. Christian Carion)
Emir Kusturica, the actor/director, plays a dour, real-life Russian KGB officer who literally changed the course of history when he provided vital information to French intelligence (personified by his "handler", a meek engineer trapped into the job by circumstances and played by a wonderfully understated actor/director Guillaume Canet.)  The film is a masterful thriller in the style of Costa-Gavras (although it doesn't quite have the realistic, tension provoking suspense that Costa-Gavras is so good at).  I was totally enthralled by the psychological interplay between the characters and their families, and the historical implications of this story.  Maybe its only flaw (but an enjoyable one, nevertheless) was its humorous handling of the real people in the story:  lookalikes for Reagan, Gorbachev, Mitterrand etc.  Still, this was a fine production, which deserves to be seen.  *** 1/4

THE FATHER OF MY CHILDREN (Le Père de mes enfants) (d. Mia Hansen-Løve)
Overextended art film producer, Grégoire, spends most of his time on the phone juggling various projects at the expense of his family life, wife and 3 cute daughters.  The film really nails the pressures of big time indie filmmaking today; and it totally involved me in the processes of Grégoire's life, which is actually based on a real person, film producer Humbert Balsan.  The problem is that the film is episodic, overlong, and seemingly plotless until about 2/3 in when it undergoes a startling change of tone.  Still, overall it is a well made slice-of-life film, very French in its emphasis on intelligent conversations.  ** 3/4

FRENCH KISSERS, THE (Les beaux gosses)  (d. Riad Sattour)
This is a French verision of the American Pie and Superbad theme:  nerdy, sex-obsessed teen-age boys doing their predictable thing.  It wasn't terrible; and the lead actor, Vincent Lacoste made a convincing Gallic Michael Cera type.  Also, Noémie Lvovsky creates an amusingly original take on the neurotic mother of a teenager role.  The French are more salacious and realistic about the sex than Hollywood would be with this genre...but all in all there isn't anything fresh enough about this film to make it stand out.  ** 1/4

THE HEDGEHOG (Le hérisson)  (d. Mona Ashashe)
Young Garance Le Guillermic plays Paloma, a difficult 11 year old, daughter of a rich government minister and tranquillizer addled mother.  After having been given a video camera to play with, she confides to her camera that in 156 days on her 12th birthday she will kill herself.  That's the set up for this extraordinary coming of age story...which also involves a life changing relationship between the dowdy concierge (translated as "janitor") of the tony Parisian condo where Paloma lives (played by the superb Josiane Balasko) and the new tenant, a cultured Japanese widower (also superbly played by Togo Igawa).  It doesn't sound all that promising...I'll admit that I probably would have skipped this film from the on-line description.  But what doesn't come across in the plot summary are the sensitive characterizations, the emotionally devastating plot developments, and the fine, subtle director's touch with the material, which is mainly played from the point of view of the 11 year old through her videography and wildly creative artistic bent.  *** 3/4

HIDDEN DIARY  (Mères et filles)  (d. Julie Lopes-Curval)
Catherine Deneuve is quite touching, playing a small-town, middle age doctor, somewhat estranged from her daughter, who was in turn deserted by her own mother at an impressionable young age and never forgave.  The film is a drama about mothers and daughters which turns around the discovery of a long lost diary written by Deneuve's disappeared mother.  I really liked the film's flashback structure and the way the central mystery gradually unfolds in unpredictable ways.  *** 1/4

HIPSTERS  (d. Valery Todorovsky)
A dazzlingly visual Russian musical about the Soviet '50s?  Who woulda thunk it.  I have no idea how realistic this film is; but I have to say it is one of the most entertaining musicals I've seen...combining the zany, super-saturated colorful visual panache of Yes Nurse, No Nurse with a story right out of the '30s American musical tradition...young communist boy meets rebellious girl and changes his stripes, literally in this case since the wild clothes of these " hipsters"  are their trademark.  Maybe the film went on a bit too long for its slender story; but its visual inventiveness, wonderfully lively song and dance treatments, and unexpected Western tradition brio made for a unique film experience.  And the young couple, played by Anton Shagin and Oksana Akinshina, were fine and had nice chemistry together.    *** 1/2

I AM LOVE (Io sono l'amore)  (d. Luca Guadagnino)
Guadagnino is a young director of great promise.  This film is the story of an haute bourgeois family of mill owners, whose fortune has led to a sumptuous life style, although though the two sons and daughter of the current generation have problems.  The film reminds me of the huge family sagas that Olivier Assayas is so good at staging, particularly Les destinées sentimentales.  And Guadagnino has gathered an exceptional cast and has used a strong musical score by John Adams to good effect.  There are sequences (including a sex scene montage) of enormous filmic beauty and originality.  However, there is also a feeling of excess and pretentiousness...the filmmaker's ambition may have gotten ahead of his ability to produce.  It also seems a little overlong and ponderous.  But I have to say I was totally involved in the story; and despite some flaws this was an extraordinary film.  *** 1/4

I KILLED MY MOTHER (d. Xavier Dolan)
Dolan was 19 when he wrote, directed and starred in this amazing howl of adolescent angst.  To call him a wunderkind would be understating the case (we just may be witnessing the debut of a youthful auteur of Wellesian stature).  His character, Hubert, is 16 at the start of the film, a sensitive boy embarrassed by his bourgeois, single mother (a heartbreaking performance of maternal tough love by Anne Dorval); and their constant bickering as he castigates her is quite unpleasant to watch.  Hubert hides his gay side from his mother, at the same time he is fantasizing about escape from his mother's supposed tyranny.  I don't ever recall seeing a film like this before: a probing, masterfully filmic look at being a teenager from the inside.  *** 1/2  (second viewing even more impressive:  *** 3/4)

THE LAST CAMPAIGN OF GOVERNER BOOTH GARDNER (d. Daniel Junge)
I didn't review this on my site because it was a documentary which fell beneath the 70 minute threashhold that I set for these reviews.  However this is a fascinating political documentary about the Washington State governor who boosted the "Death With Dignity" initiative for personal as well as political reasons.  Quite moving and involving.  *** 3/4

LETTERS TO FATHER JACOB (Postia Pappi Jaakobille) (d. Klaus Härö)
Härö directed one of my favorite films of the decade, Mother of Mine, an emotionally devastating film.  This current film is a much smaller affair, an intimate story of spiritual awakening...but just about as moving for all of that.  It's the story of an elderly blind pastor who hires a paroled woman murderer to read his correspondence.  The two actors are especially fine, their subtle performances play against each other perfectly.  The film is beautifully shot, austere interiors, lush exteriors; and the soundtrack, featuring a haunting piano musical score, is remarkable.  Yet somehow I didn't quite reach the emotional catharsis that the film promised.  Maybe it was just a tad too austere.  *** 1/4

MEDITERRANEAN DIET  (d. Joaquin Oristrell)
A young woman is born to cook, growing up working for her parents at a small Spanish seaside restaurant.  She gets married to a good man, has an affair with a not-so-good man, a waiter on the rise.  She studies cooking with a French master; and along with the two young men from her home town opens a fine cuisine restaurant in her old town.  Along the way, the film goes for an unconventional three way love affair and presents enough delicious looking food that I am glad I wasn't hungry when I watched the film!  Apparently the word got out that this was a delightful film, as every screening after the first was a sellout.  The film looks fabulous; and this film goes a long way to add to Spain's increasing reputation for producing really wonderful and original romantic comedies.  *** 1/2

THE MILK OF SORROW (d. Claudia Llosa)
A young woman watches her mother die.  The mother is singing a song about how terrorists abused her and her baby, the sorrow passed through her mother's milk to her daughter along with other horrors too terrible to mention in this review.  The girl now lives with her uncle's family in a poor shanty town; and in order to obtain the funds to bury her mother she goes to work as a domestic for a rich lady.   This exercise in miserablism is artfully, even beautifully shot with compositions making fine use of light and shadow.  One has to admire the sad truths of the film, even though its slow pacing and the lead characters impassivity was ultimately hard to take.  An interesting sidelight of the film was a recurrent theme of the regenerative quality of weddings in the impoverished village.  As an exotic slice of a hard life, this was an interesting film...it just wasn't my cuppa'.  ***

THE OVER THE HILL BAND  (d. Geoffrey Enthoven)
Three seventy-ish Flemish ladies were a rock 'n roll trio in their youth.  One of their sons is a failed musician; and by a series of plot devices the three reunite with the son and his musician friends to try out for a musical talent tv show.  This is another of those Full Monty, fish-out-of-water films, only it does go to a darker place as the film progresses.  But along the way it's a feel-good film for seniors which didn't make me feel all that good.  ** 1/2

PLEASE, PLEASE ME  (Fais-moi plaisir!)  (d. Emmanuel Mouret)
Mouret is a French farceur actor-writer-director hyphenate who combines the inept charm of Jacques Tati and Woody Allen with a some of the physical characteristics of Chaplin and Keaton.  In other words he is an original talent with a unique vision carrying on a fine tradition.  Here he plays Jean-Jacques, hapless inventor, whose romantic misadventures start when a friend boasts of a fail-safe method of getting girls.  What follows is a subtle, underplayed farce which somehow really tickled my funny bone.  Mouret has a way of quietly escalating sequences of ineptitude to absurd levels, while somehow playing it straight and remaining realistic.  It's a high-wire act of spot-on comic timing; and he really pulls it off.  *** 1/4

PROTEKTOR (d. Marek Najbrt)
Emil is a popular radio announcer married to a Jewish actress when the Germans are ceded Czechoslovakia after Munich.  The film is about the moral dilemma that Emil is forced into trying to accommodate both his job and his temperamental wife during the war years which follow.  This is a fundamentally interesting concept; but the film is stylistically tricked out to the point that it seems contrived, when it could have been emotionally powerful.  ** 1/2

RAPT  (d. Lucas Belvaux)
Belvaux makes wonderful, subtle thrillers which are treats for the mind as well as satisfying procedurals.  Here he tells the complex story of a cocky industrialist, young CEO of a huge conglomerate, who is kidnapped for ransom.  It's a brilliant performance by Yvan Attal of upper class hubris brought down.  I don't want to say anything more about the plot; but I was fascinated by this glimpse of high level government, industry and police operations.  *** 1/2

RESTREPO (d. Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger)
PFC Juan "Doc" Restrepo was a guitar playing, fun loving medic with the 173rd Airborne Brigade stationed in a remote Afghanistan valley near the Pakistani border and at the forefront of the Taliban insurgency.  After Restrepo was killed in action, his platoon was sent to build and man a forward outpost on a rocky crag overlooking the Korengal Valley, which they named Outpost Restropo.  The directors of this documentary spent a year embedded for long periods with the 2nd Platoon and made this sprawling film which captured the feeling of the daily life of these soldiers.  The film is remarkable for the way it portrays the soldiers, by their actions in-country and through later reflections in big-head close up interviews.  There is a palpable sense of ever present danger, both to the soldiers and the filmmakers.   *** 1/4

REVERSE (Rewers) (d. Borys Lankosz)
The year is 1952, and black and white stock footage from that time in Warsaw seamlessly segues into a beautifully shot B&W film about a bourgeois family of three generations of women caught up in the terrors of the encroaching police state.  The center of the film is the dogged, unattractive daughter, an office functionary in the poetry department of a publishing house.  Her mother was a druggist before the war, and her feisty, aristocratic elderly grandmother is approaching death with pluck.  Together they bravely face their new lifestyle through a series of events comprising a deliciously satiric black comedy of sorts, one which captures the tone of an era perfectly even as it goes to gristly extremes.  The only flaw is that it intercuts occasionally events in modern day Poland, shot in color for contrast, events which detract a bit from the suspense of the 1952 story.  Nevertheless, I really enjoyed this beautifully realized gem of a film. *** 1/2

REYKJAVIK-ROTTERDAM (d. Oskar Jonasson)
Baltasar Kormakur, who has been sticking to directing lately, comes back to acting in this clever, comic, caper/thriller from Iceland.  Kormakur plays an ex-con smuggler, married with two cute young sons, in AA, and trying to go straight.  He's drawn into one last smuggling trip to Rotterdam by his incompetent brother-in-law, and a comedy of errors ensues.  It's the kind of mad plot that Hollywood will probably steal and ruin.  Lots of trivial fun and quite well directed to keep all the balls in the air at once.  *** 1/4

SAMSON AND DELILAH (d. Warwick Thornton)
The setting is a threadbare New South Wales aboriginal settlement where a disaffected pair of teenagers are marking time.  Samson is a gasoline sniffer with an abusive big brother, Delilah cares for her aging primitive artist grandmother.  Their lives are really unpleasant, as is the film, although it is almost redeemed by the bittersweet ending.  ** 1/4

SOUTHERN DISTRICT (Zona Sur) (d. Juan Carlos Valdivia)
An upper class white family:  divorced mother, lesbian teenage daughter, wastrel teenage son and adorable 5 year old boy inhabit a beautiful La Paz villa accompanied by two indian servants who are part of the family, but subtly not.  The director utilizes a constantly slow panning camera: it becomes almost a signature of the, frankly, gorgeous cinematography and production design.  Not much happens, the story is very insular in the way it keeps inside the home for the most part; but the accumulation of details about how these people lead their lives is very telling about current Bolivian society and the way class distinctions are breaking down.  This is a filmmaker to watch.  *** 1/4

THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE  (2003, d. Sylvaine Chomet)  Stylish 2-D animation feature film.  It's the weird story of an old Tour de France race gone very wrong.  Nice music, though; but just not my cuppa'.  ***

VORTEX (Duburys) (d. Gytis Luksas)
The film takes place at some unspecified, but Sovietized time in rural Lithuania, where a farm boy from a struggling family is traumatized by the accidental death of his father.  He grows up; and despite an almost Candide like goodness, lives and loves through a troubled life.  Shot in glorious black & white (a real trend this year with some of the best cinematography of recent years), the film has its problems:  overlong, confusingly episodic, with a draggy 2nd act.  Still, the direction is outstanding, the acting throughout assured.  I was absorbed by the hero's life and times, even while cringing at the unmitigated miserablism.  *** 1/4

WHITE WEDDING (d. Jann Turner)
An upscale black couple are planning to wed in Capetown.  But the groom has to make the journey by bus and car from Johannesburg before the ceremony.  This turns into a comedy road trip as he and his best friend encounter a series of adventures involving a hitchhiking Englishwoman, some angry Boers and various other setbacks on the road.  It's an opportunity to humorously explore the reconciled social fabric of the new South Africa.  But the situational comedy comes off a tad light, and for all its popular appeal, I couldn't get very involved. ** 1/2

WOMAN WITHOUT PIANO (d. Javier Rebollo)
This is an arch comic take on modern life in today's Madrid.  Carmen Machi plays a middle-aged, middle-class married Madriano matron (how's that for "M" alliteration) who, probably out of boredom with her life as a professional laser hair remover, sets off on a one night excursion to anywhere but where she's at.  During the evening of comic encounters, her always taciturn character drinks more than a few brandies and interacts with various strange people and situations, especially a Polish gentleman on the lam.  The film is shot like a constantly evolving Hopper painting, and has an emotionally reserved point of view which reminded me of absurdist comic filmmakers like Tati and Keaton without the evident humor of their slapstick.  I enjoyed this film, mostly for the mood it engendered; but I didn't love it.   ** 3/4