David R. Walker

Archive for the ‘European Film Festival’ Category

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Director: Lukas Dhont

Cast: Eden Dambrine, Gustav De Waele, Emilie Dequenne, Lea Drucker, Igor van Dressel, Kevin Janssens

Running Time: 1 hour 44 minutes

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Language: Flemish with English Subtitles

Festival: European Film Festival 2023

Belgian director Lukas Dhont follows up his 2018 film Girl, with an emotionally complex film Close starring an excellent Eden Dambrine as a teenage schoolboy Leo whose childhood friendship with Remi played by Gustav de Waele goes from being extremely close to being exceptionally difficult as both boys enter high school in contemporary Belgium and experience different feelings.

Dhont whose film Close was nominated for the Best International Film at the 2023 Oscars representing Belgium packs his skilful and emotionally taut storyline into an uncomfortable gaze. Most of the film is shot in extreme close up particularly the opening scenes featuring Remi and Leo as they are childhood friends who spend all their waking hours’ together, playing imaginary games against the so-called enemies and spending all their time at Remi’s house with his mother Sophie, a nurse watching on happily.

In a radical shift in circumstances and as Leo and Remi start navigating the treacherous teenage years of high school, Leo yearns to fit into a bigger crowd at school and as a result of bullying knowingly distances himself from Remi, who doesn’t have the emotional capacity to understand why his best friend has started ghosting him.

Close is expertly shot with that casual European nonchalance which gradually draws the viewer into an absolutely poignant and gut-wrenching film. This top class drama, a razor sharp analysis of young human beings in transition in that tricky stage of puberty when they are attempting to deal with complex relationships and ever shifting feelings.

Leo is suddenly thrust into a morally uncomfortable situation one in which he questions his own version of who he wants to be while trying to make amends.

Co-written by Lukas Dhont, Close not only refers to close friendships or bullying but the rather messy dynamic of family relationships and how children are socialized differently, particularly boys who are brought up to be tough, competitive and resilient. Any sign of weakness is seen to be an opportunity for exploitation.

Close is an absolutely heart wrenching and thoroughly human story about the consequences of treating someone cruelly and the social effects of bullying. Eden Dambrine dominates the story in this riveting and psychologically scarring film about cruelty, unarticulated feelings and redemption.

Close gets a film rating of 8 out of 10 and is highly recommended viewing about complex issues that need to be discussed intelligently. A superb film.

Great Freedom

Director: Sebastian Meise

Cast: Franz Rogowski, Georg Friedrich, Anton von Lucke, Thomas Prenn

Running Time: 1 hour 56 minutes

This film is in German with English Subtitles

Please note this film is sexuality explicit and contains images of drug use

Austrian director Sebastian Meise’s intensely explicit homosexual prison drama Great Freedom won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival and is held together by two powerful performances by Franz Rogowski who plans renown homosexual Hans Hoffman and Georg Friedrich (Narcissus and Goldmund) who plays fellow prisoner and frequent drug user Viktor.

Hans is imprisoned under paragraph 175 for being homosexual when in post-war Germany homosexuality was criminalized. Even though Germany has been liberated by the Allies at the end of World War II, paragraph 175 still remains law and Hans tries to survive in prison by doing sewing and occasionally snatching brief sexual liaisons with younger gay men in prison, specifically played by Anton von Lucke as Leo Griese and Thomas Prenn as Oskar. However, the precocious Hans is for ever in trouble often being sent to solitary confinement.

Soon Hans befriends his cellmate Viktor who is so called straight but despite their different sexual preference, a bond of loyalty and love begins to form within the claustrophobic environment of a men’s prison in post-war Germany.

As the years pass, Hans manages to free the younger men including Leo and Oskar, however he remains in prison with Viktor until the revision of paragraph 175 in Germany in the early 1970’s. After Hans and Viktor’s relationship intensifies, the revision of paragraph of 175 allows Hans to go free.

As Hans realizes his new freedom and explores the sexual permissibility of 1970’s Germany he is forced to make a difficult choice. Great Freedom is a tender and explicit look at love in an impossible time and chronicle’s a struggle for equality for the LGBT community at a time when any deviant lifestyle was subjected to scrutiny and strict criminalization.

German actor Franz Rogowski is brilliant as the beautiful Hans Hoffman, an imprisoned gay man who bares all in an exceptionally provocative performance which makes such American portrayals of gay men in films like Milk or Brokeback Mountain positively tame.

Rogowski is superb as a stoic sexual deviant Hoffman in a world which was completely against him and made his life extremely difficult. The ending of Great Freedom is clever in it’s ambiguity supplanting a social crime with an actual one.

In a similar vein to the excellent Kiss of the Spiderwoman, director Sebastian Meise’s brilliant Great Freedom is a provocative gay prison drama involving a fight for equal rights and an unbridled passion between two lovers fuelled by suppressive captivity. Great Freedom gets a film rating of 7.5 out of 10 and is recommended viewing especially for the LGBT community.

The Worst Person in the World

Director: Joachim Trier

Cast: Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie, Herbert Nordrum, Hans Olav Brenner, Maria Grazia Di Meo

Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10

This film is in Norwegian with English Subtitles

Best Actress Winner at the Cannes Film Festival in 2021, Renate Reinsve is superb as the troubled millennial Julie in director Joachim Trier’s quirky and bizarre episodic film The Worst Person in the World, Norway’s official entry for the 2021 Best International Feature Film category at the Oscars.

Renate Reinsve is Norway’s version of British actress Keira Knightley both in looks and acting style. Reinsve plays an indecisive young woman Julie in contemporary Oslo who frequently changes career paths as often as she changes men.

However, the film focuses on a formative four years in Julie’s life as she begins a more serious relationship with a much older cartoon artist Arkel played by Anders Danielsen Lie. As Aksel introduces Julie to his friends in his age group, most of whom have children, the conversation turns to whether the couple would like to have children. At the prospect of Julie settling down with a much older man and having kids, this idea freaks her out and Julie promptly gate crashes a very hip party in central Oslo where she meets a man her own age, the handsome and muscular Ervind played by Herbert Nordrum.

Julie in between navigating the complicated relationship with her family and watching her own relationship with Aksel disintegrate, she begins an affair with Ervind and much Aksel’s shock, she unexpectedly breaks up with him. This leaves Aksel utterly bereft and lonely. This makes the selfish and indecisive Julie possibly the Worst Person in the World, a sort of Wildcat who is against any form of domesticity.

Julie and Ervind move into together and she thinks nothing more of her older ex-boyfriend besides seeing his controversial fame increase on Norwegian TV chat shows. After Julie accidentally bumps into one of Aksel’s friends Ole played by Hans Olav Brenner who tells her some distressing news about Aksels health, she reaches a cross roads in her life as she re-evaluates her relationship with Ervind while making some critical life choices.

The screenplay of The Worst Person in the World is excellent and the entire episodic film is held together tightly by a riveting performance by the ravishing Renate Reinsve. Director Joachim Trier’s Woody Allen like social comedy set in contemporary Norway is filled with angst, drama and many loose ends that leaves the viewer wishing for some form of cathartic release, something which Scandinavian film makers are not known for delivering.

The Worst Person in the World has a great title, a superb central performance and a cracking sound track but unfortunately as an episodic film some scenes could have been edited out especially the weird trippy sequence in the middle. The Worst Person in the World gets a film rating of 7.5 out of 10 and is entertaining, but not brilliant.

Do Not Hesitate

Director: Shariff Korver

Cast: Joes Brauers, Spencer Bogaert, Tobias Kersloot, Omar Alwan

Film Rating: 7 out of 10

Running Time: 1 hour 31 minutes.

This film is in Dutch with English Subtitles.

Venezuelan born director Shariff Korver brings a taut military drama to the big screen in this well-edited razor sharp drama Do Not Hesitate about three young Dutch army soldiers who are left in the desert during a foreign peace keeping force that goes wrong. The setting could be Afghanistan, but the actual location where the film was shot is probably in Greece.

The soldiers, Erik, Roy and Thomas played respectively by Joes Brauers (Quo Vadis Aida?), Spencer Bogaert and Tobias Kersloot land up in an unpredictable situation when a young boy comes into the site range and demands the return of his goat which was accidentally killed.

The immaturity of the soldiers combined with macho bravado of trying to keep sane in an isolated location slowly brews over as the try to deal with young boy played by Omar Alwyn. As the three soldiers are left to guard a military vehicle by themselves in alien territory, the situation regarding their food and water deteriorates along with the relationship between all three, with Erik trying to lead and Roy and Thomas always at odds with his commands. As they are all so young themselves, possibly in their early twenties, and without the guidance of wise council, they do not handle the situation with the young boy very well, as the prisoner becomes increasingly vocal even though he does lead the soldiers to drinking water.

From the opening sequence of Erik playing the drums loudly in his parent’s home before he goes off to the military, to the bizarre closing sequence at a nightclub in Crete, whereby all three soldiers decompress, the reality of what they have done sinks in even though they are bound by a fraternal secrecy often formed in the masculine world of the military, where civilized rules don’t apply. Jose Brauers is excellent as the leader Erik.

Director Shariff Korver fortunately keeps Do Not Hesitate engaging, taut as a wire and completely filled with anger, potential violence and remorse. Even in one of the penultimate scenes all the young soldiers remain silent when question by a military appointed psychologist.

There is omniscient danger in Do Not Hesitate but the most violence comes from the three soldiers, whose pent-up rage is eventually released.

Do Not Hesitate was the official entry from the Netherlands to be considered for the Best International Feature film Oscar for the 94^th Academy Awards in 2022. Do Not Hesitate gets a film rating of 7 out of 10 and is a worthy improvement in contemporary Dutch cinema. Recommended viewing for those that enjoy a Dutch version of Brian de Palma’s Casualties of War.

The Emigrants

Director: Erik Poppe

Cast: Gustav Skarsgard, Sofia Helin, Mikkel Brett Silset, Lisa Carlehed, Tove Lo, Laurence Kinlan

Film Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Running Time: 2 hours and 28 minutes

This film is in Swedish with English Subtitles

At a running time of 2 hours and 28 minutes, Swedish director Erik Poppe’s reimagining of the book The Emigrants written by Vilhelm Moberg published in 1949 and remake of the 1971 film, is long and arduous although held together by strong performances by the two main leads Gustaf Skarsgard, as Karl-Oskar and Lisa Carlehed as Kristina, a couple who decide to take the long and dangerous voyage from Sweden to America in his film by the same name.

The Emigrants follows the story of a young couple Karl-Oskar and Kristina who leave their family behind in Sweden and immigrate to a new world, the land of the brave, America. Only able to speak Swedish and having lost their farm in Sweden, them and a whole group of their countrymen make haste and leave Sweden with the promise of a better life in a new country.

The topic of emigration is just as relevant today as it was when this film is set in the 1850’s. The Emigrants deals with a range of issues from religious intolerance, language barriers, rural hardship and the most significant issue: the resettlement of the family and children in a new land where there are better opportunities. Most people leave one country to settle in another in search of economic security and a better life for them all.

The toils of emigrants arriving in a new land has been the subject of many films from the Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman 1992 film Far and Away to the more recent Oscar winning film Minari.

The 2021 film The Emigrants is a remake of the original 1971 film of the same name which starred Swedish acting legends Max von Sydow and Liv Ullman and was nominated for 5 Oscars.

Old prejudices from the homeland abound as Kristina initially resists friendship with local prostitute Ulrika played by Tove Lo, but soon as they both experience the hardships and opportunities of America, they become friends. While Karl-Oskar is busy preparing the farm in rural Minnesota for his expanding family, his wife Kristina yearns for her homeland Sweden and battles with differing religious convictions, the local Red Indian tribe and her children.

The Emigrants is epic in nature and is a story of resettlement told primarily from Kristina’s point of view and not so much from Karl-Oskar’s viewpoint which is apparently different to the original novel and the 1971 film. Interestingly, this version has a distinctly feminist slant.

Outside of the Swedish speaking world, many viewers will not be familiar with the backstory of The Emigrants, however as film, director Erik Poppe’s focus seems to linger too long on all the gory details and not so much on the general historical context era of the time.  

If viewers enjoy an epic and interesting historical adventure, then The Emigrants is recommended viewing. The 2021 version of The Emigrants gets a film rating of 6.5 out of 10.

The Good Boss

Director: Fernando Leon de Aranoa

Starring: Javier Bardem, Manolo Solo, Almudena Amor, Oscar de la Fuente, Tarek Rmili¸ Sonia Almarcha, Fernando Albizu

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes

This film is in Spanish with English subtitles

The extraordinary depth of talent of Spanish actor and Oscar winner Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men) can be seen in the humorous yet clever comedy The Good Boss starring Bardem in the title role as Blanco, the owner of a factory in Spain that makes scales on an industrial level.

As an inherited factory owner, Blanco likes to treats his employees as his family yet in the week whereby his company could receive a prestigious European industrial award, Blanco has to contend with a whole range of bizarre occurrences at his factory including the crazy antics of fired worker Jose played by Oscar de la Fuente who decides to create a single man strike right outside the company’s headquarters much to Blanco’s literal disgust.

As Spain’s official entry for Best Foreign Language film at the 2022 Academy Awards, The Good Boss is a superb almost cynical look at how a Boss manages to stay on top amidst his colleagues meltdown, a distraction by a beautiful yet provocative young intern Liliana wonderfully played with panache by Almudena Amor and the pestering Jose whose continued presence outside the factory causes a problem for Blanco.

Javier Bardem (Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Being the Ricardo’s) inhabits every aspect of this role as a duplicitous, commanding and ultimately egotistical boss Blanco who manages to outwit all these business and personal complications except for one. Bardem commands the screen and is brilliant as the wealthy yet slimy Blanco who appears to please everyone, but is ultimately protecting the company and himself.

The rest of the supporting cast are equally good although this comedy drama belongs to Bardem. The Good Boss is a cutting comedy of manners about workplace politics, illicit liaisons, scheming and betrayals while shining a cynical look on the hierarchal structure of industrial companies, from the boss to the head of production to the secretary and of course the misbehaving interns.

Like a work week, director Fernando Leon de Aranoa divides the film into days of the week, so it appears episodic in nature but in actual fact every little occurrence tips the scales of fairness against Blanco without him realizing it, adding the uncertainty principle into a series of events in which the boss appears to be in control. From the humorous exchanges between Blanco and the security guard Roman played by Fernando Albizu to Blanco’s deceitful affection towards his beautiful wife Adela played by Sonia Almarcha, The Good Boss is everything but decent.

The Good Boss is highly recommended viewing, a clever adult comedy about work politics, infidelity and underhand industrial tactics.

The Good Boss gets a film rating of 8 out of 10 and Javier Bardem is absolutely phenomenal. Highly recommended viewing.

Ali and Ava

Director: Clio Barnard

Cast: Claire Rushbrook, Adeel Akhtar, Shaun Thomas, Ellora Torchia

Film Rating: 6 out of 10

Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes

This film has no subtitles

The British entry for the European Film Festival is director Clio Barnard’s intimate film Ali and Ava set in an unnamed dreary Yorkshire city. Claire Rushbrook (Secrets and Lies) stars an Irish emigrant and Grandmother Ava who inadvertently falls in love with Ali, a Pakistani emigrant played by Adeel Akhtar (Victoria and Abdul, The Big Sick).

Ava is living with her youngest son Callum and his girlfriend and baby. Callum is played by rising British star Shaun Thomas, who is angry when his mother Ava brings home Ali for the first time. Both Ali and Ava come from almost closed separate communities. Ava from a white, working class Irish catholic neighbourhood and Ali from an emigrant Muslim neighbourhood. Ali is recently separated from his wife Runa played by Ellora Torchia.

Ava, on the other hand, is recently widowed from Callum’s father who she later confesses was an abusive alcoholic that used to beat her up.

Despite coming from different cultural backgrounds Ali and Ava find a tentative connection through Ali’s tenant’s daughter who Ava teaches, a young Slovakian girl with behaviour problems.

Ali was a DJ before getting married and his love of music is what makes the mutual connection with Ava although her hesitancy at getting involved is not unfounded after her son Callum finds out that she is dating someone from outside the community.

Writer and director Clio Barnard skirts over so many issues in this film and never really finds the right tone for such an intimate love story, often resorting to music as a method for replacing dialogue.

Although both Claire Rushbrook and Adeel Akhtar act really well, although there is not much to work with beyond the usual cross-cultural love story within the same town in contemporary Britain.

Issues such as abuse, domestic violence and cultural exclusion are never properly addressed and only really pinpointed in the last 40 minutes of the film. The first half of the film meanders with too much music and not enough storyline or character development.

Ali and Ava is a slightly disappointing film which could have been so much better, considering that the British are normally renowned for making really brilliant films.

Ali and Ava gets a film rating of 6 out of 10 and will have a limited appeal but does address cross cultural love and unlikely couples finding true happiness. This film will find a limited audience.

Silent Land

Director: Aga Woszczynska

Cast: Dobromir Dymecki, Agnieszka Zuleska, Jean-Marc Barr, Alma Jodborowsky, Marcello Romolo, Elvis Esposito

Film Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Running Time: 1 hour 53 minutes

Language: Polish and Italian with English Subtitles

Having premiered at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival, first time Polish director Aga Woszczynska creates an angst filled character study about a seemingly perfect polish couple who rent a villa on a nameless Italian island complete with a swimming pool and beautiful views of the Mediterranean.

The couple in question are the beautiful Adam and his equally gorgeous wife Anna played respectively by Polish actors Dobromir Dymecki and Agnieszka Zuleska, a blond haired blue eyed couple whose beautiful vacation in Italy takes an unexpectedly weird turn, when the pool boy who comes to fix the villa’s broken swimming pool mysteriously drowns in the pool.

The pool boy’s untimely death sparks a communal interest from the swarthy locals especially the villa’s owner Fabio wonderfully played by Marcello Romolo and the kind police officer, the dashing Riccardo played with zest by Romanian Italian actor Elvis Esposito who appeared in the excellent  Italian series My Brilliant Friend.

As the investigation into the mysterious death continues, the brittle relationship between Adam and Anna begins to unravel. They make friends with a couple that run a diving school Arnaud and Claire, played by French actor Jean-Marc Barr who become famous with the spectacular 1988 film The Big Blue and went on to play Jack Kerouac in Big Sur. His wife Claire is played by French actress Alma Jodborowsky who was last seen in the Netflix series The Serpent opposite Tahar Rahim and Jenna Colman.

Director Aga Woszczynska’s slightly slow moving film Silent Land is similar to Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Oscar nominated film The Lost Daughter although not nearly as good. In both films, characters are placed in foreign lands and begin to unravel emotionally when something menacing occurs.

In Silent Land, it is really the disintegration of Adam and Anna’s relationship that transpires amidst the lustful and hot landscape of Mediterranean Italy, as their Polish sensibilities break down in a foreign environment and their inner selves are revealed.

Silent Land is a fascinating character study and a revealing mystery tale, although the film’s editing could have been more effective.

Despite its drawn out length, this Polish film ironically set in Italy is revealing and fascinating particularly the two main stars that hold the suspense together. Silent Land gets a film rating of 6.5 out of 10 and is recommended viewing as an art house film.

I’m Your Man

Director: Maria Schrader

Cast: Maren Eggert, Dan Stevens, Sandra Huller, Hans Low, Jurgen Tarrach

Film Rating: 7 out of 10

Running Time: 1 hour and 48 minutes

Language: German with English Subtitles

This film is being screened as part of the European Film Festival from 13th to the 23rd October 2022.

German actress Maren Eggert won Best Leading Performance at the 2021 Berlin International Film Festival for her central role as Alma an anthropologist who indulges in a scientific experiment of taking on a humanoid or robotic man as her partner in director Maria Schrader’s fascinating comedy drama I’m Your Man starring the delectable British actor Dan Stevens (Beauty and the Beast, Blithe Spirit, The Man who invented Christmas) as the gorgeous looking rather robotic Tom, complete with startling blue eyes and a good physique.

In a rather strange opening sequence in which Alma is first introduced to Tom at a bizarre social event complete with jazzy music, martini’s, holograms and humanoids, she is not completely taken with the idea of spending time with a robot who is not essentially a pulsating, lustful man, complete with conflicting emotions like aggression, compassion and righteousness.

Director Maria Shrader’s fascinating narrative about the complex relationships between humans and artificial intelligence is intelligently explored in I’m Your Man as Alma eventually agrees to take the beautiful Tom home with her but she has limits about her companionship with this humanoid, not allowing him to share a bed and limiting his capacity for neatness, an algorithm in which he is programmed to provide happiness for the associated human.

When a long awaited Anthropological research paper about love and metaphors in ancient civilizations surrounding Persia is debunked by another author, Alma’s career stumbles and she decides to take Tom out of the city to meet her demented father and sister in the country. There is a stunning scene whereby Tom is wondering around the deer in the park, who are oblivious to any threat as he has no human odour as he is a robot.

On the sexual front, things are far more complex, as Alma discovers that while Tom is programmed to stimulate her, he cannot actually impregnate her. Alma’s initial revulsion to Tom is overcome when loneliness is replaced with curiosity and she does share a bed with Tom. Dan Stevens’s performance as the expressionless Tom is brilliant, creepy and pitch perfect, like the cipher of a man without any of the complexity or emotional nuance.

While Alma decides from an anthropological point of view that it is extremely unwise for humans to become attached to robotic companions, she herself falls into the same trap when she travels to Denmark to reignite a forgotten childhood memory. Director Maria Shrader’s I’m Your Man is a thought-provoking tale about companionship, love and the ethical complications of humans attaching themselves to artificial intelligence.

I’m Your Man gets a film rating of 7 out of 10 and is held together by two brilliant performances from Maren Eggert and Dan Stevens. Recommended viewing.  

Save Sandra

Directors: Jan Verheven & Lien Willaert

Cast: Sven de Ridder, Darya Gantura, Rosalie Charlies, Charles Aitken, Kaisa Hammerlund, Christopher Dane

Running Time: 100 minutes

This film is in Flemish, French, Dutch and English with English Subtitles

Despite this film being a true story, the co-directors of this interesting Belgian film Save Sandra Jan Verheven and Lien Willaert have created quite a schizophrenic narrative.

Is this film about Palliative Care? Is this film about the media? Is this film about the evil multinational drug companies that create orphan drugs to treat rare diseases?

Aspects of Save Sandra are beautifully told, centering on the heartbreaking plight of the parents of six year old girl Sandra who receive the shocking diagnosis that their only daughter has a rare muscular degenerative disease. The parents are a young couple in Belgium, William and Olga Massart played by Belgian actors Sven de Ridder and Darya Gantura and Sandra is played by Rosalie Charles.

Olga is devastated that her daughter could possibly die within a year, while her energetic husband William decides to investigate every drug available to arrest Sandra’s degenerative disease coming across a rare drug which has not been properly patented in Belgium.

William and Olga travel to Copenhagen and then to Rotterdam to plead with the drug company to allow Sandra to qualify for this orphan drug, however the problem lies in the prohibitive cost per dose in Euro’s, which is money the young couple do not have.

To complicate matters further, the original drug company gets bought out by a massive multinational company based in Basingstoke in the United Kingdom. So the film’s action moves from Belgium to the British countryside and the white cliffs of Dover.

William Massart starts raising funds for Sandra’s treatment through various events in Belgium soon attracting media attention and even that of the Belgian Princess. Unfortunately, the more awareness he creates about his daughter, the worse Sandra gets, quickly becoming confined to a wheel chair.

The best parts of the film are the bed side stories that William, a devoted father tells Sandra covering up her muscular disease in fantasy and fairytales about princesses and mermaids, wonderfully illustrated through animation.

Save Sandra is worth seeing although at times the subject matter is heavy going especially regarding the entire story being about a sick child that isn’t going to recover. Unfortunately with two directors, the film lacks a unifying version and becomes a much lesser version of similar films like 1992’s Lorenzo’s Oil or the Oscar winning The Constant Gardener in 2005, which expertly tackled the lack of ethics associated with big multinational drug companies.

Based on a true story, Save Sandra is an interesting Belgian film but it is not brilliant. It gets a film rating of 7 out of 10.