PSIFF 2016 – day two (Three films)
Film 4 from Netherlands “Schneider vs. Bax”: Since I liked Borgman, PSIFF2013, by Alex van Warmerdam, I had to see this one. The intended victim, Bax, is a middle-aged novelist living in a secluded lakeside cabin out in the marshes. But for the assassin, Schneider – with cute blond wife and adora
ble two blond children, takes on his children’s birthday routine assignment to kill Bax described to Schneider as a child killer when he was briefed, Bax (played by the filmmaker) turns out to be in the same line of work, and more than capable of defending himself. There are other complications too. He’s not alone. In fact Bax is busily trying to shoo off his young lover before his grown daughter shows up. Then there’s the park ranger who keeps popping up at inopportune moments.
Mischievously funny and deliciously slippery, this wildly entertaining black comedy takes no prisoners.
Film 5 from Poland “Body” –Three characters deal with bodies in different ways in the third feature from Polish director Malgorzata Szumowska, who won the Silver Bear for Best Director in Berlin for this film. A sad-sack coroner spends his days dealing with corpses, though he seems interested so little in life or his job that he hardly notices when one of his prospective “clients” actually still seems to be alive. The man’s daughter has an eating disorder and thus ravages her own body, while the girl’s therapist has just discovered she might be able to communicate with those who no longer have a body: the recently deceased. 
The well acted film is that it’s not a grim drama, or at least not only, as Szumowska’s wry sense of humor keeps creeping into scenes when you least expect it. Along the way, it investigates not only a trio of characters, soon joined by a fourth (and disembodied) presence, but also the country from which they hail.
Film 6 is so far my festival favorite, “Eisenstein in Guanajuato“.In 1931, the great Russian director Sergei Eisenstein, after a disastrous interlude in Hollywood, at age 33 drove to the Mexican town of Guanajuato to film Que Viva Mexico. There, the director of Potemkin and October: 10 Days That Shook the World experienced 10 lusty days that shook his own world to its core, when he fell into a passionate affair with his handsome, married Mexican guide. 
Peter Greenaway, back in the original form, literally lets it all hang out in this wild, raunchy and baroque celebration of his cinematic idol, bravely played by Finnish actor Elmer Bäck, who cuts an almost clown-like ADHD figure in his white suit and red suspenders. The director of The Thief, The Cook, His Wife & Her Lover explores his favorite themes – sex and death – with his usual stylistic bravado, reveling in artifice, outrage and a heady stream of ideas. This one is not for the cinematic faint-of-heart, or at least those put off by anal sex. Visually stunning.
“Greenaway has wrought an outrageously unconventional and deliriously profane biopic that could take decades to be duly appreciated” Peter Debruge, Variety
