PSIFF 2016 – Days 5 & 6 (five films)

Film 12 was “The Assassin” from Taiwan – if you’re thinking another Chinese Kung Fu western, you would be almost there, except for the magnificent scenery and sets shot and shown in 35mm. In 9th-century China, during a time of political unrest, a beautiful woman (Shu Qi), trained in the arts of swordsmanship, is sent to her home province on a lethal mission. Her assignment: to assassinate Tian Ji’an, the province’s military governor. He is also her cousin, and her childhood love. Can she follow through on her task? This is the total of the plot of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s first foray into the martial arts genre, but audiences anticipating an action film should think again. This is a film of stillness, long takes, billowing curtains and elliptical storytelling. It is a film of ravishing beauty, a meticulous and painterly recreation of Tang Dynasty China that seems to exist outside of time. Don’t worry if the “plot” is sometimes hard to follow: just immerse yourself in an exquisite sensual experience. Beauty is its own and in this film the only  reward.  “It is as gorgeous as anything you are likely to encounter on a movie screen or a museum wall. Hou […] is a master at imagining the past.” A.O. Scott, The New York Times 

Film 13 from Poland, by always experimental and edgy Skolimowski, was “11 Minutes”: Skolimowski may be 77, but you wouldn’t know it from this flamboyant, energetic exercise in pure suspense, a technical tour-de-force that plays with film form as if the medium is still new. The story covers just 11 minutes on a certain afternoon, and what’s more, apparently in real time, albeit played and replayed from many different vantage points (and with some sleight of hand) as a not entirely random cross-section of urbanites converge on a fateful hotel plaza. Among them: an actress auditioning for a Hollywood filmmaker; her jealous husband; a reckless courier; a disgraced hotdog vendor; a window cleaner; a dog; and a gaggle of hungry nuns. Skolimowski tracks their movements from myriad visual sources, including smartphones, surveillance cameras, webcams and audition tapes, choreographing chaos (or is it destiny?) with mischievous glee and implacable precision. “My focus was on seeing my characters through a continuous series of almost abstract moments, as accidental and banal—or poignant—as only life can be.” Jerzy Skolimowski  Since I think you may have to see it twice (83 minutes) to appreciate the fast moving artistry, I plan to see it again.

From Bulgaria came gem 14, “Judgement”, from the director of my own favorite The World is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner. a winner for narrative a few years ago.  This film affirms that this director knows how to tell a story in rhythm openning layers and revealing the total reality.This is a timely film, even if it predates the current refugee crisis playing out in Europe, this drama centers on Mityo, who lives in a small, impoverished Bulgarian village close to the border with Turkey and Greece. When Mityo loses his job, it is a heavy blow. Now he has lost everything that matters to him: his wife, his work and his son Vasko’s confidence and is about to lose his home. Out of desperation, Mityo agrees to smuggle illegal immigrants from Syria into Bulgaria through a steep mountain pass. Soon, the revelation of a terrible secret forces Mityo to face the past. On his final trip, Mityo is left at the mercy of Judgment Mountain. Can he be forgiven for a terrible sin committed during his military service 25 years earlier? Has he left it too late to make amends for the crimes of the past?

From Poland comes gem 15, “Summer Solstice” takes place in southeast Poland, I assume SE within the 1944 boundaries and not 1921. Summer Solstice provides a searing portrait of the summer of 1943 in provincial SE Poland under German occupation near Chelmno (Colm) killing field/camp. The story unfolds through the eyes of two 17-year-old boys, the Polish railway worker Romek and the German military policeman Guido, who both experience a shocking loss of innocence. In his off hours, Romek roams the train tracks and the nearby forests to scavenge goods dropped from trains or by any escapees that might be useful for himself or his mother, but he doesn’t seem to think about to whom these items once belonged or why they are abandoned. Then one day he comes across Bunia, a young Warsaw woman, presumably Jewish, who has escaped from a transport and begs for his help. Director Michal Rogalski, who won the Polish edition of the Hartley-Merrill competition with this complex and provocative script, also displays a keen visual sense that makes clever use of contrast. The fields of corn and hay that appear so idyllic and peaceful in the film’s opening moments turn into a shocking scene of carnage later. I think the portrait it paints about relationships and conditions under German occupation is accurate, if rarely explored in the hundreds of films about WW II.

The third consecutive gem from France/Belgium and Film 16 was a secret screening, so under original rules I could tell you nada, nicht, rien – but alas a new distributor and the rules have changed and they want publicity and this film is totally timely and will leave you talking – “Les Cowboys” and it seems there is a community in France that likes to play western, with American and Texas flags, line dancing etc., and it with them that the movie starts. Could be paired with most recent ouvre from Michel Houellebecq when on the date of the Charlie Hebdo shooting, the novel Soumission was published. The book describes a future situation in France (2022), when a Muslim is ruling the country according to Islamic law. On the same date, a cartoon of Houellebecq appeared on the cover page of Charlie Hebdo and the caption, “The Predictions of Wizard Houellebecq.”.^[7]  Well this film doesn’t go that far, but in some way hints on the possibility. Per Variety whose edited review segments follow, the story begins in 1995. when we meet Alain (Francois Damiens) at a cowboy fairs, where he climbs onstage and sings “Tennessee Waltz” for a crowd of encouraging friends, then descends to share a dance with his 16-year-old daughter, not realizing that this will be their last waltz. By the end of the evening, she will have vanished without explanation.At first, Alain assumes that she has been kidnapped. He loses his temper with the police and tries to intimidate her Muslim b.f.’s family, but a letter arrives a few days later in which she explains that she has left, begging her father not to look for her. Of course, Alain refuses to let her go and instead escalates his search in an intense and single-minded way, and there’s no telling what he’s capable of once he loses his temper.  Alain is always a step or two behind his daughter, across borders and over time. The gaps grow wider and more frustrating to follow: We see him in Syria, and learn that he was in Yemen the year before.