PSIFF 2017 (days 7 and 8)

I am slowing down. Maybe gathering my strength for the finish.  These are not necessarily easy films, at least not for me. In “I am not Madam Bovary”, from China, the title sucked me in.  In this eccentric tale of spousal revenge, Li Xuelian (Fan Bingbing) is tricked by her husband into getting a “fake” divorce for the purpose of securing their dream apartment, with the plan to remarry. When he moves in with another woman whom he marries instead, an enraged Xuelian sets out to have their divorce reversed in order for her to marry him and leave him properly on her own terms. Things don’t go as planned, and she is relentless. The years start to go by, but the tenacious Xuelian is fixed on her goal, resorting to less lawful methods in her relentless pursuit for personal justice. Directed by major Chinese filmmaker Feng Xiaogang (Aftershock), I am Not Madame Bovary is a fearless satire of bureaucracy driven by a radical visual approach-much of the film is composed in a telescopic aspect ratio-and anchored by a superb lead turn by superstar Fan Bingbing.

While I found the film tedious, and the heroine ridiculous, not everyone agrees.  “Sublime visual eloquence… The film is part Scarlet Letter, part Keystone Cops, part miniature landscape painting-all with plot twists worthy of Thomas Hardy.” David D’Arcy, Screen Winner: Best Film, Best Actress, San Sebastian; FIPRESCI Prize, Toronto.

A pleasant but inconsequential fairy tale. Once upon a time, there lived a young woman named Bella Brown. Bella worked in a library, but it was only temporary, because she was writing a book… Well, not writing, exactly, but she meant to, as soon as she discovered what it should be about.  Bella rented a nice house next door to a grumpy old widower, Alfie Stevenson, a miserable and misanthropic chap who routinely berated her about the deplorable state of her garden and refused to accept her crippling fear of flora as an excuse. When Bella had the temerity to hire away his cook simply as a way to circumvent Alfie’s habitual bullying of the poor man, already strained relations reach a nadir. Yet Fate has a way of reconciling even the least congruent personalities…  An English Amélie, but not as good  , this whimsical modern fairytale coasts along on its quirky, oddball inventiveness and the not inconsiderable charm of Jessica Brown Findlay (Lady Sybil in Downton Abbey) as Bella. Tom Wilkinson, as the haughty horticulturalist next door, adds a dash of salt to this sweet treat.

From Denmark, “The Commune” is a loosely inspired by Thomas Vinterberg’s own childhood experiences. Set in the 1970s, when the idea of open marriage, had lot of wannabees, it finds architect Erik, his TV presenter wife Anna and their teenage daughter Freja setting up a commune-mainly but not exclusively with old friends-in the rambling, but expensive, family home Erik’s inherited. Anna, especially, hopes to widen their horizons a little. So be it-though not quite as she envisaged… Crucial to this eminently enjoyable movie is that Vinterberg never patronizes commune ideals as misguided or doomed to failure: for the most part the mood is kept light, portraying the experiment in a positive light. Even when things darken, focusing on the tensions between freedom, self-determination and shared responsibility, Vinterberg favors engrossing, psychologically astute drama over social comment. The performances are excellent, with Trine Dyrholm and Ulrich Thomsen especially impressive as Anna and Erik. If Dyrholm has the more dramatically complex role, Thomsen provides a supremely subtle (and frequently very funny) study of a man trapped in a state of almost constant, quiet and barely concealed confusion.  Winner: Best Actress, Berlin.

From Estonia, whose last two films I really liked, “The Spy and the Poet” does not rise to that level.  A socially awkward secret service agent reluctantly makes the acquaintance of both a beautiful Russian spy and a barely tolerable Estonian modern poet in the absurdly comic The Spy and the Poet. From the producer of Tangerines (PSIFF 2014), this is idiosyncratic, cross-genre filmmaking that provides a sarcastic reflection on the identity and concerns of contemporary Estonia.  As in The Maltese Falcon, complicated crosses and double-crosses occur without it ever being entirely clear to the audience what is happening or why. At the same time, quirky minor characters come and go. But here, the peculiar atmosphere and digs at Estonia’s place in world politics are more to the point than any straightforward drama.

The positioning of post-Soviet Estonia as a western, Scandinavian country is one of the film’s particular concerns, as is the very notion of Estonian identity. In the film’s final frame, the heavily pregnant spy is sitting in a café in an unidentified European country. The bartender pointedly asks, “Is it a boy or a girl?” “It’s an Estonian,” comes the reply.

I have not had much luck with Greek Movies, so “Suntan” was a major disappointment, I could not wait for it to be over  On a Greek island awash in sunshine, the portly, middle-aged Kostis (Makis Papadimitriou, Chevalier) is the lone local doctor, a job that sees him joylessly attending to the bumps and bruises of over-exuberant young holidaymakers. One day, the lonely doctor takes care of a minor injury incurred by the lovely and hard-partying Anna (Elli Tringou). Soon thereafter, the smitten Kostis is playing the role of mascot as he tags along with Anna and her bronzed and sybaritic gang. But being on the periphery is not what Kostis has in mind… 

Almost vicious in the unflinching way he contrasts young and middle-aged bodies, but spiking his taut narrative with a cutting dose of black humor, director Argyris Papadimitropoulos ratchets up the tension as Kostis’s lustful infatuation evolves into a dangerous fixation… “Suntan is a, discomfiting drama… What starts as a keenly observed, almost Chekhovian account of a country doctor-the subtly suffocating aspects of island community life are vividly sketched-turns into a dark, almost excruciatingly unblinking depiction of violent male obsession…” Edward Lawrenson, Sight & Sound Winner: Best International Film, Edinburgh – don’t know what they were thinking of – unless seeing a middle age guy make an idiot of himself is your schtick.