PSIFF2018 – Day Two
In “Happy End” from France Michael Haneke’s direction brings a diamond-cutter’s precision, a wicked jolt of black humor, and a startling finale that’s 100-proof Haneke. As the Guardian review states this is a blunt, rasping comedy to be found in its thematic grimness. The plot begins with 13 year-old Eve , who is forced to stay with her father Thomas, in Calais, with his new wife and their young child after her mother overdoses. Also living in the Laurent family home is Thomas’s sister, severe real estate developer Anne (Isabelle Huppert), and their depressed father Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant), who at a robust 84 is “too healthy” to qualify for the assisted suicide he seeks, and so must make alternative arrangements. Eve moves quietly, watching the adults around her.
One of the most interesting things about Happy End is the way Haneke’s camera captures the act of watching; always interested in technology and surveillance, here he often favours fixed perspectives, trailing his characters over the shoulder or looking with detachment from an unmoving vantage point. A fist-fight plays out from a voyeuristic, clinical remove, while the film’s opening takes place via a series of darkly funny Snapchat-style videos. Eve discovers her father’s laptop and a series of sexually explicit messages on a Facebook-style website.
It’s pretty upsetting stuff, but we’re encouraged to laugh, and to see the Laurents as a parody of bourgeois selfishness (Haneke inserts BBC News footage to highlight how glaringly unaware the family are of the refugee crisis taking place on their doorstep). There is a magnificent final set piece filmed on an iPhone.
“Youth” is Chinese box-office hit from Feng Xiaogang’s epic, over sentimentalized portrait of change is thoroughly engrossing and consummately moving. Chinese history from the mid-1970s to the mid-’90s is c
aptured in the story of the People’s Liberation Army dance troupe and the tribulations of young female dancer Xiaoping (Miao Miao).
The pristine surroundings of their training center and dreamy soft focus that accompanies the young dancers whenever they rehearse revolutionary ballets exude a rarefied atmosphere that reinforces how privileged the troupe is, shielded from hunger, violence and back-breaking labor at the height of the Cultural Revolution. And yet, a hierarchy based on political pedigree is firmly in place in the so-called classless society. Shuwen (Li Xiaofeng) the daughter of a general and hospital supervisor, is the queen bee. Dingding (Yang Caiyu) scores with her looks, while Mongolian Drolma (Sui Yuan) plays her ethnic minority card. The plot segus to the Sino-Vietnam border wars in the 80s. Recalling his civil war drama “Assembly,” Feng shoots the battle scenes as propulsive spectacles of bloodshed, making one realize what an idyllic bubble the protagonists’ vocation was.
The film’s ubiquitous display of military regalia and the characters’ awed veneration of the PLA ostensibly smacks of jingoism, but the colossal human sacrifices depicted, and eventual unceremonious phasing out of the troupe as their propagandist function wanes, demonstrate Feng’s subtle departure from the conventions of “main rhythm” (government endorsed) cinema.
Production values are generous without seeming overly lavish – corny, but probably worth seeing.
“Woodpeckers” from Dominican Republic Dreadlocked and handsome Dominican-Haitian Julián begins a jail sentence for petty theft inside the notorious Najayo prison just outside Santo Domingo. While navigating the indignities, corruption and everyday violence from both guards and fellow inmates, he becomes immersed in the system of “Woodpeckers,” the unique sign language the male prisoners use to communicate with women in the adjacent penitentiary just over 400 feet away.
Standing in windows or out in prison yards, love – and heated liaisons – blossom. Julián’s entanglement with one female inmate, Yanelly is the fuse that ignites the events of Carpinteros, which was shot on location at the actual prison using real inmates for all but the lead roles. Director José María Cabral, whose previous work was the Dominican Republic’s official submission for the Foreign Language Oscar, delivers a knockout film, full of atmosphere, sexuality, and grit.Woodpeckers“.
