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Reviews
La terrazza (1980)
A good Scola and a great cast
Good opportunity to see once again Scola's great sense of criticism and love for Italian contemporary society, mixing in a tragicomic way politics, middle-age crisis, failing marriage, love, infidelity, suicide, friendship, the rôle of intellectuals. His great ensemble direction rivals Robert Altman's. And just have a look at that cast - Mastroianni (effective as always), Trintignant (always so surprising), Tognazzi (in charge of his difficult rôle), Gassman (what a superb actor!), Reggiani (moving), the lovely Stefania Sandrelli and a débutante very young Marie Trintignant. For those who like Italian cinema and politically oriented films with a touch of humor. 8/10
La grande bouffe (1973)
Watch a unique movie, nothing like you'll ever see
If you want to see what freedom of artistry and wild imagination is all about, don't miss this movie. It's a one of a kind and leaves you wondering - why don't they make movies like these anymore? OK, so it's grosse, and anarchic, and discomforting. But it's also a brilliant tragicomic story about four middle-aged friends who lock themselves away in a country house and feast literally to death. Plus there's this unbeatable quartet of actors - Mastroianni, Piccoli, Noiret and Tognazzi - playing roles with their own Christian names, which says a lot about artistic honesty. A pity there are no more Marco Ferreris around. 9/10
Ratas, ratones, rateros (1999)
If you want to know what life in a big Latin-American city today is all about, don't miss this movie!
I live in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, South America,city of sunshine, gorgeous beaches, green mountains, beautiful girls, the Corcovado, the Sugar Loaf, samba, bossa nova and soccer. I live in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, South America, city of widespread violence, corruption, poverty, slums (favelas), endemic deseases, abandoned children, drug dealing, gun traffic, underemployment, uneffective state policies on public health, security or education.
"Rodents" takes place in Quito, Ecuador. It could easily take place in Rio, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Bogotá, Caracas, Lima. It could never take place in Tokyo, Los Angeles, Stockholm, London, Calcutta, Munich, Zurich, Melbourne, Shanghai. Viewers from any big city in the world will surely relate to the shocking topics masterfully shown on the screen concerning violence, abandoned kids, drugs, messed up family relations, the poverty-ridden underworld. But what only Latin-Americans will painfully recognize as very much their own malaises are the catholic guilt, the thriving macho way of life, the contempt for women, the black humor under tragic circumstances, the poor kids' absence of future, the banality of life and death, the old well-marked social and economical hierarchy that has been skillfully preserved all through the "transition" from autocratic to "democratic" régimes.
Well, that's the result of 500 years of political and cultural annihilation: at first, the extermination of nearly all the native original population; yesterday, the fascist and corrupt dictatorships preserving time after time the same rich families and the same poor millions; today, the gradual extinction of whatever forms of art and culture we tried to produce as we are permanently shoved up with media-induced "first world values".
"Rodents" belongs to a great line of Latin-American masterpieces about social and moral abandon experienced by youth in big cities. To name but a few: Buñuel's "Los Olvidados" (Mexico, 1950); Nelson Pereira dos Santos' "Rio 40 Graus" (Brazil, 1955); Hector Babenco's "Pixote-A Lei do Mais Fraco" (Brazil, 1981); and even in Barbet Schroeder's irregular but powerful "La Virgen de los Sicarios/Our Lady of Assassins" (Colombia, 2000). Even in movies that are near in spirit and form - like Mathieu Kassovitz "La Haine" (France, 1995) and Larry Clark's "Kids" (US, 1995), we Latin-Americans can detect a world of difference. Or rather, "two" worlds of difference: the difference between living in the "first" and in the "third" world.
"Rodents" is an amazing first feature film, with knockout performances by the two leads, well-written, and most important of all: it manages to deliver a powerful political and social statement while making us care a lot about those characters up there. It also allows viewers from anywhere in the world to have a clue of what it means to be a Latin-American living in a big Latin-American city today. Bravo!
He liu (1997)
Watch it and enjoy it-it's great!
Tsai Ming-Liang offers viewers in "The River" an honest chance to take it or leave it right from the first sequence. If you make it through and enjoy (or rather, are puzzled by) this first sequence - a film shooting in a river, depicted in a long, almost real-time pace - you will for sure be caught in his stream, because what follows is simply great, original, surprising, offbeat, funny, alarming and often mind-boggling.
Tsai is a Taiwan filmmaker whose cinematic grammar apparently owes a lot to Westerners - especially to Europeans. You can spot Truffaut in his love for his characters, in the way he always casts his favorite actor Lee kang-Sheng much in the way Truffaut did with Jean-Pierre Léaud, and in the mysterious and surprising ways love expresses itself in his films.
You can feel the influence of Antonioni in the long sequences without dialogue or music, in the urban chaos leading to lack of communication between the characters, in the forces of nature (the heavy constant rain, the omnipresence of water in this case) responding to "civilization's" abuse - the echologic chaos.
You can feel a touch of the Godard of "Le Mépris" in the total lack of communication between very close people (the couple in Godard, the family here) and the kind of non-conform sexuality of the Pasolini of "Teorema" (sexual repression and catharsis among the family members, in both cases).
But Tsai has got something all his own. I've seen now all his feature films and it's very impressive to see how he has developed a language of his own, through his imagery, his pace, his actors' performances, his conflicts, his endings. He is sure to always include unforgettable sequences (here, for sure, the sequence in the sauna between father and son) that will haunt you, delight you, disgust you, move you and stay with you long after you've left the theatre. That's a rare accomplishment in any visual arts these days.
For me, "The River" is surely Tsai's masterpiece to date, a film that flows slowly, harmoniously, hauntingly, effortlessly to its destination, catches you in its stream, and leads you to a free-meaning ending - which, in this case, is something warmly welcome.