Reviews

It is good to find disenchanted Reviews, as well as enthusiastic ones. I would only add my disgust at the portrayal of the conduct of the ballet-master", and the ugly image of the world of ballet with which we are presented.

We may watch the film in order to be scared, and admire the way revulsion is generated: gratuitous blood-flow and vampiric injuries, retching and vomiting (plus drug-consumption and its immediate uncivilised effects). But the whole is a very distasteful glimpse of how such a leading company and its stars are managed, by the director: vulgar, crude, "wily and twisted", as DonFishies described him, in his enthusiastic Review.

The film may be acclaimed as "Sensational", but it is certainly a revolting picture, seeking and projecting a sick vision of art.

If the gratuitous violence, bestowing of treasured flick-knives (for use), elaborate but inexplicable tattooing, accompanied by barely intelligible dialogue (in Siberian English?) creates a film for you, good luck! in isolation, there are striking, almost self-indulgent, dramatically lit and contrasty shots. The Italian makers have deceived themselves if they thought they had made a film. It will make the viewer keep clear of Siberia, and value his own education, wherever else obtained. The disruption and lack of continuity incline the poor viewer to fast-forward in search of a coherent scene, or... the End.

Only the printed lines of a short Preface give any coherent account of the situation. Jump-cuts, wilful lack of continuity, and the odd extraneous clip (e.g. Fall of the Berlin Wall), added to the trivial dialogue, increase the incoherence.

The Director is too obsessed with her theme of hard-done-by/unfortunate young woman, and the pathos of her aggrieved face, even when her struggle is only with pedalling a bicycle uphill-—(overlong shots of this), as emblematic of her hardship!

The first shot in the film: Angèle engaged in a certain "activity" up against a wall, with a young man who gives her a Chinese Action Man, after pulling up his jeans, and is never seen again. She appears as a sullen tart, whose unsavoury past is only later hinted at by fragments of information. She is authorised to leave a Young Offenders' hostel when she tells the officer she has got herself a job (helping Tony, the charitable fisherman whose mother is recently widowed).

Her entirely graceless, furtive behaviour is further displayed when we find she has just stolen a bicycle; then she tries to steal a smart dress from a shop, and maintains she has to go and collect her son. This proves to be a charming 10 year old who has naturally become distanced while she was in prison, and she is fearful/embarrassed about confronting him. Apart from a violent demo by fishermen v. police, everyone is obliging: Angèle remains sullen and aggrieved.

In spite of all, there is a happy ending! (She marries Tony, the boy is a page, ex-in-laws are reconciled.)

The Interviews with star and director prove a further disappointment: trying to reply, haltingly, in English, to very banal questions is a daunting task; it only reveals their mutual satisfaction, as if the theme and the beautiful face were sufficient to carry the story through. (275 words)

It is indeed "slow", and perhaps a little more movement in the sound-track during the first 30 seconds would reduce anxiety for the viewer who is not prepared for the SILENCE, which the Director (in his excellent interview) rightly regards as more eloquent than words. And what eloquent silences, in contrast to the violent action and sound-tracks of popular films! How else than with silences can one feel and think? and study the expressive faces of the oppressed and anguished Elena, and the cold Vladimir?

Of the three generations--grandmother, son/daughter, and grandson--which of them is not dysfunctional (in that cold, scientific term)? How strongly the viewer's pity for our (relatively) affluent contemporary citizens is generated by this painful domestic tale!

Bad Lieutenant (Director Abel Ferrara) "90 mins, starring Harvey Keitel, NY cop,… hopelessly addicted to drugs, gambling, and sex, in this intense, hallucinatory portrait of sin and redemption…"

So says the blurb. I found it a revolting, excessively drawn-out spectacle of human degradation, which would lead one to conclude that the inhabitants of New York are living in hell. The dialogue of police and low-life characters is snarled, slurred, or Spanish; unintelligible except for the most frequently uttered verb (4 letters, of course). The demonstrations of how to absorb drugs, heating, snorting, and carefully injecting them, might be useful to the uninitiated; any benefits can barely be suggested by photographs, but the visible sordidness could serve as aversion therapy, if druggies were merely treated to an enforced viewing (twice in succession) of this 90-minute record of depravity. Love-less, anomalous sexual acts add a little to this disgust. Keitel's performance might be something of a virtuoso act, but there is no purgation, repentance or redeeming feature. The sub-human "cop" , in his painfully prolonged howl and wail, cannot move one to pity, or even terror. Any suggestion of "redemption" is too brief, unconvincing, and unmerited to emerge. A civilised judgment would be: sordid in the extreme.

La Nana (The Maid) Chilean film 2009 A superior "home movie" in every sense. Painful! Painful... for outsiders who don't want to see families singing several separate "Happy Birthdays", even in Spanish; or to suffer the spectacle of spoilt children, or of a harrowed, neurotic aging house-servant (in an admittedly virtuoso performance of prolonged misery by Catalina Saavedra).

Only the mother of the family is given a sustained characterisation; father and children generally obnoxious, and shallowly portrayed. Even the framing and sequence of indoor shots is a trial for the spectator. Painful. Might increase one's sympathy for domestic servants, but is early-morning jogging (the long closing shot) really the answer?

The novice priest declares himself unable to pursue his calling, given the sinfulness that he speaks of in his parish. But, from the start, he is pouring out his feelings of inadequacy without our seeing anything that he has had to face. It is all mere talk; and his near hysteria might be explained when, after he has collapsed (in a faint, or a fit?), his sympathetic and humble spiritual adviser uncovers the blood-spattered chest--the consequence of his self-flagellation, of which we witness another bout later. Is he fanatical, or mad?

We see nothing of the parochial trials, and sickness, endured by Bernanos' Curé de campagne (Robert Bresson's film), faced with hostility and mockery from his villagers. The two traumatic events (Mouchette cutting her throat, and a dying boy "coming to life" in the priest's arms) shock us, but do not form an integral part of the curate's spiritual day-to-day experience. They are merely sensational. Depardieu is not convincing as an agonised believer. Yet, in the spontaneous sincerity of his accompanying interview, he appears to draw inspiration from Augustine!

Few prosaic settings could arouse better the "pity" for helpless mortals that Aristotle called the essence of the tragic spectacle. The film is exquisitely composed, in the sordid type of setting that too many urban youths, unhelped by parents, are faced with. The Director's artistic reticence, and the unbroken silences where we are moved to share the mental processes, and anguish, of the two girls, cause this film to provoke that "pitiful" purification which is enriching for the spectator, and could be invaluable for adolescents on the verge of... "life" in our time.

Young men who are able to empathise with the tragic situations that Isabelle and Marie are in should form a richer sympathy for the lives of girls that they encounter.

Among all the qualities of this honourable and distinguished film, one should mention the SILENCES, in which the viewer's imagination can "READ" for him/herself, in different ways, the deeper levels of mental turmoil and sensitivity which are often excluded from rowdy, sensational films.

Such silences leave room for subsequent discussion, among fellow-viewers, of the possible, probable, and improbable feelings of the characters, their motivation, and evaluation of their conduct and attitudes. With the increasing necessity of "governmental" supervision of the conduct and habits of a population, the attendant threats to human autonomy must be constantly be realised.