Saturday, August 23, 2008

Day Three - Saturday, August 23

Our first full day at the festival. We even ran into Cinemoo and one of her friends twice as we were either coming or going (we're not seeing anything with her until Wednesday).

Der Verdacht (Suspect)
Felix Hassenfratz - Germany - 25 min.
German, eng. sub.
Trailer
FFM website
Conny’s husband has been accused, but cleared, in a small-town murder. The villagers have prejudged him, and she feels ostracized at church choir, where singing is her only pleasure. Tensions arise in the bakery Conny runs with him, and his petulant and taciturn personality doesn’t help her rising suspicions. This film masters the art of emotional silence, with its brooding, suffocating tones of village life, where gossip is everywhere among sanctimonious neighbours, and no-one’s life is private.

Stellungswechsel (Special escort)
Maggie Peren - Germany - 97 min.
German, eng. sub.
Official website
FFM website
A German Full Monty of sorts. A group of down-on-their luck men scheme to open an escort service for lonely women. There’s Frank, a P.H.D. who’s never had a job, Olli, a chubby owner of a deli on the verge of ruin, and Gy, a womanizing cop. They recruit a young virgin and a laid-off older man to round out their “stable”. False starts, confused addresses and mistaken identities are just some of usual comedic plot devices employed. Amusing, cute, totally predictable, and with the requisite happy ending. But then, it promised no more, and delivered no less.

The Magic Hour

Koki Mitani - Japan - 136 min.
Japanese, eng sub.
Official website
Trailers
FFM website
The title is a reference to the hour before sunset when the light is “best” for filming. A Japanese gangster comedy, with multiple levels of reality, film-studio lots, and self-referential lines, this farce had elements that reminded me of "Broadway Danny Rose", "Play It Again, Sam", any number of mob parodies, and is total send-up of that classic sub-genre of Japanese film, the Yakuza film. Set in a small coastal town run by a crime boss, in a bizarre science fiction-ish way, cell phones and laptops blend in seamlessly with fashion, movie-sets from the noire 1930’s and 40’s. A two-bit actor (played by Koichi Sato) gets to play hit-man in what he thinks is a film, but is really a deadly drama involving bullets, bimbos and bumpkins. Mitani directed the 2006 film Grand Hotel, which I reviewed during the 2006 FFM. The Magic Hour is more stripped down in plot and the size of the cast, more improbable, but got more laughs from me. There are no loose duck jokes in this one, although there’s a duck reference.




No comments: