CPHPIX day 7: Small Homeland, The Quiet Roar, Life of Riley, Story of My Death

Small Homeland (Alessandro Rossetto, Italy, 2013)

Notice the music from 45 sec onwards. It's used very well in the film.

Another film from the New Talent Grand Prix. This one started out a bit violently, with a man and a young woman playing what seems to be half a sex game, half something more unnerving. The young woman takes some money and runs away, we could be in some sort of thriller but then: Lethargy. The title sequence combines aerial shots of the northern Italian landscape with a song for male chorus, and a shot of a cow relieving itself. We are in Veneto, Northern Italy, close to Venice. Luisa and Renata are two young girls working in a modern hotel. Luisa lives with her parents and has a boyfriend, Bilal, from Albania. Renata is more alone. She is the one from the opening scene, and seems to be prostituting herself at times. Luisa helps create a damning tape, in an almost Lynchian scene. There are aspects of plot in the first part of the film.

But boy, this film goes meandering. I liked that. To begin with, the plot is just subservient to scenes of everyday life: The two girls shop for clothes, Luisa's father goes to a political meeting with a group seeking indepence for the Veneto region. Most, but not all, of these scenes are very beautifully filmed, but still feel real. The nighttime photography, of which there is a lot, is amazing. There is a sense of a dead-end region, of recession and small hopes for the future. Luisa's father is mad at immigrants. And then, a long interlude finds Luisa and Bilal travelling to Venice for a few days to help Bilal's cousin escape immigration police. This is a long stretch of film, with only two of the characters of the film, which seemingly has nothing to do with the main story. But it has some of the best characterwork, and another beautiful night-time scene with dancing at a small-town festival. Line-dancing has to be the dumbest thing ever.

And then. We're back. What little plot was brought into place like, an hour before, is suddenly brought into play again. And the film, slowly and methodically, becomes the semi-high-stakes drama the beginning threatened it would be. It's a brilliant construction, and the slowness pays off in the final moment. Boy, this film nails it's final moments. It could have had the feel of a Greek tragedy, or of Romeo and Juliet. The klichéd version. Instead, it brings us to exactly the point where we cannot but accept the brokenness of the people in the region. And then it stops. Bravo!

The Quiet Roar (Henrik Hellström, Sweden, 2014)

Looking at Scandinavian cinema, you would probably be surprised to learn that it's a region with mountains. Swedish cinema is famous for Bergman's Farö-films, Lukas Moodyson's small towns, and cities like Göteborg, Stockholm or Wallander's Ystad. Fjords, perfect for nude swimming. The best Scandinavian mountain-film I've seen in recent years was the Norwegian film The Troll Hunters. That one remembered that parts of Scandinavia is still very much wilderness. Henrik Hellström's film is first and foremost valuable as the best mountain film anyone's made in ages.

The plot is a bit silly and pretentious: An old woman named Marianne is terminally ill, and to take her mind off things she takes a drug, which causes her to flash back to her youth and time spent in the mountains of Norway. That's it. It's all about the look. Oh, those mountains. Caught in crisp hi-def digital, it's sublime, rugged cliffs meeting gray and threatening clouds. And in the distance, a glacier. Streaks of ice. The modern wooden cabin with panoramic glass windows. This is worth the price of admission.

Marianne was depressed. She felt so sad, but was never able to tell. Her marriage fell apart, and she ended up not seeing her kids. The mood of the film is dark and heavy, and the dialogue, between young Marianne, old Marianne, and her husband, is a bit writerly and unnatural. Also, some might be put off by the pretentious-ness. I was captivated, but I did notice in retrospect that an insane part of the film was in slow-motion... Make of that what you want. It's a simple film, which simply manages to use a landscape we don't see enough of artistically. As such, it's a reminder of how rugged Scandinavia can actually be. And as a Scandinavian, I love that. So many boring small towns and middle class problems. God, it's good to see something sublime every now and then.

Life of Riley (Alain Resnais, France, 2014)

Alain Resnais is the Maestro'est of the Maestro's on the program. By far. His career stretches back to short documentaries in the fourties, one of which, on Van Gogh, won an Oscar in 1950. His trifecta of early masterpieces, Hiroshima Mon Amour, Last Year at Marienbad and Muriel, will keep him at a central place in the film-history books for all time. And his career after that, though less acclaimed, is filled with different styles, different experiments, different kinds of film. This year at Berlin, three weeks before his death at the age of 91, Life of Riley won the Alfred Bauer Award for 'opening new perspectives on cinematic art.' That is pretty well done. Unfortunately, the film doesn't really deserve that award.

A lot of later Resnais was inspired by theater, and Life of Riley belongs to a subset of four films, adapted from the British playwright Alan Aycbourn, along with Private Fears in Public Places and the diptych Smoking/Non-Smoking. Of these films I've only seen Smoking, but my guess is that the jury hasn't done much better. Because Life of Riley is pretty much like Smoking. We're talking a stylized, theatrical version of cinema, with typical Britishes humor and a story of people in small towns dreaming of getting somewhere else. While Smoking used model landscapes in the background, in Life of Riley the backgrounds are painted cloth. Nearly every scene in both films takes place in gardens, and there's the same sort of painted establishing shots, and written explanations on the development of time. It looks like a development of an earlier theme not a 'new perspective'. Nothing neccessarily wrong with that, though.

The plot is simple: Three couples react to the news, that school-teacher George Riley is terminally ill with cancer. It riles up the past, makes them reconsider the present and the future. Riley is never seen. Actually, except for the last scene of the film, only six actors are in the film, though they are constantly phoning or shouting at people outside of the frame. It's all playfully irreverent and amusing, but I still feel like there's something I don't get. I don't get the fetishisation of Northern England, which is really what one has to call it. Maps, roads, small houses, cottages. I don't get what Resnais sees in it, but he seems obsessed. I don't get why Resnais, this grand master of cinema, who worked with Duras and Robbe-Grillet in the early days of his carreer, has made four Aycbourn features, and why he was apparantly preparing a fifth when he died. It's fine, but...

It's quite fun looking at it in relation with the rest of his filmography, though. People might see the film as obsessed with death - and the final frame of the film seems very grim in retrospect - but it's not something new. His first films were obsessed with trauma from the unacknowledged dead, of Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Nevers, Algeria. If anything, he became more okay with death as he came closer to it. In the earlier features, the trauma of dead people are holding people down, it's what they have to escape. In this film, the spectre of death opens up the structures in the group. It riles up the past, opens perspectives for the future. The future lacune where Riley is now in the present becomes an escape route through which the characters seek to rearrange their lives. It's almost like a liberation.

Overwhelmed with sadness over the news of Riley's illness, one of the characters says: It is always those full of life who die young. The people who get old are boring and dull (quoted from memory) In Resnais' case, that is quite obviously wrong. This is a film full of life, in bright and glorious colours, with little stylistic flourishes like a series of monologues delivered in close-up against a white screen with black scratches. It is really strange comparing this film to the stark black-and-white of Hiroshima Mon Amour, made 55 years ago. Life of Riley is a lark, a very minor movie. I can't find anything in this film I haven't seen before in Resnais. Still, a pretty fun way to go out. RIP.

Story of My Death (Albert Serra, Spain, 2013)

Boy, this was boring. The plot is Casanova vs Dracula, how boring can it be? You'd be surprised. 148 min with almost nothing happening, people talking, eating, sitting around. Grainy pictures, lit by candlelight.  People were falling asleep in the theatre. This is probably the film I've seen so far, which is most an aquired taste. If you've read my other writeups of this festival, you might think that it sounds like my kind of film. And yeah, you'd be right.

More than most trailers, this captures the essence of the film quite well.

This is not a film to be understood, this is a film to be felt. The mood is so sad. Casanova spends the first part of the film talking about his sense of a coming revolution, it is quite clear that he has become old and a has-been. But he can't stop living, eating and laughing at everything. There is litterally a long scene of him laughing while shitting. It is a sad laugh, though, one I can't get out of my head. The first long stretch takes place at Casanova's castle, until we move into the country, where Casanova and his servant Pompeu settles down at a farmer's house. This is where they come across an old, bearded man, with intense eyes, who's mainly around at night. And some bored girls, who's drawn to all the visitors.

I was constantly drifting throughout this film, I didn't get that much of what they were talking about. But I don't think it's important. What's important is the sense of sadness and I did feel that. Such overwhelming sadness. The candlelit pictures are incredible, looking a bit like Kubrick's Barry Lyndon. Casanova's laughter is so striking, and so sad. He is an old fool, if he just decided to retire and be old, he would be okay. But he can't stop living, lusting, etc. And it makes him seem so sad, even while fornicating with beautiful young women. And then there's Dracula. Who can't stop killing. The two characters really seem like opposites, life vs death.

Nearly nothing happens, and I'll bet I've forgotten quite a lot of scenes. But when something all of a sudden happened, 90 minutes into the runtime, it gave me a shock like I've seldom gotten from cinema. Because I was in a state of half-sleep. And the dark and disturbing parts of the second half hit that much harder in this kind of cinema. I don't know if this is a 'good film'. All I know is that thinking back on the experience, I get a churning feeling in my stomach. I find it disturbing how much certain aspects of this film is seared into my mind. And my gut. This is not for anyone, but if you're in the right mood, and willing to lower your defences, it cuts like a knife.