Force Majeure (2014) or How Fragile we Are

Turist, Force Majeure or Snow Therapy? Seems like each country translates film titles to something a tad more exotic than it's used to: English speaking countries promoted the film under the title Force Majeure, so that's how we know it and that's how the film got international acclaim in too many festivals. In the Golden Globes, too. In France, the blatantly ironic (and my favourite) given title was Snow Therapy. While in their native Sweden, artists remain practical: Turist was good enough.

I want to become a Lobster, he said

Hotel Manager: Have you thought of what animal you’d like to be if you end up alone?

David: Yes, a lobster.

Hotel Manager: A lobster is an excellent choice.

[More quotes here]

Once upon a time, there was a Man-Who-Wanted-to-Become-a-Lobster. Later on, he had to skip it and run away instead. That  happened when the Woman-With-No-Feelings killed his brother who had the form of a dog, because he could not find a partner in forty-five days. She killed him with endless kicks on the head, the belly, all over really. Her right shoe, white sock and leg was full of blood to the height of the knee when she announced him her cruel deed.

The Man-Who-Wanted-to-Become-a-Lobster decided to run away to the woods after the assassination of his brother, who was a dog, from the Woman-With-No-Feelings. He has lost his chance to become a lobster, an animal he so much liked, because of its blue, aristocratic blood. If found alive after lying about his own absence of feelings, he would be turned into the animal nobody wants to turn into (which animal is that, I cannot divulge). That's why the Man-Who-Wanted-to-Become-a-Lobster  run away from the perverse dating retreat.

Nevertheless, perversity followed him to the woods. Where the Man-Who-Wanted-to-Become-a-Lobster found more loners who did not want to turn into any animal at all. They only asked for the freedom to dance to electro music with trees as dancing partners, masturbate in solitude and hunt for their food, then eat it after killing it with their bare hands. The I-Wanna-Stay-Free people, were not so free after all, they were just mating-free. It's hard to explain, because they were not exactly mating-free either, they were actually not allowed to mate. And that's exactly when it happened.

Two days, One night (2013)

My inability to construct a decent written flow these days (but, I will still try). Out of impatience to say it all without taking too long. Hinders the potentially elegant style of a journalistic text and promotes the fragmented, goal-oriented style of business plans. Bullet points, short descriptions, absence of rhetoric devices. Words are just the means of conveying meaning these days. Beauty in the words is a luxury. And luxury costs money.

The European co-production industry boards a Night Train to Lisbon (2011)

Sometimes, watching films is bloody hard. Does it ever happen to you, as well? Do you sometimes get the feeling that certain films don't make any sense -from the point of view of the industry insider or film studies professional at least? Have you never wondered why a film got made (or, to elaborate, why such an amount of money had to be spent for a disastrous, tasteless result), why the star-cast ever got involved and so on so forth? What I get as an intuitive answer to my questions is rather ludicrous set of two things: there is a certain budget to be spent on film production -I'm mainly talking about (largely) subsidised European film production here- and an inability to spot/dig out/scout  new talents.

Sick and tired of the European co-production industry -mostly deviating from its target I'd like to propose something radical: we should get over with productions based-on-flimsy-scripts-based-on historical-events  once and for all. Now, really, we've seen enough Napoleons, and Tsars and Dukes and Duchesses. We ought to engage a bit with now-ness, the current affairs, the pressing socio-political issues, create fictional brave new heroes; and to do that efficiently we should look for good writers. Ah, let me not forget: we ought to stop entirely the sloppy process of re-writing a best-seller into a script, and then off to the screen. Why? Because, while writing a certain type of book is not such a hard thing for gifted individuals (as the only official species of the elaborate spoken language, we are, after all, acquainted to the rules of story-telling more than anything), drafting any written version to be translated into visual material is not half as easy as it seems.

The Double Life of Veronique (1991)

It was a warm summer night and we decided to go to the movies. Open air cinema, in fact. It was summer, we were two, kind of together, kind of happy, things were more or less allright. It was not back then, not when the film was released, it was only this summer. This very summer, the summer hardly a month away. We watched Veronique and her double life, we said, oh, that was a strange film and that was all. We didn't give it a lot of thought afterwards. It was a strange film and that was all, but we were happy we had watched it because we always wanted to do so.

The Double Life of Veronique (1991) is a film where two girls look alike. One lives in Paris, the other in Warsaw and they feel each other's presence in a way. They never get acquainted, but they do see each other without actually realising it, not really. Two very different girls, but in a way the same one. Torn from a need to know, a need to feel, a godforsaken curiosity that makes life hard, but exciting. 

Love is another strange concept in the film. Love is a funny game. Nobody really loves, they are just obsessed. Obsession is powerful. Obsession doesn't last, and that's the sad thing about it. Obsessions come and go and when you're the one obsessed with something you cannot have that's a good thing, when you're the object of obsession of a madman then it's a good thing he gets over you, when you're the object of obsession of your object of obsession and you know that this is gonna last a little bit, maybe a bit more, but will come to an end soon, then, oh, well, just get over it first. Cause, you know, it hurts a bit when you're dumped amidst obsessive feelings. You are even capable of committing crimes against humanity, you are.

Do you personally know any Greek person called Papadopoulos?

Only one person in my close environment is actually called Papadopoulos and I grew up and lived in Greece for the longest part of my life. Still, everyone insists that Papadopoulos is the most common Greek surname and wikipedia confirms it. Now, a film that started small but gets bigger and bigger came forward to cement the belief, placing its main characters' surname right there on the top of the film poster.

And, no, I don't have a problem with that, my only comment is that of identifying it as yet another cliche. Having said that, out of a bunch of cliches there is always the possibility to see emerge something actually good. But what's good about a film describing the story of a successful entrepreneur with Greek origins being financially downgraded due to the stock market crisis? Mr Papadopoulos, the main character played by Stephen Dillane is rich but not alive, and the journey to his roots (meaning: family, national origin, humble beginning) allows him to discover that there is life out of the "rich and successful" scheme. It may sound banale, but it ends up being liberating.

Papadopoulos and Sons owns a brand that does well in the supermarket shelves in the UK; what's their product? Feta, haloumi cheese and other Greek delicacies. Until they lose everything and have to go back to their dad's first job: frying the national English junk food, fish and chips. What a semantic inversion -I can't help commenting on it: an expat who's rather an immigrant (cause these things differentiate in a way, check it out) proudly trades with his homeland's goodies when he belongs to the upper class. If he owns the factory, then it's comme-il-faut for everyone to tell him how they love the tasty native treasures he produces. But, how did he start out, how did he conquer the foreign topos? Not by selling his stuff or being himself; his identity was not so relevant, was shyly concealed in his first venture into business: he was selling the popular dish the nation he wanted to conquer liked to savour; fish and chips was what it took to conquer the UK market, pretending to be just like them. Until he could be proud, and not ashamed of being different.

18 Meals (2010) or Life is Served

18 Meals is not a brand-new film, but it made it to the Spanish Film Festival (Festival du Film Espagnol) in Luxembourg only now. Good for us.

First thing I saw was quite some improvisation; it originally made me a bit dubious, but then certain characters and the pleasant rythm of the film won me over. 18 Meals (2010) was actually concocted in a rather experimental way: "Shot over nine days, the project began as a series of improvisations but very well-paced editing and a top-grade ensemble cast makes for an enjoyable, if not entirely filling, spread." to cite Hollywood Reporter.

Love, death, revelations, day-dreaming, everything can happen while eating. Or drinking. During the meal we are in a relatively calm state of mind; in a state of mind ready to be confused.

Eating is a bodily act; it calls for a certain ease from stress, also a certain degree of receptiveness, right? If we are opening our mouth to receive food, if we are ready to give to juicy-crunchy-colorfoul-tasty-light-unhealthy bits of nourishment the right to fill us up and keep us alive, then we are bound to be open to other things, too. Like sad or happy news and announcements, wedding proposals, work agreements, creative brainstormings and the like. There, you finally got the point of dining and wining in every single occasion -well, a great deal of meals are taking place to simply celebrate life, but that doesn't fall under my category. So, you can fall prey to somebody easier if you are his guest, that is. If he himself wants to devour you.

Lines of Wellington (2012)

There was, apparently, a great deal of buzz for what was the up-and-coming project of Raul Ruiz in 2011. Then, sadly enough, he passed away. His wife, a certain Valeria Sarmiento, chilean film-maker and Ruiz's collaborator took over the project and happily finished it; a bit more than two hours of epic deeds, blood, corpses, the madness of war; with a quasi-stellar cast: John Malkovich as General Wellington - he could be a Buffon-, Marisa Paredes and numerous others who mainly do more or less cameo roles, but they are oh-so-glamorous: Melville Poupaud, Mathieu Amalric, Michel Piccoli, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Chiara Mastroianni and we're not yet finished: there are also the young and beautiful Elsa Zylberstein and Jemima West.

We're talking about a French-portuguese co-production and there are plenty of well-known Portuguese actors in lead characters -I only decide not to mention them by name, because probably they don't make any sense to most of us. The film was also cut in a TV-series version and was sold -as far as I know- in Canada (!); it was also released in Portugal, under the title As Lignas des Torres Vedras (2012). 

La Cage Doree or On being a foreigner

The Golden Cage is exactly what we are all looking for; ready to give up freedom for comfort, security and quality of life. Quality of life stands for things we can own, not abstractions. Being bohemian is not declared as a component of high standards of living, so freedom, is ruled out of the equation. Freedom is not of this world anyway.

So, you actually have to choose between the following two: do you want to be poor (in a crisis-struck or plain poor country) or do you prefer being a foreigner (anywhere else)? This is the burning question of our generation. It has always been for me, coming from one of the so-called countries of the south. Classified as rebellious, lazy, irresponsible countries.

Il Bidone (1955) or is Fellini able to do a bad movie?

It's always an issue when it comes to film criticism: do we value the whole or the parts? Can we give our opinion separately on the actors, on the scenarist, on the director and all the rest involved. In the end, can we value a film for its sentimental impact to us as empathetic individuals rather than for its compliance to the rules of film making?

I couldn't tell about you, but I can. I've learnt that films are more that a set of rules put together, films are life if they succeed to and plain dull if they don't. That's why it made me mad to see that Il Bidone or The Swindle or even The Swindlers (1955) left reviewers aghast; they didn't know what to make of it, apparently. They called it a morality tale and a cynical comedy together; I will only agree with the second. The influential back then Bosley Crowther of the New York Times wrote it was "a cheap crime thriller", only to complete his harsh statement with some buts, so as to still acknowledge the film's virtue.

Hannah Arendt (2012)

What a joy to return home and find the books you ordered waiting for you near your chocolate (or fruit, it's also ok.) I just received my long awaiting books that belong to Political Science/Philosophy section, as they clearly state. Two hot titles On Violence and The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt, leading political thinker of our times that I discovered -blame it on my arts and culture education- through cinema. Which is a passionate and efficient tool not only to tell stories and entertain, but also to open windows to another part of this world, which is totally disconnected to our microcosm and to get messages through.

In this sense, watching Hannah Arendt biopic was an eye-opening experience. It brought me to her and her strong detachment from sentimental thinking, which is one of the qualities I have a love and hate relationship with.

The film  per se is a humble biopic that for once doesn't aspire to cover every possible detail of Hannah's life -except for insisting on her being a compulsive smoker-, but just a certain incident in her life. With very few flashbacks and a fine sense of nowness the film describes her involvement in Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem, revealing her strong, defiant personality, one devoted to the discovery of truth (if there is one) rather than to a narcissistic self of being, devoted to fans (sic) devotion.

Le Havre or An African Container and its Consequences

Aki Kaurismaki always had two ambivalent qualities in his films: the ability to keep a certain distance, on the opposite side of let's say Hollywood, that tries to force feelings -either in its soaked-to-tears dramas or its feel-good comedies- and a certain naive take on life and its adventures. He can observe the world with an innocent child's eyes or he can let one of his characters do so; if you are acquainted with his filmography, you certainly know what I mean. Likewise, a retro feeling is usually present, even if his stories are situated in our very much post-modern world.