20.2.10

Berlinale 2010: Premios paralelos


Prizes of the Ecumenical Jury

Since 1992, the international film organisations of the Protestant and Catholic Churches - INTERFILM and SIGNIS - have been represented by the Ecumenical Jury. It consists of six members and awards its main prize to a film entered in the Competition. It also awards two other prizes, both worth 2,500 Euros, one to a film from the Panorama and one to a film in the Forum. The prizes go to directors who have succeeded in portraying actions or human experiences that are in keeping with the Gospels, or in sensitising viewers to spiritual, human or social values. The jury members for the Berlinale 2010: Werner Schneider-Quindeau (president), Philip Lee, Ylva Liljeholm, Markus Leniger, Edgar Rubio und Alberto Ramos Ruiz.
The prize for a film from the Competition goes to

Bal | Honey

by Semih Kaplanoglu
The prize for a film from the Panorama goes to

Kawasakiho ruze | Kawasaki's Rose

by Jan Hrebejk
The prize for a film from the Forum goes to

Aisheen [Still Alive in Gaza]

by Nicolas Wadimoff

Prizes of the FIPRESCI Juries

The juries of the Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique (FIPRESCI), the international film critics association, view films from the Competition programme and the Panorama andForum sections. They award a prize for the best film in each of these sections. The three FIPRESCI juries at the Berlinale 2010 are as follows: Samir Farid, Vladimir Ignatovski, Dita Rietuma (Competition); Rui Tendinha, Rolf-Ruediger Hamacher, Pierre Pageau (Panorama); Ronald Bergan (jury president), Caroline M. Buck, Robert Köhler (Forum).
The prize for a film from the Competition

En Familie | A Family

Director: Pernille Fischer Christensen
The prize for a film from the Panorama

Parade

Director: Isao Yukisada
The prize for a film from the Forum

El vuelco del cangrejo | Crab Trap

Director: Oscar Ruíz Navia

Prize of the Guild of German Art House Cinemas

The jury of the Guild of German Art House Cinemas is composed of three members who run cinemas and are members of the Guild. The jury awards its prize to a film screened in the Competition. The jury members for the Berlinale 2010: Adrian Kutter, Hans-Werner Renneke and Christopher Bausch.
The members of the Jury award the Prize of the Guild of German Art House Cinemas to

Shahada

by Burhan Qurbani

C.I.C.A.E Prizes

The Confédération Internationale des Cinémas d’Art et d’Essai (C.I.C.A.E.), the International Confederation of Art House Cinemas, forms one jury for the Panorama and one for the Forum. Each jury awards one prize in its section. Jury members 2010: Nikos Grigoriadis, Volker Kufahl, Rosa Maino (Panorama); Julien Moeschler, Benjamin Scholz, Davide Zanza (Forum)
The members of the Panorama-Jury award the C.I.C.A.E. Prize to

Kawasakiho ruze | Kawasaki's Rose

by Jan Hrebejk
The members of the Forum-Jury award the C.I.C.A.E. Prize to

Winter’s Bone

by Debra Granik

"Label Europa Cinemas"

Launched for the first time in 2003 within the Cannes Film Festival, the Europa Cinemas Label has been created in order to help European films increase their distribution and raise their profile with audiences and media. The Label is since then awarded by a jury of 5 member exhibitors to a European film selected in the Directors' Fortnight section in Cannes and since 2004 in the Venice Days. Since 2005, Europa Cinemas has been cooperating with the Berlinale to award the Label in the Panoramasection. The jury at the Berlinale 2010: Mark Cosgrove, Christophe Maffi, Iris Praefke, Laure Bacqué.
The jury awards:

Die Fremde | When We Leave

Director: Feo Aladag

Teddy – Queer Film Award

The Teddy Awards go to films that have a gay and/or lesbian context. The nine members of this international jury - for the most part, organizers of gay and lesbian film festivals - view films screened in all sections of the Festival. Chosen from a list of films selected by the jury, a 3,000-Euro Teddy is awarded to a feature film, a short film and a documentary. The Teddy Jury at the Berlinale 2010: Laura Coppens, Bard Yden, Michelle Mangan, Michael Gamilla, Sridhar Rangayan, Doris Senn, Pau Guillen and Gulya Sultanova.

Best Feature Film

The Kids Are All Right

by Lisa Cholodenko

Best Documentary Film

La bocca del lupo | The Mouth of the Wolf

by Pietro Marcello

Best Short Film

The Feast Of Stephen

by James Franco

Teddy Jury Award

Open

by Jake Yuzna

Dialogue en perspective

In 2004, the prize "Dialogue en perspective", initially sponsored by TV5Monde in cooperation with the German-French Youth Office, was awarded for the first time to a film entry in the section Perspektive Deutsches Kino. In 2010, the German-French Youth Office will be the exclusive sponsor of the “Dialogue en perspective”. The prize is the result of an intercultural dialogue on film between young people from two different countries: France and Germany. It is awarded to the film that equally impresses the young and critical jury members from both nations. The prize jury has seven members and is headed by a president. The French and German members are selected by the prize donators by means of a public call for application. The president of the jury is a professional whose work represents the cinematographic dialogue between France and Germany. This jury is the only one at the Berlin International Film Festival which is constituted after a public invitation to tender. In 2010, the jury will be headed by producer Roman Paul (Paradise Now) from Berlin. The other jury member: Lisa Aylin Berns, Mara Helena Klein, Nicolas Oxen, Maximilian van Aertryck, Severine Beaudot, Jonathan Rescigno and Sofiane Ouaret.

Caligari Film Prize

A three-person jury awards the Caligari Film Prize to a film in the Forum. The prize is sponsored by the "German Federal Association of Communal Film Work" and “filmdienst” magazine. The winning film is honoured with 4,000 Euros, half of which is given to the director, the other half is meant to fund distribution. The 2010 jury: Dörte Küll, Axel Röthemeyer, Esther Buss.

La bocca del lupo | The Mouth of the Wolf

by Pietro Marcello

NETPAC Prize

The Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC) is an alliance of festival organisers and film critics whose aim is to support Asian film. The jury awards a prize to an Asian film screened in the Forum. Jury members this year are Tuck Cheong Wong, Vicci Ho and Jane Yu.
The members of the Jury award the NETPAC Prize to

Yi yè Tái bei | Au revoir Taipei

by Arvin Chen

Peace Film Award

The jury is composed of 9 members and views films from every section. The 5,000-Euro prize is donated by the Peace Film Award Initiative in association with the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). The Peace Film Prize Jury can also award Special Mentions. The jury members for the Berlinale 2010: Monica Ch. Puginier, Marianne Wündrich-Brosien, Christoph Heubner, Christian Ziewer, Harriet Eder, Christoph Wermke, Oliver Passek, Mehdi Benhadj-Djilali, Jan Engelmann and Alice Ströver.

Son Of Babylon

by Mohamed Al-Daradji

Amnesty International Film Prize

The German branch of Amnesty International has awarded the Amnesty International Film Prize for the first time at the Berlinale 2005. This award has already been presented at other international film festivals. The prize is worth 5,000 Euros. The jury will view films entered into the Competition,Panorama and Forum sections, paying special attention to documentaries. The aim of the prize is to draw the attention of audiences and representatives of the film industry to the theme of human rights and encourage filmmakers to tackle this topic. The jury members at the Berlinale 2010: Barbara Sukowa, Pagonis Pagonakis, Chloe Baird-Murray.
The Jury awards the Amnesty International Film Prize to

Son Of Babylon

by Mohamed Al-Daradji
ex aequo

Waste Land

by Lucy Walker, João Jardim, Karen Harley

Femina Film Prize

The prize honours the “outstanding artistic contribution of a female technician” in a feature film from a German-speaking country in the areas of set design, camera work, costumes, music or editing. The aim of the prize is to highlight the contribution of the creative work of women towards the final result of a film. The prize is worth 3,000 Euros and is awarded annually by the Femina Film Prize Association, since 2005 within the scope of the Berlinale. The jury is comprised of three women working in the film industry. The jury members at the Berlinale 2010: Silke Fischer, Angelina Maccarone and Sabine Timoteo.
The Jury awards the Femina Film Prize to

Reinhild Blaschke

for the production design in Im Schatten (In the Shadows) by Thomas Arslan (Forum)
With subtle perfection Reinhild Blaschke takes us into a world “in the shadows”, into the places behind the places. Cars as mediators between characters and outside world, between city and surrounding countryside. The sanctuary in the forest still maintains a connection with urbanity by its angular forms and therefore keeps a unity. With just a few minimalistic escapes from functionality the rooms reveal the characters longings and still preserve an overall discretion.
Elements of red break gently through the blue and grey until it culminates in the blood of a bullet wound. Beyond stereotypes Reinhild Blaschke succeeds in translating film noir atmospheres into contemporary Berlin.
Readers' Juries and Audience Awards

Panorama Audience Award

All Berlinale visitors can vote for the Panorama Audience Award by filling in a vote sheet. The prize was started in 1999 and is made possible by a joint initiative between the Berlin city magazine "tip", the radio channel "Radioeins" and the Panorama section itself.

Waste Land

by Lucy Walker, João Jardim, Karen Harley

The "Berliner Morgenpost" Readers' Jury

The jury is made up of 12 readers of the daily newspaper "Berliner Morgenpost". It is awarded to a feature film in the Competition section. The 2010 jury includes Alexandra Lucht, Holger Kühne, Felix Feistel, Dr. Holger Mirek, Aline Noack, Sindy Schödel, Benjamin Teske, Arzu Tuncel Rollenhagen, Manuela Tischendorf, Katharina Hauck, Waldemar Mross and Olaf Marnczek.
This year’s Berliner Morgenpost Readers’ Prize goes to

En ganske snill mann | A Somewhat Gentle Man

by Hans Petter Moland

The ELSE Siegessäule Readers' Choice Award

The jury, which is made up of seven readers of the Berlin gay and lesbian magazine "Siegessäule", takes into account all films with gay or lesbian content, regardless of which section they are in. The prize is awarded to a feature film. The 2010 jury: Jörg Michael Fehlhaber, Matteo Lodevole, Inga Pylypchuk, Katayun Pirdawari M.A., Ainara Katharina Tiefenthäler, Moritz G. C. Sander and Klaus Schrader.

Postcard To Daddy

by Michael Stock

The "Tagesspiegel" Readers' Jury

Since the Berlinale 2007, the Berlin-based national daily newspaper "Tagesspiegel" has awarded a Readers' Prize. The jury consists of nine members and the prize is given to the best film in the Forum - along with 3.000 Euro.
This year’s Tagesspiegel Readers’ Prize goes to

Winter’s Bone

by Debra Granik
Prizes of the Berlinale Talent Campus

Berlin Today Award

For the Berlin Today Award, Campus participants must form international teams and develop an idea for a short film which has something to do with Berlin. Three projects are selected and produced in co-operation with the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and Boxfish Films. The films are shown at the next year’s Berlinale Talent Campus. The jury gives the best of these films the Berlin Today Award. British director Stephen Daldry will chair the jury in 2010.

Bryn Chainey (Australien)

for Jonah and the Vicarious Nature of Homesickness

Score Competition

The Score Competition offers three young composers or sound designers the opportunity to compose new scores for a pre-selected short film and record them with the German Film Orchestra Babelsberg, with final mixing at the Film and Television Academy (HFF) "Konrad Wolf". The scores will premiere during the Berlinale Talent Campus, and the best score will be chosen by a jury and awarded during the Closing Ceremony. The winner will receive a trip to the finest sound studios in Los Angeles, sponsored by Dolby. French composer and Golden Globe winner Alexandre Desplat has committed to mentor the Score Competition 2010.

Camilo Sanabria (Colombia)

Berlinale 2010 - "The Kids Are All Right" gana el premio Teddy (IndieWire)


by Peter Knegt

Lisa Cholodenko’s “The Kids are All Right” took the best feature film prize at Berlin International Film Festival’s Teddy Awards, handed out the best queer works featured in all sections of the festival. The film - which stars Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as a couple negotiating the newfound presence of the sperm donor of their children - is coming off a very well received debut at the Sundance Film Festival, where it was acquired by Focus Features in one the fest’s biggest deals.


Berlinale 2010 - Pronósticos de premios y comentarios de A Family, The Killer Inside Me y Mammuth (Clarín)


19.2.10

IFC Films picks up "Puzzle" (Variety)


IFC Films has snapped up North American rights to Berlin fave "Puzzle."

The Argentine pic about a woman who discovers she's gifted at puzzling was helmed by first-timer Natalia Smirnoff and had its Berlinale competition bow on Thursday night.

Maria Onetto plays the lead, a middle-aged housewife who has devoted her life to her husband and grown children. When she's given a puzzle, she finds she can solve it quickly and takes on a tournament training partner (Arturo Goetz).

IFC Entertainment prexy Jonathan Sehring said, "'Puzzle' completely charmed our entire team at the Berlinale. It is one of the rare crowd pleasers that manages to respect its audience and deliver profound thrills."

Producers are Carousel Films' Gabriele Pastore and La Ninas Pictures' Caroline Dhainaut.
Smirnoff has served as a casting director on three of fellow Argentine director Lucrecia Martel's films, including her last, "The Headless Woman." She's also worked as an assistant director.

Deal was negotiated by IFC's Elizabeth Nastro and Memento Films Intl.'s Emilie Georges and Tanja Meissner.

Meissner also reported brisk foreign sales on "Puzzle," which has sold to distribs in more than 15 territories so far.

IFC will bow "Puzzle" in theaters and VOD later this year, after a fall fest run.


Berlinale 2010 - Premios FIPRESCI


Se acaba de entreganr los premios FIPRESCI.


Los ganadores son:

-"Una familia", de Pernille Fischer Christensen (Dinamarca, Competencia)

-"Parade", de Isao Yukisada (Japón, Panorama)

-'"El vuelco del cangrejo", de Oscar Ruíz Navia (Colombia, Fórum)


Debo decir que no concuerdo con los premios. Más allá de que las películas me haya gustado más o menos (me refiero a Competencia y Fórum, la de Panorama no la vi), creo que había mejores filmes en ambas secciones.


Eso, desde Berlín.


Candidatos a Cannes (Screen)


Berlinale 2010 - "Rompecabezas", de Natalia Smirnoff (críticas)


Variety
By Jay Weissberg

A Carroussel Films (Argentina)/Las Ninas Pictures (France)/Zarlek Producciones (Argentina) production. (International sales: Memento Films Intl., Paris.) Produced by Gabriel Pastore, Caroline Dhainaut, Luis Sartor, Natalia Smirnoff. Executive producer, Gabriel Pastore. Directed, written by Natalia Smirnoff. (Spanish dialogue)


After a decade as assistant director and casting director for the likes of Pablo Trapero and Lucrecia Martel, Natalia Smirnoff settles into the director's chair with her delicate feature debut, "Puzzle." A detail-oriented look at a housewife quietly asserting her independence through a puzzle tournament, this femme-skewed chamber piece is a low-key charmer for auds open to its honest subtleties, boosted in no small part by Maria Onetto's beautifully modulated performance. The pic's Berlin competish slot should spur moderate Euro sales, though critical support will be necessary if other pieces are to fall into place.

The opening segment perfectly captures the situation at home for Maria del Carmen (Onetto): We see closeups of a meal being made as she prepares for a large party, during which she serves the guests, takes veiled barbs from her mother-in-law and then brings out a cake featuring a big "50" in candles. Only then do auds realize it's her own birthday. After cleaning up (unassisted, of course), she looks at her presents and starts doing a puzzle.

Maria del Carmen has reached a difficult moment: Her husband, Juan (Gabriel Goity), has his business and is eminently satisfied with his wife's status as a loving drudge at home, while her two kids, Ivan (Julien Doregger) and Juan Pablo (Felipe Villanueva), are reaching the age where they're moving out or otherwise preoccupied with their lives. Lacking any interests outside the home, Maria del Carmen needs a purpose again, or at least a passion.

Her first puzzle sparks an interest, and at a shop, she sees a flier from someone looking for a puzzle tournament partner. Without letting her family know, she meets rich bachelor Roberto (Arturo Goetz), who's struck by her unorthodox but rapid puzzle-solving skills, and this old hand at competitions agrees to take her into training. In the coming weeks, Maria del Carmen tells her family she's looking after a sick aunt -- while she and Roberto do puzzles together at his mansion, where he opens her up to outside interests.

While story-driven, the pic knows it's a slip of a tale, and Smirnoff's success comes in the way she fills in her characters, signaling the dynamics at home in a clear but understated way. Maria del Carmen is taken for granted by her kids, and it's ultimately difficult to decide whether Juan really loves his wife or just likes the comfort of knowing there's a warm, devoted and willing body next to him in bed.

If Maria del Carmen is on a different wavelength from her husband and kids, the same goes for her relationship with the sophisticated Roberto. The point is, she doesn't truly fit in either world, at least not until she's able to assert a modicum of independence at home and find the happiness in herself that's been lacking. Considering how close Smirnoff keeps the camera on her protag's face, registering Onetto's every shifting feature, it's clear the helmer had absolute, and justifiable, trust in the thesp's ability to get inside her character. Without overdoing the mousiness, Onetto (who starred in Martel's "The Headless Woman") combines an unsophisticated fragility with a strong core, and when she gets what she wants, there's a radiance in her smile that fills the screen.

For the most part, Maria del Carmen's world is shot with diffused, pale tonalities, matching the pallid colors of her clothes and skin. Roberto's home appears slightly warmer, increasing the sense of escape into something comforting and rare. Ace d.p. Barbara Alvarez ("Whisky," "The Headless Woman") at times overdoes the shaky lensing, though it's nothing out of the ordinary in this obsessively handheld age. Auds will be divided over whether the odd mouth-harp music detracts from or enhances the proceedings.



Camera (color, HD-to-35mm), Barbara Alvarez; editor, Natacha Valerga; music, Alejandro Franov; production designer, Maria Eugenia Sueiro; costume designer, Julio Suarez; sound (Dolby SRD), Fernando Soldevila, Facundo "Paco" Giron; associate producer, Alvaro Urtizberea; assistant director, casting, Natalie Urruti. Reviewed at Berlin Film Festival (competing), Feb. 17, 2010. Running time: 89 MIN.



Screendaily


By Jonathan Romney


Dir/scr Natalia Smirnoff. Argentina/France 2010. 88 mins.


A middle-aged housewife finds a new lease of life through discovering her skills at jigsaw puzzles. That may sound like a weekday afternoon TV movie, and although Argentinian domestic drama Puzzle is slightly more distinguished than that, it’s not hard to drift off while watching it and imagine who you’d cast in the remake: Julie Walters, perhaps, with Bill Nighy as her suave jigsaw mentor.

A debut from Natalia Smirnoff, former AD to Pablo Trapero and casting director for Lucrecia Martel, Puzzle is a slender, unremarkable piece of feminist affirmation that represents no stretch for lead Maria Onetto. Mundane execution and mainstream approach should make it a low priority even for distributors committed to new Argentinian cinema.

The film lays its cards on the table at the start, showing Buenos Aires housewife Maria del Carmen (Onetto) slaving to prepare a birthday party – which turns out to be her own 50th. Her husband Juan (Goity) and two teenage sons are devoted, but they take Maria for granted and let her do all the work around the house, which she endures with long-suffering calm.


Then she discovers jigsaw puzzles, and when she finds an advert for a partner in a tournament, she’s game. Apparently an unschooled natural, she’s taken up by elderly, dashing and moneyed Roberto (Goetz), who shows her the ropes of the jigsaw world. As Carmen spends more time shuffling around little bits of cardboard, her family starts to fend for itself, the men even learning to cook. Before long, Maria is on the way to her first jigsaw trophy, with an impressed Roberto even getting, well, jiggy with her.


And, apart from a lightly bittersweet ending, that is just about it. If we were expecting Maria’s hobby to become a morbid obsession with disturbing repercussions for her family, Puzzle certainly doesn’t go there. Nor does Smirnoff particularly develop the metaphor of Maria reconstructing the scattered order of her life: no, this is quite simply a film about a woman who likes doing jigsaws. The characters are thin, but generally likeable: even Juan, for all his machismo, is a loving husband, played by affable blokeish charm by Goity, and there’s some relaxed ensemble acting, apparently improvised, within Maria’s household.


But we learn next to nothing about Roberto, except that he knows a bit about Egyptian history, and it’s hard to credit any erotic spark between Maria and this dry, patrician townie. As for the humorous domestic moments – Juan confesses a propensity for tai ch’i, Maria’s younger son embraces vegetarian cooking - it’s all designed to elicit the lightest chuckle.


Onetto sensitively downplays the harried, hesitant Maria, but hardly gets the scope to shine as she did in The Headless Woman. Barbara Alvarez’s photography is warm-hued but muted, establishing a tone of low-key kitchen-sink naturalism. The film’s most distinctive touches are its incongruously hippie-ish percussion and flute score, together with a great deal of what looks suspiciously like product placement for jigsaw manufacturers Ravensburger.



Berlinale 2010 - Jew Suss, On the Path, Rompecabezas (Clarín)


"La mujer sin cabeza", de Lucrecia Martel (The Guardian)


By Peter Bradshaw

In the past decade, there have been three great films about guilt, denial and the return of the repressed: Mike Leigh's Vera Drake in 2004, Michael Haneke's Hidden in 2005 – and this is the third, La Mujer Sin Cabeza, or The Headless Woman, directed by Lucrecia Martel and co-produced by Pedro and Agustín ­Almodóvar. It is a masterly, disturbing and deeply mysterious film about someone who strenuously conceals from ­herself the knowledge of her own guilt.

Each time I have seen it, this film has swirled residually in my subconscious for days, and each time I have witnessed exactly the same spectacle outside the cinema afterwards: knots of people ­excitably, grumpily arguing about it. Some denounce it for ­being boring, ­wilfully obscure arthouse stuff – and, yes, be warned, it is a ­difficult, challenging film – while others, like onlookers trying to piece together events leading up to a robbery, ­frantically ask each other what happened and where and how and why. Then there's a smaller group, including me, dazed and ­wondering if what we have seen is not a portrait of a guilty person, but rather the ­autobiographical and minutely realistic dream this person is having.

The Headless Woman is set among an extended wealthy family in ­Argentina. Maria Onetto plays Verónica, an ­elegant, middle-aged woman who works as a dentist. Driving back from a ­family ­get-together, Verónica hits something in her car – bang! – her ­forehead lunges ­forward and appears to smash either into the steering wheel or the ­windshield, and whiplashes back. Verónica brakes and for a long, long ­moment, Martel's camera holds the shot of her profile: as she sits immobile and silent in the car. Is she in shock? Is she gazing at what she has hit in the rear-view mirror? For the first time, we see a child's handprint on the driver's-side window, a handprint which, in some kind of nightmarish ­continuity error appears to change ­position in the next shot.

But couldn't that just be from the kids who were larking around her car at the party earlier? We turn with Verónica, and all we can see at this stage is a dead dog in the distance, which in an earlier scene had been with some boys playing by the roadside.

Verónica returns home: clearly ­traumatised. She cannot answer simple questions; she is ­confused. But it is not merely the physical impact. Verónica is dealing with the awful suspicion that she killed not merely the dog, but its owner. She has killed a child. Verónica confesses as much, in a quiet, wondering voice, to her ­husband, perhaps ­conveying an unspoken ­instruction that he and the menfolk of the ­family – ­doctors and medical types well ­connected with the cops – should ­handle this situation.

Martel's movie intuits and imitates her concussed state, a state which ­embraces evasive semi-consciousness. Shots are asymmetrically composed in such a way that we can't be sure what we are supposed to be looking at: Verónica, with her faint, not-all-there smile, will be in one part of the screen, while someone else, in another part, will be quietly getting something sorted. Like Verónica, the film glimpses the truth out of the corner of its eye. The sound design is such that voices that we think are emanating from just behind the camera, near Verónica, are ­coming from people talking in the middle ­distance: belatedly, we match the sound to their moving lips.

Often, people talking to Verónica will be seen only from the neck down – they are headless, like the famous photo of the "headless man" in the 1963 Duchess of Argyll divorce case. Her disorientation becomes most disturbing when she goes with a family party to visit an ancient aunt, who is suffering from dementia, and who complains that her apartment with its ancient furniture is filled with squeaks, like the sounds of the dead. In the same state of ­suppressed panic that she ­perceives ­everything else, Verónica sees that this old woman is a kindred spirit; she too must now live with ghosts.

But even here the complications and agonies are not complete. This is not the first time Verónica has had to swallow a secret and live a lie. There is another elephant in the living room she has to feed. A long, mysterious trip to a hotel just after the accident, and sexualised encounters with two different ­family members, indicate that avoidance, ­secrecy and denial are lifelong habits.

This is not an easy film to watch, or to understand, but the potency with which it resonates in the imagination is remarkable. Lucrecia Martel's other films, The Swamp (2001) and The Holy Girl (2004) have both had something of this spacey, floating style, but never before has it been applied to something so painful, so relevant, and never before has she delivered such a psychologically real portrait: demonstrating in both style and content what happens when we go into denial. I'm as certain as I can be of the towering talent of Lucrecia Martel, but I can't quite be certain of exactly what The Headless Woman is about. For example: the child's ­handprint changing position … did I just ­imagine that? You tell me.


"The Ghost Writer", de Roman Polanski (críticas)


THE NEW YORK TIMES By Manohla Dargis

The darkly brooding sky that hangs over much of “The Ghost Writer,” the latest from Roman Polanski, suggests that all is grim and gray and perhaps even for naught. But this high-grade pulp entertainment is too delectably amusing and self-amused, and far too aware of its own outrageous conceits to sustain such a dolorous verdict. The world has gone mad of course — this is a Polanski film — so all we can do is puzzle through the madness, dodging the traps with our ironic detachment and tongue lightly in cheek.

The Ghost of the title, never named in the film, is played by Ewan McGregor at his ingénue best. A writer for hire — his oeuvre is summed up by the vulgar wit of his latest effort, about a magician, “I Came, I Sawed, I Conquered” — the Ghost is tapped for cleanup duties. The initial ghostwriter behind the unfinished memoirs of a former British prime minister, Adam Lang (a superb Pierce Brosnan), has washed up dead on an American beach. The publisher wants a completed book and presumptive best seller, and Lang, an increasingly divisive figure at home and abroad, needs the kind of tidying up that such a media event might provide. The Ghost, an agreeable, convenient blank slate (no family, no history), seems the man for the job.

And what nasty work it proves to be! Based on the novel “The Ghost” by Robert Harris, who shares screenwriting credit with Mr. Polanski, the film opens under a menacing cloak of darkness that rarely rises. An abandoned car in the first shot leads to the first ghostwriter’s beached body being lashed by ocean waters in Martha’s Vineyard, a macabre setup that in turn leads to the Ghost receiving a thrashing in London, as he’s insulted (by an editor who thinks he’s wrong for the job); bullied (by the publisher who wants a fast turnaround); and punched (by a mugger who snatches a manuscript, mistaking it for Lang’s). By the time the Ghost meets Lang, who’s holed up at Martha’s Vineyard, he is as jumpy as the rest of us. (The film was largely shot in Germany.)

Mr. Polanski is a master of menace and, working with a striking wintry palette that at times veers into the near-monochromatic — the blacks are strong and inky, the churning ocean the color of lead — he creates a wholly believable world rich in strange contradictions and ominous implications. Among the most initially confusing is Lang, a professional charmer whose beaming smiles, with their sinister undercurrent, and fits of rage convey depths that the Ghost soon begins to plumb, an endeavor that takes the shape of an investigation. This amateur sleuthing leads to unsurprising trouble, including with Lang’s wife, Ruth (Olivia Williams), a brainy beauty whose relationship with her husband holds its own secrets and is transparently meant to invoke that between Cherie Booth and Tony Blair.

The parallels with Mr. Blair and Lang spice up the story, especially as references to Iraq, torture and the Central Intelligence Agency are folded into the mix and placard-waving protesters gather outside Lang’s hideaway. Fingers are pointed, though sometimes it seems not only at Lang but also at Mr. Polanski, who is under house arrest in Switzerland awaiting word on whether he will be sent back to Los Angeles to face sentencing for having had sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977. Certainly the shots of Lang’s detractors, with their furiously distorted faces and accusatory placards (“guilty,” “wanted”), gives the film an extra-cinematic tang, though as with so much here, it’s also evident that Mr. Polanski is having his fun.

And he’s delivering this pulpy fun at such a high level that “The Ghost Writer” is irresistible, no matter how obvious the twists. Everything — including Alexandre Desplat’s score, with its mocking, light notes and urgent rhythms suggestive of Bernard Herrmann — works to sustain a mood, establish an atmosphere and confirm an authorial intelligence that distinguishes this film from the chaff. Unlike many modern Hollywood and Hollywood-style thrillers, which seek to wrest tension from a frenzy of cutting and a confusion of camera angles, Mr. Polanski creates suspense inside the frame through dynamic angles and through the discrete, choreographed movements of the camera and actors. He makes especially effective use of the enormous windows in Lang’s house through which the sky and ocean beckon and threaten.

It’s easy to speculate that Mr. Polanski was attracted to the theme of rewriting one’s life history. Reading a work of art through the lens of biography is seductive, particularly when an artist ventures into the explicitly personal, as he did in “The Pianist,” his 2002 film about a musician who, like him, survived the Holocaust. But such interpretations can flatten poetry into prose and also serve as strategies to neuter artists, whose works of imagination are “revealed” as nothing more than banal facts. This isn’t to deny the personal in art, only an insistence on the elusiveness of creation. Mr. Polanski’s ventures into the horrific in films like “Repulsion” might have something to do with his history, but they are also a matter of affinities, inspirations, attitudes, competencies, tastes, pleasures.

In this respect “The Ghost Writer” seems to be as much about Mr. Polanski’s life as, well, that of Tony Blair, which only means that there are amusing points of convergence. Tracing the lines between fact and fiction makes for a dandy parlor game, one that Mr. Polanski obviously wants us to play, at least for a while, because such resonances have their rewards. They thicken the texture of the work, even if they don’t define it. Such thickening might seem especially critical with material as thin as “The Ghost Writer,” but these are the tools of a director working with every element at his disposal, including a colorful miscellany of emoting, popping, memorable faces (notably those of Kim Cattrall, Tom Wilkinson, Eli Wallach and David Rintoul).

It would be easy to overstate the appeal of “The Ghost Writer” just as, I imagine, it will be easy for some to dismiss it. But the pleasures of a well-directed movie should never be underestimated. The image of Mr. Brosnan abruptly leaning toward the camera like a man possessed is worth a dozen Oscar-nominated performances. And the way, when Lang chats with the Ghost — his arms and legs open, a drink in hand, as if he were hitting on a woman — shows how an actor and his director can sum up an entire personality with a single pose. Mr. Polanski’s work with his performers is consistently subtle even when the performances seem anything but, which is true of this very fine film from welcome start to finish.

“The Ghost Writer” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Adult words and deeds.

THE GHOST WRITER

Opens on Friday in New York and Los Angeles.

Directed by Roman Polanski; written by Mr. Polanski and Robert Harris, based on the novel by Mr. Harris; director of photography, Pawel Edelman; edited by Herve de Luze; production designer, Albrecht Konrad; music by Alexandre Desplat; produced by Mr. Polanski, Robert Benmussa, Alain Sarde and Timothy Burrill; released by Summit Entertainment. Running time: 2 hours.

WITH: Ewan McGregor (the Ghost), Kim Cattrall (Amelia Bly), Olivia Williams (Ruth Lang), Pierce Brosnan (Adam Lang), Timothy Hutton (Sidney Kroll), Tom Wilkinson (Paul Emmett), Robert Pugh (Richard Rycart), James Belushi (John Maddox), David Rintoul (Stranger) and Eli Wallach (Old Man).



VILLAGE VOICE By Nicolas Rapold

It's hard not to picture Polanski under house arrest in Gstaad editing his diverting new thriller, in which a former British prime minister dodges extradition while having his memoirs rewritten. Then again, when your life is like a mash-up of the History Channel's entire catalog of shock programming, autobiography will probably influence your fictions, and Polanski seems inspired as he maintains implausible momentum with a cloudy premise. Ewan McGregor diffidently plays the so-called ghost to exiled politician Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), living in cushioned seclusion off the gray New England coast. The writer is hacking through the bombast left by his (dead) predecessor when Lang's past war-on-terrorism overstepping raises Blair-style static. Saved by often delightfully bitchy British dialogue, the movie sees McGregor's (arbitrarily written) semi-naif stumbling onto conspiracies and dueling with Lang's wife and mistress (Olivia Williams and Kim Cattrall, both sharp). What actually happens is less important than the barest glimmers of that old Polanski magic: ambient paranoia (aided by the Cul-de-Sac–y land's-end setting) and uneven power struggles (one involving a very crafty Tom Wilkinson as an old Lang associate). The wrap-up is one strange, ah-fuggit mess, on top of Google-powered plot moves, but Polanski's work therapy could have been a lot worse.

Berlinale 2010 - Rompecabezas, The Kids Are All Right, Shahada, How I Ended This Summer (Clarín)


18.2.10

Oscar Preview: Foreign Language Film (In Contention)


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Posted by Kristopher Tapley · 11:06 am · February 18th, 2010

The foreign Language film category has been marred in controversy for the last few years. When films like “4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days” and “Persepolis” were unceremoniously nixed from the field a few years ago, a special new “executive committee” was established to have final say on the fallen, hopefully saving the committee (which has to see all the titles to vote) some embarrassment.

Still, there is an inherent bias throughout the votership here. Violence rarely plays well, and they are loathe to be accepting of non-traditional filmmaking. One need only look back one year to 2008’s “Departures” upset for evidence. For thee reasons, the category always seems ready to surprise.

The nominees are:

“Ajami” (Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani)
“The Milk of Sorrow (La Teta Asustada)” (Claudia Llosa)
“A Prophet (Un Prophète)” (Jacques Audiard)
“The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos)” (Juan José Campanella)
“The White Ribbon (Das Weisse Band)” (Michael Haneke)

When it came to the annual narrowing of the submitted titles to seven semi-final contenders, there was at least one film that needed the executive committee’s help in staying afloat. And against all odds, that film managed a nomination at the end of the day. It’s not worth embarrassing the title in this space, but suffice it to say, it probably has no chance at appealing with the entire committee.

One film that was well-positioned with relevant themes and an intriguing director tandem from the start was “Ajami.” A dramatic examination of religious conflict in a region of Israel populated by Christians, Muslims and Jews, the film has frequently been categorized as a sort of “Crash” of the Middle Eastern conflict. At the helm are Scandar Copti, a Palestinian, and Yaron Shani, an Israeli Jew. But while conflicting ideologies might make for a nice headline for the film, it doesn’t always yield a solid piece of work. The pro- and anti-zionist tandem of Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner on “Munich” comes to mind. “Ajami” is a sometimes confusing tale, due largely to an arbitrary broken narrative structure that keeps the emotional beats from connecting. And it’s also a violent film, which could ultimately hurt it.

Perhaps the least conventional narrative of the bunch is Claudia Llosa’s “The Milk of Sorrow,” which was a surprising entry in the field. The film is interesting in that it is concerned with the psychology of an entire country. Llosa dramatizes a folk tale in Peru that says the violence and rape endured by the country’s women for 12 years during the Maoist uprising was passed on to their children through breast milk. It’s an intriguing study of how the wounds of militaristic conflict never fully heal, which certainly makes it compelling from a zeitgeist standpoint. But the narrative is incredibly inaccessible, with a measured pace that never lifts it off the ground or pushes it forward in any dynamic way. The nomination will most certainly have to be the reward here, because it is not up the committee’s alley.

Speaking of which, Jacques Audiard’s “A Prophet” is far and away the most accomplished of the foreign language nominees this year. This means, of course, it is destined to lose the Oscar. The French prison drama charts the rise to power of a young Arab, which gives Tahar Rahim the opportunity to offer up one of the best performances of the last 10 years. But the film is undoubtedly the most violent of the lot, and that will most certainly give voters pause. “Gomorrah,” a frequently cited parallel despite a vastly different narrative, was snubbed last year largely due to violence. That Audiard’s film made it this far is already a bit of an accomplishment, but it will have its day once more at the end of the year, when you can count on its showing up on any number of top 10 lists.

If I were to place a bet on any of the nominees, I would frankly double down on Juan José Campanella’s “The Secret in Their Eyes.” It is a powerful tale that at first glance appears to be a conventional police drama, but as the narrative unfolds, its themes begin to register and it takes on a whole other shape. The story, in the briefest terms, concerns an Argentinian federal agent’s quest to solve a murder that was swept up cleanly and sloppily by a crooked justice system. Told in flashback, the film is framed by the agent, 25 years later, haunted by the case’s memories, and indeed, the memories of a love that got away. The film is about so many things, really, which is its greatest strength. And it packs a powerful narrative punch in the third act that is sure to get it across the finish line.

The most critically acclaimed film of the bunch is “The White Ribbon” from Golden Globe winner Michael Haneke. After years of working, and establishing quite the following, Haneke only received his first nomination this year. So an award for his efforts would be quite novel, but I’m given slight pause by the unconventional nature of the narrative. While the themes may be potent, and the craftsmanship certainly respected, this just isn’t the manner in which this committee likes its stories told. They like crisp, simple, plot-driven films that aren’t overly demanding, and Haneke’s film misses in all those categories. Still, it’s been a long and healthy run for the film, one that began with a Palme d’Or way back in Cannes. There is an outside possibility the film takes the prize for prestige alone, but I’m doubtful.

Will win: “The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos)”
Could win: “The White Ribbon (Das Weisse Band)”
Should win: “A Prophet (Un Prophète)”

Should have been here: “London River”