BIBLIOTHEQUE PASCAL: sex trade as fairy tale

This film is a visual fantasy, creating a world that doesn't exist but in art. It reminded me of  a Terry Gilliam film because of its quirky characters and setting. Interesting, the movie has bright colors and exciting sets but is about a world that is dark and dangerous, where men are predators and poor women are sold as sex slaves. Yet, it keeps from being too disturbing because of its fairy tale like style. 

Now, when I say fairy tale style I do not mean it makes the sex trade look fun or not-so-bad, the underground sex trade world of this film is nasty and often leads to death for the women (and boys) who get trapped in it. The consequences are real and harsh, but the scenery is over the top, bright colors and breath taking props, the workers are dressed in costumes that are not so sexy and more like visual candy.

Let me back up. The film follows Mona a poor but tough women who lives in Hungary. She becomes impregnated by a convict on the run from police who takes her hostage and then seduces her with his dream, because his dreams come to life when he has them. Soon she is a single mother who works in a circus doing puppet shows. Her father, a nasty man, arrives one night and tricks her into going to Germany with him, where she is sold to some men. Soon she is sent off to work in a club called Bibliotheque Pascal, where she is locked in a room and dressed up like Joan of Arc. She has to memorize a script as Joan and then men come and rape her. Luckily the rape scenes are few and not graphic, but the consequences are very real. People do die. The colors are bright, the imagery fun but the topic is dark. 

The film does suggest that perhaps the fantasy like elements are simply that, fantasy. Perhaps Mona chooses to remember things like this as a way to cope, or because she is insane, hard to say. It opens and closes in a child services office with Mona trying to convince a man that she is a fit mother and the movie is far more realistic in these scenes. The colors are muted, the camera more static. But as soon as Mona tells her story it jumps into hyper color and at times feels like it is about to become a musical. (It never does) 

Portraying sex slavery in this hyper real way is risky, recently SUCKER PUNCH tried and failed miserably, making the girls victims that have no escape and yet glossing over any real sense of what the girls (who are forced to work in a brothel) would be going through. BIBLIOTHEQUE PASCAL does not gloss over this, the horror of what Mona is going through is clear. She is terrified, trapped and yet never gives in. She is determined to escape her prison and get back to her daughter. The fantasy elements are simply Mona's way of dealing with the pain of a brutal life. 

THE OFF HOURS: sad people in a diner

Local director Megan Griffiths has been developing THE OFF HOURS film for over five years. She wrote in in 2007 and has been trying to raise a budget ever since, a year ago she decided to scrap the budget and just make it with way less. In the end she may not have needed a bigger budget because THE OFF HOURS,  is a great small film about small people.
It is the story of Francine, a young waitress who works at a diner next to a truck stop in a small, going nowhere type of town. She lives with her foster brother and spends her time working, drinking and having sex with almost every guy who shows interest. Of course, Francine wants out, and when she meets a handsome truck driver who has an intelligence not found much in her world, she begins to see the world outside of the town.
The strength of THE OFF HOURS is largely the great performances. Amy Seimetz as Francine carries the film well. She gives a wonderful natural performance with lots of repressed emotions playing just beneath the surface. The rest of the cast does their part to keep the characters real and I give huge props to the costume department who do a great job of making everyone look like they live in a poor, small town. Tony Doupe (a local and very talented actor) is also good as the heartbreaking alcoholic owner of the bar, who has almost lost his daughter to his drinking but keeps messing up when he has a chance to prove himself to both her and his ex wife.
The movie is subtle, and in it we see the growth of Francine without any overly dramatic scenes. The cinematography is great, the score is decent, the sound is a little weak, but I am not positive it was the movie, perhaps just a poor theater, but I found some of the dialog hard to understand. Luckily it is a quit movie, so it wasn't a very noticeable problem.
Overall, THE OFF OURS is a strong character piece, and well directed. It left me slightly underwhelmed because it is somewhat flat, most of the characters are already so set in their ways nothing really changes for them, but it captures that very well, so maybe that is intended?

LYS: nature vs. power plants

LYS is a German film school project that was made in 2008. Yet, it is very topical and well structured. The story is of a power plant that has been created that can take energy from the earth. It begins with the power plant having a near melt down and the discovery of a 13 year old girl passed out in its core.
The movie follows the head scientist in the apocolyptic future telling the story of how everything fell apart, it also follows the girl, Lys, in present day as she discovers as she begins to discover she has powers, and as she tries to hide from the scientist men who are after her.
The story is a enviromental cautionary tale, about the dangers of using up so much of the earth energy. Despit some rather cheesy affects I was impressed by how entertaining and suspensful the movie was. However, I did feel it could have been more developed. I understood enough to make sense of what was going on, and find it refreshing to a film to be longer, but it certainly could have added ten or fifteen minutes of more back story to flesh out the plot.
The character of Lys is what drew me in. I always have a soft spot for red heads, but the actress who plays her also has a naturalness that helped carry the film through scenes of her dealing with pretty far out things and also being a 13 year old girl, who likes boys and has a troubled relationship with her mom.
The film is short, hardly an hour, and does have a somewhat film school feel to it, but I still enjoyed it and found in more entertaining and compelling then most Blockbuster multi-million dollar movies.

TABLOID: analyzing a spectacle

TABLOID is a documentary made of interviews about the crazy spectacle that is Joyce Kinney. First made famous in tabloid news in 1978 when she allegedly kidnapped and raped a morman missionary whom she had formally been engaged. The truth of the situation is not what is explored, but instead the many versions that different people call truths.
Director Errol Morris is a good director and the quality of all the interviews and archival footage is high, but by the end of the movie I wasn't fully sold on the true intention of the film. The story is salacious, and so over-the-top that it is easy to get sucked into the film, but at parts I felt the subjects were being mocked more then studied.
Joyce Kinney is the star of the movie, her interview is very up close, and I would say personal but the entire film is pointing out that someone is lying, and she probably is at times, or else she has fallen victim to more planted stories and evidence then one would have thought possible. According to her, her ex fiance left with her willingly and then later lied about the kidnapping/rape because of pressure from the Mormon Church. While it does seem unlikely he was an complete victim, there are several people who claim to have been involved that claim things about Joyce she rejects. That she was naked in front of them a lot, that she was delusional, and that she instructed men to take her ex by force if he declined going with them. While Joyce does admit she thought he was brainwashed and wanted to try to save him, she denies all the other claims against her and continues to say she was set-up later when many images of porn, featuring her, surfaced.
Just as the viewer is starting to feel like this woman denies everything, it also is pointed out that almost all evidence of this porn past has been "destroyed" and the men claiming it as truth, cannot produce any hard evidence.
So the real story of Tabloid is the spectacle, it is sort of a long metaphor of the saying "you can't prove a rumor, that's why it's a rumor". Joyce's identity in the tabloids is over the top, and has somewhat identified her as a person. She feels that everyone takes advantage of her, while she claims to simply be a good girl who was in love with a man.
To make the experience even stranger, after the movie ended and we were all leaving the theater, we were greeted by a furious Joyce Kinney outside, ranting on about how the movie was a lie, that she had been tricked into making it and now was not allowed to even watch it with the rest of us (she claimed SIFF would not let her enter the theater, which hearing her yelling and screaming on the street I was grateful for). The audience of the film grouped around her, eyes wide, mouths open. Unfortunately for Joyce, I feel anyone who left the film thinking perhapes she was just misunderstood, after seeing her go on like that was sure she was crazy.
For me, it just made the whole thing sadder. It was a front row seat for a rather disturbing element of our society; the glee in which we watch famous people self destruct. Unfortunately for Joyce, she is only famous for being involved in crazy tabloid stories.

BELLE EPINE: painful, just the way I like my films

BELLE EPINE is the story of 15 year old Prudence, whose family has abandoned her weeks after her mother's death. It is a film about the deep loss Prudence is going through and her desperate search for the love that she lost, while being utterly alone. 

This is the first film from french director Rebecca Zlotowski, who has co-written several shorts and features before making her directorial debut with BELLE EPIN, and it is a very strong, impressive film.

One of the strongest elements of this movie is the leading performance by Lea Seydoux, who carries the entire film and is playing a girl suffering sever grief. Her performance is captivating and she is able to juxtapose Prudence's hardness and her vulnerability brilliantly. 

The film opens with Prudence at the police station having been caught shoplifting. There she meets a fellow young female offender named Maryline, who hangs out with a group of guys who ride motorbikes and like to have illegal races at night. Prudence wants into this world, and throws parties at the apartment she has been left alone in since her mothers death. Prudence enters a world of drugs, sex and riding on the back of boys motorbikes. 

Her behavior bothers her cousin, the only seeming person who is paying attention to her, who tells Prudence she is morning inappropriately and will no longer be her friend. This leaves Prudence's closest connection being to a group of young men who take her places on their bikes and have sex with her. 

Obviously this does not lead to any form of healing for Prudence and as one relationship with a particular boy falls apart and leads to a tragic accident, Prudence is faced with the reality that life and death are constant and that she cannot escape the pain she feels over the loss and grief of losing her mother. 

BELLE EPINE  is not a happy movie in anyway shape or form, but it is captivating, and also has a badass score that is very reminiscent of Italian director Dario Argenta's scores. The music was awesome and great for expressing the freedom Prudence feels while riding on motorbikes. 

TROLLHUNTER: trolls are really big

TROLLHUNTER is a fun mockumentory monster movie made in Norway. It is in the style of CLOVERFIELD, but more of a comedy (it is about Trolls after all) and much less trendy. The story is that three film students set out to bust a bear poacher. The man is Hans, not a bear poacher but a Trollhunter working for the government to cover up trolls existence. Of course, the students get a troll on film, while running from it, and team up with the hunter to get more footage, despite government officials warning them and him it's a bad idea.
Every scene is footage the students are getting on camera as they follow this hunter and capture several dangerous killings on tape. There isn't any really scary scenes, but the closest to that is the first night they follow the hunter out into the woods and first see a troll, because it has a long scene of them hiking around the trees in the dark just hearing creepy noises. That always gets me tense because I am just waiting for something to jump out. Of course, these Trolls don't really jump out at you, they smash through the trees and step on you.

I learned many things about Trolls from this movie.
1. They are allergic to sunlight.
2. They smell the blood of Christians and then go after them.
3. They like to eat tires.
4. They sprout additional heads as they get older.
5. They are really really big!

The viewing experience was a lot of fun. The audience was pumped up for the movie and cheered a lot, and since it is all subtitled the poor sound quality in the theater (Neptune, not so good) didn't affect it negatively. The Troll effects were pretty good. I liked the look they gave them, and the green countryside backdrop is nice. The characters are pretty transparent, with the exception of Hans, who is wonderfully grizzled and his growing disdain for the government that controls him gives the film its only real character development.
I liked the movie. It is a lot of fun. Beyond that, I pretty much thought it was silly fluff.

FUCK MY LIFE: Chili's sex comedy

FUCK MY LIFE would fit in perfectly with movies like FORGETTING SARAH MARSHAL and THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN. It was the number one movie in Chili last year and I read they are already filming the sequel.
It is a fairly funny comedy about Javier, a young man who breaks up with his girl friend and then wants her back when she starts dating a famous pop star. Around this time he looses his job in advertising, looses all his friends (all but his childhood gal pal) and develops a serious drinking problem. The bulk of the movie is Javier either harassing his ex or dating several crazy women.
The young cast is very attractive (although Javier is more "normal" looking and all the women are hot) and many of the scenes are pretty funny. The two highlights for me were, a date with a supermodel who is listing all the things she hates and one of them is "people with down syndrom". Later Javier goes out drinking with a male bartender who tries to force him to play his favorite game from his prison days "Hide it in the Mouth".Those two jokes give an idea of the sort of humor FUCK MY LIFE consists of. On track with the American comedies of late.
I don't have a whole lot else to say about the movie. The subtitles were rather weak, some things characters said were clearly translated wrong, so I do wonder how many things that didn't make me laugh were simply lost in translation.
The two areas that annoyed me were the large amount of fat jokes, only targeted at women and so much that it seemed very much like overkill. The other thing was Javier's stalker tendencies with his ex. In certain scenes I felt he went beyond just pathetic drunk loser who can't leave her alone, to somewhat threatening of her. In one scene she is in a car with him and he tries to kiss her, when she pulls away he grabs her by the shoulders and forces her face to him and seems to be tearing at her top, but a cop knocks on the window and he stops.
My reaction was somewhat shocked that our leading man would behave that terribly, but the movie moves along like this is no big deal, as if him being drunk and crying outside her window for days is pretty much the same thing as tearing at her clothes while she fights him off.
I would say if you are a fan of THE HANGOVER and those types of films, FUCK MY LIFE is worth checking out. It has some funny parts and its fun to see the Chili take on gross out/sex humor.

CIRCUMSTANCE

I wanted to like CIRCUMSTANCE a lot. I had first read about the film when one of my favorite magazines, Nylon, did a write up on the two female leads. They made the movie sound interesting and it is about subject matter I find interesting and important. Also, CIRCUMSTANCE is directed by a women, which is something I seek out in SIFF films. The director, Maryam Keshavarz, is also the writer and based it on her experiences growing up. Unfortunately my high expectations may have made it harder for me to enjoy this well-made, but still flawed film.

The story follows Atafeh and Shireen, two young women going to school in modern day Iran. Atafeh is from a wealthy and liberal family, her father is a graduate of Berkeley and he has a loving relationship with his daughter and wife. Shireen comes from an educated but less fortunate family. Her parents are not in the film, we know they were professors accused of being traitors and are, perhapes, dead. 

Atafeh takes Shireen into her world, bringing her on a family trip to the ocean, where the famles sit in their head scarves and long dresses while the men swim and lounge in small swim trunks. The girls also explore Tehran's underground scene of music, drugs and dancing. As their strong friendship grows so do their feelings and they become secret lovers. Trouble begins to brew when Atafeh's brother returns home after being in and out of rehab for drug addictions. He is very troubled and filled with anger. His anger drives him to join the Morality Police and soon he begins spying on his own family with cameras he places around their house. This leads to him following his sister and her friend and they are arrested by the Morality Police while driving home from an underground party. They are taken in, given a virginity test (which Atafeh fails) and then held until a high bail is paid. 

My biggest frustration with CIRCUMSTANCE was my desire for the filmmaker to more deeply explore the political issues in the film. I felt it was somewhat scattered at times, and introduced so many issues that it couldn't fully flesh them all out, and it left me wanting to better understand where the characters were coming from. For example, in one scene Shireen is riding in a car with a man who pulls over and demands she give her naked foot or he will deliver her to the police. Shireen has no choice but to hold back her revulsion as he moans and gropes her foot while playing with himself. This scene well represents the convoluted struggle of the hostility that men have in a sexually oppressive society when they desire a women.  But immediately following that scene Shireen is seen in a club, wearing a sexy outfit, wasted and making out with boys we have never seen before and she is without Atafeh, whom up until this point has been the one paying for their drugs, drinks and giving Shireen her outfits. I understood her state was a result of Shireen feeling violated but it made little sense how she suddenly had access to this world without her rich friend. 

I found the class difference between the girls to be one of the most rich elements to the story of these girls oppression. It is clear Atafeh has a safety net with her rich liberal father, and Shireen only has her very conservative Uncle who wants to marry her off in a hurry. But I felt Keshavarz pulled away from this issue at the end of the film, favoring dramatic emotional scenes of both girls crying, kissing, and fighting but lacking a deeper connection to how much their differences are because of Shireen's powerlessness. 

The cinematography is beautiful in CIRCUMSTANCE, as are both female leads. Many beautiful images of them laying next to each other, or standing in the wind with their head scarves blowing around their faces fill CIRCUMSTANCE, making it lush and sexy. I just felt at times the film was dealing with so many serious and fascinating political issues that got lost in all the scenes of how beautiful the two females are. The final third was weakest part of the film, because it has the most dramatic moments but at the same time felt the most removed from the characters. The end left me unclear as to what was driving them to make their individual choices.