Day Seven at the FFM: Thursday, August 31st

My mother, Lily, turned 80 years old today. I hope I'm as healthy as her when I get to her age (hope springs eternal!).

Taiyo no Uta (Midnight Sun). Norihuro Koizumi. Japan. 119 minutes. In Japanese with English subtitles. Xeroderma pigmentosum is a real medical condition that forces the sufferer to avoid any sunlight, as it causes burns, hives, and is eventually fatal. The base cause is a defective ability to repair damaged DNA "broken" by UV exposure. Sixteen year-old Kaoru Amane lives after dark, singing and playing the guitar in the town plaza, watching some boys arrive for surfing each early morning, just before sunrise and her bedtime. She’s never gone to high school, and aside from her supportive, but overly protective parents, has one female friend. She decides to purse Koji, one of the surfer boys she's seen from her window. How can a boy who lives during the day (like, most, but not all of us) have a meaningful relationship with a girl who lives a vampire-like existence? Koji doesn't abandon Kaoru when he finds out about her illness, despite her wanting to hide away and never love anyone. Instead, he wants her to continue to pursue her dream of recording a CD of her songs and music. Will she have time before her body starts to fail? Well, we got suckered into a Japanese teen-age Love Story. Nicely done, but a tad too saccharine, even for the genre, and Japanese films of this type tend to be massively sentimental on a level that seems almost naïve to Western sensibilities. The explanation often given is it’s the flip side to the constant pressure to conform and be stoic. I’m not complaining – really. It’s just…well, the story is a bit too predictable – the only new angle is the sun sensitivity. The singer (who was 19 at the time of filming, playing a 16 yr old girl) did a workable attempt at acting. Kleenex sellers will make a killing at this one.

Day Six at the FFM: Wednesday, August 30th

Fuck. Steve Anderson. USA. 91 minutes. In English. A documentary of more than just the word Fuck, this film takes an American-centric historical look at the whole debate on obscenity in the U.S., particularly focusing on contemporary attacks on free speech on the radio, television, and in the movies. Anderson nicely juxtaposes the two camps fighting the war of words. On the pro-free speech side, anti-censorship side, there’s noted news broadcasters, comedians, writers/producers to popular musicians. On the pro-censorship side, there's conservative politicians, tv/radio talk show hosts, self-proclaimed defenders of “decency” and civilization, including the religious right, parents and “morality” focused lobbying groups. There’s also the requisite mini-bio on Lenny Bruce, since his trials and tribulations were central to the obscenity/free speech arguments in the U.S.). Make no mistake, this documentary is squarely in the pro-free speech camp, but tries to be light-hearted and comical about it. The censorship advocates are allowed full license to place both feet as far as possible in their mouths. I was expecting just a treatise on the word “Fuck”, but the film goes a lot further. Although, fuck is used at least 682 times, if I remember the statistic at the end. Fucking-fantabulous!

Day Five at the FFM: Tuesday, August 29th

One full length film tonight (Tuesday).

The OH in Ohio. Billy Kent. USA. 88 minutes. In English. As Nathan Lee in the New York Times said, “…(this film) is the rare American sex comedy that doesn’t involve teenagers making love to pastry…” This indie film is about one woman’s quest for the only thing missing in her life..an orgasm. Parkey Posey is Priscilla Chase, a Cleveland business woman with a biology high school teacher husband Jack, whom she loves, but doesn’t come with. Jack can’t bear the fact that he can’t satisfy his wife, and the marriage falls apart. He’s off on an affair with a student of his, and Priscilla’s hell bent to find out how to come. Great lines, and Heather Graham as the vibrator store clerk (uncredited) is hilarious. A cameo by Liza Minelli doing a Shirley MacLaine-ish new age masturbation expert was perfect sardonic casting. And Danny Devito, as the Wayne the Pool Guy, brings everything to a satisfactory climax. You can groan now. We both laughed a lot.

Day Three at the FFM: Sunday, August 27

Two full length films today.

Antonio Vivaldi: Un Prince à Venise. Jean-Louis Guillermou. Co-France/Italy. 95 mins. French with English subtitles. A couple years ago we saw a great BBC historical dramatized biopic of Beethoven premiering his Third Symphony. That film was wonderful…however, today’s biopic on Vivaldi was less so. It seemed that the dialogue was wooden, and delivered by puppets. Jonathan felt he was watching a high-school play. The style of the presentation, where actors step out of character, but still in costume on set, to give narration to the story, came off a bit hackneyed. I suppose seeing a “98% working print of the film” didn’t help..there were places where I hope better editing will prevail in the finished print. The music, of course, was sublime. I also think I’d have enjoyed it better if it was the Italian soundtrack version instead of the French one.

Kamome Shokudo. Naoko Ogigami. Japan. 102 mins. Japanese and some Finnish with English subtitles. Onigiri, Japanese rice balls, considered a “soul food”. Sachie, a mid-thirties Japanese woman, has moved to Helsinki and opened a diner, but the locales aren’t biting. A young anime fan who speaks Japanese, Tommi, becomes her first customer. Sachie meets Midori, a rather gawkish woman who’s just come to Helsinki on a whim. Midori ends up moving in with Sachie, and helping out at the diner, even though there’s no real customers yet. Then a strange Finnish man shows her how to make a really good cup of coffee, and business picks up. Then Masako, an even odder Japanese woman, shows up. She was visiting Finland and her luggage got lost. Of course, she ends up helping at the diner, too. The individual characters are so idiosyncratic that their regular actions become comedic motifs that the audience laughs at. If anything, the Kamome (Seagull) Diner becomes a drop-in center for people looking for a way out of their sadness. At turns quite funny in a gentle way, and poignant, I thoroughly enjoyed it. And it doesn’t hurt that the entire film was shot so crisply, and cleanly – and the food and coffee is so evocative, that I was salivating for a coffee and Japanese food through most of the film. So far, this film ranks up on the top of our list with Samoan Wedding

Day Two at the FFM (Saturday, August 26th)

Three full length and two short films today.

The bathrooms at the Quartier Latin are small. They haven’t learned the lessons (or gotten the real estate) of Paramount, AMC, or Star City. However, the super wide screens are nice, even if sitting closer than half-way to the front is overwhelming.

It was nice having not one, but two venues with free wifi within 3 minutes walking distance from the cinemas. Kudos to Starbucks, but St-Suplice, why do you make people register if the service is free? What a waste of time.

Camarón. Jaime Chávarri. Spain. 117 min. Spanish with English subtitles. José Monge Cruz, known in Spain as Camarón de la Isla, “shrimp from the island”, died in 1992 of lung cancer. His fame as the founding “cantaor” (or singer) of Nuevo Flamenco was such that 100,000 people attended his funeral. He collaborated first with the famous guitar player Paco de Lucía, and later one of Paco’s students, Tomatito. This dramatization of his life is the Flamenco version of Ray. And it’s damned good. Using original recordings of Camarón, his life story unfolds from his childhood in San Fernando (Cadiz), through his rise to fame, the usual problem with drugs (artists are such tortured souls) and his death from lung cancer (maybe the chain smoking from his adolescence?). Those of you that know our film preferences know that musical biographies (dramatized or not), documentaries, and art films are high up on our list. Camarón didn’t disappoint us at all.

Ex Memoria. John Appignanesi. UK. 15 min. In English. A nicely made, touching piece about Eva, an elderly woman with Alzheimer’s, who now lives in a supervised retirement home. The photography had a quality that you don’t even see in full length films, and being shot on film, was still superior to a lot of the shot on video productions that are so popular.

Slippery Slope. Sarah Schenck. US. 79 min. In English. A young NYC film director has her film “Feminism For Dummies” selected for Cannes, but the print is being held hostage at the lab, since her unpaid bill is $50,000. A young actor she used in her film gets her involved in a scheme to make a quick buck, but it turns out to be directing a porn film, the very thing she and her husband are opposed to. It’s a predictable, but cute film. Shot on video. But, it has its moments, principally in how her prudish mother succeeds in letting loose her inhibitions faster than her daughter. Jonathan said the young director is an innocent Carrie to the evil Samantha-like female producer, for those of you familiar with Sex in the City.

Ten Feet Tall. Aaron Wilson. Australia. 13 min. In English. A father and a husband deal with driving back to the country town to bury a woman...a daughter who was also a wife.

Samoan Wedding. Chris Graham. New Zealand. 97 min. In English. Call it “Four Samoan Guys and a Wedding”. All mid-30-something going on 16, they’re so bad with their pranks and drunken behaviour at community weddings, that all are banned from further ones – including a brother’s wedding in a couple weeks. Unless, of course, they can procure steady girlfriends by that time. One has a great girlfriend, but his carousing and alcohol problems keep them apart. Another’s a mamma’s boy, blind to his coworker’s desire. The third is forever trying phone chat lines, and always finding desperate women who lie more than he does, about everything. And the brother of the groom to be, is a lady’s man that prefers white women, but the kind like him – just in it for the sex. A very funny film showing Auckland, New Zealand from the non-white perspective. Hilarious sendups of stereotypes.

First Day at the FFM! (Friday, August 25th)

Here we are back at the FFM...I'm scheduled to see 16 films over twelve days.

I have to say that the Quartier Latin theatres are a welcome change to the tired old Parisien, which is overdue for a major renovation. Big screens, comfy seats, and floors that aren't sticky. No review of the bathrooms yet, though ;)

Our first film of the festival...on a Friday night, after having had only six hours sleep the night before, and a long day at work. T'was good I had a nap after supper, and the extra caffeine during the film. This is because Japanese films are loooooooong, no matter what the genre. This one was a comedy.

Uchoten Hotel (circumflex over the "o" in Uchoten...my stupid pc laptop doesn't have accents or a useable ASCII method of generating them). Know as Suite Dreams in English. Director Koki Mitani. Japan, 2006, 136 minutes. English subtitles.

A comedic farce set at an upscale hotel, on New Year's Eve. Everything is of course going wrong, with many, silly, improbable circumstances. A politician implicated in a financial scandal (is there any other kind?) is holed up in one suite, torn between admitting all or running. His former lover, now a maid at the hotel, masquerades as a young woman having an affair with a rich older man, who's son wants her to break it off. Staff drama mixes with a wandering duck, philandering academics, an older singer who wants to kill himself, and a hooker with the requisite heart of gold. These are only some of the subplots. I could imagine Cary Grant in a film doing this, and with the strongest intimate contact being a hug or kiss on the cheek, it could pass the censors of the time.

There's pleeeeenty of time to develop all the complications and characters, and even more time to come to the classic moment of panic, with still dozens of minutes left for the denouement at midnight. The comedy had its moments (hint: duck humour), but there's plenty of overly slow periods that could benefited from more ruthless editing. In all, a cute film, but a bit too slow. I noticed also that the film ended just after midnight :P