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