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