Day Ten at the FFM: Saturday, September 3, 2006

Four feature films (and one short) today: I saw three, and Jonathan saw three, but we each saw one that the other didn't. Jonathan wrote the review for film number two, as guest reviewer.

Maria am Callas (Maria to Callas). Petra Katharina Wagner. Germany. 95 minutes. In German with English subtitles. The internet makes it easy to pretend what you’re not. But what if you share a similar pain of loss and you both love each other – does that make up for any initial deception? Jost is a successful, product designer, who travels the world. His wife dies, and he discovers that she had kept up an internet correspondence with a woman, Anni, pretending to have Jost’s career and life. Unable to break the news to Anni, he continues the charade, and eventually falls in love with her. Anni had talked about losing her son and husband in a car crash she herself was spared from, but the rest of her life isn’t all what she made it out to be. What the two woman shared was a love of Maria Callas’s singing. Jost stays at the “Ritz Palace”, far from the five star hotel Maria described, but a small B & B. Anni starts to fall in love with Jost, but can the eventual revelation of he being Maria ruin things? Great acting, lovely locales on the northern German coast, and strong writing. What I expected to be merely cute actually ended up being a lot better, and we both liked it a lot.

Jonathan saw a different film than I thought he was going to see: En Soap (A Soap). Pernille Fischer Christensen. Denmark-Sweden. 105 mins. In Danish with English subtitles. A soap opera with supercilious narration. Charlotte is successful with her beauty salon, but bored with her life with Kristian, so she leaves him, and moves to a new apartment, just above Veronica (Ulrick) and her (his) dog, Miss Daisy. Veronica, a (lousy) would-be dominatrix by night, spends most of her (his) day watching soaps. She (He) has applied with the medical authority for a sex change and awaits the coveted letter. Meanwhile, Charlotte saves Veronica’s life, after she (Veronica) tries to commit suicide (yet again) and takes care of Miss Daisy. But when a drunken Kristian returns and starts beating Charlotte, it is Veronica who saves Charlotte’s life. In the end, after toying with the idea of getting back with Kristian, Charlotte reveals her secret to Veronica (who received permission to go ahead with her sex change, from the authorities, but definitely not her (his) parents). The story ends with some nose rubbing between Charlotte, the genetic woman, and Veronica, the soon-to-be generic woman. So we’ve seen adultery, drunkenness, verbal abuse, physical abuse, transexualism, abandonment, lesbianism, and some horny nose rubbing not performed by Inuits. Does the whole thing work? I can only say, I don’t like soap operas.

Strength and Honour: Cycling Canada Coast to Coast. Zaack Robichaud. Canada. 82 mins. In English. Nine amateur cyclists attempt to ride the country coast to coast. Starting in Vancouver, and heading to New Brunswick over seven weeks, this rough-around-the-edges video follows the team as they struggle with an assortment of road rash, flat tires, sore bodies, and frayed nerves, also how they grow from being just a group of individuals into a tight group, united in their quest. What was staggering to me was how little any of them had really trained for something so monumental as cycling 6000 km in seven weeks! That’s 130 km a day, day in and day out, with just a couple rest days en-route! I’ve wanted to bike the trip since I was first crazy about cycling in my teens, and now I’ve seen people (well, some in the team) that were about my age. That’s if my knee is up to it.

Un Filo Intorno al Mondo (A Wire Around the World). Sophie Chiarello. Italian. 15 mins. In Italian with English subtitles. A farmer and his old father get a letter from the son, who’s in the army…saying that it’s winter on the front, and his shoes have holes in them. The farmer gets an idea how he’s going to get his wedding shoes (which were his dad’s, also) to the son. A great little comedic, Italian short.

Per Non Dimenticarti (Forget You Not). Mariantonia Avati. Italy. 94 mins. In Italian with English subtitles. Rome, 1947. Shortages of everything still persists, two years after the war, including men. But babies are still being born. Nina is admitted to the maternity ward due to some complications. She quickly makes friends with the women on the ward, who come from every class. There’s the working class gal who’s having her fifth, the rich American gal who pretends not to speak Italian yet after six years in the country, a sad young woman who keeps getting pregnant and having stillbirths, a woman who’s due to have a black baby, and so on. With so many back stories in a lively ward of Italian expectant mothers, there’s never a dull moment. And while Nina is comforting to those around her, will she be able to handle the problems she will face? I won’t spoil it, but this very nicely made, sad film was high on my list so far for a historical slice-of-life drama.

One feature film and one short left for tomorrow, the last day of the festival.