Enter the Void
Director : Gaspar Noe
Visionary filmmaker Gaspar Noé’s reputation as a provocateur and master technician is sure to be solidified by Enter the Void, a cinematically audacious exploration of the connected nature of sex, drugs, life, and death.
Oscar’s a small-time drug dealer. One night he is caught in a police bust and shot. As he lies dying, his spirit, faithful to the promise he made his sister—that he would never abandon her—refuses to leave the world of the living. It wanders through the city, its visions growing ever more distorted and nightmarish. Past, present, and future merge in a hallucinatory maelstrom.
Biutiful
Director : Alejandro González Iñárritu
A powerful contemporary drama set in Barcelona's underworld, with an award-winning performance from Javier Bardem.
Set in Barcelona's grungy underworld, Alejandro González Iñárritu's return to Spanish-language filmmaking (after 21 Grams and Babel) combines hard-hitting drama, striking visuals and an award-winning performance from Javier Bardem. Uxbal (Bardem) is a man whose life is already unravelling when we meet him. At home he's a caring and responsible single father, loving and loved by his two children. Outside he's something of a hustler, striking deals and running rackets with illegal immigrants: drug dealers, sweatshop workers and labourers. Exploitative though these activities are, Uxbal treats the workers with respect, operating within his own moral framework. He has an instinctive understanding of human nature, and more than this, an ability to connect with the dead, a consoling gift that is also sometimes a money-spinner. As he ducks and dives through Barcelona's back alleys and hidden spaces, it's clear that his health is failing, and his family responsibilities take on a new urgency. Uxbal's story brings a more linear narrative than in Iñárritu's previous films, though the director's critique of modern society is no less acute, and his partnership with cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto ensures that the visual styling is strong. Most impressive of all though is Bardem's performance, a tour-de-force even by his very high standards, intense and sensitive in equal measure.
Mammuth
Director : Benoît Delépine, Gustave Kervern
Gérard Depardieu teams up with subversive farceurs Delépine and de Kervern for a trouble-making road comedy about an old biker heading back to his past.
LFF-goers will be familiar with the no-holds-barred comedies of provocateurs Delépine and Kervern - including wheelchair road movie Aaltra and proletarian revenge tale Louise-Michel. The duo are up to their usual tricks - and in vivid colour - in Mammuth, the story of a man, a mission and a motorbike. Serge (Gérard Depardieu) is an abattoir worker who retires only to find that he doesn't have a pension and needs to track down paperwork from his former employers. Hitting the road on his Mammuth bike, he has a series of variously humiliating and inspiring encounters - including a reunion with a long-lost cousin, the cue for one of the most outrageous sight gags in recent cinema. Isabelle Adjani makes an eerie appearance as a woman from the past, while outsider artist Miss Ming makes her distinctly oddball mark. Above all, the screen is filled - and then some - by Depardieu, casting vanity, long hair and often clothes to the winds. Reconnecting with the spirit of Bertrand Blier's Les Valseuses, Depardieu clearly hits it off a treat with the directors, whose anarchic cheek and up-yours radicalism are, despite a new-found lyricism, here in full force.
Happy Few
Director : Antony Cordier
Elodie Bouchez and Roschdy Zem are among the partners in a Parisian sexual quartet, in this mature, intelligent and very intimate drama from up-and-coming director Antony Cordier.
Young director Antony Cordier made his mark in 2005 with Cold Showers, an intimate but punchy story of teenage polysexuality. Now he explores more overtly adult material in Happy Few, a four-hander about two well-heeled Parisian couples who become sexually entangled. This thoughtful and non-judgmental drama examines the delicate emotional negotiations involved in partner-swapping. Marina Foïs plays Rachel, a jewellery designer who hits it off with website advisor Vincent (Nicolas Duvauchelle). When they meet for dinner with their respective spouses (Roschdy Zem, Elodie Bouchez), the sexual ripples are palpable, and a cordially agreed all-change regime ensues. Eventually, however, the foursome start to ask what the rules are in their new game, and who gets to set the limits. Psychologically and sociologically astute, not to mention genuinely sexy, the film also displays a wry humour at the expense of bourgeois Parisian lifestyle (especially concerning the difficulty of combining sex with feng shui), and the four leads offer fearless and intelligent performances. But take note: you will never again look at a bag of self-raising flour in quite the same way.
127 Hours
Director : Danny Boyle
Written by Simon Beaufoy, 127 Hours tells the true story of the headline-grabbing ordeal suffered by American mountain climber Aron Ralston in April 2003.
James Franco plays Ralston, who sets out on a solo climbing trip in Utah's Blue John canyon. When a dislodged half-tonne boulder crashes down on him in an isolated ravine, his right forearm is crushed and he is pinned against the canyon wall. Ralston had not told anyone about his plans, so he realises that no one will be searching for him. Over the course of the next five days, Ralston examines his life, recalling friends, family and lovers, and recording his thoughts on a small video camera. Having exhausted his meagre supplies and run out of water, he knows he will die unless he takes drastic measures.
Cold Fish
Director : Sion Sono
Sion Sono's outrageously splattery thriller, allegedly based on fact, shows an innocent tropical-fish seller caught up in serial murders and corpse disposals.
Sion Sono announces his outrageous thriller as being based on a true story, but you'll have raised a sceptical eyebrow well before you're wallowing in the first bloodbath. The factual case which inspired the one-time poet involved dog-breeders in Saitama Prefecture, but Sono sets his story in the bizarre world of tropical fish retailing. Shop-owner Shamoto is increasingly estranged from his wife and daughter (teenager Mitsuko has reached a 'difficult age') and lives for visits to his favourite planetarium. When Yukio Murata, boss of a tropical fish supermarket (a stupendous performance from former comedian Denden), steps into his life, Shamoto's world is transformed. It's not until he witnesses Murata murdering an investor and is forced to help with the splattery disposal of the corpse that he realises just how much his world has been transformed. With the same irresponsible glee he showed in Exte and Love Exposure, Sono piles on the agony: several murders later, Shamoto is struggling to outwit Murata, call the cops and regain the respect of his wife and daughter. Will he succeed? What do you think?
Film Socialisme
Director : Jean-Luc Godard
Enigmatic as ever, but provocative and visually vibrant, Jean-Luc Godard's latest film takes to the Mediterranean, with Patti Smith briefly glimpsed on board.
'Farewell to language', commented (or quoted) Jean-Luc Godard in a recent interview - which is as good a clue as any to the tenor of his new film, made in collaboration with a 'direction committee' including Anne-Marie Miéville. In some ways a compendium of his recent styles and preoccupations, Film Socialisme matches its visuals to a dense collage of (sometimes audible) texts (Beckett, Derrida, Pirandello, Goethe et al). The result is an elusive flow of cogitations on the image, the Middle East, copyright, geometry, YouTube and the history and future of Europe. In an extraordinary first third, vibrant HD photography explores a Mediterranean cruise ship with passengers including a barely-glimpsed Patti Smith, and philosopher Alain Badiou, lecturing to an empty hall. The second section visits a family who run a petrol station and keep a pet llama. This may be Godard's most hermetic film for some time, but it is also furiously energetic, as intellectually suggestive as ever and magisterially confounding, right up to its final, dismissive caption.
Essential Killing
Director : Jerzy Skolimowski
Vincent Gallo stars as a member of the Taliban on the run in Jerzy Skolimowski's compelling chase thriller.
Captured in Afghanistan by US forces, Mohammed (Vincent Gallo), a member of the Taliban, is subject to interrogation and rendition. In the course of his journey through an unnamed European country, he escapes across a snow-covered landscape, where he attempts to live off the land, eventually having his wounds tended by a deaf and mute woman (Emmanuelle Seigner). Essential Killing confirms the authority of Jerzy Skolimowski's return to feature direction with an allegorical tale amplified by striking mise-en-scène and a compelling music score. Virtually without dialogue, its simple and in some ways traditional narrative recalls The Fugitive - but transformed through imaginative cinematography (by Adam Sikora, who photographed Skolimowski's Four Nights with Anna), clever use of natural imagery, and perfect timing. In a sense, the fact that Gallo is a Taliban is irrelevant, but Skolimowski reminds us that one side in a conflict does not hold a prerogative on human feeling and experience.
How I Ended This Summer
Director : Alexei Popogrebsky
A taut psychological drama set against a striking polar landscape.
On a deserted, windswept Russian island inside the Arctic Circle, two men spend the summer working at a remote meteorological station. Each day they take readings from their partly-radioactive surroundings, and relay them via two-way radio, their only contact with the outside world. Sergei, a gruff man in his fifties, is a polar veteran, used to solitude and now just about tolerating the inexperienced Pavel, a college graduate on a temporary posting. When Sergei leaves on a fishing trip, Pavel is slipshod in his reporting and, worse, he receives terrible news from the mainland. In beautifully minimalist fashion, director Alexei Popogrebsky (Koktebel, Simple Things) has fashioned a taut psychological drama made all the more gripping by the isolation and desolation of its setting. Despite the evident rigours of location shooting, actors Sergei Puskepalis and Grigory Dobrygin give subtle, compelling performances, and the film also boasts striking cinematography and well-chosen music. Highly original, and with a unique atmosphere and sense of place, this is a memorable and deeply affecting work.
Our day will come
Director : Roman Gavrais
Redheaded teen Rémy (Olivier Barthélémy) is bullied by his soccer teammates and drawn into fights with his younger sister and mother in their cramped apartment. After a flare-up of domestic violence, he flees home and is tracked down by a bitter guidance counsellor, Patrick (Vincent Cassel), also a redhead. Patrick looks upon Rémy’s sullen insolence with both sympathy and disdain and decides to toughen him up. The two redheads realize that they are out of place in twenty-first century France. They have no country, no people and no army. Together they plot to take on the world in a hallucinatory quest for a land of imagined freedom.
Norwegian Wood
Director : Tran Anh Hung
Adapting Haruki Murakami’s breakthrough novel with the romantic melancholy of the Beatles song that gave it its name, Norwegian Wood is a passionate story of nostalgia, loss and awakening sexuality.
Childhood friends Watanabe (Kenichi Matsuyama) and Naoko (Rinko Kikuchi) are reunited in Tokyo in 1969 when they find themselves enrolled at the same college. Their friendship is rekindled, but they are both haunted by a shared tragedy that they would prefer remain shrouded in distant memory. As their affections for each other begin to grow, so too does the spectre of the past. The more their love blossoms, the more the shared history that unites them threatens to tear them apart. Meanwhile, Tokyo is awash with the spirit of political protest. Watanabe is both intrigued by the changing social mores and a bit skeptical. Following the lead of bon vivant Nagasawa (Tetsuji Tamayama), he is lured into a new world of sexual freedom. Taken on a seductive journey through after-hours Tokyo – replete with sex, debauchery and rock and roll – Watanabe meets the beguiling Midori (Kiko Mizuhara), an outspoken and mysterious young woman. Captivated by all she represents, Watanabe’s growing interest in Midori begins to threaten his future with Naoko, forcing him to choose between his passion and his principles.
