Rotterdam 05 By Hannah Eaves and Jonathan Marlow December 12, 2005 - 12:31 PM PST Dispatches 1 through 3 January 29 With 2005 just revving up and even before the Sundance and Slamdance awards were announced, Jonathan Marlow had landed in Rotterdam, where the International Film Festival was already underway. The trick in the overlap between screenings in Park City and the festival in Rotterdam is one of compromises. One has to give way to the other, with full knowledge that you'll be missing something, somewhere. Just as the competition was heating up at Sundance (Mike Mills's Thumbsucker and Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know had finally surfaced in the hours before departure), IFFR overtakes the mountain village festivals (with acquisitions occuring at both dances, Slam and Sun). Instead, time to see things with potentially more possibilities. New films by Claire Denis, Kim Ki-duk, Olivier Assayas, Takashi Miike, Wong Kar-wai, Jia Zhang-ke, Lukas Moodysson, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Todd Solondz, Hayao Miyazaki, Wim Wenders, Carlos Sorin, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Yervant Giankian and Angela Ricci Lucchi (among others). Naturally, these are not all premieres but it hardly matters. Is it any wonder that Rotterdam ranks among my favorite festivals - perhaps the favorite (until I finally make the pilgrimage to Telluride for the first time in September)? The latest from last year's honored guest, Raúl Ruiz (Benoît Jacquot has the distinction this year), graced the screen last night. Particularly dream-like, not unusually for the Chilean ex-pat (though his first film made in his homeland in more than thirty years), absolutely enhanced by two days without sleep. Caveh Zahedi's long-awaited I am a Sex Addict premiered at the fest as well. It is arguably Caveh's best work, a pure, hillarious distillation of his personal brand of filmmaking. The long-anticipated Casshern gets its Netherlands debut, as will the anxiously-awaited 2046. Indeed, the selection of Asian films at the festival is perhaps the best anywhere outside of Vancouver (or, of course, Asia itself). Many things to see in only a handful of days. Far too many films will be overlooked, either by chance or design. Such is the frustration of festivals. February 1 A couple of days later, Hannah Eaves sent word. Two Sokurov shorts before breakfast is something I cannot recommend, even in the most extreme of festival moments, particularly when one of them is a complete recording of Mozart's Requiem. About fifteen minutes in to the death dirge, the craving for coffee becomes unbearable. It was an interesting decision on the part of the Rotterdam Film Festival to include these shorts at all, two very disparate entries in Sokurov's largely patchy oeuvre. The first, a student film made in 1986 is a Bava-esque tale of a bedridden woman's neurosis and the audience's awareness her oncoming murder. As for other festival highlights so far... Oh, Man, the last installment of Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucci's First World War trilogy, is a testament to the hellish bodily damage wrought by war. With the help of the Trento History Museum and the Italian History Museum of War of Roverto, the images for this film come entirely from footage relevant to the WWI. Slowed to a pace more acceptable to the human eye, and lent gravity by their slowness, these images are here to remind us of the pain felt by the living survivors of war. There is also a considerable section devoted to the suffering of children, particularly from starvation . Those with kids of their own might not make it far. The title here has a double meaning. The first is the standard, "Oh, mankind! Look at the terrible things that you continue to do." The second has more to do with the human body itself. Gianikian and Lucci choose to use footage found in medical archives that deals with both the colossal wounds explosives can render to the human body and, on the flip-side, the vast array of corrective devices and procedures we create to counter them. These problems run the full gamut, starting with the uncontrollable jitters of shell shock. There is an extended close-up of operative eye removal. The images of cosmetic surgery and limb replacement are particularly relevant now considering the prevalence of improvised explosive devices in Iraq. The phrase "Lest We Forget" is invoked on Remembrance Days all around the world, though for me, it always refers to the 11th of November at the 11th hour in WWI, during the battle for Ypres (inspiration for the famous poem "In Flanders Fields"). Films like this are essential viewing for a country, the USA, that seems willfully amnesiac. Wong Kar-wai's 2046 has reportedly gone through a significant edit since its notoriously belated appearance at Cannes. Wong could no doubt make three or four completely different movies out of the reels of film he's shot for this one. The version showing at Rotterdam, the final cut, is a piece of blissful, beautiful nostalgia for a time and place that never was. Though it's set in the 60s, it seems to occupy a (Philip K) Dickian world, not past, and not really future, either. The key to appreciating this film is that it is, despite Wong's protests to the contrary, a sequel to In the Mood For Love. Tony Leung reprises his role as Chow Mo Wan, a writer, now trying to get over his love for Su Li Zhen (Maggie Cheung). In a dirty hotel in Hong Kong and a gambling house in Singapore, he writes pulp fiction and fools around with some beautiful women. What matters is not whether Leung is playing the same person as in In The Mood for Love; it's whether he is the same character. It's this romantic melancholic, trapped in his memories and surrounded by graceful degradation, that lives on here as an archetype. This isn't the first time Wong has reprised characters in this way. Su Li Zhen could be any woman in a different time, a different situation, but still remain the same character - she's the woman that keeps Chow from being able to change, from escaping his past. Indeed, there is another Su Li Zhen (Gong Li) in this film - here a mysterious professional gambler with one black glove she never removes. Wong could easily follow any of the women here (Gong Li, Faye Wong, Zhang Ziyi) in another film, creating (to my delight) a labyrinthine, unending series of sequels. February 2 Quick takes on half a dozen features and two shorts screened from Jonathan Marlow. The so-called "Maestros" continue to disappoint. Olivier Assayas's Clean gives the otherwise talented Maggie Cheung little to do as a widowed misfit trying to overcome her addictions. Related Articles Also in February, Jonathan Marlow interviewed Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Then, this summer, Jonathan Marlow spoke with Tony Leung Chiu Wai about 2046. Meanwhile, Claire Denis's L'Intrus shares an actor (the under-utilized Béatrice Dalle) but lacks the narrative straightforwardness of Assayas's work. Perhaps it requires a second viewing to unravel its labyrinthian plot. The film appears to concern a man, hunted by Russian agents, who escapes to the islands in the South Seas after a heart transplant to reunite with his long-lost son. Maybe. At least its lovely to look at, thanks to regular lenser Agnès Godard. Writer and director Jia Zhang-ke fails to find a story in The World that lives up to its locale or his reputation. His first film shot with the approval of the Chinese government, it hardly lives up to his previous effort, Unknown Pleasures. Much of the action in the film centers around World Park, an amusement park that features the major cities of the world in miniature. When I briefly lived in Berlin in 1998, the city was said to be the largest concentration of construction sites in the world. The "honor" could likely fall on Beijing these days. Every frame away from World Park seems to be populated by cranes and construction crews - one of which finally proves a turning point in the meandering tale. The most touching moment actually hails from another film; in a chapter entitled "Tokyo Story," Jia presents two parents grieving in silhouette while music from Ozu's film plays in the background. Unfortunately, this is followed by an unexceptional cop-out ending of sophomoric aspirations. He does, at least, continue to invent. How outdated will text-messaging seem in only a few years? Yet, this fad introduces a series of fanciful animated sequences throughout the film. The finest documentary screened thus far is Alias Kurban Saïd, perhaps the one true highlight of the event. An essentially perfect example of investigative reporting, it could be easily compared to the inferior The Stone Reader, similarly exploring the tale of a mysterious writer of a literary classic (although with more twists and turns than one of Borges's 'fictiones'). Impressively narrated by the great Bruno Ganz, the doc should be required viewing by all lovers of literature and history. Tropical Malady contains the most inventive use of open-ended narrative structure, promising still greater things from its director, Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Alexander Sokurov has two shorter enteries in the program, paired together. The first, Empire, takes the tale Sorry, Wrong Number as its inspiration. Despite a strong, Guy Maddin-like start, the whole devolves rather quickly into a maudlin affair. Meanwhile, the considerably more recent Diary of St. Petersburg is essentially a taped performance of Mozart's Requiem as stage-directed by Sokurov. Five cameras - seemingly five entirely different brands of video cameras, each balanced to a different "white" and indifferently focused - ineptly record the singers and the results are randomly intercut with shots of the unimpressed audience. The direction evidently consists of asking the singers to mill about aimlessly. With this one work, Sokurov supports the notion that he is the most inconsistent of contemporary directors. next >>> Index Dispatches 1 through 3 Dispatches 4 and 5 The Awards back to past articles

Hannah Eaves and Jonathan Marlow Hannah Eaves is an Australian-born writer and filmmaker currently based in the Bay Area. Her writing can also be found in Intersection magazine, which she co-publishes with Jonathan Marlow. In addition to his persistence in acquiring obscure films for GreenCine, Marlow is a writer, filmmaker, curator and occasional critic. Not necessarily in that order. He is also a dedicated skeptic. February 6, 2007. Mark Savage & the D.I.Y. Aesthetic by Jeffrey M. Anderson February 3, 2007. Seeing the Humor in Sexual Identity by Michael Guillen January 29, 2007. Smokin' Aces with Joe Carnahan and Jeremy Piven by Sean Axmaker January 26, 2007. Include Me Out: Interview with Farley Granger by Jonathan Marlow January 25, 2007. Grindhouse: Chapter Four - The 1960's by Eddie Muller January 19, 2007. Charles Mudede: Zoo Story by Andy Spletzer January 19, 2007. Mark Becker: Merging the Personal and the Political by Sara Schieron January 19, 2007. Micha X. Peled: The Lives of the Sweatshop Youth by Hannah Eaves January 16, 2007. Djinn: A Taxi Driver Dreams of Perth by Jeffrey M. Anderson January 12, 2007. Clint Eastwood: Flags and Letters From the "Good War" by Jeff Shannon view past articles