Berlinale Forum, 2/7.

Only the third day, and my ass is already really starting to hurt. But that's beside the point. The point is: Today I saw four movies in the same day, so let's get to it.

First up was Dieses Jahr in Czernowitz (This Year in Czernowitz), a documentary from German filmmaker Volker Koepp. It is ostensibly about people from Czernowitz, a city in the old Bukovina province of the Austro-Hungarian empire, since split, with Czernowitz going to Ukraine and much of the rest to Romania. Koepp sets out to catch up with those who have emigrated from the area, but unfortunately, the result is a rambling, unfocused work made up mostly of talking heads, talking about nothing in particular. The film is not helped by the large role given to Harvey Keitel whose mother immigrated to Brooklyn from the old country. He's a terrible interviewee, frequently talking over other people, and speaking very slowly to people who don't understand English... all in all, a meandering 134 minutes to nowhere.

Jumalan morsian

A beautiful film out of Finland followed: Jumalan morsian (Bride of Seventh Heaven) is a folk legend told by an aging grandmother to her blind granddaughter. It takes place on the Finnish tundra and, perhaps because of how foreign the landscape looks to these western eyes, it has a quiet, magical quality. The photography, performances and music are wonderful throughout, perfectly complementing the touching story.

Folle embellie (A Wonderful Spell) is a French film by Dominique Cabrera. The story is set, presumably, during World War II, in France, and follows a group of escapees from an asylum as they travel the countryside looking for food. The portrayals of insanity are as predictably "look at me, I'm insane" as one would fear (think William Peter Blatty's The Ninth Configuration), and that really detracted from the film for me. The circular narrative has the characters walk for weeks only to arrive exactly where they started. There are a few surprising, surreal elements, and some vividly cruel scenes involving animals that should probably have PETA up in arms. Also of note: the music is ridiculously inappropriate and often overpowered several scenes.

Finally for the day, Darkness Bride, from Chinese directors William Kwok and Wai Lun, is a haunting, strangely suspenseful, totally unpredictable film. The cinematography is excellent and features beautifully saturated, rich, dark hues accenting reds, browns and blacks. It starts off as a story about three people (a woman and two men), all in love with each other. One of the men mysteriously disappears and the others search high and low to find him. Eventually, they are reunited in a big, dirty industrial city with rows of nuclear reactors outside their apartment window. Upon meeting a new woman in the city, things take several strange turns for the worse. Because of the many unexplained elements in the film, as well as the amazingly stylized art direction and photography, I think this film will stick with me for a long time.

But for now, I must catch some sleep before taking in four more movies tomorrow.

Posted by dwhudson at February 8, 2004 10:51 AM