Rotterdam Dispatch. 5.

Film festivals, like relationships, are characterized by compromise. For every film that you see, there are dozens more that you will not. One lesson, learned early - the best films are the ones you're not seeing. You're left with the best of what you've seen and, if you are fortunate, that best is good enough.

Take, for instance, Innocence by second-time helmer (and Gaspar Noé cohort) Lucile Hadzihalilovic. Beautifully photographed by Benoit Debie (Irreversible) with only available light, the film is essentially a pre-teen Picnic at Hanging Rock in reverse, set in a mysterious dance school populated entirely by missing girls. Although audiences at the event were not fully enthralled with the film, I would claim that the tale is the first work of allegorical storytelling since The Prisoner to successfully tackle questions of free will and man's place in society and perhaps the best film to indirectly address a young girl's flowering since Valerie and her Week of Wonders. Indeed, there is not much of a flaw to be found in Innocence, from the performances of the thirty schoolgirls to the audio design, a mix of natural sounds put to suspenseful use and the music of Janácek, whose Cunning Little Vixen is used to great effect.

Given the location of the event, the fest often provides an opportunity to see a few things missed elsewhere. Nobody Knows, Hirokazu Kore-eda's tale of four Japanese children abandoned by their mother, loosely based on an actual incident, has made the rounds elsewhere (the Mill Valley Film Festival being only one of several places it has earlier appeared). Despite convincing acting from the child actors, the film is a relatively predictable and unecessarily long affair. Not up to Kore-eda's earlier, exceptional work... or perhaps this is merely the reaction after too many screenings in too short a time.

Similarly suffering is Hou Hsiao-hsien's Café Lumière. Made to celebrate the Ozu centenary, this Café follows on the heals of Millennium Mambo, suggesting a slump for this otherwise great director. Appropriate for a film inspired by Ozu, the film begins and ends wth images of trains. Asano Tadanobu (also starring in Vital) portrays a used book salesman who records the sounds of trains in his spare time. His friend, the protagonist of the picture, is a young woman researching a long-forgotten composer. With these minor plot details, little is done. Like many films in the festival (including Nobody Knows), it marks an unfortunate trend in current cinema - the lack of an ending.

While this marked the close of screenings for this personal version of IFFR 2005 (before departing for a brief retreat before the Berlinale at the appropriately named Hôtel Langlois in Paris, renamed since appearing as a location in the recent remake of Charade), it was not without some apprehension (particularly in the knowledge of criticism I'll receive from friends for skipping the closing night film, Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle).

What of the films that will not likely reach American shores? This, above all, provides the primary rationale for this festival tour. Therein, a few words about a handful of obscurities. Some little-known and some that should stay unknown. Ever wonder what happened to Czech New Wave legend Jan Nemec? He's still "working" - his latest, Landscape of My Heart, is definitely a landmark in narcissistic filmmaking. Scenes of his heart surgery are intercut with otherwise unrelated footage of Air Force One landing and departing the Prague airport (the coincidental appearance of GW in the Czech Republic on the same day as the surgery provides the slim connection). Along with disconcerting images of womens' exposed midriffs (ladies roughly fifty years or more younger than the director) and an inept "score" by the filmmaker himself, this is one experiment better forgotten.

In addition to its strong Asian programming (and its thankfully weak selection of American films), the festival is also full of French titles and, naturally, Dutch films. One such example, Het Nysterie van de Sardine (The Mystery of the Sardine) is an inexplicable tale that waits until its final minutes to make some semblence of sense, narrowly fumbling possibilities of greatness in every scene. Regardless, it presents the perfect festival experience - the regional film unlikely to be seen or heard of again.

Finally, the most promising discovery of the festival, thanks to IFFR's unusual dedication to uncoventional films. I've read about the work of Owen Land for years on Frameworks with no opportunity to see his films myself. Formerly known as George Landow, Land's shorts combine (for sake of reference only) the visual, lyric inventiveness of Kenneth Anger with the humor of George Kuchar in slices of brilliance. His On the Marriage Broker Joke and Wide Angle Saxon are slyly self-depreciating and full of wit, providing the purest moments of enjoyment during the entire festival. I only hope that these Reverence programs find other venues and rapturous audiences on its promised tour.

Posted by dwhudson at February 5, 2005 8:42 AM