San Sebastian Dispatch. 8.

One of the few genre pieces at competition in San Sebastian, Anne Fontaine's Entre ses mains is a romantic thriller with considerable charm. Isabelle Carré (recently seen here in Bertrand Tavernier's Holy Lola) plays the role of a 30-year-old woman who trades her monotonous life as a wife and mother for one with more intensity when she meets a vet (Benoît Poelvoorde) with a plain image but charming ways. The main problem she has with the man, besides not being married to him, is that he just might be the one who's sowing terror in the city by murdering several women.

A bitter, sad tale of desire, paranoia and obsession, Fontaine's winner is an interesting affair which convinces through the use of a realistic storytelling style that calls Hitchcock and De Palma to mind. What's more, the actors are brilliant (especially Carré), the cinematography amazes (there's a terrific last shot of the woman walking to a rollercoaster) and the soundtrack features Bloc Party. What's not to like? A little clunky dialogue and a slight problem with pacing, for example. Otherwise, a fine piece of work.

It was going to be a fine day yesterday. First Entre ses mains, then Miranda July's moving Me and You and Everyone We Know in the Zabaltegi section. But then came the Danish film, Bang Bang Orangutang, and it shot me down. The director, Simon Staho, presented Dag Och Natt (Day and Night) in Zabaltegi section last year, and is now competing with this similarly-toned black comedy about a business man who tries to start a new life after killing one of his children by accident and being fired from work. In the pressbook, Staho defines the piece as "a film about love," but this cannot be seen exactly - taking a cue from its dadaist title, Bang Bang Orangutang is a nonsensical and boring comedy whose only clear aim seems to be discomfort and shock and awe. Arbitrary changes of style, an impossible sense of humor, gratuitous nudity, opaque depressive passages... As with a lot of amateur arty stuff, this film tries so hard to be "something else" that it simply becomes oppressively annoying.

Posted by dwhudson at September 23, 2005 4:34 AM