Berlinale. Musta jää (Black Ice).

Let me follow up that entry on Zuo You by saying: this is how you do melodrama. In Musta jää (Black Ice), Petri Kotwica asks, What if a woman discovers her husband's been cheating on her and sets out to find out more about his lover? And what if she unintentionally finds herself face-to-face with the young woman? And what if she decides on the spur of the moment that, rather than confront her, she's too curious to call off the hunt - and instead presents herself as someone else entirely? Whips up a false identity right there on the spot. And what if the two women become friends...?

Like Wang, then, Kotwica starts off with a simple premise. But he insists that matters grow increasingly, deliciously complicated. Organically, too: causes don't always lead to predictable effects, which in turn, sprout further surprises. Sure, he takes it over the top in the third act, but the moments that are so overblown they knock you right out of the film's world are few and far between.

Updated through 2/10.

Black Ice, which scored six major Jussi Awards (Finland's Oscars, sort of), including Best Picture, has grown on me since I saw it last night. I think I initially underrated it because the look and feel is one barely perceptible notch above common European made-for-TV fare. Which, come to think of it, as I have today, is not bad at all. In terms of technical sheen - and certainly performances as well - popular European television dramas, the thrillers, mysteries and romantic comedies, most of them set in the present day, are not at all inferior to much of what you'll find in suburban American multiplexes on any given weekend. But Europeans occasionally develop certain complexes with regard to those Hollywood movies; they seem to have a certain magic, or more tangibly, a certain international box office appeal that a well-made European domestic drama never will. That magic, I'd argue, is a willful, blissful, blatant and purposeful unreality - plus, and this isn't at all unrelated, it's got a fluid star system plugged into to it as well.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not talking about the There Will Be Bloods and No Country for Old Mens of contemporary American cinema. Look instead to Scott Foundas's review of Fool's Gold and then click over to yesterday's box office estimates; that's what I'm talking about.

As we left the theater after the screening of Black Ice, Andrew Grant commented that he was already dreading the American remake. If that happens, catch the original beforehand if you can. It's a fun ride. Not profound, not groundbreaking, but damn well done.

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Boyd van Hoeij (european-films.net) finds the film to be "a showcase for Finnish acting talent from top to bottom and marks a significant step forward for the writer-director after his debut Koti-ikävä (Home Sick), though the closing reels of Musta Jää dilute its power as a psychological thriller in favour of plot twists and turns more at home in a soap opera."

"Black Ice wraps a melodramatic, borderline-silly storyline in a classy-looking, solemnity-rich package and garnishes with impeccable perfs, resulting in an experience not unlike watching a soap opera made by Bergman acolytes," suggests Leslie Felperin in Variety.

In Screen Daily, Lee Marshall finds that it "tries to be at one and the same time a Hitchcockian thriller, a horror version of a Feydeau farce, and an intense marriage drama of love, betrayal and jealousy in the tradition of Ingmar Bergman. Although this does sound like an indigestible cocktail, the mood of highly-charged dramatic and sexual tension is so well sustained, the script turns are managed with such bravura, and the three central performances are so mesmerising that Kotwica almost gets away with his hugely ambitious gameplan."

FWIW, I don't get the Bergman allusions at all, but fine.

Updates, 2/10: "Sometimes it is only the actor who can escape the clutches of a resounding bad - or in this case, mediocre - feature," writes Daniel Kasman in the Auteurs' Notebook. "Ria Kataja in the Finnish film Black Ice is a particularly noteworthy example, as this is no showboating performance that so-called 'chews up the scenery' and embarrasses a film that cannot keep up with an actorly flurry of Method and energy."

"Jealousy and treachery run so deep in this gripping thriller that a few coincidences too many are easily forgiven," writes Jürgen Fauth, who partied down with the Finns til 6 am.

Posted by dwhudson at February 9, 2008 1:05 PM