NYFF. Junkets Dispatch. 2.

Film: Tulpan
Time & Date: Tuesday, October 7, 2:55
Moderator: Scott Foundas.

Subject: Sergey Dvortsevoy, co-writer/director.
Attendance: Disheartening.

Tone: Incredibly intense. Three-and-a-half minutes into the conference, after revealing the film took four years to shoot, Dvortsevoy announces, "I think only crazy people can make this type of film." This is the first of many statements that make me want to nominate him for Werner Herzog Jr status, along with stories about filming in dust storms and trying to avoid getting bitten by camels. It helps that Dvortsevoy's accented English isn't Russian-tinged, as you'd expect, but oddly Teutonic.

Highlights: Much has been made of an incredible 10-minute shot of a sheep giving birth; Dvortsevoy confirmed that the actor in question had never given birth to a sheep before. (They had to try it twice: the sheep died the first time.) We learn that the name "Tulpan" means "tulip," which is helpful. Someone asks the standard question about how the film was received in its country of origin. But the country in question is Kazakhstan, which raises the specter of something no one wants to mention, but which is clearly not a joke for Dvortsevoy, given that he's made a film about poor, crude regional shepherds. "I've shown the film in Kazakhstan two times, one time in Astana, the capitol, in a Eurasian film festival, and then five days ago in Almaty. There was a special screening for people of power, some local chiefs, and also for audience. The first time we screened it, we showed it to 1,500 people and the reaction was very good. But people from power said, 'It's awful. It's even worse than Borat.'" This is not a joke, despite the eruption into laughter. "They said, 'Why do you show this poor life? Why do you present Kazakhstan like a poor country?... Why do you show this steppe? Please present Kazakhstan as a modern country. We have a lot of cities, we have a lot of buildings.'" Fortunately, the wife of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Sara Nazarbayev, loved it, saying, "It's like my childhood." So there's hope yet.

Best Q&A Smackdown (non-Mike Leigh category): Someone asks about the potential symbolic import of the cucumbers carried around by one character, since they're ostensibly the only green thing in the film. Since Dvortsevoy has repeatedly talked about his semi-documentary, on-the-fly filming techniques and emphasized a literal-minded approach to everything, this is not a wise question. "Yes. And?" says Dvortsevoy. "But I think also the grass is green? With cucumbers, that was also improvisation, because once I met a guy who sold cucumbers there."

Film: Let It Rain
Time & Date: Wednesday, October 8, 11:55 am
Moderator: Kent Jones.
Subject: Agnes Jaoui, co-writer/director.
Attendance: Fairly hearty.

Tone: A little lugubrious (just like the movie), because Jaoui insists on avoiding a translator's services and speaks in halting French instead.

Highlights: Jaoui offhandedly reveals that this most leaden and stereotypically bourgeois of French dramas was originally conceived as a fairy tale, of all things. "At the beginning, Mimouna [Mimouna Hadji, playing the mother of Jamel Debouzze and the faithful servant of the family Jaoui's character belongs to] was dusting the house." And then somehow a genie would appear from the dust and grant wishes, which she compares to Aladdin. This seems even more ill-advised than what's on-screen. Otherwise, there's not much in the way of revelation: unsurprisingly, Jaoui works closely with her actors and is inspired by Woody Allen. Someone asks a long question about how "political" the film is (i.e., one character is a feminist who has her core beliefs shaken and Debouzze gets to deliver one monologue about racism). Jaoui takes it like a Gallic stereotype: "The family is a lot like society." She gets this close to saying "Everything is politics." She has an oddly interesting take on The West Wing, which she believes would be impossible to make in France because "we are so much more cynical about our leaders.... For me, it's the most interesting series to understand the difference between American and European politics." She goes on to complain that her generation started out as optimists and now wants to "make more money and have less problems," which makes her "afraid," which is especially resonant, since this conference is taking place during a huge recession.

Most Fawning Question: "It's amazing to me how you put out what are definitely comedies of manners, but you do imbue them with cross-currents of political stuff. It's an incredibly subtle balance. How do you keep that balance? It must be difficult." Jaoui answers about trying not to be too demonstrative, but I'm not even sure how this qualifies as a question.

Film: Tokyo Sonata
Time & Date: Thursday, October 9, 3:20 pm
Moderator: Kent Jones.
Subject: Kiyoshi Kurosawa, co-writer/director.
Attendance: Underwhelming.

Tone: Extremely polite on all sides. Regardless of his movies, Kurosawa is as mild-mannered and thoroughly precise in his attempts to answer questions as most Japanese directors.

Highlights: Asked how the film's title relates to the structure of an actual piano sonata, Kurosawa is first flippant, then flips it around in an unexpectedly rewarding way. "The truth is that I didn't place a lot of weight on the concept of sonata. It's a movie that unfolds in Tokyo, and there's piano music at the end, and Tokyo Sonata has a super-nice ring to it. I'll try to think a little more deeply about that." Give Kurosawa credit for perfect comic timing: he stops for the translator to get that out, everyone chuckles, then lets fire the second part. "I did look up what sonata means, and I understand that it's three or four separate pieces of music that form one coherent whole. My film has four central characters, and each of them unfolds in the world independently, and then from time to time they come together to share a meal." Kurosawa doesn't think that his film is funny (it is, frequently), but has no problem with people who do, sort of: "I didn't set out to make a comedy in any way, but for those who find certain scenes funny, please feel free to laugh." However: "It really depends on the country and the screening, though. In Japan, practically no one laughed. For some reason at Cannes, people found it hilarious in places that were wildly inappropriate. I mostly prefer a sort of sweet chuckle." Kurosawa also revealed his frustration with distributors who would pigeonhole him as a genre guy: "I love horror films and I know I've made a lot of them, but I don't consider myself a horror specialist.... That's not how I'm perceived in Japan. I'm part of a group of several other directors who try our hands at many different kinds of film. It's not perceived as strange that I'm making a film that's not horror.... There have been some films in the past that I didn't make as a horror film, but the distributors decided to call it a horror film because it was going to be easier to sell. Frankly, that gives me pause because I didn't make it as a horror film." Example: "Doppelganger. If anything, I would call that a comedy action-movie. It had nothing to do with horror, but it was marketed as horror." This explains a lot; it may be time to re-evaluate all those lukewarm reviews. Kent Jones is curious: does this mean Pulse wasn't a horror film? "Unfortunately, Pulse was a total horror film."

Stupidest Question: None! The great thing about a Kurosawa film, even one as relatively straightforward as this one, is that it's always so mystifying that there are no stupid questions. Everyone wins.

Posted by dwhudson at October 21, 2008 1:04 PM