Another 10 (Sydney Film Fest reviews)

The Sydney Film Festival is entering its final stretch but the promising films I missed still outnumber the ones I've made time to see, such is the quality, diversity and breadth of this year's program. Following the first ten and the next ten, here are notes on another ten features seen in the past few days.



21. Three Blind Mice (Matthew Newton, Australia, 2008)

The jury gave actor-writer-director Matt Newton a special mention for the film's energy and passion. Three Blind Mice is the best Australian film I've seen this year. Read my full review here.




22. Son of a Lion (Benjamin Gilmour, Australia, 2008)

It's not often that you run across reluctant filmmakers at film festivals, but Benjamin Gilmour's story is far from common. A Sydney paramedic with little filmmaking experience (yes, it shows, but that's somewhat besides the point), Gilmour felt compelled to make a film after travelling through Pakistan and contrasting his experience with the images portrayed in the Westerm media.

Gilmour smuggled himself into Pakistan's remote tribal region bordering Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden is meant to be hiding since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan over six years ago. This simple story of an 11-year-old Pashtun boy who dreams of escaping his father's weapons workshop and going to school was co-written by the local people in the village of Darra Adam Khel. It's an honest portrait of the Pashtuns - who are clearly not all Taliban sympathizers - and a faith-restoring addition to the small number of Australian films concerned with what actually goes on in the rest of the world.



23. My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, Canada, 2007)

Enough! Enough about the charming, mischievous, self-effacing, witty Guy Maddin. Enough about his idiosyncratic, hypnotic, utterly compelling and frequently hilarious film! Enough about the genius of bringing Detour's Ann Savage out of retirement decades after her last film! Enough about the frozen horse heads and whether or not this brilliant, eccentric story is true or not! Enough! Enough! If I watch this great film one more time I may just get tired of your talent Mr Maddin. Make another film already! Or someone host a retrospective so we can talk about one of your 32 earlier, equally amazing films for a change!



24. Tokyo Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan, 2008)

My favourite film in the festival so far, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's family drama is a departure of sorts after a string of brilliant multi-layered horror films. It charts the implosion of the family unit following the bread-winner's loss of his salaryman status. Quietly devastating, Tokyo Sonata paints a precise portrait of the deep, quiet crisis currently reshaping traditional Japanese values.

Kurosawa's work shares common themes with the cinema of Michael Haneke (whose Funny Games remake is screening this week), most notably its hypothesis that what society elevates as a model of accomplishment - the harmonious middle-class family - is really a fragile illusion, and that unseen chaos lurks just beneath the surface of civilization. You can read my profile of Kurosawa here.



25. Lake Tahoe (Fernando Eimbke, Mexico, 2008)

Yucatan-set cometition entry Lake Tahoe follows young Juan (Diego Catano) as he searches his small, deserted town for a mechanic after crashing the family car. Existing in a universe halfway between Hal Hartley and Jim Jarmush, the film is composed of semi-static vignettes intercut with increasingly lengthy fade-to-blacks.

The first thirty minutes of this slow, minimalist Mexican follow up to Duck Season had me worried. The dry deadpan, the cute dog, the quirky, observational wit... please don't let this be another Bombón El Perro, I thought. But then something special happened. A plot point is revealed which shines an entire new light on every scene, an emotional resonance which gives full meaning to the film's laconic, blinkered structure.

One particular scene involving the great Bruce Lee reminded me of cinema's magical power to take us away from ourselves and the troubles of the day. That this scene is actually blacked out, relying solely on the power of sound and memory, nicely encapsulates the feel of this simple but evocative film.



26. Stop Loss (Kimberly Peirce, USA, 2008)

I didn't think I was going to enjoy this story of American soldiers in Iraq. But don't judge a film by its poster. Kimberly Peirce's belated follow-up to Boys Don't Cry is a solid, even-handed look at a soldier's story. It makes sense of that unique brand of American patriotism we foreign liberals so quickly shrink back from in righteous horror, while building a powerful case against stop-loss, a form of back-door draft responsible for sending over 650,000 American troops back to Iraq often against their will.

Peirce once again gets great performance from her young cast, which this time includes such promising actors as Victor Rasuk, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Channing Tatum and Australia's Abbie Cornish who plays an American for the first time. Stylistically it's still a little too Hollywood for my taste - slick editing, swelling orchestral score - but there's no denying the brutal authenticity of the stories being told.



27. Man on Wire (James Marsh, UK, 2008)

This thrilling and highly entertaining documentary opens with suspicious foreigners sneaking mysterious packages into the World Trade Centre. But if the opposite of terror is beauty, then wire walking may be the opposite of terrorism - legal or not, for Philippe Petit 's daring goal is really to walk a tightrope between the two towers.

The next scene is a shot of the foundations of the WTC - which would later be known as ground zero. But this is a flashback. While the shadow of 9/11 hovers above the entire film, the destructive act is never mentioned, let alone shown. Instead we are treated to strangely therapeutic footage of the towers being built.

The film charts the charismatic Frenchman's preparation for this spectacular, secret stunt which took place in 1974, images of which are only revealed in the last reel. Using a mix of interviews, archive footage and stylized reenactments, we are invited to join this ramshackle crew on a thrilling, strangely uplifting journey. In a documentary program otherwise obsessed with war and strife, this tale of human folly, talent and determination makes for inspiring and inspired escapism.



28. The Square (Nash Edgerton, Australia, 2008)

There's a lot of talent involved in the making of The Square, a noirish thriller about a small con which, in going wrong, sets off a chain reaction of unfortunate events. Unfortunately that talent is wasted on a script which apart from its sweltering summer christmas setting and one lone scene of pure, darkly comic genius (the dog's untimely death), doesn't have one original thought.

Unlikeable characters do increasingly stupid things until you begin to laugh at them and their tragic accidents. It's a formula that works well for say, the Coen brothers, unfortunately this is not meant to be a comedy. Even if you shrug away the plot holes (large enough to bury a body into), it's hard to ignore the cliches. A shot of the well-meaning lead character staring first at his blood-stained hands, then at his face in the bathroom mirror, is particularly cringe-worthy.

Working exclusively within the confines of a square-shaped conceptual box, this Australian competition entry displays very little in the way of "new directions in film" - the criteria on which the films are meant to be judged. In fact it is not dissimilar to the countless profitable but generic American b-movies which go straight to video here every year. That may be good for the Australian film industry, but I'm not sure it's all that great for Australian film culture. It saddens me that, more often than not, we fail to make that distinction.



29. Night and Day (Hong Sang-Soo, South Korea, 2008)

I was really looking forward to the new Hong Sang-Soo, especially after last year's sublime Woman on the Beach. His trademark motif of a self-centered man whose ego is playfully ripped apart by the volatile but strong-minded women around him returns. This time the action moves to France and follows a weak-willed Korean painter laying low in Paris (he fears the Korean police may be after him for smoking pot), and his relationships with a handful of beautiful Korean expats.

The lightness of Rohmer and the complexity of Ackerman both inform Hong's style. Structured like a diary, this long film deconstructs Korean masculinity with deceptive nonchalance, through a series of chance encounters, cafe conversations and that Hong staple, the drunken meal. Korean values surrounding relationships, sex, politics, religion and gender roles are framed by the culturally contrasting context of a Parisian summer and explored through subtle symbolism. At 145 minutes, I felt the film was longer than what it needed to make it point, but if you're going to spend a sunny afternoon in Paris with a Korean master, wouldn't you want to take your time?



30. Wild Combination: a Portrait of Arthur Russell (Matt Wolf, USA, 2008)

Matt Wolf’s portrait of seminal avant-guarde composer, singer-songwriter, cellist, and disco producer Arthur Russell is timely as 15 years after his death from AIDS in 1992, Russell's work is being dragged out of obscurity and reappraised.

At times Wolf's film feels like an extended promo for Audika Records' reissues and one wishes the filmmaker was perhaps a little less in love with his subject as critical distance is somewhat lacking. Russell is an enigmatic artist who worked alongside luminaries such as Philip Glass, Allen Ginsberg and Robert Wilson, and the film does provides interesting - if limited - glimpses into what was an exciting era for American experimental music.



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Some of my friends are also blogging the Festival. In particular, I would recommend the excellent coverage by James at Reverse Shot, Syms at Syms Covington, Leigh at Arts Rocket, Cibbuano at 20/20 Filmsight and ex-SFF director Lynden Barber at Eyes Wired Open.

Another 10 (Sydney Film Fest reviews)