The days are counting down at this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival. Several films that I’ve praised have another screening to come, including Blue Note, Winter Flies, The Oslo Diaries and What is Democracy?
And these, again with no ratings attached, are my latest recommendations:
Love and Bullets:
Ben is Back:
The Man Who Stole Banksy:
The Museum of Forgotten Triumphs:
The Load:
Impulso:
LOVE AND BULLETS: Of all the films I’ve seen at VIFF this year, this one has been the most fun. It’s improbable, silly, absurd, lovely, action-filled and a musical all at the same time. It’s from Italy where it got 15 nominations at the top movie awards (comparable to the Oscars) and won five, including best picture. It seems the Italians are more ready than the Americans to give rewards for just being good entertainment.
This one announces right at the start that it’s pure fantasy. There’s a funeral for a Mafia don, his widow emotes to the sky with her grief but inside the coffin, the corpse starts singing a song. He’s not the gangster boss, he sings, and yes, flashing back we do find out that this is a faked death engineered by the man’s movie obsessed wife who got the idea from a 007 film. The silliness keeps coming. A nurse stumbles on to the truth; two thugs are sent find her, but one, it turns out, was a childhood sweetheart to her and they run away together. Now others are on their trail which leads to the coast, a smuggler’s boat, his daughter at university in America and a lot of gunplay. Every once in a while there’s an original song, sometimes with a production number. The best of them is an exhilarating dance number in a hospital hallway to a cover version of the Flashdance song, with new lyrics. See? Absurd. But most enjoyable. (Screens Thurs evening)
BEN IS BACK: Back from rehab that is, for a drug addiction. It’s Christmas Eve and only mom (Julia Roberts) is happy to see him. His sister (Kathryn Newton) and his stepfather (Courtney B. Vance) are not. They’ve seen him backslide before. But mom’s love for her son (Lucas Hedges) can’t be snuffed out just that easily. Through this night she’s going to learn just how much she simply didn’t know about him and his life. Something like it happens to many parents, but with a drug abuser like Ben it can get extreme. This film doesn’t go that deep; it tells an absorbing story that comes off somewhat on the safe side.
That may be because Lucas Hedges is a likeable actor (remember Manchester by the Sea, Lady Bird and others) and you don’t expect him to get really evil. His friends, maybe. The family house is broken into, the pet dog is gone and mom and son go out to find it. That takes the story to a grim neighborhood, a drug house and an AA meeting. It’s a situation that not only reveals much to mom but also tests her ability maintain her love. Julia Roberts shines in the role as does Hedges. His dad Peter directed and I’ll do a fuller review when the film comes back for a regular engagement in a month and a half. Meanwhile, at VIFF, it screens Thurs night.
THE MAN WHO STOLE BANKSY: The phantom-like artist has just been in the news again so there might be an extra measure of interest in this film right now. Not that it needs any help because it’s a heady mix of several themes, chief among them the business side of art. A Palestinian taxi driver picked up on that when he spotted a mural by Banksy on a wall in Bethlehem. The artist had furtively painted it in 2007 on the barrier Israel had built to keep terrorists out. Walid Zawahrah knew it had value, chopped out a 4-ton section of it and put it up for sale.
He thought the money could go to Palestinian causes but he opened up controversy instead. For one thing, the drawing showed a soldier demanding identity papers from a donkey. It was surely a political statement with a Biblical reference but was denounced as a cultural insult. At the same time the film shows and explores quite thoroughly the black market in stolen art that even extends to large chunks of concrete, as long as the artist is in so much in demand. Also, there’s probably historical value in preserving works of street art like that. Italian director Marco Proserpio raises all these issues in this interesting film. It is narrated by another cultural icon, Iggy Pop. (It screens Thurs evening and Fri afternoon)
THE MUSEUM OF FORGOTTEN TRIUMPHS: Some people take the time to listen to their grandparents talk about the life they’ve led. Vancouver filmmaker and film teacher Bojan Bodružić did it for 15 years and the result is this revealing and sometimes moving film. But then it’s a marvelous story he heard from them, not only about their lives but about the wars in the Balkans. They have tales from World War II, the Russians’ arrival right after and the fighting that broke up Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Bojan was born in Sarajevo, was brought to Vancouver when that war started and returned there many times to film his grandparents.
They’re a classic long time couple; interrupting each other, mildly bickering, but comfortable with each other. They tell how they met, how they raised their children and how they survived the 1,200-day siege of Sarajevo and dodged the artillery shells flying by their house. They still have some of the shrapnel. They talk about politics, including the time she met Marshal Tito and chattered on too long. They get feisty at times when they try telling Bojan how to do his filming. It’s an affectionate portrait and a loving tribute. On Saturday it was named the best Canadian documentary at VIFF this year. (It screens midday today, Wed.)
THE LOAD: This one is also about the Balkan wars, but different. It’s an adventure foremost; politics and international affairs are there only as side comments spoken by some of the characters. In a way that makes them stronger because they’re not preached at you; they represent what people think. The main character is a truck driver working a one-time job to get an unknown cargo to Belgrade. In what he scorns as a “video war,” Serbia is fighting Kosovo separatists and NATO is bombing. You hear the planes frequently. Roadblocks and downed bridges force the truck onto farm roads and through tiny villages, and past a national monument that commemorates a key battle in World War II.
Now it’s been neglected and the kids who play on it don’t know what it represents. “Those were different times” is a line you hear more than once. There’s a palpable sense of lament in this film, and irony. “The arsenals of democracy run deep,” say the leaflets dropped by NATO planes. “Just imagine” reads a billboard with a destroyed Eiffel tower. “Stop the bombs.” In front of all this, there’s a simple story with a tense road trip. Both levels are worth watching. (Screens Friday later afternoon)
IMPULSO: I learned more about the art of flamenco from this film than I had ever known before. For instance: improvisation is not welcomed. Spanish dancer Rocío Molina breaks the normal rules and does push it and says what she’s doing here is like “diving into the unknown.” She’s just as likely to be dancing to a rock band as the usual guitar ensemble. We see it as she rehearses to create a new piece that she’s to debut at a major theatre in Paris. The film counts us down towards that opening.
Flamenco is mostly rhythm, she tells us and the film is edited in step with that rhythm. It gives it a unique kinetic energy. She seems to be in a deep daze as her dance gets going. Her shoes bang hard and sharp on the floor. Sometimes she’s crawling on gravel or sliding on red and black paint. We get a bit of her story too but mostly these fiery dance sequences and rehearsals. Curiously though, not that much from the big show she’s been preparing for all film. Anyway, there’s lots here to delight you. (Tonight, Wed, 6:00 pm)