27th November - 31st December 2005
Following the hugely successful 49th Times London Film Festival, the BFI has assembled a touring package of highlights that over the next couple of months will visit the Queen's Film Theatre, Belfast; The Rex, Berkhamsted; National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, Bradford; Cinema 3, Canterbury; Chapter, Cardiff; New Park Film Centre, Chichester; Clywd Theatre Cymru; Irish Film Institute, Dublin; Ipswich Film Theatre; and Forum, Northampton.
It's readily apparent that Bouli Lanners was a landscape painter before he turned to film-making, as his use of the post-industrial landscape on the outskirts of the Belgian town of Liège reinforces the sense of ennui that pervades Ultranova. The junior partner in a trio of shiftless property developers, Vincent Lecuyer drifts into a friendship with bored furniture warehouse worker Hélène De Reymaeker, who manages to break his heart in a scene of careless callousness that chimes in with the notion shared by the majority of these careworn characters that life is something that happens to other people. Droll, touching and reminiscent of Aki Kaurismäki's influential brand of bittersweet understatement, this is a little gem.
The same sense of everyday emptiness informs Lucile Chaufour's debut feature, Violent Days. Opening in a Parisian apartment, where Serena Lunn tries to retain order as boyfriend Frédéric Beltran and his buddies François Mayet and Franck Musard party the night away, the action soon hits the highway, as the quartet makes for a rockabilly gig in Le Havre. The road trip is filled with minor incidents and glorious music from the vaults of Sun Records. But the atmosphere changes the moment the first band takes to the stage, as the venue is staked out by local thugs looking for trouble. Brandishing the pared down authenticity of Free Cinema, the self-assurance of the nouvelle vague and the dramatic naturalism of such US independents as John Cassavetes and Shirley Clarke, this is a disconcerting monochrome odyssey that challenges the mythical innocence of a highly romanticised era.
However, intolerance and intimidation are not merely urban phenomena, as Giorgio Diritti ably demonstrates in The Wind Blows Round. Echoes of Jean de Florette reverberate around this tale of rural envy and revenge, as French goatherd Thierry Toscan moves his family into a mountain village in the Occitaine Alps that barely brooks tourists, let alone interlopers. It's only a matter of time before Toscan's casual methods upset the more conservative locals. But what's so fascinating is that they are as keen to see his advocates on the parish council proved wrong as they are to see his enterprise fail. A murky subplot involving Toscan's wife, Alessandra Agosti, and musician Dario Anghilante only heightens the tension in this simmering, yet creditably low-key melodrama.
Many of the same themes recur in Perry Ogden's Pavee Lackeen, which explores the struggle for acceptance of a traveller family living in a desolate district of Dublin. Drawing on observations made while compiling his photo book, Pony Kids, Ogden views the endless round of poverty, bigotry and interference (from well-wishers, bureaucrats and busybodies alike) through the eyes of ten-year-old Winnie Maughan.
Tweenager Thomas Acda has no more understanding of his situation in Joram Lürsen's In Orange, as he tries to cope with the loss of his greengrocer father, his mother's burgeoning romance and the injury that threatens his promising football career. The well-intentioned advice of his dad's ghost doesn't help much, either - although he does take him to an enchanted wood, where such past masters as Garrincha, Lev Yashin and Bobby Moore continue to play supernatural matches. But this isn't simply a lads' movie, as it explores the problem of accepting a parent's new partner, the need to commit to succeed and the different priorities of boys and girls with a pleasing combination of amusement and sensitivity.
Coming to terms with grief is also the theme of Kari Paljakka's For The Living And The Dead. An outstanding performance by Hannu-Pekka Björkman dominates this Finnish drama, which continues the ongoing Euro-Cinema fixation with mourning that began with François Ozon's Sous Le Sable and Nanni Moretti's The Son's Room. However, Björkman has added reason for distress, as he blames himself for the accidental car fire that killed his toddler son and this sense of guilt places an unbearable burden on both the surviving child and wife Katja Kukkola, whose pain is exacerbated by the bloodless empathy of her more successful sister. Moving without ever being mawkish, this is a very human story whose realism only adds to its poignancy and power.
