Archive for the ‘DIFF’ Category

The Endless River

Director: Oliver Hermanus

Cast: Crystal-Donna Roberts, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Denise Newman, Darren Kelfkens, Clayton Evertson, Carel Nel

After South African director Oliver Hermanus’s controversial debut with his 2011 film, Skoonheid, which made into the Un Certain Regard category at the Cannes Film Festival, Hermanus returns to the prestigious 37^th Durban International Film Festival http://www.durbanfilmfest.co.za/ with his new film Endless River.

The Endless River is set in contemporary South Africa and focuses on an immigrant French family headed by Gilles played by Nicolas Duvauchelle, who suffers a heart wrenching loss when his wife and two children are killed in a brutal farm and home attack. Set in the small rural community of Riviersonderend geographically situated between Caledon and Swellendam in the Western Cape which historically got the nickname of Tygerhoek which translates into English as Tiger’s Corner.

Visually, The Endless River is stylised like a Western with big bold lettering announcing the actor’s names as the opening credits appear on screen. Audiences immediately expect a dramatic showdown, instead Hermanus gives us an emotional showdown between different communities both foreign and local, angry and unforgiving.

The opening shot of the film is of Giles sitting in the local restaurant chatting to a friendly waitress, Tiny, wonderfully played by Crystal-Donna Roberts, which sets the scene for these two character’s lives being irrevocably entwined.

Hermanus divides The Endless River into three distinct chapters, Gilles, Tiny’s and Tiny’s gangster boyfriend played by Clayton Evertson.

Soon Giles and Tiny start a tentative love affair although Hermanus stays clear of the sexually explicit nature of this affair, something he didn’t do in the obsessive love story of his previous film Skoonheid which made it so ground-breaking and shocking.

The Endless River is a fascinating portrayal of mutually shared grief, loss, love and the power of two people to reconcile their differences and form a strong bond which ultimately is doomed to fail.

Whilst The Endless River does not pack the same shock value as Skoonheid, except during the brutal home invasion sequence in which Gilles’s beautiful French wife is gang-raped and his two young sons shot in the bath, it is a film which resonates with provocative images signifying deeper issues in South Africa such as gang violence, the brutal crime of home invasion and unemployment.

Audiences should not expect to experience a cathartic release in Hermanus’s narrative, except a beautiful if poignant yet tragic portrayal of love, loss and revenge set in Riviersonderend, a place which since settlers have first arrived in South Africa have found to be as unforgiving as it is revealing. Look out for a powerful cameo by Denise Newman (Material, Shirley Adams, Disgrace) as Tiny’s mother Mona who is weary of welcoming her daughter’s boyfriend fresh out of prison into their domestic environment.

Endless River is not as brilliant as Skoonheid but judging by the packed audience at its first screening at the 37^th Durban International Film Festival http://www.durbanfilmfest.co.za/ is sure to attract a curious following and is testament to Oliver Hermanus’s rising status as an influential South African film maker.

Filled with some well-constructed and breath-taking images especially of Tsitsikamma forest and of the Garden Route, The Endless River is a love story born out of pain, grief and mutual mistrust.

Coming Home

Director: Zhang Yimou

Cast: Gong Li, Chen Daoming, Zhang Huiwen

Another film set during and after the Cultural Revolution is Coming Home, the latest film by acclaimed Chinese director Zhang Yimou who brought such classics as Raise the Red Lantern and the more commercially accessible The Flowers of War.

Coming Home as seen at the 36^th Durban International Film Festival DIFF is a quiet and intimate film focusing on a Chinese couple, Lu Yanshi played by Chen Daoming and Feng Wanyu superbly played by Gong Li who are forced to separate after their only daughter, an aspiring ballerina Dan Dan played by Zhang Huiwen reports her father to the Communist authorities and he in turns is sent away as a political prisoner.

After a disruptive farewell at the local train station, Lu Yanshi and Feng Wanyu do not see each other for years and when Yanshi returns to his home, he finds that his wife does not recognize him due to psychological amnesia caused by a traumatic event.

After the flourish of earlier films like Raise the Red Lantern, The House of Flying Daggers and Curse of the Golden Flower Zhang Yimou rather chooses to focus on the broken relationship of a husband and wife whose love for each other is brutally torn apart by the restrictive society they live and as fate occurs, this love cannot be resurrected despite Lu Yanshi’s attempts at reconciliation and his own careful methods of reawakening his wife’s lost memory, mainly through the use of old photos and an abundance of letters.

At 109 minutes, Coming Home is a slightly drawn out film in Mandarin with English subtitles, which could have done with some editing, however the central narrative is held together by Gong Li’s brilliant portrayal of a woman whose own memory has betrayed her, leaving her bewildered and confused, yet always clinging to a hope that one day her family will be reconciled.

Unlike Zhang Yimou’s previous films such as The Flowers of War and Curse of the Golden Flower, Coming Home lacks flourish and spectacle but is beautifully filmed and held together by some magnificent acting especially by Gong Li, who does for Chinese cinema what Oscar winner Julianne Moore did for American cinema in Still Alice.

Taxi

Director: Jafar Panahi

Spoiler Alert Valid until date of Commercial Release

One of the delights of the 36^th Durban International Film Festival DIFF was watching the short but powerful Iranian film, Taxi, directed by Jafar Panahi shot entirely on the streets of Tehran, which incidentally won the Golden Bear at the 2015 Bernlinale, otherwise known as the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival.

Using the Italian Neo-Realist model of such directors as Vittorio di Sica (The Bicycle Thief), Panahi shows a slice of a forbidden and reclusive society through the lives of ordinary citizens in Tehran, Iran. Using a mixture of hand-held footage and cellphone footage director Jafar Panahi does a brilliantly job of showcasing the Iranian citizens as normal, sometimes comical and often repressed population trying to survive in a society which is very rigid and also economically restricted by Western sanctions.

From the hilarious conversations that Panahi has with one of his passengers in his taxi who pedals pirated DVDs including Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris to a couple of elderly woman carrying goldfish in a bowl whom then have to release into spring at noon.

Jafar Panahi using real characters to highlight the exciting and often ordinary daily lives of the Tehran citizens who also have to deal with economic and social issues like crime, informants and the threat of being imprisoned. Taxi is a fascinating slice of life or cinema verite into a world which Westerners seldom see or can even relate to, that of contemporary Tehran in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a country which since 1980 has basically had sanctions imposed upon them by America and its allies.

Director Jafar Panahi shows Tehran as a vibrant city, whose citizens constantly live in a state of uncertainty about whether crime or the state police will restrict their already limited freedoms. Taxi only showed what potential Iranian cinema has to offer on the future now that there seems to be an international easing of sanctions against the country. Recommended viewing to all those who manage to see this extraordinary film.

Wolf Totem

Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud

Cast: Shaofeng Feng, Shawn Dou, Yin Zhusheng, Ankkhnyam Ragchaa

Acclaimed French director Jean-Jacques Annaud (The Lover, Seven Years in Tibet) returns with an extraordinary and powerful film Wolf Totem set in Mongolia at the start of the Cultural Revolution in China. Wolf Totem had its South African premiere at the 36^th Durban International Film Festival DIFF.

Set on the Mongolian steppes where untamed wolves run wild, the story focuses on a young student Chen Zhen from Beijing who is sent there to indoctrinate the local tribesman about the benefits of communism. Instead Chen Zen encounters a harsh, hostile environment where the Mongolian tribes live at one with nature and dare not upset the delicate harmony between man and beast.

However, this relationship especially between man and wolf is further complicated by the interference of the local Chinese leader who is enforcing Communist ways on an essentially nomadic existence of the Mongolians, who respect the environment and the delicate ecosystem in which man and nature survive together in this harsh landscape.

Visually spectacular and brilliantly filmed, Wolf Totem is a powerful film about the dangers of interfering with an ancient civilization which has lived for centuries with the knowledge that man and beast must mutually respect each other’s power. When this respect is forcefully compromised, the wolves retaliate and so do the tribesman in a battle of man against beast which will leave many viewers that cannot tolerate animal cruelty shielding their eyes.

In terms of Visual Anthropology, Wolf Totem is essential viewing and a powerful indictment on the dangers of man interfering with an already delicate ecosystem and that despite their ability to reason, sometimes man cannot always tame or extinguish wild animals, such as the rampant Mongolian wolves.

Instead, the wolves should be respected, even the wolf cub which Chen Zen tries to tame, should ultimately be allowed to roam free in their natural habitat. Warning that Wolf Totem is not recommended for viewers that are sensitive to scenes of animal cruelty.

Wolf Totem is a fascinating tale of how a Beijing man, Chen Zen becomes accustomed to the existence of a fast vanishing nomadic tribe: the Mongolians, which is ultimately threatened by a stringent political system which is intent on crushing all signs of individualism and natural harmony.

Ayanda

Director: Sara Blecher

Cast: Fulu Mugovhani, OC Ukeje, Nthathi Moshesh, Kenneth Nkosi, Vanessa Cooke, Thomas Gumede, Jafta Mamabola

South African director of Otelo Burning, Sara Blecher, follows up her previous success with her new film Ayanda which opened the prestigious the 36^th Durban International Film Festival DIFF in July 2015.

Set in the cosmopolitan suburb of Yeoville in contemporary Johannesburg, Ayanda tells the vibrant tale of a young 21 old girl who wants to keep her father’s memory alive by continuing to run his garage.

Amidst a whole bunch of trials and tribulations including fraud, economic hardship and entrepreneurial reinvention, Ayanda wonderfully played by Fulu Mugovhani, is determined to keep her father’s garage afloat financially by coming up with the brilliant scheme of refashioning old cars and then selling them at auctions. The first car Ayanda and her two faithful mechanics set on touching up a vintage Carmen Ghia brought down from Uganda. Each vintage car tells the story of its former owner, emblematic of an African migration to Johannesburg in search of a better life.

Ayanda deals as much with celebrating the cultural diversity of contemporary South Africa as well as the challenges of integration of a huge influx of immigrants from the rest of the African continent, specifically from Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Malawi.

Director Sara Blecher takes great pains to emphasize the vibrancy of South Africa and with many directorial quirks the continent as a whole which is especially relevant in the wake of the recent Xenophobic attacks which occurred in Durban and Johannesburg in April 2015.

At times, Ayanda is a love story and also a comedy, but through all the turmoils of the main character, it is essentially a coming of age story about a young girl who has to deal with the sudden death of her father and of her mother who has to confront the ghosts of the past, while dealing with the treachery of Zama, gregariously played by Kenneth Nkosi, a new husband, and uncle to Ayanda, who has committed massive fraud at the cost of her family’s business.

Ayanda, despite its confusing story line is a celebration of African and in part South African vibrancy although the screenplay by Trish Malone could have done with some polishing. Unlike such films as Jerusalema and the Oscar winning Tsotsi, Ayanda does not dwell on the usual South African horrors of crime or violence but rather focuses on the vibrancy of the African continent to reach its full potential. Recommended viewing for a light, fun filled and positive spin on the possibilities that Africa and in turn South Africa has to offer.

Strangerland

Director: Kim Farrant

Cast: Nicole Kidman, Joseph Fiennes, Hugo Weaving, Maddison Brown, Nicholas Hamilton, Sean Keenan

Spoiler Alert valid until date of Commercial Release

Oscar winner Nicole Kidman (The Hours) gives another provocative performance in her home country of Australia in the sexually charged mystery thriller, Strangerland as she plays Catherine Parker mother of two children, who one night mysteriously vanish into the Outback. Directed by Kim Farrant and co-starring Joseph Fiennes (Hercules, Elizabeth) as her husband, the straight laced, brutal tempered pharmacist Matthew Parker and Hugo Weaving (The Matrix; Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) as the small town Detective David Rae who eventually gets to the heart of the mystery.

With beautiful cinematography by P. J. Dillon who captures the isolation and vastness of the Australian outback on the edge of the small town of Nathgari where the Parkers reside. As the days of the Parker’s children’s disappearance increase, town rumours run riot along with all sorts of sexual innuendo involving sexual abuse and psychological meltdown. The children Tommy and the precocious Lily are played by Nicholas Hamilton and Maddison Brown respectively.

Coupled with the blistering heat, the Parkers relationship as husband and wife, each with their own secrets is carefully dissected in a fascinating if at times slightly drawn out character study of the disintegration of a marriage.

Naturally Nicole Kidman is superb as the young and sexually frustrated mother who eventually blames herself for her children’s inexplicable disappearance yet while trying to remain actively involved in the investigation, which includes a vast manhunt in the blistering Australian manhunt.

Joseph Fiennes is equally good as the pent-up husband although he is not given as much scope as his co-star but still makes the most of his role. Fiennes is the younger brother of Oscar-nominee Ralph Fiennes and although he has not had as a prolific film career as Ralph, it’s wonderful to see Joseph Fiennes take on more gritty film roles after his initial success in Shakespeare in Love.

Although Strangerland could have been edited, it’s still a gripping family drama about parents dealing with loss and a sense of their own failure and is worth watching for lovers of suspense filled Australian drama in a similar vein to the brilliant Animal Kingdom.

After its debut at the Sundance Film Festival Sundance, Strangerland had its South African premiere at the 36^th Durban International Film Festival DIFF. This film is another opportunity to see the immensely talented Nicole Kidman continue in her daring streak of taking on more sexually explicit film roles such as those in The Paperboy and Stoker.

White Bird in a Blizzard

Director: Gregg Araki

Cast: Shailene Woodley, Eva Green, Shiloh Fernandez, Thomas Jane, Angela Bassett, Christopher Meloni, Gabourey Sidibe, Dale Dickey

The Descendants star Shailene Woodley gives an impressive performance as a sexually charged teenage girl, Kat Connors who discovers her blossoming confidence just as her gorgeous yet unstable mother, Eve, wonderfully played by French actress Eva Green, (The Dreamers, Casino Royale) mysteriously disappears.

Mysterious Skin director Gregg Araki’s startling yet uber cool Eighties drama White Bird in a Blizzard is a bit like Whatever happened to Baby Jane? with a massive twist at the end. So audiences should expect the unexpected.

Assembling a rock star cast including Christopher Meloni as the clueless father, the sumptuous Shiloh Fernandez (Red Riding Hood) as the sexy boy next door, Phil, Gabourey Sidibe star of Precious as Kat Conner’s best friend Beth along with Angela Bassett and Thomas Jane as the grizzled yet carefree police detective. Watch out for a cameo by Sheryl Lee star of the hit TV series Twin Peaks.

White Bird in a Blizzard as seen at the 36^th Durban International Film Festival DIFF subverts everything seemingly domestic about the average American life and turns a seemingly mysterious occurrence in suburban California into something far more sinister and ripe with Freudian references.

On every level, this is a bizarre yet highly amusing film, superbly cast with excellent performances by Woodley and Green as they embark on a tortuous mother-daughter relationship which ignores what is primarily occurring under their noses, undermining their own vanities and exploring hidden agendas from all involved. Eva Green is fabulous as the hip mother who receives little attention from her absent-minded husband while envying the sexual exploits of her beautiful teenage daughter, brilliantly played by Shailene Woodley, who proves she is an actress to watch.

Woodley’s distinct ability to hold her own throughout such a bizarre film is testament to her ever expanding talent which is sure to flourish in years to come. Araki’s frames each shot in the film with an ironic pathos assisted by a nostalgic and cool Eighties soundtrack which includes Depeche Mode.

Everything about White Bird in a Blizzard is wrong in a seriously dysfunctional way. This is a highly entertaining family drama about one young girls’ slow realization that those people surrounding her are certainly not what they claim to be.

Araki’s film is perverse, fabulous and definitely recommended viewing for those audiences which like their narratives as twisted as the intricacies of the most complex of human relationships.

White Bird in a Blizzard is like a Patricia Highsmith novel on acid with a retro Eighties soundtrack. 

Boychoir

Director: Francois Girard

Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Eddie Izzard, Debra Winger, Kathy Bates, Josh Lucas, Kevin McHale, Garrett Wareing

Oscar winner Dustin Hoffman (Rain Man, Midnight Cowboy) teams up with Oscar winner Kathy Bates (Misery, Titanic, Midnight in Paris) along with the rarely seen actress Debra Winger (Shadowlands, The Sheltering Sky) in a heart warming tale of an 11 year old boy Stet, superbly played by Garrett Wareing who after the death of his young mother and abandonment of his cold hearted father Gerard, played by Josh Lucas (A Beautiful Mind, The Lincoln Lawyer) is sent to an exceptionally Boychoir school to study singing, an American version of the Drakensberg Boys Choir set in Connecticut on the East Coast.

Hoffman plays the hard edged choir master Carvelle who recognizes the shimmering talent in Stet and soon after a series of missteps, casts him as the solo lead in a Choir Concert by Handel that the travelling Boychoir is performing in in New York city. French Canadian director Francois Girard’s  (Silk, The Red Violin) nuanced film Boychoir which premiered at the 36^th Durban International Film Festival DIFF is an absolute treat of a film and will be highly appreciated by audiences that enjoy beautiful music and singing of an elusive scale.

Boychoir is a scaled down version of Dead Poets Society, a brilliant portrait of one man, Carvelle who is desperate to catch the singing talent that these boys have before they reach puberty and of a boy, Stet, who struggles to survive in a hostile yet ultimately rewarding environment who eventually wins back the affection of his estranged father.

Boychoir also stars Eddie Izzard (Valkyrie, Ocean’s Thirteen) and Kevin McHale from the hit TV series Glee and is a highly recommended film sure to warm any viewer’s perceptions of a child prodigy struggling against endless adversity.

The Hundred Year Old Man who

Climbed out the Window and Disappeared

Director: Felix Herngren

Cast: Robert Gustafsson, Georg Nikoloff, Cory Peterson, Kerry Shale, Alan Ford.

Definitely one of the highlights of DIFF 2014 http://www.durbanfilmfest.co.za/ was the film adaptation of the Swedish novel, The Hundred Year Old Man who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared. A hugely entertaining and entirely Scandinavian tale about a pyromaniac pensioner Alan Karlsson delightfully played by Robert Gustafsson who after blowing up a foxhole near his home in rural Sweden, is untimely placed in a seemingly secure retirement village.

On his hundredth birthday, Alan decides that this confinement is for the birds and literally climbs out the window and misses his hundredth birthday party. So begins a marvellous adventure in which Alan gets mistakenly mixed up with a gang of Neo-Nazi criminals, an elephant, an undecided student and a mischievous train station manager who are all after a suitcase filled with loads of cash.

Based on the internationally bestselling novel by Jonas Jonasson The 100 Year Old man is a delightful subtitled film as the audience follows the sweet natured Alan who whilst going on his escapades also reminisces about his life as an explosives expert, who happens to quite literally cross paths with some of the 20^th century’s most ruthless dictators including Spain’s General Franco and Russia’s Stalin.

Through espionage and countless subterfuge, Alan also becomes involved with the Manhattan project about the building of the nuclear bomb by the Americans, gets drunk with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and even receives an invitation to the Atomic Energy Commission by the Swedish prime minister.

The 100 Year Old Man is truly a cinematic gem and a clever statement and parody on Sweden’s apparent neutrality throughout some of the last centuries most brutal, menacing and socially disruptive geo-political conflicts including the Spanish Civil War, World War II, the Cold War and even the 1968 counter-culture youth rebellion in Paris.

This is recommended viewing and whilst some of the jokes would miss an English speaking audience, the 100 Year Old Man is a definite must see and certainly totally different to the dark Swedish thriller trilogy starting with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

The 100 Year Old Man is a charming, hilarious and poignant journey through a century by a naïve likable character who keeps things simple by blowing things up or dancing with dictators. A must see Swedish comedy featuring lovable characters with a clever script and a highly amusing plot.

Million Dollar Arm

Director: Craig Gillespie

Cast: Jon Hamm, Alan Arkin, Suraj Sharma, Bill Paxton, Lake Bell, Aashif Mandvi, Maddhur Mittal

Disney’s take on baseball meets Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire comes in the form of the charming sports film, Million Dollar Arm featuring Mad Men’s Jon Hamm teaming up with Life of Pi’s Suraj Sharma and Alan Arkin from Argo.

Set in India and Los Angeles, director Craig Gillespie’s Million Dollar Arm premiering at the Durban International Film Festival 2014 – http://www.durbanfilmfest.co.za/ tells the true story of a down on his luck sports agents J. Bernstein, played by Hamm who while channel surfing flicking between Britain’s Got Talent and cricket in India on late night TV, comes up with an epiphany to travel to India to find the next big baseball player.

The only problem is that in India, once the jewel of the British colonial empire, the main sport is cricket as it in the rest of the Commonwealth and the general male population there do not play baseball. With the help of a shady Chinese business investor Chang played by Tzi Ma, J. B. Bernstein travels to chaotic Mumbai to discover a world so alien and different to his lavish and ordered Californian lifestyle, one in which he was a once successful sports agent.

Spurred on by his tenant, Brenda played by Lake Bell, J. B. Bernstein travels the length and breadth of India in search of a cricket player with a million dollar arm. He is helped by a retired baseball talent spotter Ray wonderfully underplayed by Alan Arkin (Little Miss Sunshine) who discover two young men Rinky and Dinesh, played by Suraj Sharma and Maddhur Mittal respectively who each possess a million dollar arm, or an above average ball throwing speed.

Part of the enticement for these two young players is the opportunity of traveling to the United States and play a game that they have never played before. Leaving the rural confines of Lucknow, India, they are suddenly transplanted in University of Southern California’s baseball fields where they are coached by the cautious yet optimistic coach Tom House played by Bill Paxton.

Naturally as a Disney film, director Gillespie in Million Dollar Arm aims for a general feel good sports film while making insightful observations about the massive cultural differences between India and America and highlighting each society’s similarities.

Jon Hamm is excellent as the exasperated JB Bernstein supported by a great cast especially Oscar winner Arkin and the always amiable Lake Bell, along with Aashif Mandvi as Aash while Suraj Sharma and Maddhur Mittal make the most of their roles as young Indian boys caught up in an essentially American sporting dilemma. Watch out for a superb musical score by A. R. Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire).

Unlike the very specific baseball films Moneyball or Field of Dreams, Million Dollar Arm is enjoyable family viewing and will appeal to sporting enthusiasts both in America and the commonwealth highlighting Hollywood’s increasing desire to deliver more international fare. A thought provoking and fascinating film about the increasing globalization of sport and the desire for all people to achieve seemingly impossible dreams. Like Indian hockey players trying out for the American National Baseball league. Recommended viewing especially as it is a true story.