The 2008 Miami International Film Festival

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The Miami International Film Festival turns 25 this year. The 2008 edition will take place from February 28th to March 9th at seven venues throughout the city. The majestic 1400-seat Gusman Theatre, located in the downtown area, is the site where the opening and closing films are shown. The Awards Ceremony and a special 25th Anniversary homage will also be held at the Gusman, as well as a number of Red Carpet events and screenings. Dramatic and Documentary features competing for awards usually receive three screenings at smaller venues located in Miami Beach, Coral Gables, Little Havana, and North Miami.

The Festival will show well over 100 feature films from throughout the world, with a continued concentration on films from Iberoamerica. The Miami festival has been hailed as the premiere showcase for Iberoamerican cinema in North America. The Festival's Film Exchange Program focuses on a different Latin American country each year with exhibition of films, panel discussions and events. This year, films from emerging Mexican filmmakers will be shown, and the festival will bring to Mexico a group of film industry advisors to share experience and knowledge with local film students and filmmakers.

In 2008, the Festival's World Issues sidebar concentrates on "children without a childhood", the environment, and war. There will be 27 short films competing for cash awards, and a Preservation Screening Program that will include the U.S. premiere of the restored print of Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West and a collection of highly influential avant-garde shorts by the Kuchar brothers.

Festival director Patrick de Bokay makes his debut this year. There are a number of apparent changes. The festival now opens on a thursday so that there is one more full day of screenings available. The three films that receive Grand Jury prizes will have an additional screening at the large Gusman venue on closing day. A program called Reel Music Scene has been added to showcase music documentaries and videos. The Miami festival has historically served, like the New York Film Festival, as a launching pad for U.S. distributors to showcase upcoming releases. There are less of them in this year's program. Perhaps the most important development is that the MIFF, in its 25th edition, is placing even more emphasis on discovering new talent and introducing films that have not secured distribution.

Let the films begin!

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BODY OF WAR (USA)

The great Roman historian, Titus Livius, said, "All things will be clear and distinct to the man who does not hurry; haste is blind and improvident."
"Blind and improvident," Mr. President. Congress would be wise to heed those words today, for as sure as the sun rises in the east, we are embarking on a course of action with regard to Iraq that, in its haste, is both blind and improvident. We are rushing into war without fully discussing why, without thoroughly considering the consequences, or without making any attempt to explore what steps we might take to avert conflict.

That is an excerpt from the remarks made by Robert Byrd, the Democratic Senator from West Virgina, during the debate leading to the passing of the Iraq War Resolution in October of 2002. This documentary co-directed by TV icon Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro intercuts between the debate and vote count that sanctioned the Bush Administration's invasion of Iraq and the daily activities of Tomas Young. Mr. Young joined the Army two days after 9/11 hoping to search and capture those responsible for the terrorist attacks. Instead, he was deployed to Iraq. He was shot on his fifth day there, resulting in permanent spinal cord injury.

Body of War depicts with absolute frankness the ensuing physical and mental challenges involved. The daily care he receives from his wife Brie, from his mother Cathy, and from medical staff from the Veteran's Administration (which is found to be insufficient and second-rate). The film documents Young's activism as a member of the Iraq Veterans Against the War, and his mother's political involvement in anti-war causes. Body of War doesn't dwell deeply into the fact that Young has an enlisted younger brother and a conservative, hawkish father. How the Youngs seemingly maintain familial cohesion and harmony in the face of marked disparity of opinion about the War, and politics in general, would be interesting documentary material. Perhaps exploring this issue would have detracted from the film's unwavering focus on the "blind and improvident" decision to invade Iraq and the price being paid. Yet some attention to it would have made for more compelling viewing.

Body of War ends on a perfect note as the two narrative strands are neatly brought together. Young pays a visit to the longest-serving member in the history of the Senate. As they walk down the hall after a nice chat, the wheelchair-bound Young and the 90 year-old Byrd jokingly compare their "mobility issues".

*Body of War received an award as Best Documentary of 2007 by the National Board of Review (based on festival screenings). It will be released theatrically in four major markets in April 2008.

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IN THE CITY OF SYLVIA (Spain/France)

"He" is a young man with tousled hair, stubble under a prominent jaw, and intense light eyes. He wears clothes a size too large and loves to sketch. He has checked into a one-star hotel in the city's old quarter. Sylvie is a girl he met at a nearby club six years ago. He hasn't seen her since, but continues to search for her. He thinks he spots her while sitting at a cafe. When "she" leaves, he tails her and spies on her for what will be the film's longest sequence. He seems to delay approaching her, perhaps to extend the illusion that "she" is Sylvie or to postpone being disappointed. "She" is played by Pilar Lopez de Ayala, the beautiful actress who won a Goya for her performance as Juana, the Spanish queen who went crazy in Mad Love. "He" is played by the lesser-known Xavier Lafitte.

The city of Sylvie is Strasbourg, here playing a role as protagonic as his. And the city is mostly bathed in warm sunlight even though the film is divided into three "nights". In the City of Sylvia is, among other things, a people-watching film. There are some recurring supporting players like an African man peddling wallets and belts and a rose seller with a pronounced limp. Director Jose Luis Guerin sometimes digresses briefly from "him" and his quest. At one point, he aims the camera discreetly at an obese, disheveled streetwoman, who sits on the sidewalk as she tosses an empty beer bottle across the street. The city comes alive in every sense via a combination of long takes, precise framing and a magnificently detailed, naturalistic sound design. The music we hear intermittently is not part of a composed score; it comes out of club speakers, car radios, and actual instruments being played live.

Graffiti signs around town proclaiming "Laure Je t'aime" are impossible to miss. The mystery messenger might be another forlorn lover who makes explicit the sentiments "he" can't express. Hard to say. I think the film is a testament to the power of a chance meeting or a fleeting moment on a person's life. The dialogue in the film is very sparse, by the way. This is fill-in-the-blanks storytelling. The mode is contemplative and observational, not unlike several films by directors from Barcelona such as Albert Serra's Honor de Cavalleria, Marc Recha's August Days and, to a lesser extent, Cesc Gay's Fiction. The experience they provide is rich and sensual. Detractors might claim that "nothing really happens". "Nothing", I'd reply, "except life".

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PERSONAL BELONGINGS (CUBA)

Independent Cuban films like Personal Belongings have more freedom to deal with controversial issues than those produced under the auspices of the government's organization for film production (ICAIC). This directing debut of Alejandro Brugues frankly dramatizes a primordial dilemma for Cubans: do I stay or do I attempt to leave? The handsome, former medical student Ernesto spends substantial time visiting consulates and reviewing visa requirements. Those who've decided to leave exist in a type of "purgatory", he says, made apparent by the fact he lives in the Lada he inherited when his mother passed away. The title refers to the contents of a small suitcase he plans to take abroad, most notably a memento his father gave him years before their estrangement. While assisting an injured person, Ernesto meets Ana, a young doctor who wouldn't want to leave the island. Personal Belongings adroitly charts the course of their relationship from the initial attraction and mutual affinity into a tentative romance with set limits imposed to avoid the pain of separation. A shortcut to exile appears when Ernesto meets a Spanish party-girl. She's just found out she's pregnant and needs a "husband" to placate her family in Spain.

All is well with Personal Belongings for about the first hour. It certainly presents a fair and balanced treatment of a delicate theme for Cubans home and abroad. It engages the viewer effortlessly, anchored by two dimensional and likable central characters. What devalues it has nothing to do with the restrictions of a low budget or directorial inexperience. It's the terrible third act of the script by Brugues, who has a writing background, that damns the film. It contains a number of improbable twists and awkward last-minute revelations designed, I imagine, to surprise, thrill, and amuse audiences. The unanimous opinion after the press screening was that Brugues lost his nerve, failed to trust the characters, "sold out". I am curious as to how a general audience will react to this disappointing film competing for the Festival's Ibero-American Feature Jury Prize.

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THE POPE'S TOILET (URUGUAY)

The titular toilet is not for John Paul II, it's for the tens of thousands expected to descend upon the small Uruguayan town of Melo during his visit. News of the Pope's visit have stimulated a flurry of activity. Struggling locals save and borrow to buy large quantities of food, drink and souvenirs to sell to throngs of pilgrims_news reports predict as many as 80 thousand. Beto (Cesar Troncoso) figures they will need bathroom facilities. He decides to build a modern bathroom in his frontyard and charge for usage.

By the time Beto starts collecting the necessary bricks we're rooting for him. He belongs to a friendly pack of men who make a living smuggling contraband, to be sold by local grocers, by bicycle across the Brazilian border. Beto lives with his loyal wife Carmen (Virginia Mendez) and their teenage daughter Silvia. They protest when they discover Beto is secretly smuggling goods for a corrupt customs official, but he needs quick money for a door and a toilet bowl "like the ones the rich use". Perhaps he'll raise enough money to buy the motorcycle of his dreams. The one that would allow him to rest his bum knee.

The Pope's Toilet was written and directed by Enrique Fernandez and Cesar Charlone_the cinematographer who lensed City of God and The Constant Gardener. The images found in this directing debut are every bit as accomplished. From the early tracking shots of the smugglers attempting to out-pedal the authorities to long shots of the town at dusk following the fabled event, The Pope's Toilet is a testament to the rich visual imagination and filmmaking chops of Fernandez and Charlone. Yet one is never distracted from the deep humanistic core of the narrative. Almost imperceptibly, the script weaves in Silvia's coming-of-age story. Mom wants her to go to sewing school, dad wants her to pedal next to him, but Silvia hopes to broadcast news on radio, perhaps even television. By film's end, a wiser, more aware Sylvia comes to a decision.

The Pope's Toilet is based on John Paul II's visit to Melo in 1988. Some plot elements reminded me of Fuse, a superb 2005 film about a Serbian town preparing for a visit from President Clinton. Despite potential expectations raised by its title, The Pope's Toilet doesn't aim for the satiric comedy found in Fuse. It's not devoid of humor though, and it achieves the type of rare, earned pathos found in Vittorio de Sica's The Bicycle Thief.

*The Pope's Toilet has won multiple awards af film festivals in Spain and Brazil, including Best Latin-American Film at the prestigious San Sebastian Film Festival. In Miami, the film will receive "red carpet treatment" as a "Gusman Gala", thus showing out of competition.

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AND ALONG CAME TOURISTS (GERMANY)

The second film directed by Robert Thalheim is partly based on his experiences at the International Youth Meeting Center of Auschwitz. Like Sven, the protagonist of And Along Came Tourists, Thalheim opted to to complete one year of civil service rather than the two years of military service required of Germans. He was assigned to the hostel/memorial/museum complex located at the former concentration camp next to the Polish town of Oswiecism. Sven is assigned to provide transportation and assistance to Stanislaw, the Center's octogenarian survivor-in-residence. The rough-mannered, former political prisoner educates youth groups visiting the camp and helps prepare victims' suitcases for display at the museum.

The amiable Sven must from the start contend with the barely repressed anti-German attitudes of the locals and Stanislaw's bad temper. Then, he sublets a room from Ania, a multilingual Polish girl who works as a museum guide and a casual romance develops between them. Sven patiently manages to get along with the old man, who's having conflict with museum curators who insist the suitcases need to be preserved not restored. When Ania quits her job to attend University abroad, Sven wonders if he'd be happier elsewhere and considers requesting a transfer.

And Along Came Tourists benefits from a good cast and a thougthful script. But the drama simmers at a low boil. One watches the film with interest for 85 minutes but I doubt I'll remember much about it in a couple of months. Well, I won't forget the scene in which Sven protests after a businesswoman interrupts Stanislaw's remarks at the unveiling of a Holocaust memorial at a new German-owned factory. It's a rare compelling moment in a film that's earnest and well-meaning but merely competent.

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SLINGSHOT (PHILIPPINES)

Brillante Mendoza toiled as a production designer under the psudonymn Dante for a long time before he directed his debut at age 45. He is furiously making up for lost time with 6 films released since 2005, and quickly establishing quite a reputation in his native Philippines and abroad. Mendoza's latest is nothing less than a feat of filmmaking prowess. A comprehensive, fictionalized snapshot of Manila slum life that could easily pass for a fly-on-the-wall documentary. Now imagine the fly being able to move across space at will thanks to those handy, lightweight Hi-Def DV cameras. Mendoza takes you into the cramped rooms, narrow alleyways, and crowded streets with unparalleled urgency and immediacy.

Slingshot is bookended by a vertiginous police raid and a political rally, the only event not staged for the camera. The hard work, skill and time required to make the rest look absolutely real can't be overlooked. That Mendoza is a great director of actors, a brilliant performance shaper, will be obvious to any viewer who realizes Slingshot is not a documentary. The shooting of the film was scheduled to coincide with Holy Week and the campaign leading to council elections. Slingshot consists of a number of vignettes involving multiple characters, none of whom takes center stage. A girl kneels to beg not to be turned in to police after caught shoplifting a dvd player. Another girl, who's missing front teeth, wails after accidentally dropping her dentures down the drain. The youngest among a gang of thieving schoolboys, the only one who gets caught, gets beat up at the police station. A toddler plays with his feces while dad gets high with his friends. A basketball game devolves into a knife fight. Believers pray devoutly to Jesus and Allah. Two women compete for a handsome casanova. Residents make a long line to collect cash in exchange for votes. Scaming, hustling, borrowing, bartering, pawning, begging, stealing. Whatever it takes to survive in the oppressive environment. It has such an impact on the lives of slum residents that Mendoza's sociological, rather than psychological, approach is not only valid but entirely appropriate.

Slingshot ends with a sequence of unmitigated power and poignancy. At the rally, a candidate's empty speechifying is followed by the singing of "How Great is Our God" as a bystander gets his pocket picked.

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BLUE EYELIDS (MEXICO)

Characters like Marina (Cecilia Suarez) and Victor (Enrique Arreola) are common in real life but rare in movies. At best, they are supporting characters subjected to violence, derision, or ridicule. Marina sells work uniforms at a store and Victor is in charge of the photocopier at an insurance company. They are both 30-something, single, isolated, humble, and guarded. What propells the plot of Blue Eyelids is Marina's winning an all-expenses-paid vacation for two at a beach resort. She thinks of inviting a girlfriend she hasn't seen for a while but she seems to have changed phone mumbers. Her selfish sister tries to get Marina to give up both tickets so she can take her husband and hopefully save their marriage. Desperate, Marina calls Victor. They had met at the cafe about a month earlier. He claimed to have been in her graduating class but Marina doesn't remember him at all. Blue Eyelids tracks their growing relationship over a series of encounters and dates prior to the vacation. It's a sometimes awkward, tentative getting-to-know-you between two who don't feel passion but perceive they just might make a good match. Marina and Victor recognize their suitability and common decency. They also seem well aware of the risks of getting close.

This film, directed by Ernesto Contreras and written by his brother Carlos, assumes the personality of the protagonists. Just like Marina and Victor wouldn't know how to tell a joke, Blue Eyelids doesn't exploit the obvious comedic potential of certain situations. They are also not melodrama characters so the script avoids large emotions or overly explicit displays of feeling in favor of nuance and sublety. A somewhat undercooked but brief narrative thread involving the old, lonesome owner of the shop where Marina works barely detracts from the overall effect. Blue Eyelids bucks convention in ways that could displease audiences who demand comic relief or who like their romances torrid. Discerning audiences will likely appreciate Blue Eyelids as a thoughtful, fairly unpredictable, breath-of-fresh-air. It was a Cannes selection in 2007 and winner of Best Film and Best Screenplay awards at Mexico's premiere film festival, the one that takes place in Guadalajara every spring.

The outstanding performances by US-educated Ms. Suarez (Sex, Shame & Tears, A Wonderful World) and Mr. Arreola (the pizza delivery man in Duck Season) are critical to the success of Blue Eyelids. They are both nominated for Mexican Academy awards. In Miami, Blue Eyelids is competing for Best Ibero-American Film.

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THE TREE OF GHIBET (CAMEROON-ITALY-USA)

This activist DV feature is simply not good enough to recommend. It is a project of The Traveling Film School, a non-profit organization that provides free film and theater training to children from underdeveloped regions. The school was created by New Yorker and Columbia grad Amedeo D'Adamo and Milanese documentarian Nevina Satta. The filmmakers describe The Tree of Ghibet as "an experiment in filmmaking without a screenplay to bring attention to the billion children living in poverty".

An 8 year-old named DJ is rejected and abandoned by his aunt because she thinks he is possessed by an evil spirit. The boy joins a group of kids living in the streets of Douala, Cameroon under the less than ideal leadership of a quarrelsome woman named Ghibet, and Divine, a teenage prostitute. A few vignettes illustrate the dangers faced by homeless, third-world kids. One involves the popularity of glue as a means of escape for youths living under these conditions. Another one features an American sexual predator. Then Divine gets killed by one of her johns.

The issues raised are neither explored nor convincingly dramatized, they are simply brought up. The edification one would derive from immersion in an alien environment and the enjoyment of watching the street kids play themselves is diminished by rudimentary production values and mediocre lensing. As perhaps should be expected of a film without a screenplay, there are serious pacing problems and a general narrative slackness.

Text prior to final credits provides interesting and important information about the world's 200 million homeless minors. In many African countries, for instance, there are no laws against child neglect and abandonment. In others, the laws are not enforced. I wished I could give a good review to this well-meaning film meant to raise awareness about their plight.

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TRICKS (POLAND)

Summer in a Polish provincial town from three distinct points of view. Elka is a tall blonde in her late teens assiduously trying to master the Italian language so she can apply for a job with an Italian firm with offices in Poland. She even carries two-sided conversations in Italian while washing mugs at the beer garden where she works. Elka's brother Stefek, an inquisitive, force-of-nature of about 9 years of age, wanders the streets observing and trying to make sense of the adult world. Elka and Stefek live with their shopkeeper mother, who is relegated to a secondary role in the narrative. The train station is Stefek's favorite hangout. He becomes curious about a well-dressed man who changes trains at the station. Elka explains that father left because "another woman trapped him with her tricks". Her willful avoidance of the man at the station signals to Stefek that this man could be the father who left when he was very little. So Stefek decides to engage him in conversation to learn more about him. The third major character in Tricks is Jerzy, a young car enthusiast and mechanic contemplating what he can do to make Elka fall in love with him.

This sophomore effort by writer/director Andrzej Jakimowski (Squint Your Eyes) feels freshly imagined from beginning to end. Jakimowski gives us three likable, well-defined characters with specific goals and creates a great deal of suspense and anticipation around whether or not they will achieve them. Tricks presents a view of reality as an interplay between what people can do to get what they want and intervening forces outside their control. Handsome lensing by Adam Bajersky makes even nondescript, drab locations exude hope but the denounment is realistically ambiguous and a tad inconclusive. Cast is uniformly good, but it was little Damian Ul who winning the Best Actor prize at the Tokyo Film Festival. Tricks also won two prizes at Venice and captured Best Film and Best Cinematography at the Polish Film Festival.

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STRANDED: I HAVE COME FROM A PLANE THAT CRASHED ON THE MOUNTAINS (URUGUAY-ARGENTINA-CHILE-FRANCE)

"The tenth day arrived, the day when we hear on the radio, that the search has been called off, the day when we had no more food at all… Then, we said to ourselves: if Christ could offer His flesh and His blood to His Apostles during the Last Supper, then surely He had shown us the way and we must do the same: take His blood and His flesh as incarnated in our friends who had died in the crash… So that this became an intimate Communion for all of us… and this is what helped us to survive."
(A survivor of the flight that crashed on the Andes mountains in 1972)

The tale of how a group of Uruguayan rugby players survived for 72 days after their plane crashed on the Andes cordillera at over 13,000 ft. altitude has been called "the most extraordinary survival story ever". A film adaptation made in Mexico in 1976 was dubbed into English and released in the States as Survive! even though it wasn't any good. It was based on one of several books about the ordeal. Probably the best among them, written by Piers Paul Read, was adapted by John Patrick Shanley for the US-made Alive (1993). While it was clearly better than the quickly put together Mexican film and included an outstanding crash sequence, Alive somehow failed to get under one's skin. As Roger Ebert put it: "what would it really be like to huddle in a wrecked aircraft for 10 weeks in freezing weather, eating human flesh? I cannot imagine, and frankly this film doesn't much help me."

Stranded: I Have Come From A Plane That Crashed on the Mountains, a documentary by Uruguayan director Gonzalo Arijon, is the definitive movie about the crash and survival. For the first time since the press conferences immediately after rescue, all the survivors have spoken openly and frankly in front of the camera about this amazing event. One gets a very clear idea of what it took, physically, mentally, spiritually, to survive for 72 days in this most inhospitable environment. Content from face-to-face interviews with the 16 survivors, families, and rescuers is fleshed out via photographs and footage of the rescue and press conference. Most importantly, Stranded includes brief, expressionistic reenactments in Super 16mm shot by Cesar Charlone_the award-winning cinematographer whose directing debut, The Pope's Toilet, is one of the best films at this year's festival. These scenes with their grainy texture, variable focus, and overexposure stir the imagination and add vividness to the survivor statements without competing with them. The film also explores the effects on the lives of the survivors and their families. A few of the then-young men are shown back at the crash site more than three decades later accompanied by wives or children.

It's very satisfying to finally have a really good film about this story that captivated the world during the 70s and continues to awe and inspire those who learn about it today. Stranded: I Have Come From A Plane That Crashed on the Mountains as been contracted for broadcast by PBS as part of their Independent Lens series during the 2008-2009 season. No specific dates announced yet.

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THE DRUMMER (HONG KONG-TAIWAN)

Kenneth Bi's widely and universally appealing The Drummer is certainly not a "festival film"_a low profile, film-as-art production with little or no box office potential. It's a genre hybrid starring Jackie Chan's son Jaycee and Hong Kong star Tony Leung Ka Fai (The Lover, Ashes of Time, Election). Jaycee plays Sid, the loquacious, egotistic, rock drummer son of triad boss Kwan (Leung). Sid is caught having sex with the mistress of one Kwan's powerful rivals, the ruthless Stephen Ma. When confronted, Sid insolently humiliates Ma in front of his posse. Kwan orders Sid to hide in rural Taiwan to protect him from Ma's wrath. Once exiled, Sid catches a performance by a group of Zen drummers called U Theater and becomes fascinated. The drummers live in a mountaintop retreat where they lead a simple, disciplined lifestyle that includes the practice of martial arts and meditation. Sid is eventually allowed to join and undergoes a spiritual and emotional transformation over the course of many months. Fate will force Sid to abandon Taiwan and a romantic interest there and become embroiled in Hong Kong's triad wars.

The Drummer is equal parts gangster flick and redemptive, fish-out-of-water tale with comedic and romantic overtones. It skillfully combines admittedly familiar elements of both genres. The film is a study of contrasts between urban and rural, materialism and spirituality, violence and peace. At the conclusion, Sid faces a dilemma between family obligations and a new sense of self that would wilt in Hong Kong's mean streets. Production values are top-notch, particularly the excellent sound design by Tu Duu-chih (a favorite of directors Hou and Tsai) and debutant Sam Koa's photography. The film's crucial element is the ability of the charismatic Jaycee Chan to make Sid's transformation believable. He manages to do that while remaining charming throughout. The Drummer doesn't break new ground but it's very well-made and consistently fun to watch.

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DEFICIT (MEXICO)

Perhaps Latin American is the world region with the widest economic disparity between the rich and the poor. Increasingly, Latin American cinema is reflecting this reality. Prominent examples include Live-in Maid from Argentina, and the Mexican films Battle in Heaven and Amores Perros. The latter is the breakthrough film for Gael Garcia Bernal, who proceeded to appear in films by A-list directors Pedro Almodovar, Michel Gondry, Walter Salles and Alfonso Cuaron. No doubt, a good education for any actor with helmer aspirations. And here it is, Deficit, Garcia Bernal's directing debut.

He also assumes the protagonist role, Cristobal, a 23 year-old from an affluent family who has been refused admission to Harvard and is afraid to tell his parents. Not that he has any motivation to enter graduate school or any ambition beyond girls and partying with his friends. To that effect, he has invited a group of friends to his family's sprawling country estate, not realizing his younger and wilder sister Elisa had exactly the same idea. However, her group includes Dolores, a charming and cute girl from Argentina. Cris gives his girlfriend the wrong directions to allow for enough time to woo Dolores. Meanwhile, Adan, the gardener's son who practically grew up with Cris, is crossing the class line and also showing interest in Dolores. Cris must also contend with Elisa's older boyfriend who Cris holds responsible for Elisa's growing drug use. Moreover, there's a potential conflict brewing among the servants, one of whom covets the wife of the other.

What we have here is a simpler, young-set, modern version of Jean Renoir's masterpiece The Rules of the Game. I don't mean to imply that Deficit begins to approach the subtle, sophisticated perfection of that French classic but it shares a narrative blueprint and aims for the same type of social commentary. Deficit's major virtue is that none of the dialogue feels written. One gets the impression the script by Kyzza Terrazas is fairly short and that a lot of the slang-rich exchanges were improvised during the shoot. The script tends to telegraph narrative twists prematurely and undersells the servants' romantic triangle. A nice detail is that Cristobal's parents are away in Zurich, apparently trying to hide money obtained as a result of Mexico's systemic corruption. The acting by the entire cast is quite convincing, not that any of the roles would be much of a stretch for the actors. Film's highly appropriate title refers to both Cristobal's personality deficiencies and the disadvantages of the servants in comparison with their masters. Deficit exposes a prevalent mindset, a culture of entitlement, among affluent Latin Americans. It's an encouraging, auspicious directorial debut for Gael Garcia Bernal.

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YOU, THE LIVING (SWEDEN)

Be pleased then, you living one
in your delightfully warm bed
before Lethe's ice-cold wave
will lick your escaping foot
F.W. Goethe

Goethe's exhortation to enjoy life when it's good because it won't remain so is the inspiration behind Roy Andersson's fourth feature. Like Songs From the Second Floor, his Cannes Jury Prize winner, You, the Living links a series of vignettes involving a cross-section of Swedish society. The new film has a wider emotional range and tone. A number of sequences are like snapshots from an absurdist play by Eugene Ionesco. Many are serio-comic, mixing humor with social commentary in differing proportions. There are a couple of unabashedly sweet moments that might surprise Andersson aficionados.

A chubby couple dressed in leather and animal print walk their dog Bobbo in the park. The woman sits on a bench loudly lamenting how nobody loves or understands her. Her patient husband replies that he and Bobbo love her. She retorts that they're both faking it and belts out a funny, miserablist song accompanied by a brass band heard on the soundtrack. A bit later, at a bar, the woman waits for a beer while ignoring her husband's plea to call it a night. The bartender rings a bell. The woman screams: "Last chance to get plastered, you bums!

An old-money family's dinner guest attempts to impress by performing the old trick of removing the tablecloth without disturbing what's resting on it. It's absurd to try because the table is impossibly long. But he proceeds anyway and breaks an expensive, antique china set. The bare wooden table is revealed to have inlaid swastikas. The room is full of anger, laughter, disbelief, embarrasment.

A cute girl infatuated with a rock guitarrist faces the camera to relate a dream she had. In it, she marries the guy of her dreams and they're inside their small house still wearing tux and white wedding dress. Then the house begins to move about town and you realize it's traveling along train tracks. The house comes to a stop and the whole town comes to their window to congratulate them and wish them well. They break into song as the smiling couple wave goodbye and the house begins to move again.

A skinny old man lays naked on his back discussing his money woes while his curvy wife, wearing nothing but a viking helmet, straddles him and moans with pleasure.
A woman enjoying a bubble bath sweetly sings a song about a town where there's no strife. Her husband observes from another room.

You get the idea, I hope. Andersson keeps his camera static most of the time and favors muted pastel colors. His staging is painterly composed, with dynamic interplay between what's on the background and the foreground. In You, the Living, Andersson looks at the struggles and fleeting joys of living with an attitude of bemusement that's both delightful and substantive.

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IRON LADIES OF LIBERIA (USA)

The first elected female president of an African country, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, is known as "the Iron Lady" because of her strong convictions and willful determination to confront the seemingly insurmountable problems that besiege her nation. She won a tough election against the well-connected son-in-law of the dictatorial, corrupt former president Charles Taylor. Some of the most important members of her cabinet are strong women cut from the same mold as the president. Iron Ladies of Liberia was directed by Daniel Junge, a documentarian from Wyoming, and Siatta Scott Johnson, a Liberian single mother and journalist who's an "iron lady" herself. She introduces us to her country, founded in 1847 by freed American slaves and just emerging from a devastating civil war that lasted 14 years. The co-director shares her hopes that her children will inherit a better Liberia. Her on-going dispute with a Taylor supporter over a lot she purchased is integrated into the film, but its central focus is the Iron Lady's tremendously challenging first year in office.

When Ellen Johnson Sirleaf takes power the economy is in shambles, systemic corruption is rampant, the judicial system is a joke, chaos and lawlessness reign and the police don't have weapons. Over the course of one year, she convinces street vendors to vacate the streets and move to a market she had built so car traffic is not impeded, she manages to attract a visit from the President of China to promote foreign investment, she travels to Washington and gets the US to cancel Liberia's $391 million debt, and she craftily handles threats by soldiers from the disbanded army. She also proposes a series of measures to battle corruption. A particularly intense moment involves the Iron Lady's reaction to a fire ignited at the presidential mansion. The filmmakers were evidently given free access to the president and her cabinet. When the police chief finally gets arms for her department, she grabs a high-caliber gun and says: "Now I feel like a real woman" before bursting into laughter.

Iron Ladies of Liberia serves as a counter-balance to a number of recent documentaries about African atrocities that stem from conditions similar to those found in Liberia. This documentary provides an example of what is happening in Africa that is constructive and encouraging.

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SCRAMBLED BEER (CHILE)

Vladimir, a fun-seeking slacker who gets serially evicted from apartments, runs into Jorge, a high school classmate he hasn't seen in years. Jorge is a neurotic nerd with a hot girlfriend who works at a chemical lab. He needs a roommate so he invites Vladimir to move in. When Vladimir agrees, one expects Scrambled Beer to turn into a new version of The Odd Couple. Then Vladimir begins to experience severe time disorientation, waking up a week ahead or behind actual time. This could develop into a type of metaphysical comedy like Groundhog Day, I thought, or a time-travel fantasy. Once Scrambled Beer becomes a dark comedy about murder, it became obvious I was watching something derivative and uninspired. It's seemingly aimed at a young crowd who hasn't seen excellent examples of the genre like Eating Raoul, The War of the Roses and Serial Mom.

The title refers to a drink made by mixing malt beer, sugar and one raw egg that Jorge shares with his friend. Scrambled Beer was co-written and directed by Cristobal Valderrama, making his filmmaking debut. Given the stereotypical, superficial characters, it's no surprise to learn that he is a former cartoonist. It's possible I imagine to take these characters, which also include one appropriately and simply described by the director as "a goth freak", and make something fresh out of it. But the Santiago, Chile setting is not enough to put a new spin on a stale, recycled narrative.

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THE OTHER (ARGENTINA)

This unassuming miniature, written and directed by 34 year-old Ariel Rotter, won the Jury Grand Prix and the award for Best Actor (Julio Chavez) at the prestigious Berlin Film Festival. The fact that it's become routine for Argentine films to garner awards at festivals worldwide speaks volumes about the consistent quality of a national cinema that has experienced an unprecedented revival over the past decade.

The Other is a character study about Juan Desouza (Chavez), a 46 year-old lawyer. The opening scene depicts that middle-age rite of passage of finding out you need eyeglasses. Then Juan visists his ailing father, with whom he has a very warm relationship. Juan gives his father a bath, a scene of supreme terderness reminiscent of Sokurov's Mother and Son, because the old man refused to let the nurse assist him. Juan has an intimate moment with his wife before departing on a business trip to the provinces. After completing some legal paperwork for a recently deceased man, Juan goes to the station and decides not to leave. Over the next two nights, he checks into two hotels using the name of his client and, subsequently, that of a man who died while sitting next to him on the bus. He wanders around the town and surrounding areas being someone other than himself, as if taking some sort of existential vacation.

The Other has a rigorous first-person point of view as Juan appears in every single scene. Rotter's filmmaking is unblinkingly austere, never calling attention to itself. The camera stares at him, and Chavez is a fascinating actor to watch, and follows him wherever he goes without feeling the need to explain and interpret his behavior. Juan is having to grapple with his father approaching the hour of death and, as it was initially subtly hinted and later confirmed, his impending fatherhood. His days in a provincial town under assumed identities amount to a period of reprieve or adjustment to new realities. Some will no doubt find the film a bit too cryptic and tight-lipped. Count me among those who find that The Other provides more than enough rationale for the protagonist's actions. It's an engrossing and fascinating character study with a superb performance by Julio Chavez as its core.

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IZALINE CALISTER: LADY SINGS THE TAMBU (NETHERLANDS)

This hour-long documentary directed by Miluska Rosalina is structured around a concert consisting of songs from George Gershwin's musical "Porgy and Bess" at a theater in Amsterdam. It opens with the chanteuse from the Caribbean island of Curacao backstage prior to her performance. The middle portion is primarily concerned with her learning, arranging, and rehearsing the chosen numbers with her quartet. The climax is, predictably, her excellent renditions of two of the songs in front of an audience on the opening night of her Gershwin tour.

We also learn about Ms. Calister's development as an artist beginning with her recording of boleros and ballads when still in primary school, followed by recordings in her native Papiamentu language, her affinity for Brazilian popular music, and her more recent embracing of American jazz. What about the tambu? This talented lady actually does not sing the tambu, a call-and-response music form with African roots. We watch her discussing her fascination with tambu with a veteran of the genre and Calister's musician father but her attempts to learn it indicate the highly improvisational tambu is not suited to her talents. However catchy, the title of Rosalina's documentary is deceiving. One also wishes Izaline Calister: Lady Sings the Tambu would provide an idea as to the singer's degree of recognition and popularity around the world. Through my own research I learned, for instance, that she embarked on a 3-week tour of Mexico and that she's performed in faraway Indonesia. The documentary spiked my interest in Ms. Calister but it didn't satiate it. Perhaps making a feature-length documentary on her was not an option for Rosalina due to funding or broadcasting limitations.

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GETTING HOME (CHINA)

Director Zhang Yang's Shower (2000), about the owners and patrons of a traditional bathhouse set for demolition, became one of the most widely distributed Chinese films. His success continued with Quitting and the highly ambitious family saga Sunflower. Yang's central theme is the clash between rural and urban, tradition and modernity. That main concern remains evident in his latest, Getting Home, although Yang seems here to be more consciously aiming to please the general public, with mixed results.

Zhao and Liu have, like millions of rural Chinese, emigrated to the city in search of employment. They have worked together as construction workers for four years and become best friends. We meet them towards the end of a drinking binge, when the slight and short Liu seems to have passed out. The corpulent Zhao carries his buddy on his back and boards a bus. He has realized before we do that Liu is dead and that he must, as promised, take him to his faraway town to be properly buried. The trip will be rich in incident and adventure, comedy and tragedy, as Zhao is determined to fulfill his commitment to bring Liu's corpse to his relatives_the film's Chinese title is based on the proverb: "A fallen leaf returns to its roots". Along the way, Zhao will meet some who will ease his burden and help him get closer to his destination, and others who will do the opposite. What emerges is a reasonably varied portrait of contemporary China.

Almost by definition, road movies like Getting Home are episodic. It's a bit of a disappointment how some very effective sequences are surrounded by others that succumb to excess. A lot of genuinely funny bits are generated by the various ways Zhao attempts to transport the corpse, including placing it inside a huge tractor tire. Yang ridicuously elongates the scene as if wanting to exhaust the comic potential of a man rolling inside the tire. A chapter involving a rich but pathetically lonely man who hires mourners to stage his own funeral is both hilarious and moving. One featuring a hysterical, heartbroken truck driver verges into schmaltz. Zhao's encounters with a homeless woman who earns a living by selling her blood, and a family of urban exiles turned beekeepers are very successful. Another involving a gang of repentant thugs requires too much suspension of disbelief.

Getting Home is wildly inconsistent. What smooths the ride through the rough spots is the winning performance by the enormously sympathetic Zhao Bensham, a stage comedian seen previously in Zhang Yimou's Happy Times. May we see more from him soon.

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AMAL (CANADA)

Expanded, feature length version of a short film by the same title released in 2004 by Toronto-born brothers Richie and Shaun Mehta. The eventful narrative was inspired by their encounter with a surprisingly honest motorized rickshaw driver during the one year they spent at college in Delhi, India.

The narrative kicks off with a brief voiceover by an old man who relates how, just prior to his death, he learned a valuable life lesson from a rickshaw wallah named Amal. The old man, Suresh (Roshan Seth), is apparently nothing but a cantankerous, quarrelsome, ailing hobo. He is later revealed to be a millionaire hotel chain owner who changes his will during his last days and leaves everything to Amal. The angriest among his relatives is Suresh's younger son, who has large gambling debts. The lawyer in charge of the large estate has 30 days to find Amal, but she unwisely enlists Suresh's business partner (Naseeruddin Shah) to assist in the search. Meanwhile, Amal is trying to collect money to pay for an operation for a street girl who stole a purse from one of his passengers and got hit by a car while running away.

Amal is a pleasant, well-made film that benefits enormously from a first-rate cast and on-location shooting in the crowded streets of Delhi_ a particularly difficult shoot because of the enormous popularity of veteran thespians Seth and Shah. The narrative is nicely paced, maintaining a consistently forward thrust. Some plot developments might be improbable but not incredible. Amal is decisively simplistic from an emotional and intellectual point of view. Realistic milieu aside, it's a fable that uses fairly archetypal characters like the virtuous, humble rickshaw wallah to illustrate how "the poorest of men can be the richest".

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A WORKING MOM (ISRAEL)

Narration in Hebrew introduces Marisa Villozial, a native of Cochabamba, Bolivia who has worked in Tel Aviv cleaning homes and apartments for the past fifteen years. We observe her working, visiting Jerusalem for the first time in her life, and having a farewell dinner with a dozen compatriots. We learn she left her three year-old son and baby daughter under her parents' care and hasn't seen any of them for 15 years. The narration stops and it becomes clear A Working Mom's subject is not Marisa's time in Israel but her return to Bolivia and her attempt to become a mother to her kids again.

What ensues packs the emotional punch of fictional family drama, made even more devastating by our awareness that none of it is fabricated. The kids have built certain expectations based on culture and environment about the concept of mother that Marisa fails to meet. The parents await the return of the submissive, dependent girl who left at age 22, not the 37 year-old self-reliant, emancipated woman Marisa has become_they make serious and apparently baseless accusations against the Bolivian boyfriend Marisa met in Israel who is coming back to join her. Marisa has seen a different way of life and questions norms and mores no longer familiar to her. Moreover, she sent as much money as she could from Israel to have a small house built and a bank account opened for the kids' college education, and the money was, to some degree, misspent or mismanaged.

Powerful material, well-presented by director Limor Pinhasov, who met Marisa in 1995 when she was assigned to clean her film production office. However, A Working Mom single-case scenario touches on global themes. Lower-class people working in foreign lands is an important and growing phenomenon. Remittances from those working abroad, mainly in Chile, Argentina and the US, amount to close to 10% of Bolivia's gross domestic product (that figure is roughly doubled for smaller countries like Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Honduras and El Salvador). I wish Ms. Pinhasov had placed Marisa's story within a larger, sociological context. It would have enriched the viewing experience.

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COCHOCHI (MEXICO)

The large State of Chihuahua in northern Mexico is a highly industrialized State but it's two of its agricultural communities that are the focus of recent Mexican films: the highly celebrated Silent Light by Carlos Reygadas (which will be reviewed later in this space), and this lower profile feature by writer/directors Israel Cárdenas and Laura Amelia Guzmán. Both communities, Mennonites who emigrated from Europe and native Raramuri Indians, exist at the margins of mainstream Mexican culture and society. Their members speak, at least among themselves, languages other than the official Spanish. Both films utilize members of each community who have no acting experience. Silent Light, which already has a place in any serious cinema canon, is the most technically accomplished. But Cochochi is also quite special and I worry that it will be overlooked despite being selected by visiting film critics at Toronto '07 for the Discovery Award.

Cochochi's plot is based on a simple premise: two boys are asked by their grandfather to deliver medicine to a old couple who live in a remote canyon in the Tarahumara mountains. The boys decide to ride grandfather's white horse rather than a donkey. Along the way, they tie the horse to a tree while exploring the area on foot. When they return, the horse is gone. They must find the horse and deliver the goods before returning home. Cardenas and Guzman, who hails from the Dominican Republic, have adopted the working methods of Portuguese auteur Pedro Costa: become immersed in the community you are planning to depict, use a small crew (Cardenas and Guzman are also the film's cinematographers and camera operators), develop the story in close collaboration with the (non) actors, who are actually playing themselves or a slightly fictionalized version of themselves.

Cochochi is both a road movie and a coming-of-age tale. It opens with a major rite of passage for Raramuri kids: their 6th grade graduation. This is, by choice or necessity, as much formal education as many indigenous kids will receive. Evaristo is very proud to be graduating and has plans to attend secondary school in the fall. It's ironic that his brother Tony, who decided not to go to the ceremony and doesn't plan to return to school, is the one whose academic achievement earns him a scholarship. The boys have contrasting views regarding the larger, mainstream society and different theories regarding what happened to the horse and what to do about it. The boys separate sometime after losing the horse and have distinct experiences based on encounters with both Raramuris and outsiders.

Cochochi moves to the slow rhythms of its rural milieu and takes the time to contemplate the natural environment. Some stretches could exasperate audiences who might find the film lacking narrative urgency. The structure of the film allows for acquaintance with certain cultural aspects of the natives such as the making and consumption of teshuino, a fermented corn-based beverage, and the reliance on messages broadcasted by a local radio station to communicate and transmit vital information. These aspects are, however, neatly integrated into the narrative. They are organic to it rather than documentary asides. Cochochi is a work of anthropological rescue of a culture that's likely to eventually vanish. Its integrity to its themes and subjects is to be admired. But Cochochi is also a very beautiful, if conventionally lensed, movie that tells a story that seems slight at first but gains heft and complexity as it moves along.

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ESTOMAGO: A GASTRONOMIC STORY (BRAZIL/ITALY)

A large percentage of Latin American films are co-productions between a Latin American country and one or more European one. Typically, all the Europeans provide is funding and a limited distribution deal. On the other hand, Estomago (which means "stomach") is truly an artistic collaboration between Brazilians and Italians even though it's set in Rio and spoken in Portuguese.

What will be most familiar to Brazilians is the protagonist, Nonato, an undereducated, fairly clueless native of the underdeveloped Northeast region who comes to the big city looking for a better life. He has just arrived when we meet him and he's hungry and penniless. So he enters a cafeteria, orders some food and ends up having to clean the filthy kitchen as a form of payment. His hard work and humble ways please the owner, who offers meals and a cot in exchange for help in the kitchen. Nonato turns out to have almost instinctual culinary talent. The working class patrons become enamored of his coxinhas (a fried snack food known in the US as "mock chicken legs") and other delicacies. Nonnato's biggest fan is Iria, a gluttonous, vulgar but sweet prostitute that can rightly be called "Felliniesque". He is lured away by the owner of a restaurant named, not coincidentally, Boccaccio '70 and introduced to gourmet cuisine. Nonato is smitten by Iria, who is more than willing to offer her services in exchange for his tasty food. Then Estomago flashes-forward to Nonato being taken to his jail cell, the beginning of a second story about how Nonato enters an alien environment and masters it thanks to his cooking skills.

Co-writer/director Marcos Jorge shuttles back and forth between the two stories with expert assistance from editor Luca Alverdi (who Jorge met in film school in Rome). The first story is a mystery regarding how and why Nonato ended up behind bars. The second one generates suspense because a crowded Brazilian jail in which 8 criminals share a cell is a most dangerous environment. But, Estomago is, resolutely, a comedy, one based on the realistic predicament of an innocent, fish-out-of-water convincingly played by Joao Miguel. His performance evidences masterful comic timing but the role involves substantial dramatic material, which shows off the thespian's range (Miguel received his second Best Actor nod at the Rio festival in the past 3 years). The film's revelation is Fabiula Nascimiento, making her feature debut with a robust, confident performance as Iria. One can't fail to mention the contribution of composer Giovanni Venosta, whose music sounds like an update on Ennio Morricone's scores for spaghetti westerns, and DP Toca Seabra's slow pans and a bravura final shot that's the perfect bow for this gift to film lovers of all stripes.

*Estomago's screening at the Miami International Film Festival is its North American premiere. The film will open in Brazil shortly, followed by theatrical runs in 12 other countries. It's likely to continue making the festival circuit in the US. During Q&A, Jorge expressed his hope that a US distributor will turn up. Audience response was enthusiastic, particularly regarding Miguel and Nascimiento's performances, the bizarre and brilliantly lensed final scene, and the clever way the two narrative strands are handled and finally brought together.

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KATRINA'S CHILDREN (USA)

World premiere of feature length documentary directed by Laura Belsey. It won the Jury Prize at the New Orleans Human Rights Film Festival in its original short version. Title is most accurate. Katrina's Children examines the effects of Hurricane Katrina exclusively from the point of view of kids between the ages of 7 and 13 from New Orleans and other gulf communities. It makes ample use of the children's artwork, particularly drawings which were subsequently animated by artists David and Courtney Egan.

The interviews, set in the children's homes and schools, reveal that the effects are quite varied depending on a number of factors. Some kids who left the area in advance of the storm evidence minimal discomfort. It's encouraging to note that these kids are quite aware of their advantageous position relative to kids who witnessed tragedy and lived through terror. Like a 10 year-old girl, for instance, who states that "nothing will make (her sadness and anxiety) go away". The experience of loss of family, friends, home, and a sense of being safe in their world is palpable. As the film progresses, it becomes evident (although there's no narration or text spelling it out) that most of the kids exhibiting signs of post-traumatic stress are African-American. A couple of frank statements regarding race are most illuminating about how kids perceive the racial divide in America. Two interviews are interesting in showing how, when children attempt to assign blame, they often tend to point the finger at themselves no matter how illogical. A boy seems to be negotiating between contrasting impulses when he says: "Sometimes, I just wonder why it happened, why my house got taken away. I know it's not my fault, but I could have changed things. I could have quit being mean. I could have been more grateful for what I've been given. And I could have not took my friends for granted."

This is engaging and important documentary material but, at 80 minutes, this feature length version of Katrina's Children often feels repetitive. There are also some scenes that add little to our understanding of the children's reactions to the tragic event. The material could be condensed into a nicely paced, hour-long film for television broadcasting.

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KONYEC (HUNGARY)

The Hungarian Film Week is the only film festival I know that separates its Jury Prize into Best Auteur Film and Best Mainstream Film. Konyec, the directing debut of Gabor Rohonyi, won the latter and, as if to support the jury's decision, also won the People's Choice Award. It is, as that pedigree indicates, an extremely well-crafted, thoroughly enjoyable movie.

Konyec tells the story of Emil and Heidi at two separate points in time. Black-and-white scenes relate how in 1959, when Emil was a chaffeur for Soviet communists, he hid Heidi from authorities who were searching her home. Later they fell in love and married. In the present, the 81 year-old Emil and 70 year-old Heidi are unable to live with dignity because their social security or pension check can't begin to cover basic expenses. When Heidi is forced to use her prized diamond earrings as a form of payment, a desperate Emil grabs an old gun he was allowed to keep when the Soviets left and robs a post office. It's the first of a series of crimes. Heidi is both concerned for his safety and excited by his courage. She regains her passion for Emil and eventually joins him on a crime spree across Hungary as they evade police capture. They are labeled "the blood money pensioners" by the press, become folk heroes to working class people and a source of embarrasment to the police. Andor and Agi, the cops assigned to the case are young, married and constantly bickering because of Andor's recent tryst with a whore at the station. The chase gives Andor the opportunity to make amends.

Konyec feels like more than a "geriatric road movie" or another criminals-on-the-run yarn. Emil and Heidi's criminal motivation is deeply rooted in the plight of many retirees in Europe and elsewhere. Konyec has a humanist core and sustained romantic overtones. Reportedly the title means "end" in Russian. It might refer to what the end of communism in Hungary has brought on, or to the last stage in the life of a human being, or both. Anyway, there's no reason why anyone must see Konyec but it's hard to think of anyone who wouldn't be entertained by it.

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BARCELONA (UN MAPA) (SPAIN)

Veteran writer-director Ventura Pons suffers from the general underexposure to which intellectual/highbrow art is subjected in our current cultural climate. I don't mean to imply that Ventura Pons' films are difficult and inaccessible, but his are not the type of foreign films that receive wide distribution. The prolific, Barcelona-based Pons produces consistently ambitious work that is often quite accomplished_I like Wounded Animals, Food for Love, Anita Takes A Chance and Dear Mary. He often adapts acclaimed plays by Catalan authors. Barcelona (Un Mapa) is an adaptation of Lluisa Cunille's "Barcelona (Mapa d'ombres)" which premiered in 2004 to great reviews_it has been compared to Harold Pinter's "Moonlight" and James Joyce's "The Dead". The film develops some of Pons' preferred themes: the isolation and loneliness of urbanites, the lives of those marginalized because of sexual or political orientation, and cultural degradation.

Barcelona (un mapa) is set inside an old house owned by 76 year-old Ramon (Jose Maria Pou), a former usher at the Opera House, and his wife Rosa (Nuria Espert), a reclusive woman raised in bourgeois comfort who, unlike Ramon, truly loves opera. Their marriage is based on maintaining a facade that hides a great deal of pain and trauma. Ramon's terminal lung cancer propels him into honest disclosure since he has "nothing left to lose". He also wishes for a more private, peaceful last chapter of his life so he decides to ask the three boarders occupying rooms in the house to leave. The 90-minute film is divided into five segments, each is a dialogue between two characters in a different room of the house. 1) Ramon meets with a middle-aged, highly cultured woman (Rosa Maria Sarda, the star of Anita Takes a Chance) who teaches French to disinterested teenagers and wishes she had a closer relation with her son, an architect responsible for the modernization of the city. 2) Rosa meets with a 30-something security guard and failed soccer goalie who's been entertaining revenge fantasies since his wife left him. 3) Ramon meets the third tenant: a pregnant waitress (Maria Botto) from Argentina (this is the only segment spoken in Spanish) who's considering giving the baby to someone who wants to adopt. 4) Rosa receives a rare visit from her younger, gay brother (Jordi Bosch) in which a couple of devastating family secrets are finally brought into the open. 5) Ramon and Rosa have a transcendental conversation in which they finally reveal themselves with complete honesty and confront the imminence of death.

Ventura Pons "opens" the play by means of brief but highly suggestive flashbacks and a bracketing device: documentary footage of the public rally held to welcome Franco's troops at the end of the Spanish Civil War. One infers that Ramon and Rosa are (ex?) fascists who are perhaps pathetic but still worthy of compassion and understanding. "They won the war but lost the peace" said Pons, who was deservedly nominated for best adapted screenplay at the Spanish Academy Awards. It feels a bit unfair to single out any of the actors among such an excellent cast but the film showcases the full-bodied performances by veteran stage and film thespians Pou and Espert. Barcelona (un Mapa) is an intense drama of the highest caliber. It reminded me of Saraband, the late Ingmar Bergman's final film.

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SILENT LIGHT (MEXICO)

The reception received at Cannes and elsewhere by the third feature by Mexican director Carlos Reygadas leaves no doubt that he has entered the unofficial pantheon of modern practitioners of the art of cinema. Everyone who fashions himself a cinephile must partake of his films and weigh on their merits, or lack thereof. There are multiple ways to approach Silent Light from a critical standpoint. It raises a variety of issues that can't possibly be addressed in a single review, even a relatively lengthy one like the one you are reading. One consideration when discussing a new film by an "auteur" (a director with a personal vision who is clearly the overriding creative force) is: What makes it stand out from his previous work? It's apparent to me that unlike Japon and, especially, Battle in Heaven (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=15230#post15230), Silent Light does not contain transgressive or subversive material. It's not the work of an enfant terrible out to rattle bourgeoise notions of "good taste" or to do battle with taboo subjects. It's a simple story with a magical ending; about Johan, a family man who loves his wife Esther and also loves Marianne and he experiences joy, pain and confusion as a consequence.

Silent Light takes place among a Mennonite settlement_they speak a European dialect called Plautdietsch, living in Chihuahua, Mexico. Reygadas is not interested in the Mennonites per se. He likes the landscape there and the fact that they are a "uniform, monolithic" community that can serve as a blank canvas that won't detract attention from the essential story. We learn significantly less about the Mennonites during Silent Light's 142 minutes than we do about Chihuahua's Raramuri Indians in the 87 minutes of Cochochi (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=19655#post19655), ironically a film Reygadas has singled out as particularly praiseworthy. The focus is on the universal aspects of the story rather than the specificity of the culture in which it takes place.

That universal (we could call it cosmic) orientation becomes apparent in the opening image of a starry sky which becomes progressively lighter as the camera moves 180 degrees across the horizon and then meanders among the sights of sounds of nature. The 6-minute time-lapse sequence is matched by a similar shot at the conclusion of the film which reverses the order to return to the starry sky on its final image. In other words, Silent Light is bookended by sunrise and sunset, as if to suggest that the story takes place during the course of a single day. This concept of man being subservient to time, encapsulated, and even victimized by it, is central to Silent Light. No wonder the first people we see-Johan's family around the breakfast table-are reflected/trapped on the pendulum of a grandfather's clock that has stopped ticking from lack of winding. Johan wishes he could do just that when he makes love to Marianne for, maybe, the last time and explicitly expresses desire to reverse time so he can marry whom he now thinks is the woman better suited for him.

Since the release of Japon in 2002, Reygadas has been very outspoken about the kind of cinema that has had formative influence on him. He is especially enamored of what's come to be known as transcendental cinema since the publication of Paul Schrader's not particularly well-written but insightful and highly influential "Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer" in 1972 (A style that is arguably experiencing a revival (http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/festivals/07/44/hong-kong-iff-2007.html)). It has since become de facto to include Andrei Tarkovsky, among others, as a maker of transcendental films.

It's interesting to note the influence of these directors on Silent Light. What's Bressonian about Reygadas is his casting of non-actors and his handling of them. Reygadas: "I saw Gael dressed as Che Guevara. Then I see Benicio del Toro dressed as Che Guevara. In five years we'll see someone else. I almost feel they should lend each other the costume". He sounds exactly like what one would expect from Bresson were he alive today. Most of the male roles in Silent Light are played by Mennonites who run a country radio station, including disc jockey Cornelio Hall as the protagonist. Hall's real-life dad plays his minister father in the film. The women playing Esther and Marianne were recruited from less conservative Mennonite communities in Canada and Germany. They were asked to memorize their lines, but no rehearsals were held and discussions about character were kept to a minimum. "The one who has to think about the film and the characters is the director", Reygadas says. Bresson referred to his non-actors as "models". Reygadas fancies himself a pupeteer: "Sometimes I get down and tie strings to their legs to tell them when to say their line or to move". The timing is particularly crucial for a film like Silent Light characterized by sustained silent stretches between moments in which characters move or speak. The contrast between Bresson and Reygadas is that the latter doesn't drain the emotion of out the performances like Bresson, who shot dozens of takes until the performers were so exhausted they appear nearly catatonic. What Reygadas shares with Tarkovsky is a rare ability to imbue open spaces with meaning, to make them signify. In Silent Light, like in many films by Tarkovsky and Werner Herzog, Reygadas aspires to create a distinctive universe in which the film exists, like a self-containing sphere.

The director's name that comes up most frequently in commentary about Silent Light is that of Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer (1889-1968). I must, in the spirit of fair play, issue a spoiler alert at this time. One writer opined that mere mention of Reygadas' acknowledgement that the ending is an homage to Dreyer's Ordet is more than a reader who plans to see Silent Light should know. In Ordet, a man named Johannes is deemed half-mad by others within his religious community who believe God no longer works miracles. Then the prayers of Johannes resurrect his presumably dead sister-in-law. The most common interpretation of Ordet is that the conclusion represents the triumph of blind faith over dogma. Silent Light has raised discussions as to whether its ending, which includes Esther's coming-back-to-life, has religious connotations. It certainly can be interpreted as such, and one might feel so inclined by the Mennonites' Christian practices on view. Reygadas himself seems to regard it as belonging to the realm of the fairy tale by citing Charles Perrault's "Sleeping Beauty" as a source of inspiration. I personally found myself thinking of Ordet much earlier, during a scene in which a torn and bewildered Johan asks his father for advice regarding his dilemma. Another area of comparison is that Reygadas, like Dreyer and also Tarkovsky, often moves the camera in a very slow, deliberate manner in the form of lateral pans, particularly during indoor scenes. He stands, by all appearances, against the very much in-vogue tendency of covering a scene by moving those new, lighter cameras all over the place often without a sense of purpose.

Now back to the story. What makes this love triangle particularly compelling and moving is not only that Johan genuinely and deeply loves both women_ as opposed to merely having an affair or a dalliance that can be neatly ended. What's truly sublime is that both women are so compassionate and generous of spirit that they acknowledge each other's grief. In Silent Light's most visceral and unforgettable scene, Esther dies of a broken heart, crouched against a roadside tree as a rainstorm rages and her umbrella is taken away and battered by the wind. Later, Marianne will witness Johan being consumed by pain and perhaps regret. Her life-giving kiss to Esther is an act of love and redemption. A sacrifice of a magnitude not seen at the movies since Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves about a decade ago. If cinema were dead, I'd ask Carlos Reygadas to kiss it on the lips.

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DARLING (FRANCE)

This second film directed by Christine Carriere is an adaptation of a novel by Jean Teule based on the true story of a battered wife who abandoned her three children. Darling is set in a farming town near the highway to Caen in western France. It's the story of Catherine (Marina Fois). Before we see her, we hear an emergency room doctor say:"there isn't a part of her body that isn't scarred", we hear her begging the doctor not to report it but our view of her is blocked by a half-open door, then the door is opened but she has absconded. Darling flashes back to just before her birth . "I hate this baby" her mother says. Dad wants a third boy or nothing. She growns into a chubby, tomboyish girl who is perpetually humiliated, belittled, ignored and beaten by her parents. They typically call her "barrel-chest" or "double-chin" rather than Catherine. Darling flashes-forward to a time in her late teens when her life takes a hopeful turn; she loses weight by running and gets a job at a pastry shop owned by a very nice, cheerful woman. Meanwhile, she dreams of leaving the town for good and vows not to become a farmer's wife. Catherine becomes a CB radio operator under the moniker Darling, meets a young trucker named Joel (Guillaume Canet). It's apparent to the audience but not to Catherine that her "Romeo" is a lecherous alcoholic. She gets pregnant, they marry, and a pattern of violence, degradation and abuse is set in motion.

Carriere attempts to lighten the mood of this horrific and predictable story with a voice-over narration that includes humorous comments often tinged with sarcasm. However, the device is used excessively and the humor strikes me as inappropriate relative to the gravity of the events. The same thing can be said about the playful, lilting music score. There is nothing particularly interesting, and nothing objectionable, about the filmmaking. Marina Fois (Hypnotized and Hysterical), an actress who isn't very well-known in the States, was nominated for a Best Actress Cesar for this film. Her performing skills almost shatter the impression I had that at age 37 she's too old to play the teenage Catherine. Her scenes as an abused wife and neglectful mother are convincing and riveting though. Marina Fois is Darling's redeeming feature. I hope we get to see her in a better film in the near future.

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FADOS (PORTUGAL/SPAIN)

The latest musical film by Carlos Saura is strictly a performance showcase like Flamenco ('95) and Sevillanas ('92). It lacks the fictional element he incorporated into Tangos ('98), his previous celebration of a music form. The fado was created in the slums of Lisbon in the 1820s by rural newcomers and immigrants from Portuguese colonies. It has continued to evolve into the present. Saura's film is a compendium of these styles and traditions. Its quintessential element is the expression of saudade, a Portuguese term for longing for what cannot be had and for the melancholy and solitude one feels when experiencing that longing.

The fado thus gets "the Saura treatment". He splits a huge soundstage into smaller spaces by means of partitions, and transparency screens that produce shadows and silhouettes. He uses a variety of props, especially mirrors, and adds choreographed dances to several numbers. He plays with a variety of lighting schemes and covers the action with cameras that moves as fluidly as water_this time he uses two directors of photography, Jose L. Lopez Linares and Eduardo Serra, in place of Vittorio Storaro. He uses backstage projection of archival footage, most notably performances by legendary fado practitioners whom Fados pays homage, and footage of the street celebrations following the triumph of the "Carnation Revolution" in 1974.

The variety of musical performances included here speaks volumes about the vitality of the fado. There are some traditional performances here that will please purists and others, especially from former Portuguese colonies Brazil, Cape Verde, and Mozambique, that mix the fado with African musical styles. There's even a hip-hop fado in the program. Another notable number recreates the most common way to experience the fado, in a Lisbon taverna while drinking a bottle of vinho verde. It's hard to think how Fados could have been improved within the strictures of the performance film. Carlos do Carmo's "Fado da saudade" received the Spanish Academy Award (Goya) for Best Original Song and the film was named Best Documentary by the Spanish Cinema Writers Circle.

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LAMB OF GOD (ARGENTINA)

Lamb of God opens with the kidnapping of Arturo, a septuagenarian veterinarian, in 2002 when Argentina's economy was in shambles. His captors phone Arturo's 30 year-old grandaughter Guillermina to alert her they are holding him and will call again with instructions. Arturo's daughter Teresa arrives from Paris. She and her husband Paco were part of the underground movement against the military junta that governed Argentina. In 1978, Paco was killed in the streets and Teresa was arrested and then released with the condition that she leave the country immediately. Her father's capture forces her to return for the first time in decades. The kidnappers' demand an amount of money that forces the women to decide between selling the family home or borrow from a friend of Arturo with right wing connections. Teresa doesn't like either option and appears to lack any sense of urgency about raising the funds needed. Guillermina, who serves to some degree as audience surrogate, is mystified by Teresa's nonchalance. Teresa reluctantly agrees to an exploratory meeting with her father's friend and becomes disgusted when he attempts to force her not to testify to the Human Rights Commission collecting information about the Junta's abuses. Unresolved issues between father and daughter, rooted in the political turbulence of the 70s, begin to emerge.

Lamb of God is the type of debut film its director simply had to make. It tells a story that has a very personal meaning for director Luisa Cedron, a Sorbonne graduate. After her father died under unclear circumstances in the 70s, the 4 year-old Luisa and her mother moved to Paris. It seems apparent that Ms. Cedron identifies with Guillermina, whose point of view takes precedent. The director dedicates Lamb of God to her mother. This is a very assured fictional feature debut. It not surprising to learn Ms. Cedron has previously directed a documentary, award-winning shorts, and a segment of the omnibus film 18-J which involves the reunification of an exiled woman and her son with her parents. One of the inherent challenges of the project was the casting of Teresa who appears as an adult in both 1978 and 2002. Instead of casting one actress and using make-up to age her, Cedron casts two different actresses, Malena Solda and Mercedes Moran, who collaborate in creating a complex, multi-faceted but unified character at two crucial times in her life. DP Guillermo Nieto separates the two time periods by slightly but perceptibly draining the color out of the 70s scenes. The indelible mark left by those years on the more recent past and the synergy between the personal and the political are conveyed with great narrative skill. Cedron could have chosen to play up certain aspects of the story and make a thriller (like last year's Chronicle of an Escape) or create emotionally cathartic melodrama (the Oscar winner The Official Story, for instance). She chose to make something more thought-provoking and ambiguous and probably less marketable. Lamb of God reflects a certain distance from the events that tore up Argentina during the 70s and consequently invites sober reflection.

Lamb of God was chosen as the Opening Night Film of the 2008 Rotterdam Film Festival. The Hollywood Reporter states that Lamb of God "received excellent reviews. Other candidates for the Tiger Award did not get as warm a reception from press and public alike". Its screening at the Miami Film Festival is the American premiere of the film which will open commercially in Argentina next month.

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CALIFORNIA DREAMIN' (ENDLESS) (ROMANIA)

California Dreamin' was inspired by the actual detainment of an American convoy carrying radar equipment to Kosovo by the station master at a small Romanian town because of insufficient documentation. It's the feature debut of 27 year-old Cristian Nemescu, a director who had developed an excellent reputation based on several short and medium-length films. The shoot of the ambitious project was finally completed in July of 2006. About a month later, Nemescu and his sound editor were riding in a taxi which was hit by a car traveling at high speed. Both of them died. The producers eventually decided to release the film in the condition it was when Nemescu died rather than tinker with it. They added the word "nesfarsit" (translated as "endless") between parenthesis to the title. They also added pre-credit text explaining their decision to release the film "as is". California Dreamin' premiered as part of the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes 2007. The jury had decided not to judge the film because of of its "unfinished" status but they were so impressed after the screening that they gave it the section's top prize. Subsequently, California Dreamin' won several awards at other festivals, was released commercially in parts of Europe and is currently making the US festival circuit.

California Dreamin' is divided into five parts corresponding to the five eventful days between the arrival by train of a platoon US Marines lead by Captain Jones (Armand Assante) and their departure. When the convoy stops at the town of Capalnita, station manager Doiaru (Razvan Vasilescu) insists that transport of the radar system they are taking to Kosovo requires customs documents that are missing. His motivation is gleaned in a prologue in which Doiaru, as a child, suffers because the communists have arrested his parents and hopes the Americans will come to the rescue. The saviors never arrive, the communist era comes to an end, and the bitter Doiaru becomes Capalnita's very corrupt station master. Bureaucratic attempts to solve the impasse fail initially because of Doiaru's intransigence and the rampant inefficiency and disorganization of the Romanian authorities. Everybody wants to benefit from the American presence. Doairu's daughter Monica (Maria Dinulescu) figures that romancing Sgt. McClaren (Jamie Elman) could be her ticket out of Capalnita and her father's clutches, the town's mayor decides to hold an elaborate celebration to honor the Americans and raise his political profile, a group of disgruntled factory workers decide this is the prefect time to strike because of the media attention, the town's single girls are fascinated with the newly arrived, very fit, men-in-uniform, and a Romanian soldier traveling with the Americans decides to pass himself as American to score with the girls. There's more; California Dreamin' is a film with an epic scope and novelistic attention to detail.

California Dreamin' is thoroughly entertaining and deeply satifying. It's the rare film that is alternately and sometimes simultaneously funny, tragic, sweet, caustic, thoughtful, and freewheeling. It's a critique of Romanian post-communist governance, a meditation on the often unintended and always unpredictable consequences of American presence on foreign soil, a drama about a domineering father and her freedom-loving daughter, a character study about man who loves and hates America with equal intensity, a sexy romantic comedy, and more. All of it works and the acting is superb, particularly the performance by Razvan Vasilescu, a veteran actor who appeared in some of the most memorable Romanian films of the 90s: The Oak, Betrayal, and An Unforgettable Summer. I personally found that DP Liviu Mardighan's use of handheld cameras looks amateurish in the early parts of the film. California Dreamin' is, as advertised, a rough cut. At 155 minutes, the film feels too long. Transitions between sequences are sometimes jarring and the sound design lacks polish, particularly the integration of music, dialogue and ambient sound. None of this detracts from the impression that Cristian Nemescu was a major talent and that his feature debut deserves to be seen and appreciated.

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MATAHARIS (SPAIN)

I try to avoid approaching a film with high expectations. Tha laws of probability ensure one is likely to be disappointed and, consequently, judge the film too harshly. Having seen her three previous films, it's hard not to walk into actress-turned-filmmaker Iciar Bollain's fourth feature expecting excellence. More so because her last one, Take My Eyes, was so accomplished: perhaps the essential film about domestic abuse because Bollain managed the rare feat of humanizing and facilitating identification with the perpetrator without minimizing the gravity of his behavior. Besides, Bollain's four features have accumulated a total of 20 Spanish Academy nominations, six of them for Bollain's writing and direction.

The novelty of Mataharis is that, in contrast to a long tradition in literature and cinema, it is women who are the private dicks or voyeurs-for-hire. There are three of them working at a Madrid agency run by the ruthless, results-oriented Valbuena. Eva (Najwa Nimri) returns to work after three months of maternal leave. She tries to get back on the swing of things but becomes derailed when she discovers her husband is making mysterious trips to Zaragoza. She decides to trail him. The more experienced Carmen (Nuria Gonzalez) can't get her workaholic husband to pay attention to her, so she draws closer to a client who wants proof of his wife's infidelity. The younger and single Ines (Maria Vasquez) does undercover work at a corporation where employee theft is suspected. It turns out that is an excuse. What top executives really want is information about the workers' union activism. Ines falls in love with Manuel (Diego Martin), a manager who is helping organize a strike. Each "matahari" faces a moral dilemma.

The most engaging subplot in Mataharis involves Ines, who yearns to settle down with the right guy. Manuel seems to fit the bill but being honest with him will likely cause her to lose her job and there's no guarantee he would forgive her. Bollain avoids cliche in her portrayal of the familiar flirtation between Carmen and her client. But the character of Carmen's husband is woefully underwritten and the depiction of the agency boss is too one-sided. Excellent work by the three well-established actresses in the lead roles and assured lensing by Kiko de la Rica (Sex and Lucia), who tastefully incorporates bits of surveillance camera footage. Like Take My Eyes, Mataharis earned Iciar Bollain best director and best screenplay nods from Spain's most important critics organization. I think it's a notch or two below Bollain's masterpiece. A solid if unspectacular drama from one of Spain's best filmmakers.

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SANTIAGO (BRAZIL)

Joao Moreira Salles, the brother of famous film director Walter Salles (Central Station, Motorcycle Diaries), is highly regarded in the smaller and less glamorous world of documentary filmmaking. Salles' documentaries evidence a wide range of interests: China, the poet Jorge Amado, soccer, blues music, President Lula da Silva, American culture, the life of a concert pianist, etc. Santiago, recently acquired by the Museum of Modern Art for its permanent collection, seems to be his most personal work.

Salles initially intended to make a film about the memories of his youth in the magnificent mansion where his banker and diplomat father and high society mother entertained the world's elites (the Rockefellers, the Onassis clan, Hollywood stars, European royalty, Maria Callas, you name it). A central figure was their beloved butler Santiago, an erudite polyglot born in Argentina of Piedmontese parents. Salles aborted the project after filming his family's dilapidated estate and a five-day shoot in Santiago's apartment in 1992, two years before Santiago's death.

In 2005, Salles decides he can incorporate the 1992 footage into a new documentary. He didn't simply edit and complete the film he intended to make back then. He has made a documentary about the documentary that never got made by injecting himself into the subject matter and questioning his old methods and assumptions. Was the use of a fixed camera at medium distance simply embracing the esthetics of Yasujiro Ozu? Was it also a way to maintain the separation between social classes typical of the environment in which Salles was raised? Was it a sign of respect for Santiago's privacy? By means of narration, written by Salles but voiced by someone else, the documentary examines the issue of control over content between filmmaker and biographical subject . There is an insightful and thorough deconstruction, in the postmodern manner, of the raw footage of Santiago waxing poetic about a world that is no more; an intellectual, high culture, aristocratic world where etiquette and good manners were rigorously practiced.

Santiago, the man, is fascinating. He recites poetry, discusses literature, tells amusing stories, plays maracas to Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" and explains why a musical number from The Band Wagon featuring Fred Astaire means so much to him. He is most excited when showing off his life-long project: 30,000 typewritten pages in which he documents and comments on the leaders of all the world's civilizations in five different languages. Santiago was no aristocrat or world leader but he was a great man. I think he'd be proud of the film that bears his name.

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LOKAS (CHILE)

This comedy inspired by the French farce La Cage aux Folles is having its world premiere at the festival. Charlie is a swindler and con artist who left Chile and moved to Mexico years ago. He got married and divorced and has raised 9 year-old Pedro on his own. He gets in trouble with the law and faces deportation to Chile. Charlie is also a homophobe who hasn't seen his dad since he was a little boy, about 30 years ago. Of course, dad turns out to be gay, extravagantly so, and in a relationship. The couple attempt to hide the fact but give up fairly quickly. Little Pedro really likes his grandpa and his new "uncle" and doesn't understand why Charlie is making such a fuzz about their being gay. Charlie can't find a job because of his bad reputation and grows desperate. He eventually and reluctantly agrees to apply for a position at the gay nightclub Lokas. He must first undergo a make-over and acquire a gay education because only homosexuals need apply for the job. He manages to fool everyone but falls in love with the very sexy female manager of the club.

Lokas was directed by established veteran Gonzalo Justiniano. His brand new film is indeed quite professionally made, with production chores handled skillfully down the line. When La Cage aux Folles had a wildly successful commercial run in the US almost 30 years ago, critic Dave Kehr complained it was "one of those sitcoms that explain a minority to middle-class audiences by making their members cute, cuddly and harmlessly eccentric". That criticism would also apply to Lokas, although the fact that what we have here is a homophobe pretending to be gay rather than a gay couple pretending to be straight is somewhat progressive. Otherwise, Lokas is rather tame, predictable and overly familiar. It's also quite funny, in no small part because of the performance of veteran stand-up comic Coco Legrand, here making his film debut.

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HELP ME, EROS (TAIWAN)

Kang-sheng Lee has been Ming-liang Tsai's alter-ego/muse since the very beginning, in 1990's midlength Boys. He has played the protagonist role in every single Tsai movie. Lee was obviously paying attention. The Missing (2003), his auspicious debut as writer/director had a successful run through the festival circuit. It received, among others, the top prize at Rotterdam 2004. The influenced of Tsai was palpable in the length of the takes and the resistance to use dialogue as a means of storytelling and characterization. Unlike The Missing, Lee's Help Me Eros is the type of controversial "film maudit" that generates wildly divergent opinions. Top prizes at Gijon (Spain) and Bangkok, and negative reviews in US trade magazines Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, for instance. Reviews apparently dismissed by distributor Strand Releasing which purchased the North American rights to Help Me, Eros recently, about a month before the US premiere in Miami.

Lee cast himself in the leading role of Ah Jie, a partly autobiographical character. He is 28 and has recently lost his stocktrader job due to the recession. His SUV and his luxury apartment have been inpounded but he sneaks into the apartment at night with his spare key. He survives by pawning his belongings, which are growing scarce. The only thing he seems to care about is the marijuana plant growing in his hidden greenhouse. Ah Jie is depressed and probably suicidal. He resorts to a telephone helpline and forges a connection with a girl named Chyi. Under the influence of marijuana, Ah Jie indulges in sexual fantasies involving Chyi. She is quite different than Ah Jie pictures her. Chyi is fat and married to a gay, avant garde chef who has a TV show in which he cooks animals while they are still alive. Chyi sublimates her sexual cravings by stuffing herself with her husband's elaborate dishes_there's a stunning metaphorical sequence in which he brings home live eels, puts them in the bathtub and Chyi jumps into the water and lies down suggestively. Meanwhile, Ah Jie begins a relationship of sorts with Shin, a pretty 20 year-old who works as a betelnut girl in a sidewalk stand below his apartment. They hang out and have mechanical, joyless sex. Ah Jie continues to fantasize about the helpline girl and stalks someone he thinks might be Chyi but turns out to be Shin's co-worker. Ah Jie and Shin split up. He falls further into depression and becomes increasingly disconnected from reality.

Lee has a perpetually sad expression in Tsai's movies. It's not only the roles he plays but part of his psychological profile; "I'm not a very optimistic kind of person", he says. Help Me, Eros is downbeat despite bits of absurdist humor here and there. Some scenes are unpleasant and rather shocking like some you'd find in films by Chan-wook Park (Oldboy). Moreover, the plot is elliptical and image-based, thus requiring more attention from the viewer. I am willing to admit Lee's narrative skills are still at a developmental stage and that Help Me, Eros would benefit from more narrative clarity. These reasons seem to account for some of the negative reaction Help Me, Eros has gotten. There are reports of walk-outs at screenings _I read somewhere that about 50% of the audience at the Toronto Film Festival's screening left before the ending. One can't rely on these reports though; I estimate the walk-outs in Miami at about 10 %, mostly older filmgoers. I think Help Me, Eros is a very good film that has no mainstream appeal but will develop an intense cult following. It's a convincing condemnation of rampant materialism, sexual objectification and escapism among emotionally detached, urban youth. A highly stylized scene of acrobatic sex between Ah Jie and two girls in which the threesome's bodies are covered in Gucci and Louis Vitton logos will be offensive and/or indulgent to a segment of the audience no matter how powerful an expression of corporate branding it is. Granted, it is not subtle.

No one will find fault with the performances by all involved_if anything Lee has proven himself a good director of actors, as befits his background. The lensing by Peng-jung Liao and Tsai's art direction/production design are simply exquisite. I look forward to a second viewing of Lee's intriguing Help Me, Eros and will follow the development of this promising filmmaker with great interest.

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THE OLD THIEVES (MEXICO)

In the 50-year history of the Mexican Academy Awards, a documentary had never been nominated in the Best Picture category. It happened this year to Everardo Gonzalez's The Old Thieves, a film about a group of thieves that became famous in Mexico City during the 1970s because of their skill, style, and code of honor. Gonzalez depicts a whole subculture of folks raised to be criminals from childhood who adhered to unwritten codes of behavior. None of them ever carried weapons, or so they claim, but it's a fact that the half dozen notorious pickpockets and burglars interviewed were never charged with assault or any type of violenct act. They were also known as people with impeccable manners and a sense of style. "I remember the silk suit, Napoleon-style, I wore when I broke into President Echevarria's home" says Carrizos, also known as "the king of thieves" at the time. The Old Thieves contrasts the gravity of the corruption at high levels of the Echevarria administration with the relatively benign crimes of the actual thieves. Gonzalez also interviews a few detectives and police officials who served at that time. A most interesting chapter involves an ambitious cop nicknamed "Dracula" who made a deal with Carrizos, who allowed "Dracula" to arrest him so the cop could get a promotion, knowing that they had no clear evidence against him. The Old Thieves ultimately takes a stand against deplorable prison conditions which foster violence. We learn that two inmates who were never violent in society are serving long prison sentences because of murders committed while incarcerated.

The Old Thieves is padded with archival material from TV news shows of the time; some of it is only minimally relevant and not very interesting. Gonzalez also has a tendency to use extreme closeups for no apparent purpose. The film would have benefited from a more reflexive approach to the genre. Listening to the director explain the process of locating, meeting and developing relationships with his subjects during pre-production convinced me that The Old Thieves would be much more compelling if Gonzalez had incorporated this "making of" material into the film. For instance, the months-long negotiations between the filmmaker and Carrizos regarding the latter's participation and what he'd received in exchange reveals as much about his personality as the filmed interviews. Sometimes what a documentary leaves out is as important as what it includes.

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XXY (ARGENTINA)

I wonder if Lucia Puenzo felt any pressure based on her being the daughter of Luis Puenzo, the director of the only film from Argentina to win an Oscar. The 34 year-old Lucia was a scriptwriter for several years before XXY, her directing debut. By any measure, she passed the test with flying colors. XXY debuted at Cannes 2007 as part of the Critics' Week section and won the Grand Prize, the first of its many festival awards. More recently, XXY won both the Spanish Academy and the Mexican Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film in Spanish. It can be argued that, with the possible exception of Carlos Reygadas' Silent light, XXY is the most celebrated Spanish-language film of the past year. The programmers at the Miami festival decided to exhibit it out of competition as a Gala Showcase at the biggest festival venue. Lucia Puenzo and her XXY truly deserved the red carpet treatment.

XXY was inspired by a short story by Sergio Bizzio about a 15 year-old born with both male and female genitalia. Alex is played by Ines Efron, a gangly actress in her early 20s who gives a most memorable, very convincing performance. She channels Alex's simultaneous maculinity and femininity into every scene. Efron undergoes quite a transformation here. I didn't realize she is the same actress who had a major role in Glue, one of my favorite movies released last year. She's created a whole new voice for her protagonic performance as the marginalized Alex. When Alex was born his/her parents decided not to have him/her operated and wonder whether that was the right decision. They moved from Buenos Aires to a small port city in Uruguay years ago. We learn that Alex was precribed drugs to supress masculine traits and that she has discontinued taking them. Suli (Valeria Bertucelli), the mother, has a friend from her high school days who is married to Ramiro, a plastic surgeon who has successfully operated on intersexuals. Kraken, Alex's father and a marine biologist, seems to be against such drastic intervention but probably hasn't ruled it out since he's allowing Ramiro and his family to visit for a few days. Ramiro's softspoken 16 year-old son Alvaro is at first curious about Alex then becomes attracted. Alex is at the point where sexual initiation becomes imperative in a teenager's life. We learn that Alex has recently gotten in a bit of trouble for giving a boy named Vando a bloody nose and there are hints that it's related to Alex's difference.

XXY is the rare film that doesn't have a single gratuitous moment. Every scene serves the purpose of advancing the narrative or developing the characters and their interrelationships. The three kids and the two sets of parents get Puenzo's full attention. There's a scene for instance between Ramiro and Alvaro, based on the latter's inability to measure up to his brilliant father's expectations, that builds to scalding emotional frankness. Puenzo subtly and elegantly develops metaphorical correspondences between Kraken's efforts to preserve a turtle species under threat of extinction and his dawning realization that the best thing to do about Alex is nothing, probably. Kraken is played by Ricardo Darin, an excellent actor who is perhaps Argentina's best known thespian since appearing in Nine Queens and Son of the Bride. Puenzo has broached subject matter with obvious potential for sensationalism and made something insightful, honest and deeply touching. She's taken a short story about a rather rare type of person and honored the person's uniqueness while finding the universal themes within it. She's ably assisted by cinematographer Natasha Brier (In the City of Sylvia, Glue) and the appropriately understated score by Andres Goldstein.

XXY is my favorite film of this 25th edition of the festival. I'm reluctant to thrown around the word "masterpiece" after a film's single viewing so I watched it again. XXY is a masterpiece. It's a distinct pleasure to report that Lucia Puenzo's debut will be distributed in the US by the smart folks at Film Movement beginning with a theatrical run in New York City in May followed by a "national rollout".

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KATYN (POLAND)

The renowned Andrzej Wajda has been a filmmaker since 1950 but it wasn't until last year that he managed to complete the film he absolutely had to make. When the 82 year-old director was a country boy of 14, his father became of the 12,000 officers (some say 20,000) murdered in the Katyn forest. The mass graves were discovered in 1943, three years after the massacre, by German troops.

I became aware of this terrible historical event a few years ago from a rather unlikely source: Dusan Makavejev's 1974 film Sweet Movie, which includes footage of the german soldiers digging out the bodies of the Polish officers. The Yugoslav director's irreverent, polemical film was banned in all Soviet block countries. In 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev acknowledge that the massacred was ordered by Stalin; documents proving so became public. However, during the preceding half century, the Soviet Union blamed it on the Nazis and put into practice a massive campaign to cover up their culpability.

None of this constitutes a spoiler for Katyn audiences. Wajda's film includes this background information in pre-credits text. The compelling opening scene dramatizes the plight of Poles during WWII when they were almost simultaneously invaded from the West by the Nazis and from the East by the Soviets. It's set on a bridge where groups of Poles running away from invading troops in opposite directions meet in chaotic confusion. Katyn then tells the story of a woman who finally locates her officer husband, begs him to escape with her and their daughter, and grieves after he decides he must remain with his platoon. It soon becomes apparent that Wajda has many stories to tell and that his film is a narrative mosaic without a single protagonist. The father of an officer, a professor, gets summoned to a meeting at the University, and is summarily arrested and sent to a camp along with dozens of colleagues. The sister of another officer who's been missing for years won't rest until there's a gravestone conmemorating his passing. Katyn is both about the massacre and the systemic concealment that followed. A youth writes "murdered by the Soviets in Katyn" next to the word "father" in his college application, refuses orders to erase it, runs into the street, tears out a Soviet-propaganda poster and gets shot. Katyn moves back and forth in time, from one harrowing episode to the next. It's a magnificently mounted film with crisp, assured editing and expert lensing (The Pianist's Pawel Edelman). As would be expected, Katyn ends with a very realistic depiction of the massacre. It lasts 15 to 20 minutes and it's a stunning sequence of undeniable power that rivals any of the filmed dramatizations of the Holocaust.

Katyn doesn't strive for suspense and, like all of Wajda's films, it can be enjoyed by the whole world but it's made resolutely with a Polish audience in mind. Katyn was enormously successful when it was released in Poland last fall and was one of the five films nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. It has yet to secure distribution in the US though. I think that mostly the reason derives from Wajda's apparent aim to make the ultimate and definitive 2-hour Katyn movie. Unlike Polanski's The Pianist, there isn't a character one follows throughout the movie who can serve as a guide through events that would be unfamiliar to many among foreign audiences. I think most viewers outside Poland will experience some confusion at times. Consequently some episodes don't register with maximum impact. Katyn is worthy of admiration for presenting such a comprehensive and technically brilliant picture of the subject and its ramifications. Yet I think that Katyn would be really great if it was longer, with more expository material and a more stately pace. I wonder if young Poles, Wajda's acknowledged and declared target audience, would also feel this way.

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MY DREAM (CHINA)

This performance film directed by Wang Honghai is a showcase for China's Disabled People's Performing Arts Troupe, an institution founded in 1987. I cannot think of a more beautiful and entertaining film of this type. My Dream had its world premiere last November at the American Film Market. The Los Angeles Times reports the producers were "flooded" with offers from distributors from all over the world. The performances by these disabled artists are of the highest caliber. What makes My Dream particularly entertaining is that the performances are derived from a wide variety of sources and that the film boast the highest production values. The fact that the artists are physically disabled might make it more compelling to some and make one more conscious of the years of hard work and dedication required to reach this level of artistic excellence. Each number is preceded by a quick introduction, usually in voice-over, with biographical information about the artist and brief inspirational snippets. Between numbers, we see footage of the artist(s) practicing diligently and preparing backstage.

My Dream opens with the Troupe's signature piece, a glorious interpretation of the Thousand Hand Goddess of Mercy. A wheelchair-bound girl with spina bifida sings the loveliest "Edelweiss" amidst a wintry landscape. A number called "To See Spring" is performed by a group of blind dancers against painted backgrounds inspired by Van Gogh. Another one, "Sobbing Flowers" incorporates East European black-lantern theatrical staging. Being a fan of Chinese opera, I was particularly entranced by the musical number "At the Crossroads" which features flute and several string instruments, and the main aria from the quintessential Chinese opera "The Beautiful Lovers".

My Dream utilizes just about every theatrical and cinematic means to present the performances in the best possible light. Each moment is filmed from the best possible vantage point, including overhead shots, and the precise editing gives the film a steady rhythm while allowing the viewer to savor the brilliant performances of these amazing disabled artists.

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THE AERIAL (ARGENTINA)

Esteban Sapir's second film is by definition a cult movie: a mostly silent, Orwellian sci-fi adventure in black & white that pays homage to early pioneers like Georges Melies, 20s German Expressionism, and a number of more modern dystopic allegories. The tyranical Mr. TV has stolen the voices of the people who live in a perpetual winter night, subjected to mind-numbing, soul-stealing tv broadcasts and ruled by the dictates of a giant metacorporation. An unassuming TV repairman witnesses the capture of a faceless singer, presumably the only one who still has a voice, and decides to rescue her. He enlists his dad, his little daughter and the singer's eyeless son, who turns out to have inherited his mother's ability to speak.

Esteban Sapir has much in common with Winnipeg's Guy Maddin in the sense that both appropriate and rely on silent-era conventions and technology. But Sapir's synthesis is entirely his own. Thematically, The Aerial (original title "La Antena", released in France under the most fitting title of "Telepolis") targets corporate power and consumerism more pointedly than other films in the genre. Formally, what sets it apart is the very creative use of text balloons_like the ones in comic books but given a life of their own via animation techniques, and Leo Sujatovich's extraordinary, tango-inflected music score.

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BLIND (NETHERLANDS)

Actress Tamar van den Dop's feature directorial debut is a gothic tale inspired by the works of the brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. Blind is set in and around a 19th century manor, the home of an ailing woman and Ruben, her irascible, blind young son. Ruben's violent tantrums have driven away everyone hired to read to him. Then comes Marie, an albino woman who bears the physical and emotional scars of a lifetime of abuse. Through patience and perseverance, she manages to transmit to the very handsome Ruben her love of literature and storytelling. They grow closer and Marie conquers her fear of intimacy. A doctor claims Ruben's sight can be restored by a new procedure. Ruben's illusion that Marie is young and beautiful would be shattered. Would his love endure? Is love truly blind?

Blind is set during a long winter which serves as a metaphor for Ruben and Mary's emotional frigidness. The film boasts very attractive, often fantastic, sometimes poetic images courtesy of cinematographer Gregor Meerman. Joen Seldeslachts and Halina Reijn effectively convey Ruben and Marie's intensity and desperate need for human connection. Dop's script cannily creates parallels between the central premise and the stories Ruben and Marie share, particularly Andersen's "The Snow Queen". It does take a misstep, perhaps two, before its highly satisfying conclusion. The response from the festival audience at this US premiere leads me to believe this adult, romantic fairy tale would do reasonably well commercially if it were to find a willing distributor.

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A PAPER TIGER (COLOMBIA)

"In my five-foot two inches there is compressed every imaginable contrast and contradiction. It can be asserted with equal truth that I am a poltroon or a hero, a clever fellow or an ignoramus, extremely talented or stupid. Nothing will surprise me. I myself have finally resolved to believe that I am merely an instrument, the plaything of circumstance.”
—Pedro Manrique Figueroa

Director Luis Ospina follows his documentary about writer Fernando Vallejo with this complex biography of Colombian collage pioneer Pedro Manrique Figueroa. Complex by necessity because Figueroa was a contradictory, chameleon-like figure (a Colombian critic compares him to Zelig, the fictional protagonist of the Woody Allen film). Complex by choice because Ospina has decided to "print" both the truth and the legend. Ospina uses the structure of a biographical documentary to reflect on three decades of Colombian culture and politics, roughly from the mid 1940s to the mid 1970s. A Paper Tiger: a title that both references Mao's characterization of the United States, thus acknowledging Figueroa's Maoist phase, and applies to Figueroa himself. He is portrayed here as an agitator and agent provocateur but ultimately a gentle soul.

Ospina makes ample use of Figueroa's pointedly political and highly appealing artwork. He interviews many artists and intellectuals from Figueroa's inner circle. What they have to say is not as interesting and insightful as Ospina apparently believes. At close to 2 hours, A Paper Tiger runs about 20 minutes too long. An additional problem is the overuse of on-screen text, especially when it's pedantically revealed a letter at a time, to create anticipation I presume.

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THE SECRET OF THE GRAIN (FRANCE)

I think it's inarguable that the 47 year-old, Tunis-born Abdel Kechiche is the most celebrated director to emerge from France this decade. His debut Blame it on Voltaire, a young Tunisian immigrant's Paris adventure, was awarded at Venice. Then L'Esquive, in which Kechiche found a way to relate classic 19th century French literature to the lives of contemporary teens living in the banlieue, won Cesars for Best Film, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. His third film, La Graine et le Mulet, just repeated that feat. Every time around, Kechiche seems to get bolder and more ambitious while retaining an unpolished, improvisational vibe.

The Secret of the Grain is set in the Mediterranean port city of Sete, where 60 year-old shipyard worker Slimane finds himself forced into early retirement. He has a long-term relationship with Latifah, the 40-something owner of the inn in which he occupies a room. He's very close to Latifa's daughter Rym, who considers him to be her father. Slimane maintains close ties with his ex-wife Soad and their kids Karima and Majid. Karima, who's still sore about her parents' divorce, is frustrated at her inability to toilet-train her toddler. Majid is neglecting his Russian wife and their infant son and being openly unfaithful. They all get together for a weekly family meal in which Soad's famous fish couscous is the centerpiece. Now unemployed, Slimane endeavors to own a restaurant featuring Soad's dishes. Efforts to secure a loan or find investors fall flat until Slimane finds an abandoned wrecked boat and figures he can restore it. Slimane's idea is to serve one great dinner at the restored boat hoping to impress investors, bank loan officers and other important town people he's invited. Despite palpable friction and conflict, both Slimane families pitch in to realize his dream.

Many scenes in The Secret of the Grain combine the raw, unmitigated emotion of the films of John Cassavettes with the handheld camera style popularized by Dogma '95 directors_Thomas Vinterberg's The Celebration is strongly evoked during the family luncheon at Soad's apartment. The preponderance of close-ups, excessive at times, is perhaps more a function of the realistically cramped interiors than directorial choice. The long takes, the overlapping dialogue, and the unaffected naturalism of the performances help provide an immersive experience for the viewer. There is a consistent feeling of authenticity in Kechiche's depiction of family life and in the way he exposes the polite but pervasive prejudice of the native French towards immigrants. Some scenes towards the end create the impression of being in real-time and have been cited as being simply too long. The criticism has validity yet I found myself in a forgiving mood at that juncture after being served such a rich, novelistic narrative populated by highly dimensional and nuanced characters.

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USED PARTS (MEXICO)

Feature debut by Sorbonne graduate Aaron Fernandez who apparently honed his skills by making a number of shorts over the past decade. Indeed, there's nothing amateurish about Used Parts. It's set in a working-class section of bustling Mexico City. The specific milieu is the shady world of used auto parts in which Jaime (Alan Chavez) and his 14 year-old nephew Ivan (newcomer Eduardo Granados) operate. The 30-something Jaime owns a modest shop but plans to emigrate without a visa to Chicago. A relative living there has a job lined-up for him. He plans to take Ivan but the smuggler demands more money that initially agreed. They need to raise some funds pronto. Ivan quickly learns from Jaime how to steal radios, mirrors and hubcaps from cars. His fun-loving pal Efrain tags along looking for adventure. When Jaime introduces Ivan to "El Guero", a threatening thug who deals in cars others steal from him, we understand Jaime's pressing need to go north.

Used Parts conveys a strong and specific sense of place. It was obviously shot in real locales using natural light. Debuts made under these conditions seldom look this assured whereas Used Parts is polished and professional. One figures Fernandez and DP Javier Moron thought out their camera setups before the shoot. The film is dynamically paced and precisely edited. The script penned by Fernandez allows secondary characters, like Efrain's protective mom and Jaime's girlfriend, their moments in the limelight. At a certain juncture, it becomes easy to anticipate the resolution. Perhaps too easy, yet I'd rather have that than overwrought or illogical eleventh-hour twists. The actors give the impression of having internalized their lines to make them their own. Used Parts emphasizes the characters-in-the-environment and never becomes a sociological treatise or a film with a discernible agenda. It's ultimately a universal story of loyalty and betrayal.

Used Parts received awards at the Guadalajara and Montreal film festivals. It got good notices as a Cannes '07 selection. The film received Mexican Academy nominations for Best First Film, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Actor (Mr. Chavez).

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EMPTIES (CZECH REPUBLIC)

Fourth collaboration between actor/screenwriter Zdenek Sverak and his son, director Jan Sverak (The Elementary School, Dark Blue World, Kolya). The latter won a Golden Globe and an Oscar for Best Foreign Film and featured the elder Sverak in the starring role. In Empties he plays Josef, a gruff high school teacher in his sixties who retires and can't stand the boredom of being at home with his wife all day. Josef is a confident fellow who figures his reasonably good health and life-long Prague residency make him the ideal bicycle courier. The job proves more unwieldy than he anticipated. Then he finds a job at a supermarket exchanging returnable bottles ("empties") for customers. Josef is very personable and curious about people. He finds ways to make an impact on the lives of co-workers and customers. He even manages to establish a connection with an almost incommunicative ex-general and finds a potential mate for his divorced daughter. Josef has a very active imagination, especially in the form of sexual fantasies that serve as a respite from Empties' social realism. At their best, and Empties might just be their best film, the Sveraks maintain a consistent humanistic tone in which the serious and the comedic are perfectly balanced. It seems effortless, but we known from the film's production notes that father and son engaged for years in negotiations regarding the content of the film. Reportedly, Jan felt his father had created an insufficiently sympathetic character for himself. Josef is indeed not as huggable as Kolya's Louka and Empties lacks what Variety magazine calls the moppet "awwww" factor. No complaints from this corner on either count.

A major twist occurs when the supermarket's management decides to automate the process of exchanging beverage bottles, which threatens to destroy this community Josef has built around him at the "empties" exchange window. There's a scene in which Josef goes to the neighborhood's public library and finds it's been replaced by a teeth-whitening clinic named "Happy Smile". Empties evidences a deep awareness of what's been gained and lost by the advent of democracy and capitalism to the Czech Republic. Jan Sverak's ace team, including DP Vladimir Smutny and art director Jan Vlasak, are fully engaged in delivering top-notch production values. Empties broke box office records for a native film in the Czech Republic last year. It is apparently being deemed not enough of a crowd-pleaser to merit distribution in the US. I'd like to think our foreign film audience would embrace it. I get the impression East European films have a harder time being picked up by American distributors than films in French or Spanish, for instance. It's a shame that films like Empties and the also Czech Beauty in Trouble (MIFF '07) don't get the exposure they deserve.

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SILHOUETTE CITY (USA)

I came to incite a riot. I came to affect a divine disturbance in the heart and soul of the Church. Man your battle stations, ready your weapons, lock and load!
Rod Parsley, Founder, World Harvest Church

When he was a 14 year old boy living in Little Rock, Michael W. Wilson became fascinated with news coverage of the siege of the compound of a group called The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord or CSA. It took place in 1985, 14 years after the formation of this white-supremacist, militaristic, Christian extremist group. They trained for what they believed to be the eventual confrontation with "secularist" forces (often referred as "Babylon") in a camp they named Silhouette City, hence the title of Wilson's documentary. It uses the CSA as a point of departure to explore the rise of the religious right in the United States, its philosophy, methods and development into a viable political force. Silhouette City benefits greatly from the willing participation of former "high priest" Kerry Noble and access to footage shot by CSA members themselves. It specifically dwells into the propagation of apocalyptic worldviews and instillment of fear as means of recruitment and control of followers. Wilson traces the historical development of the Christian right over the past two to three decades. The overt racism and anti-semitism have been largely abandoned while communication technology has been embraced as the movement became media-savvy. Wilson details how the Evangelical Christian Right became more influential within the Republican Party and all four branches of the military since the 1980s.They've attained new levels of acceptability while remaining focused on what basically amounts to the establishment of a theocracy. Fellow believers in the separation of Church and State, here's a horror movie made especially for us.

*The screening of Silhouette City at the MIFF was the world premiere of the film. The documentary was independently produced and it's not clear at this first exhibition stage what kind of diffusion it will have. It would seem to fit PBS's Independent Lens series but maybe they would fear broadcasting it would alienate a portion of their audience.

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UNDER THE STARS (SPAIN)

This feature debut by writer/director Felix Viscarret was highly anticipated by those who had seen his shorts. It's an adaptation of a novel by Fernando Aramburu titled "The Trumpet Player from the Utopia". Its profile was further raised prior to theatrical release in Spain when it won the top awards at the film festival in Malaga. It's the story of Beny (Alberto San Juan), a caddish fellow who makes a living playing the trumpet at Madrid nightclubs. News of his father's death prompts him to return to his hometown in the province of Navarra after a long absence. Beny is clearly only concerned about what he might possibly inherit. He shows no interest or feeling for anyone, including the live-in girlfriend left behind in Madrid. He visits his brother Lalo, an insecure, recovering alcoholic engaged to Nines (Emma Suarez), a conflicted young woman who's raising her 8 year-old daughter, Ainara. Nines and Beny went to high school together and almost had sex one drunken night but, surprisingly, it's the neglected, introverted little girl who manages to connect with the gruff Beny. A hit-and-run accident involving Lalo's van becomes a major plot catalyst in this story of one man's redemption and re-acquaintance with his roots.

Whether one likes Under the Stars is highly dependent on one's engagement with the protagonist. He is, at least initially, a highly unsympathetic character. Here's a guy who pees on the floor of his dead father's house as if to mark his territory. Mr. San Juan has built a career playing assholes of all kinds, like the misogynist cabbie in the popular comedies The Other Side of the Bed and Both Sides of the Bed, and the dishonest husband in The Ugliest Woman in the World. This time the jerk is center stage and he gets redeemed. Despite San Juan's admittedly accomplished performance ("ace" says Variety), I wasn't convinced by Beny's transformation. Since that constitutes the essence of the story, I don't think Under the Stars succeeds. It's only fair to point out that mine is a minority opinion. The film has been praised by critics and received Spanish Academy awards for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Lead Actor.

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EAT, FOR THIS IS MY BODY (HAITI/FRANCE)

Eat, For This Is My Body heralds the arrival of a major filmmaker, Michelange Quay. He was born in Queens, New York in 1974 to Haitian parents. The family moved to South Florida as Quay was entering his teens. At the University of Miami, while majoring in anthropology, Quay took a course in film studies that changed his life. He returned to New York and obtained a Masters in Film from NYU. His parents retired and moved to Haiti while Quay settled in Paris. The young man has maintained very close ties to Haiti throughout his life. In 2004, he released The Gospel of the Creole Pig, a short dealing with Haiti-USA relations in a unique poetic parable style. It won Best Short Film at the Milan and Stockholm festivals and a cadre of influential admirers. Most importantly, it became a calling card that secured funding for Eat, For This Is My Body and facilitated the casting of Catherine Samie of the Comedie-Francaise and A-list actress Sylvie Testud in it.

Quay's feature debut is a bonafide art film in that poetic parable mode of his that marks him as an iconoclast and a visionary filmmaker. It opens at sea with an aerial tracking shot that takes you past the shore over a shantytown populated by black people and continues over hills and a barren landscape; it's Haiti but it could be Martinique, or Jamaica, or any number of former European colonies in Africa or the Americas. A match cut, made imperative by the fact we are actually over France's Loire Valley, takes us past more empty terrain into a plantation manor. It's helpful to think of the scenes that follow as the stanzas of a poem and to think of the characters not simply as individuals but also as archetypes. There is a matriarch (Catherine Samie), a pale, frail old lady who bathes in a vat of cream and delivers an intense monologue while sitting in bed in an all-white room. Her diatribe conveys her sense of entitlement and racial superiority over the natives. It's shot in close-up, not unlike monologues in Ingmar Bergman films like Cries and Whispers.

The other white woman at the manor (Sylvie Testud), who could be the matriarch's daughter, is addressed as Madame. She displays a more outwardly benign view of "the others" and will, before the end of the film, leave the manor to circulate among them, perhaps in an attempt to understand them. But first, perhaps the film's centerpiece: a dozen boys arrive at the manor to dine with Madame, are made to bathe, shave their heads (evocation of comparable scenes in Salo and Full Metal Jacket might not be coincidental since Quay openly admires both Pasolini and Kubrick), and wear what Quay describes as "monkey suits". They sit around a table but the white plates remain empty while Madame in ritual form teaches them gratitute by having them exclaim "Merci" repeatedly, like a mantra. Cut to same setup with Madame replaced by a big sponge cake with white icing. The boys stare at it, poke it, then taste it, eat it with their hands and finally fling it all over the place.

If the scenes as the manor look like tableaux vivants, the scenes outside have a naturalistic, almost anthropological quality. A woman gives birth; a group of old women perform a raucous santeria or voodoo ceremony as Quay's camera draws circles around them; a handheld camera follows Madame as she walks the town streets observing all kinds of quotidian activities, the natives stare back at the unusual presence in their midst. These scenes serve to establish a contrast. Eat, for This Is My Body constitutes a mostly visual dialectic between first world and third world, white and black, master and servant, empire and colony. It makes ample use of symbolism, some of it ambiguous enough to sustain different interpretations. It is however, shortsighted to describe it as an essay or non-narrative film because however poetic and, perhaps, digressive, Eat, For This Is My Body adds up to a parable with recognizable story elements.

The great auteur Robert Bresson made this exhortation: "Make visible what without you might perhaps never have been seen". Michelange Quay has done just that. His feature debut is a resonant work of supreme beauty and power that couldn't have been made by anyone else.

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LA ZONA (MEXICO)

Most movies about vigilante justice merely provide cheap thrills and exploit feelings of insecurity among the law-abiding majority. La Zona is significantly more substantive and responsible. It's the feature debut of Rodrigo Pla, an Uruguayan who went to film school in Mexico in 1990 and decided to stay. After directing a number of shorts, including one featuring a revenge-minded Gael Garcia Bernal, he finally managed to get funding for La Zona. It premiered almost simultaneously at Venice and Toronto last September, winning awards at both festivals. Pla, and his screenwriter Laura Santullo, went into overdrive. The recently completed follow-up, The Desert Within, won Best Mexican Film when it premiered last month at the festival in Guadalajara.

As a consequence of an intense storm, a billboard collapses onto the perimeter fence of the exclusive, gated community "La Zona". Three youths from the surrounding slums take advantage of this rare opportunity and break into a house in the middle of the night. The owner, brandishing a gun, catches them in the act and they kill her. A neighbor hears the shots and activates the alarm. Armed residents kill two thieves trying to escape and, accidentally, one of their own security guards. The youngest trespasser, Miguel, manages to hide in a basement. The residents hold an emergency meeting and decide not to involve the police. They bribe and intimidate the wife of the fallen security guard, bury the bodies, and search for Miguel. The teenager living in the house where Miguel is hiding finds him and decides to help him, knowing the adults would kill him. A police detective pays a visit, after being alerted by an unidentified resident. Perhaps it was the repentant older man who shot the security guard or the resident who believes that wealth doesn't give them the right to ignore the laws that should apply to all equally.

La Zona manufactures mystery and suspense by withholding some details of the event that sets off the plot. It makes the audience care about what happens to Miguel because he is a likable kid and we sense the danger he faces. La Zona boasts excellent production values across the board. The set design and art direction are particularly worthy of notice. The marked contrast between the dilapidated slums and the manicured golf courses and luxurious residences of "La Zona" speak volumes. Lensing smartly incorporates grainy footage taken by security cameras. The cast includes Spanish thespians Maribel Verdu and Carlos Bardem, the 4-time Mexican Academy award winner Daniel Gimenez Cacho, and auspicious debuts by Alan Chavez and Daniel Tovar as the teenagers who manage to break the class barrier. While not profound or strikingly original, Pla's film is complex enough not to present any group as a monolithic entity. It's certainly not tendentiously anti-rich even while criticizing the sense of entitlement and privilege of the wealthy and powerful.

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JOGO DE CENA (BRAZIL)

Documentary filmmakers from non-English speaking countries are practically unknown in the US. The limited screen space for foreign language films is usually reserved for fictional ones. Film festivals like Miami's, with its strong documentary sections, provide a rare opportunity to sample the work of documentary filmmakers from the non-English speaking world. Brazilian septuagenarian Eduardo Coutinho is said to be a master of the genre. He made some fiction films early in his career but found his true calling in the 70s. His approach is to interview members of a particular group, say metallurgical workers on strike or practioners of Afro-based religions, and letting them tell their stories. Then he selects the most interesting ones and structures the material in the editing room. His latest film is a variation of that method that plays with the often tenuous boundary between reality and fiction.

Coutinho placed a newspaper ad inviting women over 18 to tell their stories. Eight of the more than 80 who responded are included in Jogo de Cena. The film had its US premiere in Miami under the Portuguese title that means "Scene Game" but will be shown at the upcoming Tribeca Film Festival under the English title "Playing". The interviews were filmed on a theater stage with lensing alternating between medium shot and close-up. Unwittingly, the viewer is participating in a game. A woman is telling how devastated she was when her newborn died and how she got through it when there's a sudden cut and the same story is continued by another woman. Sometimes the same tale is repeated almost verbatim by two different women. One of them has to be fake. Gradually we become aware of Coutinho's clever conceit, especially when a woman identifies herself as an actress who's been using the words of a respondent as a script. She remarks that, unlike the woman who appears as herself, she was unable to maintain her composure and couldn't help but cry while performing. The unadulterated women's stories are quite compelling. Many deal with estrangement from parents and the death of children, some involve finding solace in religion, mysticism or art, using dreams as a form of self-therapy, or aspiring to become a rapper or an actress. But the uniqueness of Jogo de Cena resides in its ability to simultaneously play a game of "true or false" with the audience and provide insights into the nature of interpretive performance.

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HORROR WHICH IS ALWAYS WITH YOU (RUSSIA)

It has been reported that, at the conference following the world premiere of Horror Which is Always With You, writer Yuri Arabov stated in the presence of director Arkadiy Yakhnis that "the ideas shown in the script were not realized" in the film. Most of Arabov's scripts have been directed by the masterful veteran Aleksandr Sokurov whereas young Mr. Yakhnis' second film makes apparent his relative lack of ambition. He has completely ignored the darker, allegorical implications of a premise revolving around a military unit's takeover of a couple's apartment to spy on an alleged terrorist living next door. When an amiable professor and his acerbic wife return home one afternoon they find four uniformed men inside. The angry, middle-aged couple, who don't get along, attempt to get the police to help them but fail. Gradually they become more accomodating and eventually begin to enjoy the company of the interlopers. Yakhnis exploits the comedic aspects of the story, focusing on how the presence of outsiders affects the couple. The professor, for instance, begins to identify with the burly leader, shaves his head and begins to wear military camouflage. There's something absurdist and Kafkaesque about the premise but the execution reduces it to a sort of routine comedy of manners. The ominous expectations engendered by the title are definitely never met.

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STALAGS (ISRAEL)

Ari Libsker's documentary is not about the military camps used by Germany to hold enlisted prisoners of war. These "stalags" of the title are a type of pulp novel set in those camps that became popular in Israel during the 50s and 60s. Usually the protagonist of the "stalags" was a handsome American or British pilot who was captured, brought to the camp and placed under the command of a female SS officer (in reality, the SS were all male) who would brutally torture and "rape" him. The resolution invariably involved the pilot finding a way to exact revenge on the woman.

Stalags describes the Holocaust as taboo subject in Israel during the 50s and 60s. Survivors didn't want to talk about it because it was painful and also because it was commonly believed that only those who collaborated with the Nazis were allowed to live through it. Social psychologists explain that the stalags were a phenomenon that introduced themes of torture and genocide during WWII into the culture in a way that made it easier to assimilate. According to experts interviewed for this documentary, the trial of Adolf Eichmann held in Jerusalem in 1961 was the first time Israeli society dealt openly with the atrocities that took place during the Holocaust. The "stalags" were influenced by the testimony of several witnesses during that trial. Most of the writers of "stalags" used pseudonyms, often English surnames that gave the impression the writer was British or American when in fact all the writers were Israelis. Perhaps it's not surprising that the Israeli government didn't censor or banned "stalags" until the first one involving a female protagonist was published. The writer of "I Was Colonel Schultz's Private Bitch" was found guilty of obscenity and the book was banned. Many "stalags" became highly valuable collector items. Perhaps the most startling revelation comes towards the end of the film: "House of Dolls", perhaps the first "stalag", is still being used in Israeli middle-schools as a tool to teach about the Holocaust.

I found Stalags thoroughly fascinating. The presentation of the material is straightforward and conventional, which is simply an observation not a complaint. However, at one hour duration, some issues raised are not fully explored. An expanded version would be welcome. Stalags is currently having a commercial run at NYC's venerable Film Forum.

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ENCARNACION (ARGENTINA)

Not long ago, Encarnacion "Erni" Levier was a popular theater personality. She still lives in the apartment on Corrientes Avenue from which she can see the large theater marquees, but now her age shows. Erni makes a living shooting commercials and appearing in small parts. She wants to make a transition to cinema, to more serious theater, and have her own webpage. She comes from a rather conservative family living far from Buenos Aires, in Las Flores. Erni and her strait-laced sister Dora maintain a distance from each other but Erni's niece Ana is turning 15 and expects her aunt at the celebration.

Director Anahi Berneri's second film is a character study in which we get to know the protagonist in her urban environment before the drama proper begins in Las Flores. Erni wisely decides to stay at a motel rather than her sister's house even though that is reason enough for some relatives to be critical of Erni. She is the kind of affectionate middle-aged gal who uses too much make-up and wears clothes that were designed for younger women. She looks out of place in Las Flores. The friction between Erni and Dora is intensified by disagreements over a land parcel they both own and Ana's fascination with her aunt's lifestyle.

Encarnacion would be inconceivable without Silvia Perez, a mostly theater-and-tv actress playing the somewhat autobiographical central role. It's simply a breakthrough performance for this 52 year-old actress who creates an inmensely likable and resourceful yet flawed and vulnerable character. The film is more classical in presentation, with its balanced array of long shots and close ups, than many of the films by young Argentine directors. What it shares with them is a reluctance to appeal to the emotions, a conscious avoidance of melodrama that makes it unlikely it will get a wide release anywhere. Encarnacion regards the characters from a rather clinical, detached perspective. It will solidify Berneri's reputation, following her Teddy-winning debut A Year Without Love (distributed in the US by Strand Releasing in 2006).

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CALLE SANTA FE (CHILE-FRANCE)

Carmen Castillo was an important member of Chile's MIR (Movement of the Revolutionary Left) and the lover and partner of its leader, Miguel Enriquez. When a CIA-sponsored coup d'etat placed General Pinochet at the head of the government on September 11th, 1973, Castillo, Enriquez and two small daughters from previous marriages went into hiding. In December of that year, they moved to a house on Santa Fe street that became the MIR's clandestine center of operations. Pinochet's security and intelligence agencies were adamantly locating, capturing, torturing, interrogating, and executing anyone suspected of revolutionary activity. In September of 1974, a priest managed to smuggle the girls into the Italian consulate. On October 5th, an armed commando entered the house on Santa Fe street. Enriquez was killed and a pregnant Castillo was seriously wounded. She lost the baby but managed to survive at a nearby hospital. Less than a month later, she was forced into exile, eventually settling in Paris. Castillo assumed the role of MIR's spokesperson outside Chile, then became an author and documentarist.

Calle Santa Fe is her most ambitious project to date. The two documentaries that preceded it seem now like rehearsals or preparation for it. Both concern persons who had a huge impact on Castillo's life and constitute a reassesment of conflicted relationships. La Flaca Alejandra (1994) is a sort of biography of the MIR member who revealed the location of the house on Santa Fe to the authorities. "La Flaca" became a double agent following her capture by Pinochet's intelligence agency. My Father's Chile (2004) centers around Castillo's frank engagement with her father, a former University Dean and Social Democrat who repudiated the MIR's ideology and methodology. Calle Santa Fe is wider in scope, a sprawling document that broaches a variety of pertinent issues. It alternates between Castillo's personal perspective and that of other revolutionaries, young and old, the families of those who died, Castillo's relatives, and the neighbor whose involvement ultimately saved her life. Castillo's narration reveals that it was the accidental meeting with this apolitical man that inspired a more accurate and nuanced appreciation of Chilean society.

Was the sacrifice worth it? Was it fair to put the struggle for justice and fairness ahead of parental responsibilities? Was it justifiable to remain in exile when other MIR members returned clandestinely to rejoin the opposition? Should the house on Santa Fe street be turned into a revolutionary museum/meeting place? There are more issues raised and they are dealt with courage and openness. There is a willingness on Castillo's part to disclose her often conflicting feelings that is quite endearing and moving. She is by all apearances reluctant to be cast in the role of heroine of the revolution. It's important to note that the only episode handled obliquely concerns her expulsion from the MIR after she penned memoirs that revealed differences of opinion among the membership. Castillo has no regrets about her past and holds no grudges. Her generosity and truly revolutionary spirit will remain with me long after the details of her struggle have receded from memory.

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AWARDS

DRAMATIC FEATURES

IBERO-AMERICAN CINEMA COMPETITION
Grand Jury Prize: Cochochi (Mexico) and Eat, For This Is My Body (Haiti/France)
Audience Award: La Zona (Mexico)

WORLD CINEMA COMPETITION
Grand Jury Prize: Tricks (Poland)
Audience Award: Bliss (Turkey)
FIPRESCI Prize: Foul Gesture (Israel)


DOCUMENTARY FEATURES

Grand Jury Prize: Santiago (Brazil)
Audience Award: Stranded: I Come From a Plane That Crashed in the Mountains

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OTHER FILMS OF INTEREST
One can't see everything that looks interesting. Some films I missed at the Festival.

YO (Spain)
"Beautifully shot, richly atmospheric mood piece set in an atypically gloomy Majorca. Me is the story of Hans, a German handyman at a wealthy estate who finds himself slowly assuming the identity of his namesake predecessor, whose disappearance remains a mystery".
FIPRESCI Prize at Rotterdam.

DRIFTER (Brazil)
"The experience of wandering on foot for countless days and seemingly endless distance resonantly captured in Cao Guimaraes' "Drifter." As an immersion in pure sight and sound, with Guimaraes' magnificent landscape photography and a fascinating soundtrack by experimental music duo O Grivo, pic reaches rare heights of sensory power. Yet it's also a sensitive doc on the strangely peaceful but sometimes terrible state of homeless wanderers in Brazil's rugged Minas Gerais state." (Variety Review)

BLISS (Turkey)
"In contemporary Turkey, where archaic honor killings still prevail in a society of increasingly western sensibilities, three people struggle to fllee their rigid, tradition-bound destinies. This intense and beautifully rendered drama boasts stellar performances, a compelling musica score and stunning images of the Sea of Marmara".
Audience Award-Miami and Montpellier

IT'S HARD TO BE NICE (Bosnia)
"Srdan Vuletic's second feature, following the prize-winning Summer in the Golden Valley, is an engaging, urban fairy tale that marks a move by the writer-director toward more commercial filmmaking. Sarajevo-set yarn about a man who wants to change his life and take charge of his destiny, "It's Hard to Be Nice" could also be a parable for the course Bosnia itself should travel. Sparkily written tale comes full circle in a satisfying way, with the sights of the capital city offering a historical counterpoint to the action." (Variety review)

THE GIRLS (Chile)
Using film as a scalpel to cut open the feminine mistique, Rodrigo Marin's two-hander pierces the heart of female relationships with uncanny precision".
"Heart-wrenching" (Variety)

MADRIGAL (Cuba)
"With its distinctive blend of surrealism, sensuality and science fiction, this stylish romantic comedy by director Fernando Perez (Madagascar, Habana Suite) suggests an inimitable sensibility that's nothing short of breathtaking."
Special Jury Prize, Best Art Direction at Habana Film Festival

FOUL GESTURE (Israel)
"Tense revenge drama about a middle-age man who decides to take justice into his own hands after becoming the victim of a road rage incident."
FIPRESCI Prize: Miami.

LETTERS TO A DICTATOR (Portugal)
"The brutal effects of oppression, both political and personal, form the crux of this documentary that showcases letters written to Portuguese dictator Antonio Salazar in the 50s."