Luxembourg City Film Festival - Five to Watch

Cine Jambalaya is back, and so is the Luxembourg Film Festival. Over next 10+ days I will be covering the small country’s largest celebration of all things cinema with as many articles and reviews I can manage. The 7th edition, which kicks off on March 10th with Mick Jackson’s Denial, marks another step forward for the growing festival. A record number of 59 films will screen during the festivities in the various sections and a high calibre of guest will attend: Ray Liotta is scheduled to hold a masterclass and the novelist Douglas Kennedy is going to introduce a special screening of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1994).

The selection meanwhile quite a bit to offer. The fiction and documentary competitions look strong, while the local film industry is presenting a more interesting than usual crop of productions and co-productions, including Laura Schroeder’s Barrage starring Isabelle Huppert. Established names in the art-cinema world such as Terrence Malick, James Gray, Aki Kaurismäki, Ben Wheatley or Kim Jee-Woon mix with interesting new and old names. The only slight disappointment (other than the unfortunate poster featuring and old man in a bathrobe flashing nature) is the lack of cultural and geographic diversity. The programme doesn’t include a single movie from Africa or South America, with a large majority coming from Western Europe and North America. Maybe quality films from those regions were not available for selection, but it does feel like a missed opportunity to create a truly global festival.

Let’s focus on the pictures which are present though and there is a lot to discover. Singling out only five of my most anticipated films wasn’t an easy task, which speaks volumes for the quality of the selection. I try to present titles across the different sections that should cover a broad range of cinematic tastes.

The Other Side of Hope (Aki Kaurismäki, Official Competition)

Any new film by the great Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki is cause for excitement. The Other Side of Hope arrives after a six-year hiatus and on the back of winning the Silver Bear for Best Director in Berlin. The filmmaker brings his unique sense of humour and melancholic retro style to a wryly sentimental tale about a Syrian refugee who arrives in Helsinki.

Raw/Grave (Julia Ducournau, Official Competition)

I always look for the genre films in competition and this one looks tasty. Nothing for people with a weak stomach (or vegetarians), this is a coming-of-age story set in a veterinarian college featuring gore, flesh and cannibalism in abundance. Julia Ducournau’s debut feature, praised for its unflinching confidence, was rewarded with the FIPRESCI-Prize at the Cannes Critics’ Week.

Forever Pure (Maya Zinshtein, Documentary Competition)

When the Israeli football team Beitar Jerusalem completes a transfer for two Chechen Muslims, chaos ensues. Notorious for their right-wing and extreme nationalist politics, the fan base immediately brands the new signings as traitors and bombards them with boos and racist chants. The Russian billionaire who owns the club and signed the players is targeted with similar abuse. This ugly story about racism and mob rule is documented with amazing access to all the involved parties.

Homo Sapiens (Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Out of Competition)

The absence of the titular humans is the theme of this experimental documentary without dialogue. The Austrian filmmaker Nikolaus Geyrhalter reflects upon what happens after we leave by touring a series of deserted locations such as Fukushima or abandoned malls and railway stations. The succession of images gives us a haunting taste of a post-apocalyptic world. The quiet film works best on the big screen where distractions are minimal.

Song to Song (Terrence Malick, Closing Film)

The international premiere of the latest Malick, mere days after the world premiere at SXSW, is probably the biggest coup by the programming team. Song to Song, set in Austin’s buzzing music scene, features all the actors (Rooney Mara, Ryan Gosling, Michael Fassbender, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Val Kilmer) and most musicians (Iggy Pop, Flea, Patti Smith, Arcade Fire, Fleet Foxes). Malick’s work is at best a metaphysical experience of cinematic consciousness, at worst a visual feast of beauty and thought-provoking ideas. Sections of the audience may have struggled with the (apparent) lack of structure and narrative in his recent films To the Wonder, Knight of Cups and to a lesser extent The Tree of Life, but the disciples of this cinematic eagerly await his latest output.

Head to the festival's website for the full programme and schedule.

Review: Amour Fou - A tale of wallpapers and awkwardness

It all comes back to the wallpaper, one of cinema's most memorable in this vein since Barton Fink. The chequered hangings with some sort of floral pattern attract the audience's gaze time and time again during Jessica Hausner's Amour Fou, which screened as part of the Cine-City film festival last week. In 1811 Berlin, towards the end of feudalism, they decorate the masonry of the living room in the aristocratic Vogel residence, where a large portion of the film takes place. The frames take on a painterly order facing the wall, meaning that it becomes a constant, looming backdrop to the drama that unfolds in front of it.

There we see Henriette (Birte Schnoeink), the lady of the house, happily married and mother of a daughter. She attracts the attention of a visiting poet named Heinrich (Christian Friedel, whom you might recognise as the school teacher from The White Ribbon). He is committed to a morbidly romantic outlook on the world and is desperate to find a woman to join him in the ultimate act of love: joint-suicide. Initially Henriette rejects his advances, but when she is diagnosed with a fatal illness, she begins to show interest in becoming the Juliet to Heinrich's Romeo.

The performances are intentionally awkward, which may be slightly irritating for some viewers. The actors' posture is formal and rigid, and they often look like they are as confused about what to do with their hands as Jack Donaghy does in the famous 30 Rock-episode. It's as if they are posing for a painting rather than camera, embodying the stiffness that entraps German aristocracy, trapped in conventions like puppets on a string. Heinrich's awkwardness meanwhile is merely a charade to fit into society until he can exit it with a bang.

In the end it all comes down to the infamous wallpaper. Hausner uses background to express the emotions bubbling under the surface of the foreground in a quite interesting way. The lighting gives the wallpaper different nuances in the various scenes. At times it shimmers in a cold, blue-ish tone, while emitting a hopeful green at others. Any escape from this claustrophobic setting has furthermore an exhilarating effect on the viewer. It takes almost half an hour until we first leave the domestic setting (we don't even see a window up to that point), so it feels like a breath of fresh air.

Not everybody will enjoy staring at a wall for an hour and a half while a relatively unengaging, sometimes alienating story is plaid out in front of it. Amour Fou is in many ways a dragging, tiresome experience, but the director's use of the mise-en-scène just about managed to keep me interested for 96 minutes. The Austro-Luxembourgish-German co-production explores a number of interesting ideas and concepts, but the audience has to work hard to find them in the wallpaper's hypnotic pattern.

LFF review: the wonderful Song of the Sea

The year of 2014 was rather disappointing for fans of animated movies. In the beginning, everything was awesome with The LEGO Movie, but that was it. With the exception of The Wind Rises (which I have considerable reservations about) and How to Train Your Dragon 2, there wasn't much to recommend. Now Song of the Sea finally puts an end to this dry spell. It is the difficult second album for the Irish studio Cartoon Saloon, but they master the challenge with flying colours. The film delivers a beautifully told story, despite never quite reaching the magic or the impact of their 2009-debut The Secret of Kells.

Comparing Tomm Moore with the genius of Hayao Miyazaki after only a couple of films is premature, but there are commonalities. Like the now comatose Studio Ghibli, he finds inspiration in folklore that surrounds him, in the local legends and gives them a modern twist. The fact that hardly anyone outside of Ireland (or Japan) is familiar with these traditions is of no importance. It actually adds a certain mystical/spiritual quality to the film which we can marvel at, even if we don't understand it. Song of the Sea introduces us to Selkies (seals that can transform into humans), the Sea God Mac Lir, the Great Seanachai and a terrifying owl-witch.

One of these mystical Selkies is the young Saoirse. On the night of her birth, her mother disappeared without a trace  leaving the girl in the custody of her father Connor (Brendan Gleeson) and her older brother Ben (David Rawle). Together with their loyal dog, they live in a lighthouse on a tiny island off the Irish coast. The absence of a mother figure weighs heavily on the family, but they try to make the best of it. On her sixth birthday, Saoirse discovers a magical shell. It had been entrusted to Ben by the mother before she left, but as soon as Saoirse picks it up, extraordinary things begin to happen. Subsequently, the siblings have to go on an epic adventure in order to save the magical creatures, who have been turned into stone by a witch.

Song of the Sea plays to a slightly younger audience then Kells, but there is a lot to enjoy for the parents as well. The story takes a while to get going, as a large chunk of the first thirty minutes take place in a more realistic world. The character development is a bit slow, but as soon as the adventure starts properly, the film immediately transforms into a gripping piece of storytelling. Despite having no magical attributes, the film's primary focus remains on Ben. He is not special, he isn't "the one"; he has no powers other than his exuberant enthusiasm. Saoirse is the extraordinary one of the siblings. Telling the story from this character's point of view is both unusual and interesting. It's okay to be normal, which is a positive message we don't see often in cinema.

In terms of visuals, the film is somewhat simpler than its predecessor, but there is enormous beauty in its images. The dominating shape is the circle. Time and time again, the picture rests for a couple of seconds on a still image resembling a Hindu or Buddhist mandala. The symmetry and the perfection of the circular form have a calming effect and give the visuals a structure. The soundtrack, a mixture of Bruno Coulais’ original compositions and of Irish traditional music lead by the band Kíla. revolves around a simple melody, which will burn itself into your subconscious for days. All these elements come together and make Song of the Sea one of the year's most gorgeous, tender and moving films for young and old. And it has Irish accents! Go see it now. Go on, go on.