BIFF 2013 #11: MDF Films of Toronto

Two of the ‘users’ for whom the daily visit to the pharmacy is part of a social routine.

This screening offered a double bill of recent films from the Canadian independent film producers MDFF or ‘Medium Density Fibreboard Films’. Trying to research the group online I’ve found http://www.mdfproductions.com/ a ‘crossplatform production company based in Toronto’, which I think is connected and a Facebook page which certainly is. I think I need to put my cards on the table here. I’m a fan of many aspects of Canadian culture and I’m always happy to when I see that Bradford has programmed something Canadian since it’s often hard to find the films elsewhere. So I’m pre-disposed to look kindly on this double-bill. But there are some things that can put me off.

The first film screened was East Hastings Pharmacy (Canada 2012) by Antoine Bourges. This a 46 minute fictionalised observational documentary. In other words what we see is a ‘drama’ played out by a pair of actors playing the pharmacists in a dispensary for methadone users in Vancouver. The users are ‘real’ and members of the local community (which, according to the Montreal Documentary fest is the district in Canada with the highest proportion of drug users). The pharmacy was built as a set a few doors down in a shopfront close to the real pharmacy (see an interview with the director here). So, while the film looks like a classic slice of the Direct Cinema school of US documentaries of the 1960s it’s actually much calmer with some of the stress taken out of the encounters at one level, allowing the audience to gradually understand what is happening and reflect upon the lives of the methadone users – which aren’t all grim, even if they are stories of loss. Shauna Hansen as the dispensing pharmacist is very good. She has both strength and vulnerability and we get to understand what the job entails as well as what is happening with the users. The whole film is non-judgemental about the issue of drug dependency and I found watching it a rewarding experience. Here is a brief trailer that conveys the calm observational style (you can also use this link to see the a trailer for the next film, Tower:

 

 

Tower (Canada 2012) is rather different. This is the first feature-length film from MDFF at 78 mins and it has been seen in cinemas, first at the Royal in Toronto. It’s directed by Kazik Radwanski, one of the founders of MDFF with Dan Montgomery. I had no problem with the subject matter of the film but I found it almost unwatchable because of the visual style. Now this may also be associated with watching the film on the IMAX screen, i.e much bigger than it would usually be (standard format films take up roughly a third of the IMAX screen, still much bigger than in a small arthouse screen). Radwanski films everything and everybody in Tower in medium close-up/close-up, even BCU, in shallow focus using a handheld camera. There are just the occasional mid-shots and perhaps a couple of long shots in the whole film. I can see that there is a logic to this and it takes us into the cheerless world of ‘Derek’ a thirty-something man, losing his hair and getting nowhere in terms of work or his social life. We spend the entire film with Derek, still at home with his parents and working part-time for his uncle in the construction business when he isn’t painstakingly creating a computer animation in his basement. We follow him to clubs, desultory dates and social gatherings and in his war against a raccoon which is attacking the dustbin at his parents’ house.

A rare composed MCU of Derek (played by Derek Bogart)

Several of the reviews contrast Canadian cinema’s approach to characters like Derek with their Hollywood equivalents, who would either be ‘redeemed’ or there would be another kind of real ‘closure’ of the narrative. Derek is also compared to literary fiction’s anti-heroes. Again, I can see the connections but I found the visual style so alienating that I couldn’t engage at all. Towards the end of the film I found myself very worried that something bad was going to happen – and I feared most for the raccoon. I should mention also that in the opening scenes Derek gets drunk at a club and when he comes to on the floor of his parents’ home he has a deep gash near the bridge of his nose. This stays with him as a livid scar (as his mother predicted) throughout the rest of the film (i.e. over several weeks). Alas, poor Derek! I think I’ll pass on Tower. The filmmakers clearly have talent and ambition, so it’s probably my loss. The film was presented in English with French subtitles. I wondered if this was a requirement for screenings in certain Toronto or Montreal cinemas? Anyway, it meant that I could practise translations when I found the screen image too off-putting.

Garage (Ireland 2007)

Pat Shortt as Josie in the bar with Carmel (Anne-Marie Duff in the orange top)

The recent release of What Richard Did by Lenny Abrahamson (review to follow) has prompted me to go back to look at his earlier release from 2007. Both this and his 2004 first feature Adam and Paul were on my radar but I hadn’t found time to watch them. I’m glad now that I finally made the effort.

Garage is set in an unnamed small town in rural Ireland (it seems to have been shot in several different parts of the country, but mainly in the ‘West Midlands’) and its central character is Josie (Pat Shortt), a 40 year-old man who ‘runs’ the town’s filling station/garage situated outside the town on the main road. In reality he is mainly the caretaker as business is slack and we never see Josie actually serve anyone. He’s employed by one of his old schoolmates who is now an entrepreneur in the town and he lives a fairly solitary life, bedding down in a backroom of the garage. Josie is considered as a little ‘slow’ by the local community – but he is cheerful and friendly and most of the locals don’t make fun of him or abuse his trust. The one lout who does bully him in the bar is the exception. Josie’s life begins to change when his boss decides that there is more passing trade and that the garage should stay open longer. Consequently  Josie is joined by an ‘assistant’, a shy and gawky 15 year-old, David. Well-played by Ryan O’Connor, David is a ‘blow-in’ to the small community and therefore initially an ‘outsider’ like Josie in social terms. He’s intelligent and sometimes a bit spiky – a ‘normal’ adolescent – but he gets on with Josie and they become friends. This friendship leads Josie into contacts with the other local teens and perhaps makes him reflect on his loneliness. Indirectly, David’s presence will lead to a series of tragic events.

My first thoughts about the film were that this was a low-budget European art film. There are no genre indications as such except towards the setting of the small town and its possibilities for drama. The town and the handful of local inhabitants are presented in a realist manner and my thoughts turned towards the Dardenne Brothers – but not so intense. A review I read mentioned Bresson. There is gentle humour in the initial representation of Josie’s mundane daily rituals and his contact with various characters. There is also a sense of the relative tranquility of rural Ireland and the potential for some kind of magic in the evening light – although the skies that Josie so enjoys seemed foreboding to me with their scudding clouds. Gradually however, we realise that happy though Josie appears to be in his own little world, he still seeks the possibility of intimacy in a relationship. Eventually too, we realise that Abrahamson is using Peter Robertson’s beautiful cinematography to compose shots very carefully and to look for various forms of symbolism in the mise en scène. The film is slow and nearly always calm. Pat Stortt’s performance is exceptional. He was first a comedian specialising in physical comedy and he uses the skills of a physical comedian to create a distinctive gait for his character, as well as an appropriate voice. His performance also has a resonance since he is well-known in Ireland for a comedy series set in the same kind of location as that in Garage.

I was a little surprised to read in the Press Pack this quote from Lenny Abrahamson:

“Josie is really a contemporary village idiot character but the Irish village doesn’t have
any place for him anymore.”

I’m not sure I would use that term to describe a character in a contemporary drama. Of course, I know what he means but it does raise what might be the uncomfortable question at the centre of the film. If this is a realist depiction of Irish rural life, it suggests that there is no modern infrastructure to replace the traditional village community in what is usually seen as one of the more affluent and ‘developed’ societies in Europe. On the other hand, as events transpire, we might argue that the ‘regulation’ of contemporary society is what really makes Josie suffer – that and economic developments. The town’s residents who know Josie and tolerate him don’t really listen to him or help him with his problems. They are just glad that he seems happy. I was interested to read the range of IMDb comments. They include many Irish commentators, but also other Europeans. While most clearly liked the film and thought it praiseworthy, there are a couple of gainsayers, including one who argues that it isn’t a very good representation of a character with mild learning difficulties and another who argues that the residents are too morose and that the rural Irish are more likely to moan and get angry about their lot. These are fair points but as an arthouse film Garage works very well. The excellent production is enhanced by the presence of George Costigan in a small but vital role and Anne-Marie Duff as Carmel (who could probably act as a focus for another story). I can see why the film won one of the Cannes prizes and why Abrahamson and his collaborators are seen as one of Ireland’s most important filmmaking teams.

The final shot of this rather good trailer offers an example of the very effective lighting and composition:

LFF 2012 #1: Memories Look at Me (China 2012)

Song Fang and her mother in Memories Look at Me

Memories Look at Me was a good place to start my visit to the 2012 London Film Festival. Writer-director Song Fang is known to arthouse audiences in the West as the young Chinese film student who appears in Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Paris-set Flight of the Red Balloon (France/Taiwan 2007). In this, her first feature, she has Jia Zhangke as executive producer. With two of the leading masters of Chinese cinema as mentors, it isn’t surprising that she has absorbed something from both filmmakers and that this feature seems so confident and composed. Inhabiting that territory between fiction and documentary that features in much of Jia’s work, Memories Look at Me is a meditation on growing up and growing old – and also a critique in many ways of the changing China and, in particular, the one child policy.

Song plays a character like herself, on a visit home to her parents’ small flat in Nanjing. Her real family play themselves (though, presumably, as fictional characters). Almost all the ‘action’ takes place in the flat and this, for me, was the only disappointment in that I would have liked to see more of Nanjing. It was frustrating to be peering through the rain-spattered windows of a car and to be told that a decaying building was the cinema where Song’s parents often went, only for her doctor father to receive an emergency call part way through the film. But then, the film deals with the interior lives of the family members and what they remember as they talk in the confined space of the house.

The film is almost an exercise in restraint and it works very well in allowing us to begin to understand the characters and their circumstances. There are relatively few moments of real drama such as when a neighbour brings the family a chicken which seems then to be kept temporarily in the shower room. Song proves inept at securing the chicken’s legs and we see no more of the bird. I presume that somebody must kill it so that they can eat it?

There are several references to Song as an unmarried woman who has passed 30 and I confess that it might have been interesting to see how she got on with the blind date that her brother and sister-in-law were keen to arrange for her. But this is one of the moments of restraint – nothing more is heard of the idea. The ‘one child’ policy crops up several times, e.g. when Fang asks her mother why she seemed so old when Fang was a child and her mother explains that she was five years older than the other mothers in Nanjing because she had already had Fang’s brother – and all the other mothers only had the one child. Fang’s uncle had no children and so Fang’s brother was important to him and later Fang visits her parents’ friends who are worried about the health of their only child.

I think it is remarkable that a woman in her early 30s should make such a mature film about getting older and realising that you have simply not taken in the import of the things that have happened to your parents’ generation. I wish that I had been that aware and mature at her tender age. Not a film I would recommend for a rollicking Friday night out, but definitely one to savour at a more sober time of the week. I hope this gets a wide distribution.

Detachment (US 2011)

Adrien Brody and Betty Kaye in ‘Detachment’

British director Tony Kaye is a ‘controversial’ figure in Hollywood following the furore that erupted around his first fiction feature American History X (US 1998) – when he attempted to disown the picture and sued New Line Pictures. His background is advertising, documentary and music videos – which he was still able to produce when Hollywood producers wouldn’t return his calls. Detachment is in some ways his ‘come-back’ feature. Though clearly a low budget film, it boasts a fantastic cast including Adrien Brody, Marcia Gay Harden, Lucy Liu, James Caan, Blythe Danner, Tim Blake Nelson and Christina Hendricks.

Detachment attempts to give the audience an insight into the current state of public high schools in urban America. There is an outline plot with three main narratives focusing on the relationships between substitute teacher Adrien Brody and his grandfather, one of his students and a teenage runaway he befriends. Each of these narratives has a resolution over three weeks, but the film encompasses a wider selection of characters associated with the school and these characters are the players in sequences that are more like sketches. There are also some animated sequences. The film begins with animated credits utilising a blackboard and vox pops from presumably ‘real’ teachers discussing their attitudes towards the profession. Adrien Brody as ‘Henry Barthes’ (the title of the film is from a quote by Albert Camus) also reads to us what seem like diary entries and we get to see flashbacks to his own troubled childhood. Brody was reported as having accepted the role (and becoming a producer) because his own father was a public school teacher.

You have probably gathered from this description that Detachment is not a conventional high school drama of the type that perhaps began with Blackboard Jungle in the 1950s and continues with more recent titles like Dangerous Minds (1995). These films generally feature a liberal teacher who wins the hearts and minds of difficult students. Henry Barthes in Detachment is himself a troubled figure and though he does try to engage with his students, he isn’t necessarily successful and the film shows the struggles of the other teachers in the school (although Henry’s is the only classroom we see – most of the other teachers are seen in the staffroom or school offices).

There have been a few negative reviews of the film, but the majority of audiences seem to have found the film compelling and have endorsed the selection by writer Carl Lund of confrontations between teachers and students that appear in the film. If you’ve ever taught in a school classroom you will have experienced some of these – critics from sheltered backgrounds might not understand, but the film is in this sense quite realistic. The cast is generally excellent and Kaye’s direction (and cinematography) is very lively. I enjoyed the animation and some of the other devices. This isn’t to say that there aren’t weaknesses in the approach, though I think that I probably need to see the film again to make a more balanced judgement. One problem is that we don’t know the situation that Henry is in when he reads his statements as voiceovers – is he in prison, in hospital or perhaps writing a biography? The other potential problem is Henry’s relationship with the young woman on the streets who Henry takes home because she is clearly too young and too damaged/abused to survive for long on her own. I did think that a) she ‘brushed up’ too well and looked far too healthy after only a couple of days of recuperation, b) the situation seemed unreal in comparison with the all too real problems in the school and c) I eventually felt manipulated by this narrative into making a conventional Hollywood emotional response. On the other hand . . . other viewers enjoyed this aspect of the film and it does work in terms of melodrama. The main point is, I think, that Detachment has so many different elements both working together and offering different ways of presenting its overall commentary, that it doesn’t really matter if one doesn’t work – you’ll soon be offered another.

Anyone who has worked in, cares for or has simply thought about education should see this film. I doubt you will be bored if you seek it out! Here’s the trailer. The film opens on Friday July 13th in the UK – though I suspect it will be difficult to find, so keep your eyes peeled.

BIFF 2012 #13: Toomelah (Australia 2011)

As I watched this film I found myself engrossed but also at times bewildered and definitely disturbed. Toomelah was screened as part of a celebration and exchange between Bradford and Sydney as the first two UNESCO ‘Cities of Film’. My reaction was partly formed around the question of what kinds of considerations went into the choice of this film? I found that some of the other audience members I spoke to afterwards felt the same way. It was only afterwards that I noticed in the festival brochure that Toomelah had won a UNESCO prize for ‘An outstanding contribution to the promotion and preservation of cultural diversity through film’ at the Asian Pacific Screen Awards in 2011. That explains the choice of the film for a Bradford screening but there are still plenty of questions to explore. I should point out that if, like me, you prefer not to read the full blurb in the brochure before the film, this is one film where it could be a mistake.

The problem for a UK audience is that the film itself offers no context for what it shows us and therefore runs the risk that we might misread it. At the end of the opening credit sequence we are presented with close-ups of a small figurine of a boxer, a trophy or an award of some kind. The first scene then shows us a small boy waking and asking his grandmother for money which he uses to buy some chips to eat on his way to school. But at school he behaves in such a disruptive manner that the teacher asks him to leave the room. For most of the rest of the film Daniel refuses to go to school and instead tags along with a group of men led by Linden the local drugs dealer. Daniel’s mother appears to have little control over or indeed much interest in her son and his grandmother withdraws to her room when her sister Cindy re-appears after 50 years away. Daniel’s father appears to live literally ‘in the gutter’ and is usually drunk. The father was indeed a boxer and Daniel sees boxing as something he can be good at. The boy’s other relationships involve his girlfriend Tanitia and Tupac the boy he fights with at school. The community is made up of indigenous peoples – the only white Australians we see are a teacher and two police officers.

The setting of this community isn’t given (though since the film is part-funded by New South Wales Screen, we assume it must be in the state somewhere). There are occasional long shots showing the landscape and these images of great natural beauty contrast with the brutality of the language used by everyone in the community. If it was released in the UK, the BBFC would struggle to give the film less than an 18 Certificate. All the dialogue is subtitled, which I found annoying since only the occasional word is a problem, but it’s difficult not to read the subtitles. None of the characters in the narrative appear to be played by ‘actors’. Is this a documentary, a dramatised reconstruction of an event or a completely fictional story? The filming style is both skilful in terms of framing and editing but also very loose, especially in the use of a handheld camera and a pronounced tendency to ignore focus, often seeming to be adjusted during shots, as if the filmmaker had just forgotten. There is a clear narrative that involves Daniel and the return of another ‘bad c**t’ from prison who threatens to take over Linden’s business. The climax of the film is then predictable.

I’m presenting the film in this way just to emphasise how such films can come across. I said I was engrossed and that’s true. The performances are staggeringly good with only a couple of occasions when sly glances towards the camera or slight hesitations in speaking betray the non-professionals. What is also clear is that while the film in one sense reinforces a negative image of indigenous communities, one which is repeated for similar communities in North America and other parts of the world, the script is also carefully constructed so that we are aware of real social issues. The lack of employment, the aimlessness of lives, substance abuse and sexual abuse are major problems associated with the racist policies which took children away from families (the ‘Stolen Generations’) and tried to eradicate the cultural identity of communities with the loss of language and history as well as the condemnation of whole communities to a second class status in Australian society. These references are carefully woven into the fabric of the film rather than presented directly. Personally I wanted to know more, e.g. about the black and white photographs in the schoolroom showing group portraits from earlier decades in the community. Having said that there are some discussions (and school lessons) about the ‘lingo’ of the local peoples and a couple of songs.

It took me a little while to research the film and this is what I found, starting with the official website. ‘Toomelah’ is a real place, a remote community of the Gamilaroi people based around an old mission (set up in the 1930s as part of a forced assimilation project for scattered smaller groups) in the far north of New South Wales nearly on the border with Queensland. It became the centre of a scandal in the late 1980s when a leading judge visited the community and helped to publicise the shocking living conditions and social problems (the most discussed being child abuse). This in turn led to an ‘intervention’ by the federal government and later changes in policy by the New South Wales government. So, I presume that Toomelah is well-known in Australia.

Ivan Sen and Daniel Connors on location in Toomelah

The filmmaker is Ivan Sen, whose mother grew up in Toomelah. He himself was brought up in Inverell, a small town further down the Macintyre River. He trained as a filmmaker and achieved success with his first feature Beneath Clouds in 2002, winning a prize at Berlin. A fiction film drawing on Sen’s own feelings growing up as a mixed race young man, this was followed by several other short dramas and documentaries, an experimental feature Dreamland (2010) and then Toomelah. Sen has maintained his interest in his roots, returning over several years to Toomelah. The filming style of Toomelah is explained by his decision to make the film virtually by himself so that his non-professional cast of locals (many from the same family) would not be intimidated by the presence of a large professional crew. This willingness to lose the slickness of a proficient crew has been rewarded by very ‘natural’ performances – and didn’t prevent the film being selected for the ‘Un Certain Regard’ programme at Cannes in 2011.

According to its Facebook page and several glowing reviews in Australia, the film has been warmly welcomed by audiences, including those who know the community at Toomelah. However, its theatrical release in Australia seems to have been limited. I suspect it will do well on DVD and in non-traditional screening events. My concern is how it will be read elsewhere in festivals and specialised cinemas. One of the questions is about the ‘humour’ in the film which is mentioned by the filmmaker and the promotional material. I think that the film deals in authenticity and often this extends into a general sense of warmth in communal relations which we can all respond to. However, there were moments in which the film’s style reminded me of reality TV and the kinds of potentially exploitative material featured in Big Fat Gypsy Weddings and similar programmes focusing on the ‘exotic’ behaviour of particular subcultures. Are we laughing at or with these communities? Toomelah is of course made from within a community and I’m not suggesting that it is exploitative, only that it could be misread. I’m sure that most audiences want children like Daniel to have a better future than their parents’ generation. The exposure of the problems they face is best organised from within their own culture and therefore it is important that filmmakers like Ivan Sen are funded and able to negotiate decent distribution deals. How we then respond to such films is a question which I think prompts a call for better film education in film cultures generally around the world.

Here’s the official trailer from the production company, Bunya:

And an interview with Ivan Sen:

Dead Man’s Shoes (UK, 2004)

Axe murderer in Derbyshire?

What happens when you cross a revenge movie with British social realism? In this case you get a not entirely successful, but certainly interesting, film. Co-writer, with star Paddy Considine, and director Shane Meadows is renowned for his slices of working class life on estates, his handheld camerawork and ensemble acting lift a lid on an under-represented class in cinema. His This Is England (2006) is a particularly successful example.

On the face of it mixing a genre movie with the aesthetics of realism seems a great idea and I don’t think it ‘fails’ because of the execution. The bunch of slightly deranged, and vulnerable, characters are typical Meadows and are convincingly portrayed. And Paddy Considine is ‘as standard’ as a brittle and unpredictable character, at once warm and threatening. He returns to his home town, looking beautiful in the hills of Derbyshire, seeking revenge for the treatment of his mentally challenged younger brother.

Maybe it doesn’t quite work because genre and realism can’t gel. The former relies upon verisimilitude, the rules of the genre, to convince its audience, whilst the latter states this is a ‘slice of life’. By their nature, genres aren’t ‘slices of life’. However, that should not be an impediment to watching this well-made and ground-breaking film.

A picture beyond the photographer’s intention: a semiotic analysis of Blow-Up

This paper was submitted by Giuseppe Raudino (see contact details below)

Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up (UK 1966) is a deep reflection about reality and meaning. What is real? Why is that real? And what does it mean? These are the questions that the viewer is obliged to ask himself/herself throughout the film.

The opening scene establishes the interpretative challenge the audience is repeatedly asked to accept: a group of mime artistes – masked merrymakers – are acting strangely in London, riding an overcrowded Land Rover and suddenly spreading themselves in the city streets, among the traffic, with no apparent reason or goal. What are they actually doing? What are their visionary gestures trying to accomplish? They seem so unreal within such a familiar context . . .

The film tells the story of Thomas (David Hemmings), a photographer who encounters a series of people, most of the time in quite odd circumstances. As a photographer he is meticulous, especially when he has to arrange the set and give orders to his models. Nothing he wants to depict in his photographs is left to chance, there is no space for the random in his shots: the photographer’s will requires accurate composition of the images even if that entails grabbing and stretching a model’s leg or engaging in an ‘intimate’ photo session with Veruschka von Lehndorff, with whom Thomas is even ready to mock-up a sexual encounter to make her reveal her sensuality to the utmost.

This concept of a full control over the product (and the related message conveyed by it) comes to a crisis when Thomas, after having blown up a picture of a couple in a park, accidentally discovers that there is a man hidden in the background, beyond a hedge. Further enlargements will show that the man is holding a gun. This third person could have never been spotted in a normal-sized photo, where his presence would have remained just a meaningless stain, but now he is there, unexpected, vigorously included in the photograph despite the photographer’s intention.

The new presence in the picture suddenly changes the original meaning of the picture itself. This implies that an (unnoticed) element may affect the reality and the context it refers to. In Thomas’ case, the armed man adds a dark connotation to the entire scene, bringing the idea of mystery, murder and drama to what was simply a romantic rendezvous in a park.

Thomas (David Hemmings) and Jane (Vanessa Redgrave) in the park

Thomas is puzzled by what he found out and feels the need to investigate more. He is overwhelmed: probably, for the first time, the reality in his pictures is different from the reality he had in mind, that reality he wanted to construct.

The film is actually disseminated with elements in strong opposition to their contexts, and this clearly is a narrative means by which Antonioni invites the viewer to rethink the significance of something in relation of its environment and vice versa. Let’s consider, for instance, the episode of the propeller.

Thomas goes to an antiquarian shop, which is full of statues, boxes, paintings and a lot of rare objects. What does Thomas finally choose? A wooden propeller, which is a piece of something else (i.e. an element of an aeroplane). The propeller will be later placed in Thomas’ studio, totally out of its original context, far away from aerodromes, hangars and so on, but it will certainly bring a new meaning to its new environment.

The Yardbirds at the Ricky Tick gig

Another example of out-of-the-context elements occurs in the scene at the Ricky Tick, the famous club in which the Yardbirds are playing live. After having experienced some problems with the amplifier, the guitarist lets his inner aggressiveness come out and smashes his instrument, throwing some pieces to the public. As Thomas picks up the guitar neck, he realises that the crowd is ready to fight in order to obtain that precious relic. Then he runs away, chased by the Yardbirds’ fans, but when he gets rid of them and finds himself outside the club, he throws away the guitar neck. Some pedestrians have a glance at this strange object laying on the sidewalk but eventually do not show any interest for it. All at once, the so much contended memento of a great rock band loses its value as soon as it is placed out of its original context.

Something similar happens when Thomas pays a visit to his neighbour Bill, an abstract painter. The latter shows a canvas onto which there are painted some rectangular and trapezoidal objects. Out of that (apparent) confusion, Bill points out an area, saying that it is a leg. Considered in absolute terms, that shape is just a rectangle, but within the painting it clearly becomes a leg, and it would be as such even without the interpretative endorsement of the author, because the context and the opposition with the other elements would make it a leg anyway. The parallel between Bill’s painting and Thomas’ photograph is more than evident: a shape and a stain are meaningless until a closer look (or an enlargement) unveils a new truth, urging further interpretations.

Finally – yet the examples might be more numerous – there is another scene in which the interpretation of what is supposed to be real and true is questioned. At a certain point, Thomas again meets Veruschka. There is a party going on and Thomas is surprised to see her, since she had told him that by that time she should have been in Paris. Once asked, Veruschka claims under the effect of some drugs that she is  in Paris. Is the model’s imagination less real than her factual location? The psychedelic dimension and culture presented in the film seems to suggest a clear alternative way for reading the signs that surround every character and build up each situation. Towards the end of the film, Thomas is somehow aware of this. What is commonly called “reality” isn’t something objective; on the contrary, it’s something subject to vary due to any little element, even an overlooked element. Perhaps it is with these thoughts that Thomas abandons himself on a bed after having smoked marijuana.

The final scene is strongly connected to the opening and shows the brand new attitude of Thomas about reality, meaning and interpretation. The mime artistes encountered in the initial frames of the film are now playing (or pretending to play?) a tennis match, but with no rackets and no balls.

Thomas is an improvised spectator who observes the match outside the court. Unexpectedly, the players throw the invisible ball beyond the fence and then stare interrogative at Thomas. Great suspense. Thomas makes some steps, stoops, picks up the ball and with an ample movement returns it to the visionary players. Then he resumes following the match, turning his head right and left, like everybody in the audience of a “normal” tennis match would do.

Thomas has learned a lesson. Fetching the ball means that he is now conscious about the fact that the reality goes beyond any straightforward appearance and a supposedly meaningless situation may become meaningful thanks to some elements, even overlooked, even imagined or dreamed. And the mime artistes don’t dream of anything but a better world.

The final section of the film on YouTube (but you’ll have to watch it there):

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Giuseppe Raudino is lecturer at the Hanze University Groningen (the Netherlands) where he teaches Media Theory and Media Skills. He graduated in Communication Sciences from the University of Siena with a dissertation in Semiotics about Umberto Eco. His homepage is http://raudino.webs.com/

Films From the South #8: Fireworks Wednesday (Chaharshanbe-soori, Iran 2006)

Hedye Tehrani and Hamid Farokhnezhad as the married couple at the centre of Fireworks Wednesday.

Asghar Farhadi is the second of the featured directors in the festival with his latest film Nader and Simin: A Separation showing in the Main Competition. That film has already been shown in many territories, including the UK where it has been a big hit, not least with the contributors on this blog. I was eager to see the two earlier films by this director showing in the festival. These last three films by Farhadi are clearly all the work of the same extremely talented filmmaker and although they present three distinct stories, there are common themes, a common cultural location – Tehran’s middle classes – and the same sense of a subtle satire. I can almost imagine a DVD box set entitled ‘Marriage Iranian Style‘.

Fireworks Wednesday takes place over the Tuesday and ‘eve’ of the Wednesday of Persian New Year in Iran (thus the Iranian title of the film, referring to a Zoroastrian festival). There appears to be a similar sense of carnival and mayhem in the streets, with the letting off of fireworks and impromptu bonfires, as there is in the UK on November 5th (i.e. Bonfire Night and also the customs of Mischief Night). This then becomes the setting for a narrative about marriage. The narrative agent is Roohi (Taraneh Alidoosti), a young woman from the outer suburbs who is just days away from her marriage to a young man she clearly loves. She rides into the city as a pillion passenger on his motorbike and goes straight to the employment agency who send her to the other side of the city for a day as a cleaner. She then finds herself in the middle of a marital ‘situation’ in which Mozdhe is very much on edge in her large apartment. One of the windows is broken, all the furniture is covered in plastic and there is a general air of chaos. Roohi understands that Mozdhe and her husband Morteza are to go on holiday the next day but Mozdhe seems more concerned that Morteza may be having an affair with Simin, the divorcée next door who runs a beauty salon. Roohi is a ‘good girl’ who finds herself confused by both Mozdhe and Simin. She doesn’t know who to believe when Mozdhe asks her to spy on Simin (who gives Roohi some beauty treatment as a wedding gift). She accepts people for who they say they are, but ends up telling white lies to protect Mozdhe and Simin from each other. The complex plotting then leads Roohi to be forced to stay with Mozdhe’s family all day and to be driven home late in the evening through streets full of fireworks by Morteza.

The four central characters in the film are carefully drawn in the script by Farhadi and Mani Haghighi and beautifully acted. These are complicated individuals and there is no easy and quick identification with them. Mozdhe in particular is a woman on the edge who we both feel for and also want to scold. For me what is most interesting is the way that she treats Roohi. At some moments she seems cold and dismissive giving curt instructions but at other moments she is considerate and appears to want to help the younger woman. Is she a good or bad employer in the eyes of her cleaner/maid (Roohi is asked to carry out a very wide range of tasks)? The almost arrogant confidence of the Iranian middle classes, especially the women, is a feature of these three Farhadi films. The women are relatively wealthy and well-educated but also trapped by certain social conventions. I’m not sure the extent to which Farhadi is being satirical by exposing the behaviour of the Tehran middle classes. It certainly outrages one IMDb commentator who damns the film: “Awful, couldn’t be worse. If we have two or three of such movies per year, that will be more than enough for our society to break down.” (‘m-mirehei’ from Iran) This seems like a very conservative view. From a Western perspective the film seems ‘honest’ in its depiction of the characters.

Taraneh Alidoosti as Roohi

The chador plays an interesting role in the film which I take to be metaphorical. In the opening sequence, when Roohi is on the motorbike, her chador gets caught in the back wheel, throwing her off the bike and jamming the wheel. I found this quite disturbing as in a famous incident in 1927 the dancer Isadora Duncan was killed by her own long scarf when it became tangled in the open spoke wheels of the car in which she was a passenger and her neck was broken. Roohi survives unhurt but the chador is a little torn. Later Mozdhe borrows the chador (without telling Roohi) and wears it in causing a scene outside Morteza’s office. This leaves Roohi ‘exposed’ (though she still has her headscarf) when she has to go and collect Mozdhe’s son from nursery school. I could do with some guidance here but there seems to be a deliberate and provocative reference to the chador and what it means about ‘respectability’ for Iranian women. I won’t ‘spoil’ what happens in these scenes but Mozdhe’s actions both put pressure on Roohi and in some way support her own fight against her husband.

Although the specifics of Iranian society are important to the film’s narrative, there is a strong universal appeal as well and there was a large and appreciative audience for the film in Oslo. There are at least two versions of the film free to view online if you search, one with subtitles and one with German titles taken from German television. But no release yet in the UK! The actors in these films are clearly important stars in Iran – see this fansite for Hedye Tehrani. I confess to having spent a long time in cinemas gazing at beautiful women and I have to say that many of the women featured in Fahradi’s films look just as stunning with their headscarves and long coats as most Hollywood stars in designer outfits. The excellent camerawork by Hossein Jafarian helps of course.