Berlinale 64: ...more stories....more films...german vulvae, STASI stuff and hong kong ghosts...

... Just for being sure I shall go straight to Inferno,

at night the various parties of the Berlinale

allowed me to meet a large bunch of friends

from all over the world.

All drunk.

Like my shootings adventures partners

the guys from Noe and AMPM and Gaumont

and other parisian production companies,

Bono Ristori, the theoretician of the living dead,

or L.,

who is always everywhere and always drinks.

From one drink to another,

I managed also to see the not yet legal copy

of an italian film on Eva Braun, by Simone Scafidi, alongside the Archangels that made it possible...

A mature and spungent film,

a sort of “Salo” but in a black comedy key.  

This would be enough to make you go crazy,

but what if I told you there is soooooo much sex in it?

If I told you it has a lot of  Bunga Bunga?

....And soon you might get news about my first film, too...

I mean based on my total story...

If you want to invest on it send me a message...

I’ll send you my IBAN...

It will be a masterpiece!
Suspiria will be just a pale copy of it.

...And then so many other people
I have NOT met... 

....And then I saw that pseudo doc on Nick Cave…

where he sees  a psychiatrist … 20,000 Days on Earth.

The scene with the shrink was revealing:

Are we witness to a confession of vulnerability?

Or the performance of such?

The key of the entire film is only one:
does it matter?

We get a journey through the past,
 

through Berlin

and the silhouette of Mick or PJ Harvey, through Cave's personal archives.

(how he kept all his crap together over his tumultuous life, I have no idea).

Cave, who had once given himself
so totally
over

to drugs and religion,
 

appears here incapable of entirely letting go

of his private being…

A man who wrote a classic song
about a woman as a boat
 

is incapable

of releasing himself...

During the film’s press conference,

co-director Jane Pollard  pointed out
 

that though the film works as a documentary,
 

it isn’t really true…

…that it was edited, with Cave’s approval,

to make him appear more troubled

than the actually was …
 

...or appearing more melancholic
 

than reality.
 

“Nick is a real person,” Pollard noted.

“But the film isn’t very real.”

 

Both the press screening and conference

were only half-attended...
 

... though Cave’s music is played in every bar

from Potsdamer Platz to Friedrichshain

(I guess he lives in Friedrichshain).

 

His life, today,
is one of the bourgeois bohemian.

 

He eats,

he watches TV (Scarface with the kids)

and “mostly, I write”

(by typewriter, of course).
 

Art can provide the rest.
 

Cave explained, “I think cinema was invented

to show violence.

That’s why I got interested in cinema, really.”

And then we all moved on to the next film...

 

…And then the party…

As the Berlinale is also about the sense of community
in the auditorium and the venues,
the shared reactions
with hundreds of strangers. ..

Or about the annoying idiot
who carefully unfolds a coat across four seats
to reserve for friends,
who never show up,
and gets into a bitter altercation with the stressed neighbors...

... Or it's about the awkward Q&As with directors who do not speak any language…

…Or about the applause after each screening,

the sense that this screening

was an event of significance,

that we were all here together

and we shared it…

This is, after all,

the one major film festival in the world

that takes place in a city

where actual people actually live.

… Rather than some remote,

exclusive resort in the Mediterranean,

where the film industry

commits its annual incest...

But the Berlinale is also the place

where I enter parties

for films I haven't seen,

smoke some Gitanes, have some alcooohoool…

…and talk to actors and directors and film producers,

making sure to leave the vague impression

I have seen their film
 

and thoroughly enjoyed it…

…Now THAT'S the true Berlinale feeling (too)...

Now enter the Greeks…

 With a central character called Antigone

(and she has the face for it),

Na Kathese Ke Na Kitas

(Standing Aside, Watching),

directed by Yorgos Servetas,  

picks up on Sophocles’ fearless,

proto-feminist heroine.

 

 

She is here re-presented as a young woman

who returns to her home village

to radically revenge on the male manipulation.

Servetas’ film plays with fable and myth.

He creates everyday situations

that are both archaic and contemporary,

marked by moral compromise.

But if you have to make a choice, though,

Sto Spiti (At Home, Forum, directed by Athanasios Karanikolas—Berlinale 2013)

is an even better matching

of means and substance.

It tells the story of Nadja,

a migrant worker from Georgia.

Set up with rigor, Karanikolas’ camera

works with a maximum of three takes per scene,

towards a sense of

inevitability

in three acts:

exposition, change and consequence.

From up North now…

Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland

brought at this Berlinale

a hilariously dark crime epic:

In Order of Disappearance.

Stellan Skarsgard  plays a darkish, introverted guy,

who goes crazy when his son turns up dead.

He chases a Norwegian Mafioso,

the super hype hipster criminal Greven
(Pal Sverre Hagen),

 in this work half way between a Bronson-

movie and the Italian policiers of the 70’ies.

 The Mafia boss is the best character seen so far at this Berlinale,

a cruel and hectic dandy,

vegetarian,

with the hypest blond reddish beard,

an art and design curator.

Mountains of bodies here,

mountains of bodies there,

whose names are shown by the director

under the sign of their religion

(a sober cross for Lutherans, slavic cross for the Serbians, star of David for the jews, etc.).

And yes, that’s a film to see...

....just that I prefer the american noirs (and from LA),

or some good french policiers...

 

Someone here has to work...

With the exception of Berlinale hero

Lars von Trier,

you don’t see many modern directors concerning themselves

with the dynamics of the office

(fantasies where everyone
is an architect or a baker
don’t count)…

Possibly because so few of them have ever held ordinary jobs.

…and the critics too treat films

on this subject

as if they were deciphering

the religious rituals of the Incas…

 Lee Yong-Seung’s “Ship Bun” follows a student intern

in a Korean office environment.

But it’s mostly about his great initial failure,

which imprints the future

as surely as a loss of virginity.

 

 

Jong-hwan,

whom at first seems

too conventionally handsome

for the role,

does well with a character

whose inner life is so opaque.

He possesses a face

which can quickly shift
between geekiness, arrogance and rage.

Of course, for many,

this is simply life in the 21st century...

 

Re: von Trier… if they should ever consider preceding Nymphomaniac
with an educational documentary,

Claudia Richarz and Ulrike Zimmermann’s

 Vulva 3.0 would work perfectly.

 

The film’s general approach

is one of post-1968 Leftist German feminism, and you’ll never see so many stuffed vaginas! 

But one wishes the approach was a little more celebratory,

instead of getting depressed

at the end

with female genital mutilation…

...it’s like bringing up the SS

during a VH-1 special on David Lee Roth...

There’s sexuality, but no sex here;

The subject may be sensual,

But the filmmaking is not.

One could hardly argue that the vulva is very,

Very important for a lady.

Very, very important.

It’s her penis!

But Vulva 3.0

 

is a little dry...

 

And yet another party…

At the Berlinale Retrospective reception

there isn't normally

a lot of blood on the walls…

You don't see academics

pulling each others hair.

And if you visit the toilet,

there's also an absence

of film archivists

feverishly wrestling 

over crumbs of ketamine

on the floor.

What you get here

is a crowd of middle-aged,

long-haired,

cardiganed film historians.

They all seem to live

under a strict prohibition

on male cosmetic products!!!
 

They debate here

on the latest digital enhancement

of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

and smash the free wine.

Many of them

(for some reason)

smell of carrots.

But this year,

I sensed a discontent

in the herd of the fourth floor

of the Film Museum.

The assembled academics 

wouldn't serve the available pretzels.

They kept glancing at the poster

with this year's theme:

“Aesthetics of Shadow. Lighting Styles 1915-1950”.

Hm.

Now what the hell does that mean?

 

Living with the STASI…

The Stasi legacy is not exactly

fresh flesh, cinematically speaking.

But Annekatrin Hendel’s documentary Anderson

has definitely turned it

into something new.

In a Proustian attempt to unfold memory,

Hendel recreated the East Berlin kitchen

from which Stasi IM

(confidential informant)

Sascha Anderson,

himself a rock-star

moving in dissident circles,

betrayed his dissident hosts

to East German authorities.

Despite this approach,

Anderson remains gloomy

in his rejection not of guilt,

but of his inability to confront it.

Is there a difference?

There is.

And Hendel, the conscious German,

puts her finger on it.

Hendel’s persistent questions

and Anderson’s persistent evasions

form a strange moral vacuum,

at the centre of a disturbing document.

...The Hong Kong bizarre feature “The Midnight After” (Panorama Special)

 

is a sort of “Lost”,

scrambled with “Stagecoach”,

and sprinkled with “Scream”.

Here subtlety is not strong.

Its ensemble cast features a Cantonese Joey Ramone manqué,

named Jan Curious,

whose karaoke version of Bowie’s "Space Oddity”,

sung into a toilet brush,

 

is the high point of the film.

Its plot is relatively simple:

 

the guys board a mini-bus.

 

The bus passes through a tunnel.

Weird shit happens.

Everyone checks their phones.

More weird shit happens …

…that doesn’t seem to have

any connection to the previous weird shit.

 

So…Is it a ghost story?

A horror film?

An environmental parable? 

Everything’s played for laughs

– even rape –

but the tone will quickly shift

into sentiment,.... and out again,

as Hong Kong films often do…

 

…………………….

by GD