Review: The Blue Room directed and starring Mathieu Amalric with Lea Drucker and Stephanie Cleau

The Blue Room is an interesting and tense little film. It’s a film that really has a main character that is really quite standard now. A middle-aged man named Julien is in an adulterous relationship with another woman; living this double life. The film starts in the middle of the story, not in the beginning; and in a moment of passion a conversation happens that leads to our protagonist in police custody. The film then goes back and forth as Julien is trying to figure out how he got to this point while talking to the police.  The thing that sets this film apart that makes it interesting to watch is the direction from Mathieu Amalric, who also is one of the writers and stars as Julien along with Christophe Beaucarne and Francois Gedigier (the Cinematographer and Editor respectively) together through shots and editing that has the intent of putting the viewer in Julien's mindframe. I must say they are pretty successful since it the film had me confused and questioning the situation just like Julien must have been feeling.

All the performances are really good and not to use a blanket statement but that’s about par for the course for me with French films this year. The run time is really short at 76 minutes and while that brisk pace works for me it may feel a little incomplete for some. Things are not nicely tied up like they are in most Hollywood films. While I thought the film was good and worth watching I can’t help but feeling a bit tired of the middle-aged man bored with his life or lying about his true nature, and basically gets in too deep with a troubled woman who ruins both their lives. As I spoke of earlier this is getting to be a tired trope but I’m guessing it’s balanced enough so that your eye and mind can focus more on how it’s told, much like flipping a fairy tale in a new way.

I shouldn’t ignore the acting but being that I’m not that familiar with many of the actors in this film it’s like watching a cast of unknowns. All the acting is great. Amalric holds the film together with his performance never being unbelievable on screen as Julien, with his relatable performance drawing you in as his situation goes from bad to worse.  Lea Drucker and Stephanie Cleau both play off Amalric well as the two main women in his life. Both are on par with Amalric in holding their own on screen with him. He was able to do well with getting great performances out of them while still having to act with them. The Blue Room is very engaging and concise thriller something that works great for the fall season. While it might not be for those who just want to be entertained by movies it is a film I would tell people to take a leap on because it is truly a well-made movie.

Rating: 4 out of 5

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Review "The German Doctor" starring Alex Brendemühl, Florencia Bado, and Diego Peretti

Every now and then you end up seeing films that you literally never heard of from anywhere. This tends to happen with a lot of foreign films for us people here in the United States; even with all our Internet and social media and such, things fall through the cracks. This happened to me with the film The German Doctor. This film was at Cannes last year and was even Argentina’s entry for the Foreign Language Film category in the Oscars this year.

The German Doctor, also titled Wakolda, is based off a novel of the same name. The story is about real-life Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele, who performed genetic experiments on people in Auschwitz, who after the war fled to Southern America and lived in secret.

Most of the story and film is about him meeting this family headed by Enzo and Eva as they go to Bariloche, where Mengele takes an interest in their 12-year-old daughter Lilith, who he feels is too small for her age.  From there he works his way in and gathers the trust from the family to help her; using his knowledge, he helps her reach “normalcy”. The film does a really great job of the quiet moments with his interaction with the family, especially the daughter Lilith and mother Eva, who basically trust him blindly. Florencio Bado, who plays Lilith, can really hold her own on screen with all the other actors actually steals the show from them constantly. Diego Peretti is also fantastic as the patriarch of the family Enzo, which is the only one we see that is always leery of this German man that has befriended his family. For me, Enzo is the character that really drew me into the film, since the performance was so well done you could see Enzo’s thinking that this man was not what he made himself out to be.

Now here’s the thing with this film: It’s a really good film for about 85% of the way through. It’s a very quiet and slow-paced film that really doesn’t let you in on Mengele’s secret, and that’s commendable. There are no real super-blatant HE’S A NAZI moments in the first 15 minutes or so. It lets you pick out the clues. The part that really knocks the film down is that the last 15 minutes feel greatly rushed; all of the sudden there’s a chase and Mossad is there and everything. It made feel like I went from watching part of the second act and skipped through most of the third to the resolution of the story. It left me wanting, and things felt left out. I never read the novel (and to be honest, had never even heard of it), but I just feel there is a bit more that was cut out for time.

One last thing another thing I really liked is that they were able to keep the Mengele/Lilith relationship and interaction free of any sexual creepiness. For me it feels like too many films like to go into a Lolita realm even just a little when it’s not needed at all. Overall this film is really solid and good. It’s worth seeing especially if you’re looking for something to see that isn’t all loud, CGI-heavy, and full of cartoon characters. The German Doctor is really good, just not great.  

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Guttenbergs

 

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Review: ‘Shirin in Love,’ starring Nazanin Boniadi, Riley Smith, and Maz Jobrani

Shirin in Love is a typical, unremarkable romantic comedy wrapped in very underdeveloped Iranian dressing. As an Iranian-American myself, I was so excited for this movie! For a cinematic experience that would subtly capture the intricacies of growing up in Iranian culture in the United States, in the challenges that one faces for love. But Shirin in Love isn’t that movie: it’s not that nuanced, it’s not that insightful, and it’s not that welcoming either to Iranian or American audiences.

The film focuses on Shirin (Nazanin Boniadi), a beautiful, quirky, and forgetful human-rights-lawyer-turned-journalist (the favorite occupation of practically all female protagonists in romantic comedies) engaged to a wealthy plastic surgeon, Mike (comedian Maz Jobrani). Their families have been close for years, but there’s absolutely no romantic sizzle or chemistry between Shirin and Mike; she smiles fondly at him maybe once, and every other time can barely stand him. And she doesn’t seem to like her parents much, either, since they’re just more Iranian stereotypes: Her mother is disgustingly thin, with long, fake blond hair, a put-on British accent, garish makeup, and extremely tight-fitting designer clothes, while her father is disconnected, overprotective, and barely tolerant of his wife.

But Shirin has essentially no backbone, so she puts up with her frustrating parents, still lives at home with them, and has no interest in marrying Mike but makes no attempt to stop it, either. So when her mother offers her a dream assignment in reviewing the new novel by reclusive author Rachel Larson (Amy Madigan) and interviewing her for a cover story, Shirin jumps at the opportunity, driving seven hours to find Rachel in a small cabin-style house in … somewhere, with pretty mountains and vineyards and all the trappings of a perfect romantic-comedy location. Because, you see, everything in Shirin in Love is as clichéd as you would expect.

After a mix-up where she gets taken in by a woman she at first doesn’t know is Rachel, Shirin grows close with the novelist and her son, William (Riley Smith), a blandly handsome white guy who lives in a lighthouse (yes, really) and types his own writings on an ancient typewriter (yes, really). Although he’s in a long-term relationship with a local bar manager, Shirin and William can’t deny the attraction between them; as foreplay, they wonder to each other, “There’s nothing worse than a relationship that’s convenient, comfortable, and boring, right?” Ugh and sigh. So not only do their growing feelings get in the way of Shirin’s engagement to Mike, but they force her to reevaluate her relationship with her parents, too. Maybe she shouldn’t still be living with them. Maybe she shouldn’t still be working for her mother. And maybe she should pursue her own dreams for once, both in love and in life.

Have you read anything yet that surprises you? It shouldn’t. Shirin in Love doesn’t really do anything to provide a specifically Iranian point of view, except for mocking and stereotyping. Iranian men are horned-up partiers, personified in Mike’s best friend, played by fellow comedian Max Amini, who deserves far better than this (check him out in Bridging the Gap: A Middle East Comedy Conference; he’s wonderful). Iranian women are materialistic, superficial shrews, according to Shirin’s mother and would-be mother-in-law.

They’re the kind of stereotypes that, as an Iranian-American, I do recognize: I can name a few relatives who would say things to me like, “Why do you dress like a beggar?” when I’m wearing a tank top, and who would go over-the-top in voicing their criticisms of other people, like when Shirin’s mother says William is “crazy, mentally unstable, self-destructive; most writers are.” But the movie doesn’t do enough to cater specifically to an Iranian audience (not enough Farsi spoken, not enough cultural details) or to an American one (not enough background about Iranian tradition, not enough explanation of why Iranian families are so top-down in their power structure). It’s just a slightly Iranian film, with all of the elements from American romantic comedies thrown in.

Perhaps it would help if the script, character development, or acting were better, but they’re not. Although Boniadi is a nicely naturalistic actress, she’s saddled with the kind of frustrating, infantilizing treatment that most romantic comedies suffer from; she only decides to change her terrible life because of a man she knows for a couple of weeks, and that’s not empowering at all. That man, William, has been living a lie for years, and although he’s not the monster Shirin’s mother makes him out to be, he’s certainly not developed past “rugged-ish guy with too much hair product and a well-meaning but checkered past.” And although the Iranian side of this cast is stacked with comedians—Jobrani, Amini—the former’s character goes from domineering jerk to supportive friend in about five seconds, and the latter only ogles at a white woman and then dances in crowd scenes. They never get a chance to have any real fun.

That’s kind of the issue with Shirin in Love as a whole: it feels like a very dutiful movie, one that goes from story step to story step without ever straying into anything zany or silly, or even remotely genuine. The movie knows where it needs to go to keep that romantic-comedy structure intact, but it doesn’t put any real passion into anything. Shirin isn’t believable either as a product of her parents or as a romantic interest for either Mike or William, and since the movie can’t sell those core relationships, it can’t convince us of anything.  

Rating: 1.5 out of 5 Guttenbergs

 

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100% more Viggo Mortensen in the trailer for 'Everybody Has a Plan'

Chances are you've never heard of director Ana Piterberg's Argentinian thriller, Everybody Has a Plan. Heck, neither had I until scrolling through TIFF's line-up a couple of weeks ago. On paper it sounds like just another throwaway Spanish crime flick, following a desperate man who takes on his twin brother's identity after he dies, as a means of starting life over again. Of course it has disastrous results, with his brother's criminal past coming back to haunt him, but all in all there's not much to set the story apart from any other. Until you realize that it stars Viggo Mortensen, and that he's playing dual roles requiring him to speak perfect Spanish.

The film recently screened in Toronto, and hopefully nobody who attended caught a look at this new trailer beforehand because it pretty much gives everything away. Few can play tortured individuals hiding murky pasts better than Mortensen, who pulled off much the same thing in A History of Violence, and he looks like the sole reason to get excited for this film. Unfortunately, Everybody Has a Plan doesn't have an American release date yet, and considering Will Ferrell couldn't make a Spanish-language film work earlier this year it's doubtful we'll ever get it.

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Teaser Trailer: The Skin I Live In, directed by Pedro Almodovar

Has it been two years already since Almodovar's Broken Embraces? Wow, time flies. The Spanish auteur, who has spent the bulk of his career paying loving tribute to the beauty of women in a variety of different films is prepping his latest, The Skin I Live In, about a surgeon who specializes in the manipulation of their looks. Antonio Banderas, once a Almodovar regular but the two haven't worked together since 1990, stars as the doctor who goes to extreme lengths to create a skin to help save his wife's life. 

The story is based on Thierry Jonque's book, Tarantula, but judging by this brief teaser trailer the plot appears to have been altered somewhat. I'll admit, I had to watch this clip a few times in order to figure out how I felt about it. I know some others are calling it a creepy horror, but to me the whole thing looks a little campy. Or more accurately, it looks like a lot of Almodovar's films, heavily influenced by Spanish telenovellas. Very melodramatic, with a touch of overacting. That's what I see far more than any creep factor.  Still, count me in for this one. Almodovar very rarely disappoints. Check out the teaser trailer below...




The Skin I Live In will be premiering at Cannes, but is already set for a release sometime in November.

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The New Wave: 8/27/10

So we're all cool with Chris Brown again, right? It's ok that I actually kinda dug him in this all-testosterone, all flash and style heist flick? I'm sure his presence won't score them too many viewers of the female variety, but then again people still buy R. Kelly records so maybe I'll be proven wrong. Takers isn't a groundbreaking film, in fact it has a lot in common with Armored, another masculine heist film from a few months ago. Not the least of which is the presence of Matt Dillon, who seems to have taken the haggard, beaten down guy routine to a new level. You can check out my review of Takers here.

You won't find a more intense experience this year than Animal Kingdom, an Australian crime flick that's small in appearance but equally as epic as The Godfather. David Michaud's film has been greatly received, taking a coveted Jury Prize at Sundance. For good reason, as it features one of the scariest portrayals of the year by Jacki Weaver, as a manipulative mommie dearest who will do anything to keep her boys free from the law. My review of Animal Kingdom can be found here.

What's old is new again, thanks to Paranormal Activity's revival of the "found footage" horror film. Daniel Stamm, working alongside horror master Eli Roth as producer, looks to use the technique in film that's part Blair Witch, part The Exorcist. For the most part it works, mostly thanks to the dyanmic performance of Patrick Fabian as a former evangelist experiencing a crisis of faith. My review of The Last Exorcism can be found here.

Director Jean-Francois Richet's last foray on these shores was the completely average action remake, Assault on Precinct 13. Now he's back in the much anticipated, globally acclaimed film chronicling the rise of gangster Jacques Mesrine(Vincent Cassel). This is merely the first part of the two-act film, the second of which will be released here in just a couple of weeks. I'm hoping that Landmark E Street will be holding a double feature.

The Lebanon War has been the highlight of a number of amazing films over the last few years, most recently 2008's Waltz with Bashir. Lebanon, directed by Samuel Maoz, has been the subject of a ton of controversy surrounding it's depiction of the military, based mostly on Maoz's own wartime experiences. The outcry didn't stop it from winning numerous awards, including the prestigious Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival.

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