Rózyczka aka Little Rose

Rózyczka (2010) aka Little Rose
Director: Jan Kidawa-Blonski
Runtime: 113
Country: Poland

Little Rose takes an unflinching look at an explosive period in Polish post-war history. The year is 1967 and Israel has just dispatched Egypt and Syria - key Soviet allies - in the Six-Day-War. Cheers of approval erupt from Polish ittle Rose takes an unflinching look at an explosive period in Polish post-war history. Thedissidents. A vehement backlash follows. Thousands of "Zionists" are pushed to leave the country - they must ultimately depart on one-way passports, forced to renounce their citizenship once and for all. The old spectre of the Jewish bogeyman has reared its head once again, but this time, the Communists are pulling the propaganda strings.
In Little Rose, these heady events provide the backdrop for an intimate study of the dissidents' plight. Slithering though their midst is the poisonous figure of the informant. "Little Rose" is the pseudonym of Kamila, a young graduate who is cajoled into spying by her lover Roman, a security services functionary. The plot is loosely based (there are many crucial differences) on the story of Paweł Jasienica, a celebrated historian who was informed upon by his girlfriend (later wife) for many years. The case caused a furore when it was revealed in the 90s, sparking a bitter court battle about who should inherit the rights to the late author's books (Jasienica died oblivious to the betrayal).
From the off, director Jan Kidawa-Błonski has struck gold with his cast. Robert Więckiewicz is electrifying as the brutish, haunted Security Services stooge Roman, who is desperate to deliver the goods to his superiors. His target, the fictional historian Adam Warczewski, is played by seasoned veteran Andrzej Seweryn, who gives a glowing performance as a gentlemanly academic conspiring for a return to democracy. Between the two lies - in both senses - Magdalena Boczarska, as the comely yet somewhat naive young blonde who does the dirty work.

Dawson Isla 10

Dawson Isla 10(2009)
Dir:Miguel Littin
Country:Chile
Runtime:117min


After the 1973 coup that deposed Allende and brought Pinochet to power in Chile, the former members of his cabinet are imprisoned on Dawson Island, the world's southernmost concentration camp. Veteran filmmaker Miguel Littin follows the ordeal of these men who are determined to survive and provide history with their testimony. Written by Palm Springs International Film Festival

Taipei Exchanges

Taipei Exchanges(2010)Dir:Hsiao Ya-Chuan
Country:Taiwan
runtime:86min

This is a story about interchange. Doris and Josie are sisters with completely different characters. Doris was offended by her younger sister's disregarded deed of initiating an event of trading goods in their coffee shop. After a series of trading and the stories along them, the event eventually changed the sisters' values and intuitions and they started to look for their own stories...credited to http://movies.insing.com/movie/taipei-exchanges/id-b3010000

Leap Year

Leap Year(2010)
Dir;Michael Rowe
Country;Mexico

Runtime:94 min

Laura is a single, 25-year-old journalist who lives in a small apartment in Mexico City. After a long series of flings, Laura meets Arturo. The first time they make love, Arturo touches here in ways that overwhelm her. Thus begins an intense, passionate and sexual romance, which mixes pleasure, pain and love. In the course of days, which she carefully crosses out on her calendar, Laura’s secret past resurfaces, driving Arturo to extremes.

My Joy

My Joy(2010)
Dir:Sergei Loznitsa
Country: Germany | Ukraine

Runtime:127 min

The story about a few days in the life of truck driver Georgi seems to be a never-ending nightmare, a spiral of violence and abuses of power. A man goes to work and on his way he is sucked into the everyday madness of his country, losing his health and memory in the process and ends up as a murderer, who calmly lies down to sleep after committing the crime. A dark parable about the situation in deep Russia today.

Bal(Honey)

Bal(2010)
Dir;Semih Kaplanoglu
Country:Turkey
Runtime:103min

The young boy Yusuf's best friend is his father, who supports his family's modest life with the honey he collects from tall trees in the forests of the remote Turkish countryside. Yusuf is a quiet boy, and his mother is concerned for his future. Perhaps he will follow in his father's footsteps, or perhaps school will offer him other opportunities. But the honey crop is failing, and Yusuf has trouble learning how to read. The greatest fear strikes when Yusuf's father doesn't return home from the forest.

Soul Deep

Soul Deep(2009)
Dir;Pantelis Voulgaris
Country:Greece

The Greek civil war (1946-1949) is a taboo for Greek cinema, and Voulgaris in this film treats the subject attempting some form of reconciliation. His heart "beats on the left" (whence the title, "Soul Deep", which was a greeting amongst rebels during the civil war), but the film does not deal with the deeper reasons behind the events. He blames the Americans and the Soviets who fueled the conflict and then abandoned the Greeks to a political chaos and a tragic civil war ("this is not a war, this is a disgrace", says Thanassis Vegos who comes to seek the body of his dead grandchild, so that he can bury him) that led people form the same village killing each other and former friends, even brothers (like Anestis and Vlassis who fight on different camps), becoming enemies.

Pantelis Voulgaris surprises us by filming with great lyricism, stunning cinematography, and at the same time a with a decent sense of rythm (and that's surprising) in the action scenes. Sometimes, though, things get too melodramatic and this may bother some (it did bother me).

What really amazes, though, is the incredible soundtrack by Giorgos Aggelakas. Modern, yet blending perfectly with the subject matter and the cinematography. If for no other reason (and there are plenty of other reasons), it's worth to see the movie for its soundtrack alone.

Corpo

Corpo(2007)

Dir:Rossana Foglia, Rubens Rewald
Country;Brazil


Arthur is a coroner obsessed with human bodies, dead or alive. Even while working in a
public mortuary full of corruption and decadence, he goes beyond the bureaucratic
diagnoses and makes a thorough reading of the bodies. The routine of his work is broken
by the arrival of bones found in a common grave. The body of a young woman causes a
clash in the department: his supervisor, Dr Lara, maintains that the body is new, without
any relation with the bones, taken as victims of the military regime. Arthur, after
examining the body, insists that it has been around more than 30 years, and belongs to the
group of bones and that, for some strange reason, remained preserved. A deadline is
imposed: if the body is not identified within 24 hours, it will be buried as unclaimed.
Arthur decides to investigate on his own the identity of that body. In police files, there is
a case of a guerrilla extremely similar to the situation: Teresa Prado Nothe. Teresa's
daughter Fernanda is traced, but to the surprise of the coroner, she says her mother is
alive and proposes that Arthur meet her. Arthur accepts the invitation.

How I Ended This Summer

How I Ended This Summer(2010)
Director: Aleksei Popogrebsky
Country:Russia

In this low-key suspense drama from Russia, Sergei (Sergei Puskepalis) and Pavel (Grigory Dobrygin) are two meteorologists working at a weather station in the frozen wastes of the Arctic. Sergei was been stationed there for several years; he's sullen, homesick and eager to return to his wife and family. Pavel is younger and enjoying his first adventure after leaving school, and prefers video games and music to Sergei's pastimes. One day, Sergei announces that he's heading out for a few days to go fishing, and Pavel is in charge of the station. While Sergei is away, Pavel gets a radio message with shocking news -- Sergei's wife and son have lost their lives in an accident, and a ship will be coming by to pick him up as soon as possible. However, given their remote location, it will take weeks for the ship to arrive, and when Sergei returns, Pavel lacks the courage to break the bad news to him. As Pavel struggles with the weight of this secret, Sergei becomes increasingly frustrated with the confines of life at the station; when he runs off again, Pavel is given strict orders to find him, and as he sets out to find his comrade, he wanders into territory that's home to polar bears who don't appreciate the presence of humans. Kak Ya Provel Etim Letom (aka How I Ended The Summer) was an official selection at the 2010 Berlin International Film Festival.

La nostra vita (Our Life)

La nostra vita (Our Life) 2010

Directed by :

Daniele LUCHETTI

Country:

ITALY, FRANCE

Year:

2010

Duration:

98.00 minutes

One of this year’s smaller Cannes competition titles, Our Life certainly has merits: it’s a gritty, closely observed slice of Roman proletarian life. And it’s marked by a raw (though at times rather too full-on) performance by Elio Germano in the lead role as a construction worker with two kids, who after the sudden death of his wife tries to provide for his family by setting himself up as a shady building contractor.

In ambience and theme, it comes on a lot like an Italian Ken Loach movie. Loach, though, is good at stories; whereas Luchetti and his co-scriptwriters are so enamoured of their characters that they forget to build a satisfying dramatic home for them.

Our Life‘s focus on the family, and redemption through families real and alternative, will reach out to Italian audiences, but this is a less commercial prospect than Luchetti’s last, My Brother is an Only Child. That had a sixties retro setting and an epic Best-Of-Youth-style timeline.

This is a punishingly neo-neo-realist tale shot on a distractingly shaky handheld camera, leavened only with a few audience baits: heartthrob Raul Bova in a minor role, some cute kids, the music of Italian stadium rocker Vasco Rossi and an upbeat ending. All will work better at home than abroad, where Our Life looks unlikely to reach even the handful of territories that picked up My Brother… for theatrical distribution.

Initially, the film’s rambling tone and jagged scene structure come across as confident rather than dispersive. Claudio (Germano) is one of those risky heroes who is never entirely likeable: street smart but also street crass, he’s brimful of arrogance as a building site foreman, but is saved by a real affection for his young wife Elena (Ragonese) – who he turns on by whispering the names of IKEA furniture – and for his two young sons.

Elena is pregnant again, but she dies in childbirth, and Claudio is knocked sideways. He’s already had a shock when he finds the body of a Romanian illegal immigrant worker on the building site. There’s a kind of moral payback in Elena’s death after his failure to report this other death, and in the way the dead man’s wife Gabriela (Berzanteanu) and teenage son Andrei (Ignat) enter his life.

But at this point the film starts to dither and the dramatic lines begin to blur. Using the cover-up of the Romanian worker’s death as a blackmail chip, Claudio convinces construction king Porcari (Colangeli) to give him the contract on a new residential block in Rome’s northern suburbs, which needs to be finished in record time.

He raises the money from a bad bunch of loan sharks thanks to his wheelchair-bound drug-dealing neighbour Ari (Zingaretti), and sinks part of it into flashy toys for his kids – the neon message being that Claudio is using consumerism to assuage his grief and guilt. Things, of course, spiral before they get any better.

Keen to show the positive side of life in Italy’s new outer suburbs – the solidarity, the love, the animal energies – Luchetti lets observation carry him too far into explorations of minor characters, like Claudio’s siblings Piero (Bova) and Loredana (Montorsi), who in the end add little. Our Life has its heart in the right place. But it feels like an episode of a tough, cutting-edge TV drama with a film struggling to find a voice inside it.