Darling, I Am Going Out For Cigarettes and I Will Be Right Back(2011)

Darling, I Am Going Out For Cigarettes and I Will Be Right Back(2011)

Directors:Mariano Cohn, Gastón Duprat
Country:Argentina
Runtime:80 min

 A darkly comic gem of a thriller with genius performances by leads Emilio Disi and Eusebio Poncela.
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This Argentinian gem of an indie thriller opens with a Spaniard (Eusebio Poncela) walking on the Moroccan desert with his camel. He does not have the sense to stay out of the thunderstorm and is hit by lightning. He is amazed to find himself still alive after the lightning strike and decides to continue. After all, there is no chance that lighting will strike in the same place twice.
Yet, he is struck again. Still undead, he awakes to find himself gifted with a strange power. He has the power to allow mortal humans to relive portions of their lives. They go out for cigarettes, relive a decade of their past and return from the store into the present time. No, this is not a science fiction film. It is a deeply probing study in the mortal and the immortal, and what happens when the two mix.
As the Spaniard realizes his foolishness and his Godliness at the same time, the tone is set for the remainder of his eternal existence. In addition, the tone is set for the 80 mesmerizing minutes of this film. The best-laid plans go awry.
The one-eyed man in the valley of the blind is not king. Be careful what you wish for. Moreover, do not be a fool if you can help it. When you find out that you cannot help but be a fool, make the best of it.
As it turns out, lead character Ernesto (Emilio Disi) is not so much an outright fool as he is a common man. He has no more, or less, foolishness than most. When he strikes his Faustian bargain with the Spaniard he has only the best of intentions.
The question is whether or not, as a mortal human being, he has the ability to use such an inhuman condition wisely. Veteran actor Emilio Disi brings a humble naiveté to the role of a man who seems to have been given a great gift; the gift to go back in time and live one’s life over. Older and wiser, he has the chance to correct past mistakes and to change his own misguided behavior.
As John Lennon said, “Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.” This breathes life into the possibilities of being able to plan better things for the life one has already lived. We all yearn for the chance to do some things over; to do them better the second time.
After all, it has to get better; it could not possibly get worse. Seizing his opportunities, talentless real estate agent Ernesto plagiarizes Lennon’s “Imagine” before the former Beatle has a chance to write it.
He notifies the US Embassy of the September 11 attacks before they happen. He says the heart-felt things on his mother’s deathbed that he was too proud and afraid to say at the time.
Nobel and ignoble intentions mix freely with Ernesto’s conversations with the gifted Spaniard. Myths handed down through time come and go. Ernesto is the sorcerer’s apprentice.
He is Mr. Peabody and Sherman from the “Rocky and Bullwinkle Show” using the Wayback Machine to travel back in time, usually with unintended results. At the end of the story he has returned from the store with much more than a pack of cigarettes.
This is a story of fate. It is a tale that advances the concept of manifest destiny with the scales slanted towards original sin. We are born; therefore we will manage to pull the worst outcomes of even the best of situations.
In the end, we have failed and we have learned at the same time. This is life. Perhaps not exactly what John Lennon said, but restated as “Life is the reality that happens while we are in a fantasy.
Shot and narrated in an understated tone that brings out the hilarity in the obvious, this film is a remarkably creative addition to the Lincoln Center Latin film festival.
In an environment where so many movies seem bent on taking northern hemisphere residents south, this flick takes us all into a new world where nothing is what we expected. Three cheers for Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat!

Avé (2011)

Avé (2011)

 Director: Konstantin Bojanov
 Country: Bulgaria
 Runtime: 82




 Kamen (Ovanes Torosian) is hitchhiking by the side of the road when he meets Avé (Angela Nedialkova). Both are trying to get to Ruse on the north eastern Bulgarian border, so, despite Kamen's hesitation, it makes sense that they share rides. Once they are in a car together, Kamen is shocked when Avé begins to make up stories about him as if they have known each other all their lives. The further they travel together, the more extreme her lies become, yet although he makes clear his rising anger he can't seem to get rid of her.

Himizu(2011)

Himizu(2011)

Director : Shion Sono
Country: Japan
Runtime:  2 hour 10 min


 Sumida and his schoolmate Keiko are 14 year old school kids living a dystopian existence where each of their parents' hopes and encourages them to die. Set in tsunami-hit areas of Japan about May 2011, which is used as a backdrop, the story follows roughly that of the manga of the same name wherein Sumida fights frequently with his father, is abandoned by his mother and tends to reject friendly advances of others. Eventually, he kills his father and then, assuming his life is ruined, attempts to improve society by killing "bad" people. Although not immediately obvious, what instead happens is that he attacks psychotic and violent characters, while he instead learns from Keiko and the Yakuza and people who befriended him that he himself has become "sick", eventually breaking free of the cycle of violence, but without a complete resolution of the issues raised during the movie before its end. Written by Jeff K. 

If The Seed Doesnt Die (2010)

If The Seed Doesnt Die (2010)

 Director: Sinisa Dragin
 Country: Serbia | Austria | Romania
 Runtime: 1 hour 53 minutes





 Two fathers, a Romanian searching for his daughter who was forced into prostitution in Kosovo, and a Serbian seeking the body of his son killed in a car accident in Romania, meet on the river Danube. A boatman recounts the 200 year-old legend of Romanian peasants struggling unsuccessfully to move an old wooden church up the hill to their village at a time when building Orthodox churches was prohibited.

Elles(2011)

Elles

Director: Malgorzata Szumowska
Country: France | Poland | Germany
Runtime: 1 hour, 35 minutes

The most provocative film at this year's Toronto and Berlin Film Festivals, Elles stars Academy Award winner Juliette Binoche as Anne, a well-off Parisian journalist investigating the lives of two student prostitutes for a magazine article. What begins as a routine assignment, though, quickly turns personal, as Anne is drawn into the lives of these fiercely independent young women and forced to confront her own physical needs and desires. ~ elles-movie.com

A writer is given a new perspective on her life by two women she initially imagines could not be more different than her in this drama from filmmaker Malgoska Szumowska. Anne is a wife and mother who maintains a busy schedule looking after her youngest son, who is obsessed with video games, her teenage son, who spends much of his time stoned on marijuana, and her aging father whose health is failing. Anne's husband is too preoccupied with his own career to worry about the household chores, and she has to juggle it all while keeping up with her work as a journalist. Anne is researching a magazine piece about prostitutes, and she's been conducting extensive interviews with Alicja and Charlotte, both of whom are attractive, well-adjusted women in their early twenties who have turned to sex work to support themselves. As Anne develops a greater understanding of Alicja and Charlotte's lives and work, she sees a contrast in the way the younger women have chosen a trade that, despite its reputation, affords them freedom while Anne's personal and professional life have become something of a trap. ~ Mark Deming, Allrovi
 

When Pigs Have Wings (2011)

When Pigs Have Wings (2011)

Director: Sylvain Estibal
Country: France | Germany | Belgium 
Runtime: 98 min



 After a storm, Jaafar, a Palestinian fisherman in Gaza, began by chance in his nets a pig fell off a cargo ship. Determined to get rid of the unclean animal, however, he decided to try to sell it to improve his miserable existence. The poor Jafaar then embarks on a fantastic trade and many unsavory ...
In this tragi-comedy, all the little people of Gaza, wedged between the absolute poverty on a daily basis, the constraints of Israeli military and the diktat of the bearded flying, is represented by the poor fisherman whose sole concern is to survive daily and, for that, everything is ready. Jaafar, a permanent mockery of himself, even in times of tragedy, the story evolves in a biting humor ... and let us hope that if we can agree, despite all the differences, across individual, we can agree ultimately on a collective scale.

Farsan [Balls] (2010)

Farsan [Balls] (2010)

Director: Josef Fares
Country: Sweden
Length: 94 min


 Lebanese-Swedish director Josef Fares gives his real-life father a star-making turn in this charming tale with light comedic overtones about family life among Middle Eastern immigrants living in Scandinavia. The gregarious Aziz, portrayed by the expressive Jan Fares, is a widower looking for love with the help of his co-workers at a rinky-dink bike shop, while his son and daughter-in-law promise to make him a grandfather. He doesn't realize that they can't conceive naturally, however, so they're faking the pregnancy and planning to adopt. Members of the supporting cast - particularly Aziz's colleague Jorgen, played by Torkel Petersson - contribute some wickedly silly moments, but the film really belongs to the two Fares fellows, director and dad, whose off-screen bond makes the on-screen sentimentality shine that much brighter.

Code Blue (2011)

Code Blue (2011)

Director: Urszula Antoniak
Country: Netherlands
Runtime: 1 hour, 17 minutes


 In the shadowy margin between life and death lies the hospital where Marian, an ascetic nurse in her 40s, dedicates herself to the gravely ill and the dying by giving them what is often their last contact with the warmth of a living body. Sometimes she even helps her patients out of their misery by sending them to the soothing order of death. For her, death is a moment of ultimate intimacy. Outside the hospital, Marian lives a solitary life. Occasionally, her suppressed feelings rise and make her drift away from her daily routine: one day, she meets a stranger in the bus, instinctively follows him and fantasizes about him. When Marian sees the man again she gets involuntarily linked to him in an act of shared voyeurism. The sudden act of intimacy between them first repels then fascinates, transfixes and frightens her. Faced with the fragility of her newfound emotions, Marian realizes that she must give in to her human needs, even if this intimacy comes with a price... ~ Filmaffinity

Marian - a middle aged nurse and a secret poisoner - lives in two worlds. Our world, where she is a nurse, a colleague, a sister. When declared sick or dying, some of us are sent to her world - Planet Hospital. Marian is one of the white-uniformed, efficient distributors of help. Death is a taboo in our world. But not in hers. Marian starts to work in a new hospital and moves into her new apartment in a high rise building on the outskirts of the city. Proceeds with her killing routine like a well oiled mechanism. One night she watches a rape from the window of her apartment. She is not the only one to do so. A man living in the same building sees the rape too. More so, he sees Marian watching. What she has seen and the fact that she was seen start to disturb her life. Marian and the stranger engage in a dance of avoidance. Until now she hasn’t shared anything with humans but intimacy of death. Now she has to share a secret with a stranger - her neighbor. Outside world, our life, has invaded her life. To disturb her. To conquer her, death herself. ~ Festival-cannes

Róza (2011)

Róza (2011)

Director: Wojciech Smarzowski
Country: Poland
Runtime: 90 min

Plot

In summer 1945 Tadeusz Mazur, an officer of the Armia Krajowa and veteran of the Warsaw uprising, whose wife was raped and murdered by the Germans, moves to Masuria, a region in former German East Prussia, which became part of Poland as a result of the Potsdam Agreement after World War II. He visits Róża, a widow of a German Wehrmacht soldier whose death Tadeusz had witnessed, to hand over her husband’s possessions. Róża invites Tadeusz to stay at her farm so that he can protect her against marauders (she has experienced a brutal rape in the lawless atmosphere of postwar Masuria). From this partnership of purpose, slowly respect and love arises - a "frowned-upon relationship" attracting the "unwelcome attention of the new Polish nationalists as well as the notorious Soviet NKVD".

While Róża is regarded a German by the new Polish authorities, thus facing her expulsion, Tadeusz wants her to declare her Polish nationality as many Masurians did in a "humiliating nationality verification procedure"

As director Wojciech Smarzowski calls it, the Masurians "fell victim to two instances of renationalisation and were later destroyed".

Reception

Variety has called the movie "almost unbearably brutal yet hauntingly romantic" and commended "Genre-savvy helmer Smarzowski's gritty mise-en-scene augments the force of the narrative, putting into visual terms its themes of ill-fated love and a nation doomed by nationalism. What in other hands might have played as costume melodrama focused on the victimized title character here takes the perspective of the loner hero, as Smarzowski gives the pic the hallmarks of a latter-day Western."

The Krakow Post reviewed the movie as "from a moral point of view Róża is a Western crammed with violence but filmed without complacency. Smarzowski ironically referred to himself as the “third Cohen brother” in a recent interview, and there may be a kernel of truth in this, at least in his commitment to injecting a dose of realism into movie genres that have never been fully developed in Polish cinema".

Awards

Grand Prix, Warsaw Film Festival 2011
Polish Film Awards: Best Film, Best Directing, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Script, Best Sound and the Audience Award.
Critics’ Award National Film Festival in Gdynia 2011
Special Jury Prize of the 23rd Polish Film Festival in America for Artistic Excellence and Importance
(Wikipedia)

The Salesman (2011)

The Salesman (2011)

Director: Sébastien Pilote
Country: Canada
Duration: 107 min.

 The perennial car salesman of the month, Marcel Lévesque takes great satisfaction in the ritual of persuasion. But in the small working-class town where the local paper mill's impending closure is immobilizing the economy, Marcel must come to terms with the changing times.

 The Salesman is the feature debut from writer director Sébastien Pilote. It premiered in the World Cinema Competition section of the 2011 Sundance International Film Festival.

A slow moving but immensely affecting character study about a man who has dedicated his entire life to perfecting the skills of his work. Marcel Lévesque (Gilbert Sicotte, in easily one of the top ten performances of 2011) is a car salesman, and a very good one. As the film begins, life appears good for Marcel, he's the top performer at his small-town dealership, where he has consistently been awarded the salesman-of-the-month trophy for as long as anyone can remember. He's also dedicated and friendly, well liked at work and in the community, and he has a close relationship with his loving daughter (Nathalie Cavezzali) and grand-son. However, this one seemingly endless Northern Quebec winter, Marcel is forced to face some difficult circumstances that are far beyond his control.

Right from the start, Pilote paints a vivid scene, capturing in perfect detail the sights and sounds of the long Canadian winter. A setting which I'm remarkably familiar with, even though I speak a different language and live 5,000 km away (to put into perspective, that's a distance further than Paris to Baghdad), the experience is the same. With the help of cinematographer Michel La Veaux, Pilote crafts some of the most evocative and immersive images I have ever seen in a Canadian film. The icy landscapes, snow covered vehicles, heavy machinery, and even a dead moose on the side of the highway are all expertly framed and composed with a sensibility not often seen this side of the Atlantic.

At the heart of this film is Gilbert Sicotte's exceptional performance. A veteran actor I know little about, but here he delivers a complex and carefully nuanced portrayal, nailing every little character quirk and always carrying an outward aura of confident charm. This is a guy for whom selling is not only a job but a way of life. At 67, he shrugs off any suggestion of retirement, and he still carries a pocket recorder so that he can learn from his mistakes, leaving it on even while spending time with his family. Even though the town's last big employer, the local paper mill, has now been shuttered for several months, and the entire community is starting to become visibly affected, Marcel carries on with the singular goal of clearing the lot in time for next year's models.

The screenplay is also quite strong overall, dealing with some heavy issues (religion, consumerism, the global economy) and handling them all with a neutral perspective; and although the story is centered on Marcel, the director takes the time to present a full and intimate portrait of the lifestyle and culture in the town where the film takes place, from the main street to the hockey rink to the community hall to the gates of the paper mill where the locked out workers huddle. All of the little pieces of this corner of the world are neatly crafted and also all very real. The only miscue is one critical plot development is telegraphed well in advance, and while it remains incredibly powerful, I think it was a bit too obvious to see where things were headed.

I don't know what it is, but there is a massive amount of great new talent coming out of Quebec lately. Add Sébastien Pilote to the growing list of young directors from there to keep your eyes on. For this is a marvelous debut that may not be the most crowd pleasing, star studded, or stylish, but it is certainly the most powerful Canadian film of the past year.