Two from Cine Europa '05

Noel Vera

Cedric Klapisch's "L'Auberge espagnole" (The Spanish Apartment,
2002) focuses on a communal apartment in Barcelona being shared by a
number of young people, although the title also refers to the idea
of "pot luck"--everyone coming together and bringing something of
theirs to share at a party.

Klapisch's characters do exactly that, with some bringing food,
others liquor, yet others boyfriends, girlfriends, jealousies, power
plays, lovers' quarrels, and breakups, leaving along the way notes
and phone messages to be comically misunderstood ("La fac." "La
fuck?!" "Yes. After 'fac' he can telephone 'maman.'"). A voiceover
by the ostensible protagonist mulls over thoughts that Klapisch
probably considered useful for us to consider, but really, the movie
is all about these little interactions--people come in, laugh, cook,
eat, talk, fight, make love, leave, not necessarily in that order.
A.O. Scott of the New York Times compared it to MTV's "The Real
World" and I suppose it's like that, only set in one of the most
beautiful cities in Europe; personally I find it closer to a travel
show on the Discovery Channel, only sexier, with younger, more
beautiful bodies, some of them with some acting talent.

I'm not sure after watching this what Klapisch may be trying to say
about life, love and international relations--or if he's saying
anything at all--and for all I know he may be making the statement
that the European Union is something like an endless, meandering,
but not altogether unpleasant Catalan party. He maintains a lightly
comic tone and avoids melodrama, but maybe a little melodrama is
what this movie needs--the whole thing seems as weightless as a
soufflé and not quite as satisfying. The real pleasures of the movie
really sink in after you relax and stop trying to take it all so
seriously--ogle the huge, lovely apartment with its provincial
furnishings and colorful décor, stare hungrily at all the breads and
cheeses and olives the actors munch on (the catering bill on this
production must have been considerable), not to mention all the wine
they're sipping while basking under the warm sun. I'm not sure about
the audience (much less me), but they sure seem to be having a good
time.

Peter Zelenka's "Knoflikari" (The Buttoners, 1997--already shown
here in Manila during the 1999 Cinemanila Film Festival) tells a
series of stories, starting with the end of World War 2, and how an
American bomber crew decides to discard their original target of the
Japanese city of Kokura and instead drop their mysterious payload
(they're not sure what it's suppose to do; they only know it's some
new kind of bomb) on top of the city of Hiroshima. The vignette ends
with some text telling us that ever since, the phrase "Kokura lucky"
has been a common saying with the Japanese.

The rest of the stories take place fifty years later: a taxi driver
takes on an adulterous couple, then a husband who wants to catch his
faithless wife in the act of adultery; a psychiatrist advises a man
on how to rebuild his life; a pair of punks run from the scene of a
man who apparently just committed suicide on a railway line; parents
throw a dinner party for their children who are getting married, and
boast of retaining the traditional values of the older generation,
but later reveal they have their own odd perversities--they like to
bite off sofa cushion buttons with dentures hidden between their
thighs ("buttoners" they call themselves).

It all seems scattershot, disjointed, but Zelenka gradually pulls it
all together: the stories reveal themselves to be a vast knot of
interrelationships intricately connected, framed at both beginning
and end by a radio call-in program commemorating the fiftieth year
of the dropping of the Hiroshima bomb.

As the threads come together, you sense in Zelenka a fairly
pessimistic outlook on the world, how so much of it is beyond our
control and how even the most earnest attempts to change it or
improve it is ineffective, or doomed to failure; this suggests an
altogether gloomy film, but far from it--Zelenka tells his story in
an ironic deadpan manner, where everything seems serious but if
you've been following the dialogue and you're quick on the uptake,
you may find it all really quite funny. The question arises: is
Zelenka an appreciator of life in all its complexities, someone who
gives us a sense of just what we're up against with maybe a dose of
humor--that all-important spoonful of sugar--to make it all
bearable, to fortify us in our impossible struggle against it? Or is
he just some nihilist who likes to set up grotesques and hypocrites
in his understated style, the better to knock them down and laugh at
them while they're laid out on the ground? No definite answers, but
Zelenka does show enough skill and imagination to warrant paying
attention to, with us hoping that maybe somewhere along the way, in
his succeeding films perhaps, he'll tip his hand.

(First published in Businessworld, 9/23/05)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)