Frenched

Noel Vera

The French Film Festival is underway! And I'd recommend every film
at the festival save the two I've already seen--not only because
they're quite old and have been screened in Manila before, but
because I'm not too crazy about them.

Luc Besson's "Arthur et les Minimoys" (Arthur and the Invisibles,
2006) is a part CGI, part live-action adaptation of two children's
books he had written back in '02 and '03. Given that he had been the
source and directed the adaptation, and was working in a medium
where literally anything was possible at the touch of a button,
you'd think all that would free up his imagination to try something
really wild.

No dice. The picture is a mix of any number of clichés, from the
villainous banker scheming to repossess the family farm to the youth
who begins his adventure by pulling a sword out of a stone (sounds
familiar?). Besson, not exactly France's greatest filmmaker ("The
Messenger: the Story of Joan of Arc" anyone?) seems inventive enough
when tuning live action into big-screen cartoons ("La Femme
Nikita;" "Leon;" "The Fifth Element"). Asked to do it the other way
around, the most he does is lift the mayhem and motion and gags out
of every recent CGI extravaganza, from "Chicken Little"
to "Madagascar." His notion of elfin character design leaves you
with the sneaking suspicion that he watches Saturday morning
cartoons for inspiration--and not the better ones, at that.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect--perhaps the ONLY interesting
aspect--in all this is the pedophilic frisson one feels when hearing
Madonna (her voice every bit as wooden as her digitally parodied
face) as the thousand-year-old Princess Selenia express love for the
eponymous Arthur (played by the fourteen-year-old Freddie Highmore).
Naughty, naughty, but it all ultimately comes to naught--Highmore's
boy hero ends his adventures with his virginity intact, not even
seriously challenged (the pop singer is better matched opposite the
more sexually ambivalent David Bowie, doing a droll impression of a
Sith Lord). I'd love to see Besson carry matters further; I'd love
to see him carry SOMETHING further, beyond the boundaries of good
taste even--anything to keep me awake while watching this picture.

Luc Jacquet's "Marche de l'iempereur" ("March of the Penguins,"
2005), is, if anything, an even duller proposition--eighty-five
minutes of watching a flock of flightless waterfowls mate and take
care of their young. What distinguishes this documentary from most
shows seen on the Discovery Channel is the wildly beautiful
cinematography by Laurent Chalet and Jerome Maison, and the
impeccably authoritative voiceover narration of Morgan Freeman.
Freeman's played god (or his moral equivalent, or at the very least
our moral superior) often enough that it's difficult to question
him, or the movie--you feel as if you're committing blasphemy (to be
fair, Freeman is possibly a far better choice than what they used in
the original French version, where actors dubbed penguin dialogue).

The material is powerful enough--yes, penguins do travel up to a
hundred miles in search of food for their families; yes male
penguins do carry their eggs cradled and warmed on their feet for
months in the intense Antarctic cold--that you can't help but resent
the many occasions the documentary attempts to manipulate your
feelings (comic trombone for penguin pratfalls; Freeman's tragic
indignation over the odd frozen egg). Nature documentaries come in
many forms, and my favorite often involved a human being's complex
responses to nature--Timothy Treadwell's self-destructive hatred of
humans in favor of grizzlies, for example, in Werner Herzog's
compelling "Grizzly Man;" or Mark Bittner's intense identification
with birds (to the point of naming them and carrying out extended
conversations with them) in Judy Irving's "The Wild Parrots of
Telegraph Hill." Failing that, I'd rather have my nature documentary
straight up, no chaser--Claude Nuridsany and Marie
Perennou's "Microcosmos: Le peuple de l'herbe" (Microcosmos, 1996)
say, or Jacques Perrin and Jacquez Clouzad "Le Peuple migrateur"
(Winged Migration, 2001), where we're immersed in the world of the
creatures without being force-fed a dreary narrative, or harassed by
syrupy anthropomorphizing music.

This film made millions, true; it's easily the most successful
documentary in history, and part of this is due to the power of the
imagery (the penguins huddled in the endless dark; an egg slowly
cracking from sheer cold; a ferocious leopard seal diving after its
fleeing prey), part of it what seems to be a knee-jerk response to
the creatures' short, portly figures and comic waddle ("Awww--ain't
they cute?"). Call me a spoilsport, killjoy, or just plain odd, but
I'd rather have the digitally enhanced adventurings of George
Miller's "Happy Feet," the first animated feature (but unfortunately
not the last) to feed off this penguin craze; at least with Miller's
film there's plenty of mind-expanding filmmaking (epic landscapes,
immense ice storms) and an almost surreal sense of otherness (the
scenes at the zoo exhibit, for example). In short, there's a
tremendous imagination involved, reined in and in the service of a
story--something that I find difficult to say about Jacquet's
picture.

(First published in Businessworld, 6/15/07)

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

Haikus on the big screen

Noel Vera

Akihiko Shiota's "Gaichu" (Harmful Insect, 2001) had previously been
shown in Cinemanila some years ago, but it's nice to see it back--
it's received so little attention since, but what little there is
has been quite strong (Mark Schilling of The Japan Times has written
enthusiastically about it; Max Tessier of Cinemaya Magazine and
Positif considers Shiota a "very underestimated filmmaker" (both
Schilling and Tessier are western critics who specialize in Japanese
cinema)).

The film follows Sachiko Kita (Aoi Miyazaki, the heroine of Shinji
Aoyama's "Yureka" (Eureka, 2000)) through her rather grim life--her
father leaves her and her mother behind before the film begins, her
mother (at film's opening) attempts suicide after suffering
rejection from her new boyfriend and (in a series of flashbacks) a
youthful math teacher in love with Sachiko (who may or may not have
sexually molested her) quits the school for a job in Northern Japan.

Sachiko becomes the center of attention at school; she's not
physically harmed (this isn't Shunji Iwai's "Lily Chou Chou no
Subete" (All About Lily Chou Chou, 2001), or Toshiaki Toyoda's "Aoi
haru" (Blue Spring, 2001)), but the whispers and gossip become so
intense anyway she starts dropping out. She falls in with a drifter
named Takao (Tetsu Sawaki) who lives with a mentally retarded man
named Tama (Koji Ichikawa); they run a scam where motor vehicles hit
Tama, and the unlucky driver pays hush money to Takao, the only
witness to the "accident." Sachiko is happy until she accidentally
meets former best friend Natsuko (Yu Aoi) again, and decides to go
back to school. She adjusts to school life easily enough, but when
both she and Natsuko fall in love with the same boy, all hell breaks
loose.

A seemingly melodramatic story in outline, but Shiota is a fairly
recent master of what might loosely be called the "Cinema of
Contemplation." He pitches the film's emotional tone at such a
quiet, almost subliminal level (no pop songs, no music-video
editing, no digital special effects) that the most outrageous
episodes are persuasively presented, with understated power (I'd
further add that the melodrama would turn the picture into
unintentional comedy using any other approach, that without Shiota's
delicate touch no one would take this film seriously). Shiota is
fond of placing Sachiko at the center or near-center of his
compositions, such that even when surrounded by schoolmates she's
irrevocably alone (the way the schoolmates are arranged and posed
isolate her, emphasize her outcast status); Sachiko may wear the
class uniform, be of the same age, but she'll never part of the
school community.

As Sachiko, Miyazaki's performance is note-perfect--just the right
amount of restraint that you might call her low-key, the same time
she's simple and direct and clear. Miyazaki's acting is crucial, of
course, along with Shiota's quiet style of directing; the latter
helps soft-sell the story, the former keeps you caring for her (and
the picture) no matter how fast and furiously the disasters pile up.

Shiota's film stands in stark contrast with Toyoda's
aforementioned "Aoi haru." Based on a manga by Taiyou Matsumoto,
this's an ultraviolent high school flick more in keeping with trendy
Japanese youth pictures than with contemplative cinema. As Toyoda
himself puts it, the picture is not a documentary; "I wanted to
inject a bit of magic," he says--kitchen sink, anyone? Toyoda's
movie has it all--teacher-student anomie, bullying, gross and gory
action, insanely stupid acts of rebellion, defiance, sheer nihilism.
Toyoda, unlike Shiota, doesn't mince words, or keep the drama at a
low flame: with a rocking J-pop score and the promised atrocity
every ten minutes, he manages to keep your attention on the big
screen the same way a, say, Guantanamo interrogator would hold an
Iraqi detainee's attention for hours on end ("Look away and my
German Shepherd'll tear your crotch out").

But it's like using a flamethrower to roast a peanut: Toyoda posits
a high school where the instructors are so apathetic they barely
bother to tour the school corridors; instead, they show up at class
(as if by force), and intone dull, endless lectures (the Japanese
equivalent of "Beuller; Beuller…"). Yes, there're cases of bullying
in Japanese schools, yes, there're cases of frightening amorality
and violence, but you never saw or heard of an entire educational
institution go to pot (unlike, say, in most American urban centers,
cases of extreme violence happen in the relative vacuum of an
essentially conformist society). This teen manga turned teen flick
is such a cartoonish depiction of the Japanese high school you're
never in danger of saying to yourself "This is what's really
happening, I know people like these" (by way of contrast Shiota
takes the extreme melodrama in "Gaichu" and by dint of his
uncompromisingly understated filmmaking, persuades you of the
honesty of his worldview).

Toyoda's picture may be a grotesque caricature, but it stands head
and shoulders above what passes for American shock cinema nowadays.
America post 9/11 seems to be trying to express the ugliness of its
guilt and anger through "Saw," and "Hostel," and the "Grindhouse"
movies, but other than sense of noxious pus being explosively
squeezed out there's precious little in terms of wit, imagination,
or art in any of this. Toyoda is perhaps a distant relative, opting
for sensationalism at the price of any relevance to reality, but
unlike, say, Roth or Tarantino, harboring a minimalist wit within
his shock and gore. His strategy is a bit like Takeshi Kitano's: two
figures (usually men) facing each other; a quick insert of some
image indirectly involved with the scene; a return to the earlier
shot, only with someone slumped on the floor, blood pouring out of
the mouth. Unlike Kitano, though, Toyoda's flick: 1) lacks a richly
melodic score from Joe Hisaishi, and 2) lacks a world-weary fatalism
that if squinted at hard might could almost be mistaken for wisdom,
even grace).

Toyoda's picture is interesting, if ultimately disposable; the real
find, I submit, is Shiota's far more moving work. See it, not just
for the wonderfully understated storytelling, but also for the
strong possibility that this may be your one and only chance, on the
big screen--the film is not available on DVD in the United States,
and there's little sign it will be anytime soon. The film IS out in
Japan but far as I can tell only in PAL system, which is
incompatible with most Filipino NTSC-system TV sets (you need both a
multisystem TV and a multisystem DVD player).

First published in Businessworld, 6.22.07)

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