Gitmek: My Marlon and Brando

Watched this for free on www.mubi.com, and was riveted by the images I saw.
A Turkish woman embarks on a romantic journey as war breaks out in Iraq , in the tough, engaging road movie My Marlon And Brando. Billed as being 'based on a true story', the film derives its distinctive immediacy from the fact that its lead characters - star/co-writer Ayça Damgaci and Kurdish actor Hama Ali Kahn - are effectively playing themselves. 
 The emotionally involving love quest, a quasi-documentary element of current-affairs reportage, plus Damgaci's charismatic central turn should all make Hüseyin Karabey's film a strong contender for moderate sales straddling the art-house niche and more mainstream buyers, with TV and DVD prospects looking equally healthy. On the festival circuit, the film - receiving its world premiere in Rotterdam - should flourish, especially at events angled towards women's cinema, politics and human rights.
We first meet Damgaci when she is acting on a film shoot in the west of Turkey, where she has met Hama Ali (Kahn), a Kurdish actor. The two have fallen for each and hope to get together soon, tensions in the area allowing; the period is the run-up to the war in Iraq. Back home in Istanbul, Ayça rehearses her role in a ramshackle agit-prop stage play, and takes part in anti-Bush demonstrations. She waits eagerly for letters from her beloved, which eventually come in the form of ebullient, passionate and intermittently amusing videos, featuring Hama Ali's home-made Superman spoofs.
Because Hama Ali is prevented from travelling westwards, the only way the pair can meet is if Ayça makes the difficult trek to his home in Sülemaniye in Northern Iraq. Seeking contacts in Istanbul 's Kurdish community - and discovering how tough it is for immigrants - Ayça sets out on her journey. First she has trouble getting across the Turkish-Iraqi border, then has to make a detour into Iran, where she is disturbed to find herself hassled on the street and obliged to cover her head. Her determination never flags, although she starts to wonder whether Hama Ali shares it. That he does is revealed in a final video letter from him, ending the film on an abrupt, dramatic note that leaves us to speculate whether a happy ending is really in store for the pair.
The film's romantic content, despite its undoubted sincerity and confessional edge, is perhaps its weakest spot. The lovers communicate with each other in English, and Ayça's effusive poetic ramblings to Hama Ali take some swallowing (they are the source of the film's ungainly English title, which could profitably be changed). The duo's bond, however, comes across all the more strongly because of their separation throughout. In no way conventional screen lovers, the couple are bracingly approachable in their ordinariness. Kahn is bald, middle-aged, cheerfully buffoonish, while Damgaci is bulky, unkempt and altogether abrasive in personality - but the very embodiment of 'feisty', her determination carrying her through as a character, as it presumably did in the real events on which the film is based.
Shot on location in Turkey, Iran and northern Iraq, the film follows Ayça's travels with documentary urgency, setting her personal mission against a background of refugee migrations at the outbreak of the Iraq war. We get to see Iranian society from an angle we're not used to - from that of a Westernised woman outsider, herself from a largely Muslim culture - and Ayça's experience also imparts a sense of current Turkish idenitity, divided between Western and Eastern traditions. The DV shooting is rough and urgent, the travelogue sections featuring unvarnished and often magnificent landscape shots. The counterpoint between personal drama, and the turbulent and very tangible real-world background, make the film as level-headed and forceful as its protagonist.

LSD: Love, Sex aur Dhokha

It actually makes sense. It really does. Less than two hours of video footage that could have been shot by you or me, with a digital camera, a bunch of unknown, but terrific acting talent, and a plausible plotline could've cumulatively turned out into L, S aur D, but for one small glitch. Neither of us is Dibakar Bannerjee.
I don't get cozy with Indian directors too well. In fact, I think they're overrated. Except for ppl like Anurag Kashyap, and maybe even Vishal Bhadardwaj, they all fall into a category where there isn't more than one to call them categories. This is different. This ain't blockbuster material. This ain't business. This is definitely not Filmfare. It's Rahul's film and the camera's started rolling long back, yaar. Cut!
That's the way the first of three inter-connected films in LSD begins: with a loverboy Rahul, a film-school student in his final year trying to piece together his diploma-film. His training has evidently made another über-stereotype director out of him, making him envision scenes of heroic splendour, song-action sequences, and what not. And then he enrols "simran", his heroine and the girl of his dreams. They both fall madly in filmy-love. And take things into their hands, the filmy way, and drive their filmy bandwagon straight into the bloody reality.
The second film switches on when a CCTV camera is installed by Adarsh, a jobless know-all who turns his expertise into his own voyeuristic tool. Four security cameras in a convenience store might not look too intimidating, even harmless. But throw in a pretty, sensible and wary girl and our debt-ridden Adarsh into a night-shift, and things ought to get passionate and tangly. This was the premise of the controversial sex-scene which was promptly blurred by big-daddy CBFC. But it isn't the nudity that shocks us, it's actually the reality of it which knocks us flat. I mean come on, how many times have we seen two actors simulating lovemaking? And I'm talkng of hindi films alone here. Everytime it's made to look like a glamourous cocktail onscreen. But this is where parents should be yelled at for bringing their kids to watch this film. It's the proper deal, if not the real deal. With all the humping the way it's meant to be, Dibakar makes it very clear that his camera attains a personality of its own.
Story three. You (yes, you) literally get beaten by a broomstick wielding lady as you run away from a failed sting operation. You're the sting. Rakesh is your reporter. And he's desperate. Enter Naina in a very hilarious suicide attempt. She's on a do-or-die vendetta against Loki Local, a popular bhangra popstar. A new sting is born.
All through these three films, characters are linked with one another, the third film being the weakest in connection with the other two. But that's not what sets apart LSD. It's the reason for the presence of a camera on the scene. In the first film, both the protagonists are film-school students, so a camera finds a natural presence. Second and third film, we don't see the story throug anything other than cctv or spycam footage. The director has effectively made a behind-the-scenes video on the same film which we see, thereby making the rest of the crew seem non-existent. The camera crew is actually the actors themselves. They set the cameras and carry the cameras with them. Now, how many films have attempted that?
Dibakar Bannerjee will certainly go places with this innovative experiment of the medium, and boy what a ride it's turned out!

By Fazil

El secreto de sus ojos (The Secret in Their Eyes)

The Secret in Their Eyes fell under my radar after watching the Oscar nominations for 2009. I had watched A Prophet and The White Ribbon and I was interested in seeing how this rather unknown movie competed with these two masterworks.

Juan José Campanella's movie follows Benjamín Esposito's investigation of the rape and murder of a 23-year-old schoolteacher. It's a case that haunts him for decades and comes to define his existence. The movie is temporally fragmented, so the narrative jumps from past to present constantly. I should commend the makeup department for its ability to portray the ageing of actors Ricardo Darín, Soledad Villamil, Pablo Rago and Javier Godino. Without good makeup, this movie would have fallen apart quickly.

Esposito's investigation takes many turns, meets opposition several times, comes to halts several times in the course of his life, ruins his personal life, and seems like it will never be solved. At the age of retirement he begins reminiscing about it and starts writing a novel based on the event.

This movie addresses many topics at the same time: first of all, the craft of fiction, as Esposito struggles to make sense of the events in order to write his novel. But through this inner journey, the movie also discusses the importance of memory. It also explores the danger of obsession, as Esposito comes to realise that decades working on the case has only left him with a lonely, empty life.

All these ruminations are disguised as a crime movie, a rather elegant one at that. The movie plays with genre a few times, the best one being that it reveals who the murderer is before the end of the first hour. By doing this the movie introduces a more interesting idea: what to do with a criminal who's politically untouchable? Is vigilantism ever justified? At times I reminded myself of Mystic River, which posed similar questions, although the stories are totally different.

Ricardo Darín gives a good performance; in fact I have little to complain about the performances in the movie, but Darín stood out as the passionate, tireless investigator. Pablo Rago, who plays the victim's husband, also impressed me for his ability to portray loss so well.

Since I watched this movie because of A Prophet and The White Ribbon, I have to ask myself: is it as good as those two? No, not by a long chance. The Secret of Her Eyes has quality and good ideas, but I never felt I was watching more than a good movie, whereas I consider the other two masterworks. It's worth watching, but it's hardly the masterpiece everyone is saying it is.

On a final note, if this movie deserved another Oscar nomination, It should be for Federico Jusid's score, whose beauty will no doubt get him more exposure soon.

By Eumenides_0 from Portugal

Pride and Prejudice

With an lovable cast, Pride and Prejudice is intelligent in its handle of the material and its fluency in cinematic crafting. Goodbye to dusty, "precious" interpretations of Jane Austen. This cheeky, poetic, even dark new film makes the story youthful with down-to-earth vibrancy and worship of emotion. Here are young people making the mistakes and dreaming the dreams of the young (when it was written it wasn't antiquity, it was life). Lizzie is not a smirking omniscient but a quick witted independent; hotheaded and fiercely loyal to her sister. She is wary of an unfair world and uses her wits to survive. Darcy is not an impenetrable stoic but a shy sensitive soul with high unwieldy social pretensions fending off the outside world. And they are both lonely and have big yearning hearts, so the filmmakers made one great decision -- they let them fall in love the first moment they lock eyes. In a shot we see hearts behind fortified personalities and an instant chemistry that takes a movie's worth of battling with each other and themselves to right itself. It's an earthy move that sets the tone for a film about the people and world behind the antiquated manners, a world not so different from ours.

Now set in 1797, when Austen wrote the first draft of the book, the filmmakers committed to main plot points and themes, and astutely represent the Romantic Age and Austen's characters. The love between Jane and Lizzie is supreme and fuels a desire in Lizzie to tear at Darcy when he separates Jane from Mr. Bingley. She's hurt, she reciprocates the pain, and it is bitter. Pride and prejudices are drawn clearly: Lizzie searches hard to find fault with Darcy, and Darcy cannot bring himself to let down his guard. Both have their reasons justified, but they foil their own chances at love constantly until they see how wrong they are and are too heartsick to keep going. Class conflict is suddenly personally injurious and vicious. When Charlotte Lucas marries for security, it's a grave matter and she must bitingly sober up a disdainful Lizzie on the realities of their world. The Bennets are too eccentric and improper for their own good. Lady Catherine (Dame Judi Dench, who is downright fearsome) is not just a cold figure for Lizzie to spar with, but someone capable of deeply hurting others. The filmmakers are savvy in their understanding of history. Setting it back 20 years is a remarkable move, because we accept more diversions and variation with the 18th century than the 19th and it presents Austen as a Romantic, which automatically requires the story to be interpreted from a different, very legitimate, perspective. The ideals of the Romantic Age are ingeniously, subtly played here: human equality, gritty realism married with beauty for the sake of beauty, but a beauty which is never elitist or decadent, always grounded, simple, and universal: nature, the human being, emotion.

The ensemble and mis-en-scene are electric. The camera spryly edges in and out of rooms and conversations instead of sitting arthritically in a corner. The dance scenes are less about ballet, now rollicking and spirited as characters send signals, flirt, deflect and analyze one another. In true Romantic form (worthy of filling Wordsworth with pride) the aesthetic unabashedly revels in beauty, but always the simple joys of our world: sunrises, dewy landscapes in wide shots, colors everywhere. It has a lovely score, period inspired and without any pomp and circumstance. Simple blocking is caffeinated and given substance, something is always going on in the background. Lively, layered interactions between characters make rich scenes, neither wasting space nor time. Consider a scene with Mr. Collins, played by the magnificent Tom Hollander (a standout here, so delightfully weird. When he jaggedly squirms his way up to someone you want to shriek). He wants to speak to Lizzie, alone, and a bolt of fear strikes through her as she pleads in vain not to be abandoned. The sisters are merciless, Mrs. Bennet delighted, Mr. Bennet at a loss, and Collins prepares. It's all silent and it's hysterical.

Suggesting variation to revered characters is a frightful task, but here it's a revelation. The entire cast is brilliant, but the two leads are transcendent in their roles. Keira Knightley is charismatic, random, wonderfully young, intuitive to the bone -- she inhabits Lizzie. Matt MacFadyen is deep, remarkably subtle, but mostly he is soulful. I've long held him as a sympathetic actor, but he shines in this. The two instill an unexpected exuberance of feeling in their performances. Neither ever acknowledge the camera exists and make the most of every second they have on screen to project their characters. When you throw them together you get a love story full of emotional subtext, double meaning, and gloriously heavy moments.

Because so much dialogue was cut, simple lines have impact and much of the exposition is visual. Epic little moments linger and rain, revealing souls. The thoughts and intentions behind the actors' eyes and words are visible at all times. This movie understands the power of a shot or glance. Lizzie comes to understand Darcy in how he embraces his sister or smiles (a momentous occasion, indeed). When she talks about love it's stirring because it's finally spilled into the open after we've seen it near the edge many times with half said sentiments and stifled tears. Usually "I love you" comes with extra explanatory prose, but here sincerity kills cliché: parties are fun, a misty field is breathtaking, the dawning of love a revelation, the heartbreak is throbbing.

It's a brilliant film. There is something breathless and luminous about it, from its youth and the break from propriety, to the beauty and spontaneity of life and romance, pain and joy, which provide the color.

Paris, Je t'aime

It's not easy making a movie with 18 different stories in it. Although 18 different international directors took the challenge, not everyone of them is good, some of them even boring. But in his entity, "Paris, je t'aime" is breathtaking, showing that, as "Love Actually" put it, 'love is all around', especially in the city of love. Here's a resumé (I'll try to make at as spoiler-free as possible) of the 18 different stories.

MONTMARTRE - kind of a dull opening sequence, nothing really special about it. A man finds a parking spot, and sees a lot of odd couples walking by, wondering why he can't find a girl. And than, suddenly, a woman faints next to his car...

QUAIS DE SEINE - another dull sequence, about three teenage boys who are searching for some 'piece of ass', when suddenly a Muslim girl trips right in front of them, receiving help from one of the boys. Really basic, but with a sweet heart to it.

LES MARAIS - this was a huge disappointment! Although a love story between two boys with an artsy background could have been interesting by the great Van Sant. Eventually, everything that comes AFTER the monologue by Ulliel is good, everything before it is just annoying.

TUILERIES - an entertaining sequence by the Coen brothers. Buscemi - without even saying one word - is mesmerizing and the whole sequence is just hilarious. This one kept me hooked until the very end, and this one also gets you truly hooked to the movie.

LOIN DU 16IEME - a beautiful story too, even if the execution is poor, the heart is there. It's the story of an Hispanic woman who drops her child off, early in the morning, to take care of another suburban baby. Beautiful.

PORTE DE CHOISY - this segment has got to be the strangest and weirdest from the whole movie. Some kind of shampoo salesman arrives in a Chinatown-lookalike place in Paris. If I understood it correctly, the story is about inner beauty, but I think I'm wrong.

BASTILLE - a truly wonderful sequence. A man meets with his wife at a restaurant, to break up with her, so that he can run off with his mistress. But the wife has some devastating news. Pretty basic, but truly sad and beautiful!

PLACE DES VICTOIRES - a sad sequence as well. Juliette Binoche plays a grieving mother. One night, she wakes up hearing her dead child. When she arrives at the location, a cowboy tells her she can give one last good-bye to her child. One of the best segments!

TOUR EIFFEL - two mimes who fall in love could have been great, but, even though it has some nice cinematic tricks, the story isn't intriguing and not funny at all.

PARC MONCEAU - a truly original and great sequence, one of the best of the movie! A young girl and an older man discuss their future and her fear for a certain man... Cuaron does a great directing job, and the actors are amazing!

QUARTIER DES ENFANTS ROUGES - an American actress (Gyllenhaal) falls in love with her drug dealer. a beautiful segment again, with a very sad ending.

PLACE DES FETES - a woman comes to a homeless man, he starts talking romantic to her... because she is the love of his life. Beautiful, sad, shocking, romantic,... Place des Fêtes will make everyone cry.

PIGALLE - a boring sequence between Ardant and Hoskins, who are looking for new thrills in their relationship... very unfunny and unromantic, Pigalle is a let-down.

QUARTIER DE LA MADELEINE - a dark horror-Gothic love starring Elijah Wood as a lost tourist in the backstreets of Paris in the night who meets a vampiress. With a black-and-white format but blood-red colour contrast that seems to incongruously bleed off screen, it nearly becomes a pastiche of Sin City – a refreshing eerie and visual turn in an otherwise fairly grounded film. bringing some diversity in the movie, QdlM is a relief. Dark, scary and oddly romantic, Madeleine is superb.

PERE-LACHAISE - another let-down segment. Directed by Wes Craven and with stars as Mortimer and Sewell, it could have been great, but Père-Lachaise is just ordinary, not original at all.

FAUBOURG SAINT-DENIS by Tom Tykwer but I think I was conditioned to think so, given that I downloaded the movie with him in mind as my favourite and nudged myself saying "finally, that's my favourite director here". Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that Tykwer delivers a lovely segment in which a blind boy picks up the phone, and hears from his girlfriend (Portman - for once not annoying) that she breaks up with him, and he reflects on their relationship. As is Tywker's style, the story is dizzyingly fast-paced, kinetic and repetitive, featuring screaming and running (Lola Rennt) making it the most adrenaline-pumping segment in Paris je t'aime and possibly also the most touching once Tywker starts wielding his most powerful tool – music.

QUARTIER Latin - even though this segment has been co-directed by Depardieu and has such stars as Rowlands, Gazzara and Depardieu, this segment is a let-down too. Nothing happens, lack of chemistry between the actors.

14TH ARRONDISSEMENT - the last sequence is hilarious and sad at the same time. An American tells in her French class about her trip to Paris. Her French is truly terrible, but at the end of the segment, she realizes that Paris is so much more than meets the eye.With Feist on the background, "Paris, je t'aime" ends in a sweet tone, not letting me down at all, even though some segments bored the hell out of me, the entity of the movie is great! A true cinematic experience for young and old. Paris, je t'aime vraiment!

Yet Paris je t'aime truly spoils you with quality, for all the other stories are well-crafted with crisp acting and amusing writing. It is certainly one of the highlights of 2006 (not saying much, I suppose) and a very personal film in the sense that it is unavoidable to pick a favourite and a least favourite. Highly recommended both to mainstream of "pretentious" (heh) audiences.