The Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival

[franco]

Is Kinatay really that despicable? I wonder whether I will like it if I thoroughly enjoyed Serbis

[franco]

I hope some of you are planning to go see Souleymane Cissé's Min Ye, AKA Tell Me Who You Are.

[brunosh]

Is anyone planning to see Air Doll? To me the most disappointing movie of the year (more the the Dumont and the Denis). If you walk out 20 minutes before it ends, then you may actually end up liking the movie. The cinematography from Mark Lee Pin-Bing (Hou Hsiao-Hsien's regular DP), however, is breathtaking. It almost makes all the other lameness tolerable.

Couldn't agree more, except that for me the admittedly outstanding cinematography in no way made up for the lameness of the rest. I might have walked out 40 minutes before the end had I not been stuck in the middle of a row, but if I had I wouldn't have discovered that the last 40 minutes in no way improved on the first 80. Oh well, I suppose it was inevitable that finally there would be a Koreeda film that to me falls a long way short of the first six; but here what there is to admire is all on the surface, process, “what-clever-mimicry-of-a-doll-coming-to-life”, and what is largely missing is patient and searching examination, gradual building of substance, food for thought, application of intelligence in creating depth and recognising complexity (which for me, together with compassion, have characterised Koreeda’s previous films).

The only other film I managed to see at LFF this year was Eugène Green’s The Portuguese Nun. Happily, although this may not have looked as good as the Koreeda, I found in it much of what I found missing in Air Doll. All of Green’s cinematic tropes (about which I have written in the past on this forum) are there, applied in the search for truth created out of unreal things. And Green adds to the enjoyment by his unrestrained and provocative response to things he doesn’t like – when asked in the Q&A why an incidental character says at one point that he doesn’t like French films because they are too intellectual when Green’s films are clearly the output of a considerable intellectual intelligence, Green cited Godard’s interjection into his films of complicated intellectual or political content in a way that, he said, disrupts and detracts from the emotional and spiritual credibility of Godard's films; and another questioner’s objection to use of religion in the form of the nun herself in the dialogue at the spiritual heart of the film was angrily dismissed by Green as “integrationist fundamentalism”.

[franco]

That's so well said about Air Doll, brunosh. I totally agree that all the charm and prettiness depend on the cosmetics and Bae Doona's idiosyncratic performance (which seems fittingly gratuitous here). It almost appears that at one point the filmmakers feel compelled to disguise the lack of depth with name-dropping - although admittedly I got a huge kick out of it: a timid cinephile asking to rent the expensive Japanese Theo Angelopoulos set in the video place.

Oh I am so jealous that you got a chance to see Eugène Green's new movie. We in the English-speaking parts of Canada never seem to be able to get his movies. The premise sounds so interesting that it's now becoming, along with the new Rivette, my most anticipated films after the end of all local film festivals.