"Estórias" (2013), hello, goodbye, and whatever's in the middle

If you're not from Lisbon and never casually hit the remote control to glimpse at a two-minute report on the curious figure of João Serra, you might haven't heard of him. He was known as Sr. do Adeus (Mr. Goodbye), for wandering Saldanha at night, carrying a shopping bag, and perpetually waving goodbye at transient cars. Night after night, year after year, wearing black-rimmed glasses, long white hair slicked back, and a warm smile on his face. Shortly, previously oblivious drivers grabbed the wheel with one hand while stretched the other to mimic the salute. Was he a hopeful man or an insane token?

Estórias (2013), an hour-long documentary by Portuguese young filmmaker João Gomes was produced a couple of years after Serra's death and opens with archive footage, combining the always well-groomed man on some of those nights with anonymous arms of dozens and dozens of people, fluttering in farewell, homaging the latest. He became a tiny local legend of human affection.

Now, if you don't know Gomes (the rest of his filmography only includes Natália, Diva Tragicómica, a documentary about a Portuguese part-mysterious-singer, part-folk-myth, that will remind you of Sunset Boulevard's Norma Desmond), and consider the 60-minute format and the production by TV channel RTP2 you may fear you're in for one cute little newsreel like those you may have missed when zapping on and off around news-broadcasts. I shall tell you how unforgivably unfair that would be. For when the prologue ends and the rest of the movie begins, it doesn't become an obvious descriptive biographical piece about one figure. It rips those expectations to shreds and embraces three new characters whose lives, intertwined by editing with the peaceful, kind, but enigmatic look of João Serra, tell a story about loneliness, the value and nature of relationships, and bittersweet expectations about life and whatever goes beyond that.

Frederico is an outsider on the sidewalk, where he rides a bike contraflow, slowly, trying to dodge the peasants. Seems lost. His job is a bore and he doesn't have companions. But he found out about Alfama-te (takes in the historical neighborhood of Alfama and "amo-te" means "i love you"), a concept that defies you to, among other things, set up a table in the pavement - towel, cutlery and actual food included - and invite a portion of strangers to have a fancy dinner. They meet, eat and drink. At the same time, they listen to each other and also speak. It's like having a chat. Only during these vanishing hours, the bells ring louder. They strike relationships. They seem best friends for one night, on a sequence of The Big Chill (1983). Frederico, divorced with two kids, tells the same story over and over again, night after night, to everyone he brings together around that talbe. He craves for watching the Apocalypse from a high place. Follow the sight of the mass destruction live, until the last second goes off. Sometimes, he wants to face the end of the world in the middle of an orgy; sometimes, he wants to be holding his kids. There's something disturbingly grateful, irresponsibly conscious and existentialist.

Helena lives alone, seems to work alone in an office with a dozen other equipped secretaries, eats alone her packed lunch. The only time of day she's close to a living thig is at the gym, where she seems to spend half of her day. She hates to sleep and thus runs, lifts weights, rides the bicycle, stretches, does aerobics. And still, she barely has a chat with someone, so forget about human warmth.

Joaninha is terrificly funny and sweet. The widest, happiest smile of the movie, that never wears off (literally). She's old, and became a TV star as an extra. No wonder, as she comes back for one day and still commands the crowd into erupting bursts of cheers. And this is why she's the one who hurts us the most. The voice-over tells us about her deceased husband, how she can't even stare at the pictures and how black she feels inside sometimes, despite the mask of joy she never peels off - she refuses to, because she believes she lived her life to the fullest and the memories are hers and thus has not the right to spread grief. She articulates one of the most painful truths I have ever heard, that plunged in me like an ice-cold sword: "I was very happy. And that's why I suffer." She is envied at work, but those are plastic relationships she merely manages.

"Estórias" means "stories". Frederico doesn't remember who he met last night, as if he restarted his life over and over again, trying to get rid of the compromise of living among others, but always reaching for human contact at the end of the day. As if he, by rejecting family and friends, could face the inherent loneliness of life on his own, reincarnating a personal hope of a new unknown path brave, at every dinner. Helena, the only character who never enacts one single act of optimism, seems sad for whatever she's lost (and we don't surely know what that is) and breathes condemnation from every pore. Joaninha carries on. She is the happiest and saddest person in the world, and the news is, that's the best we can achieve one day. The joke is on us.

Because this is a story told through stories, this is the story of João Serra. Those doors constantly closing throughout the film are the main link. An estranged person believing he could try to reach the others by enacting the simplest, most symbolic social gesture there is. He knew his time was drawing near, but he too was bittersweetly hopeful. Of what? Maybe of getting a response, maybe of just being able to do it over and over again.

"Estórias" is a mirror room. They mirror each other and somehow mirror ourselves.  They wave, we wave back.

Flight (2012): Zemeckis and Washington high above sea level

I ought to be looking for the black box of this screening. Nothing went wrong and I'm still one piece but I'd like to find the frame of my face realizing Gatins and Zemeckis had stored in a much different approach to the premise than I had in mind: an action-packaged ride of a wrong man running from a massive Government conspiracy. Instead, I saw a dedicated character-study of one man clinging to a wrecked personal life.

A one-minute opening scene with very little dialog and a lot of good visual first strokes of the main character. Katrina (Nadine Velazquez), a beautiful naked stewardess finds her panties while Whip Whitaker (thumbs up to Denzel Washington) collects the last two drops of vodka out of a bouquet of empty bottles, lights a cigarette for breakfast, and answers the cellphone to his divorced wife asking for money. The rough night has come to an end because he now has a plane to fly. Or hasn't it? He snuffs a line of coke to pump him up and get him ready for the clouds. Joe Cocker's Feelin Alright rocks in - this was going to be good storytelling.

The plane departs, turbulence hits and things go murky: a sleepy, alcoholized, drugged pilot must regain control of the engine, diving nose-down, and stop it from crashing. It's a frenetic rhythm caught through editing; an intensity of stakes given by Washington's voice, maneuvering and rapid-thinking; a subtlety of emotions plastered on the pilot's face when a stewardess dies after saving a child and when he asks Margaret (Tamara Tunie) to declare her love for her son to the black box. The coin of unexpectedness flips when Whitaker flips the plane upside down, arresting the descent and starting to glide, before bringing it back to normal position and landing in a field. He looses consciousness and you can finally breathe. Extraordinary sequence.

Ensued is the most simple of stories. Whip wakes up in a hospital bed, six people have died (including Katrina), more than half were injured. Who is to blame? No Cold-War syndrome, no post-9/11 trauma, no cabal of any kind. But this newly congratulated hero, the hand of the latest miracle of God, had a toxicological exam made. Who is to blame? Is he the wrong man, the right man, the righteous man? Is he a savior or a killer? The airplane was probably defective, as grants Charlie (Bruce Greenwood), his friend and representative of the pilots union; but he was drunk and high too. Yet, "Nobody could have landed that plane like I did.", Whip retorts. Hugh Lang (Don Cheaddle), a lawyer specialized in going against NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) investigations, is the only one capable of getting Whitaker through the agency's hearing  - he can annul the toxicological analysis and focus the defense on mechanical deficiency.

Whip takes refuge on his father's farm to stay away from the media, sweeps off any trace of booze and weed and tries to reconnect. He can't reach his ex-wife nor his son, but he has met Nicole (great surprise by Kelly Relly) at the hospital. She deserves her own POV not only for a wise foreshadowing (why is cocaine like a panic-button sometimes) but also to prove we are in for well-rounded characters beyond a sole, typical, action movie plot function. She represents the hopeful fringe to cure, compassion and affection, while his friend Harling Mays (John Goodman in his typical 7-minute-overall show-stealing) is a bohemian drug-dealer capable of cheering up Rose DeWitt Bukater when she's back on the lifeboat.

The drama progresses on Zemeckis' calm, observant, introspective camera. Quiet places, soft light. What could have usually been a third-act resurrection (e.g., flushing down marijuana; trying an AA meeting) are tests, failed tests, on the middle of the story. Turbulence that instead sends Whitaker on his own personal emotive steep downfall. The legal drama angle keeps a large pace but every new scene comes underlined by the protagonist's moral struggle - he is awfully tired of lies. Two surprising turns at the end - what he needs to go to the hearing of the NTSB (headed by Melissa Leo) and what happens there (delicious metaphors and character arc). Then you ask, what kind of man his he?

"Argo" is truly the escapist feature

 
Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy (2011) was a cold, analytical, slow-paced, spy movie engendered by minute attention to detail and a puzzling structure inflicting a paranoid feeling of double-intentions and distrust of your own and Smiley's fragile conclusions. It was commanded by Swedish director Tomas Alfredson and resulted in a little masterpiece. I could get used to one of those each year. But I didn't mind a bit sitting to watch a whole different approach to a melancholic main character, a troubled international political context and an espionage agency as the otherwise vibrating, exquisitely tense and witty flick that is Argo (2012). The year's ultimate escapist film, though it is much more than watching a bunch of guys trying to escape Iranian crazy people.

The premise is a delicious starting point. The real-life story of how the CIA and the Canadian Government hooked up with Hollywood to produce a fake sci-fi movie in order to remove, as part of the fake crew, six people from the Canadian embassy in Tehran, during the hostage crisis the U.S. suffered in 1979. A somewhat metanarrative political thriller that buckets as much suspense as comedy potential.

And that's how it rolls. Chris Terrio's script is a straightforward incredible machine of tension, suspense and last-minute touchdowns where slight distortions of historical facts only happen on behalf of the drama (as the "adaptation" of President Carter's delay in approving the plane tickets). The way it delivers the tons of thoroughly-research-based but elegantly-baked exposition makes the bed for the oiled interlocking of three very distinct worlds: CIA headquarters, Hollywood studios and Tehran's mutinies. The secret was to ally the bureaucracy and urged political swing of the first, the hilarious comic relieves of the second (among the golden cast, a special bow to Alan Arkin) and the claustrophobic, rioting suspense of the third, with Ben Affleck swifting between them both in front and behind the camera.

Affleck is fine as Tony Mendez, but he exceeds himself once again after The Town (2010) on the director's chair, confirming for the third time and hopefully once and for all that this pretty boy is up to the challenge of being considered one of the most valuable filmmakers of his generation. This is not a guy who read the script and decided to shoot it. This is a man who understood the story and interpreted history, or else he wouldn't have been able to create this tale of asphyxiating timing. Close-ups locking the characters into frightening impatience and uncertainty; the capacity to make you feel the tumults of the revolutionary crowds; strong editing; a cut-in-half 35mm filmstock, increased by 200% to produce an aged graininess - some of the distinctive options the young director took that put you on the edge of your seat.

Some will complain about the overpopulation of characters and the lack of development of most, if not all, of them. "Argo" is a heavy-plot-driven movie, relying more on the smartness of the operations and the dimension of the stakes than on the character's inner lives. Although it cares to show you how broken Mendez's life is and that draws you close to him. It is as subtle and economic in conveying the sentimental states of the couple among the hostages and Lester's among the movie business. They had more stuff on John Chambers that didn't make the final cut, and maybe even on Jack O'Donnell, but this wasn't the time nor the place and I plainly accept it as it is.

I believe this film will live as another testimony to the power of stories and how they basically structure our perception of reality. It's all in there, as when they offer the Iranian militia's some storyboards as souvenirs. The dangerous game of real life and the amusing, often escapist, flare of storytelling is the inevitable way to look at things, at living things mostly, even if you don't take part in the fictions of diplomacy and international politics and just humbly want to tell the weather to your friends. 

"Ted" is funny as fuck

A furry sand-colored teddy bear that lilts "I love you" when you pat his back is your delicious hugger for a night of thunderstorms. Overused cliché for children's playfulness, innocence and cuteness, until Seth MacFarlane, emperor of an animated world and father of a new limbo of humor and satire, twists it, wrests it, perverts its morales, puts a joint on the corner of his mouth and grows it a ghost dick. A stoner brocom-romcom that grabs hold of the writers' droop for outrageous jokes and scandalous situations as we've watched for the last ten years since Family Guy, American Dad and now Cleveland Show. The dialog is sharp and the predicable plot points are executed with surprising novelty, becoming the best comedy of the year so far (more laughs than last year's Bridesmaids).

Ted ran after the unusually self-conscious marketing campaign Ted is Real. While in the first ten minutes of the movie the characters learn the toy has been Pinoccio'ized (news broadcasting helping to create a solid sense of credibility) and now acts like a human, he was constantly advertised as authentic in our real life - the messages of support for the Euro'12 or his holding the Rated-R cards in the promotion stands. A first-rate motion-capture animation and great character writing accomplish such corporealness. Ted was alive for me last night. Whalberg was too but I am sad that Mila Kunis was under-explored thus refraining her comic potential once again.

There's a figure, an iconic figure that I shall not reveal, tying the whole act together. Alongside a perpetuating night wish and an incorrigible recklessness, a childhood idol is a mark for nostalgia, friendship and coolness of the old times. That's what bonds fit Whalberg and Ted's world to later break it apart, making them go on a coming-of-middle-age journey to restore Mark and Mila's love relationship. Add it a thimbleful of disgusting antagonists to darken and heighten the stakes and you've got a third act.

 One of the most interesting things to grasp from the film is the import of the visual and specially narrative style from Seth's animated series (much more than the voices and the meta gags). Mocking everything and everyone, differs from The Dictator in that it focuses itself on pop culture (it makes 9/11 as pop culture as Susan Boyle, while Sasha shuffles it as political satire). But the action scenes, soaked in violence and exhaustion of beats, and some particular shots (like the dizzying travelings when they're stoned at the party) attain Seth MacFarlane's uniqueness as a filmmaker.

"Dark Shadows" (2012)

One very common product of today's infinite catalog of entrainment, a tendency not so voguish in the beginning of the decade: vampires. Sure we'd had Coppola's Dracula in 1992, Buffy, the Vampire Slayer in 1997 and even John Carpenter's Vampires and Blade in 1998, but what's that compared with the bouquet of Twilight's saga and the foreign attempts to spin it off , True Blood series (2008 - present), the angle between Let the Right One In (2008) and its remake Let Me In (2010)? It engulfed the merchandise machine and we suddenly realized it is one of the most exhausted sub-genres of the time, making it much difficult not to be irrelevant.

 Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) was put upon a curse that made him a vampire and locked up for two hundred years, until the 1970's. Depp, one of the most versatile and extravagant actors of our ages, embraced this pale, archaic, handsome, ville but emotionally shattered creature of death, as he wakes up to take revenge on Angelique (Eva Green), the jealous witch who killed his beloved Josette (Bella Heathcote) and who did the tricks. The only problems are the electricity, the asphalt, the cars, television, the vinyls, the Carpenters, Alice Cooper or Iggy Pop, the still boiling design creative bubble of the 60's, the mash of colors, the hippies. What the hell is all that? Beelzebub, he thinks at first. Oh, and perhaps it is not too much to note that Angelique is a very, very sexy woman now, and the spooky mansion of his family, the Collins, is now a defunct large piece of a chateaux inhabited by the disenchanted remains of their last generation, headed by Elizabeth (Michelle Pfeiffer). 

Dark Shadows (2012) is not as touching as Edward Scissorhands (1990) or Big Fish (2003) but arrives as one of the most enjoyable Tim Burton's of a career. I am a big fan of genre and thus I delight over deconstructions, re-examinations and crossovers. Some describe it as a Gothic dramedy. Indeed it is a very funny entwining of the conventions of the vampire mythology and horror aesthetic with the distant elements of the melodrama: the overbearing sentimentalism (the love triangle; Barnabas and Hoffman (Helena B. Carter) and the whole beauty angle; Carolyn's (Chlöe G. Moretz) teenage whims); the big palette of colors (e.g. the pinkish fire); the excess of form (extraordinary art direction and special effects). The lack of a social critique has given place to the dark and witty exegesis. I hint you to pay attention at some of the best  jokes: McDonalds; Chevy; get stoned. But I laughed a lot all the way throughout.

 It does have problems. Story problems, mostly. Seth Grahame-Smith popped up a couple of years ago with his book Pride, Prejudice and Zombies (which is now being turned into a movie), and in a snap became Burton's fetish screenwriter, alongside John August, who is co-credited with a "story by", here. Seth wrote Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012) (adapted from his book) and is working on Beetlejuice 2 (2014). Although most of the dialog was very good, there were some on-the-nose lines, like Barnabus and Hoffman's last meeting in the house. Roping it to the cheesy last two minutes, I'm framing them all as target-audience devices.

Besides the protagonist and the antagonist, all the characters are sadly underdeveloped which in this case turned into a series of hanging foreshadowings, waiting for a little hand (e.g. Roger (Johnny Lee Miller) and the secret passage), unraveled storylines (e.g. David (Gulliver McGrath) and his mother) and coherence issues (why is Victoria (Belle Heathcote) the main character for fifteen minutes; what's her true relation with Josette; why is she there; who the hell is she and what's with all the ghost stuff). Also, they take some easiness while creating the rules of their special world, such as the scope of the magical powers, leaving out some logical lumps.

Chlöe proves we can wait for huge things from her in the future by making so interesting such a bi-dimensional character. She is the vehicle of one of the big (and also undeveloped) surprises and, without words, plays one of the great moments in the film when she dances in the background. The movie has those incredible visual moments, such as the set-piece sex-scene.

Take a chance to listen to the always beautiful score of Danny Elfman accompanied with some classics from the seventies, lean back, prepare your wits and enjoy this one.

Hugo (2011), what dreams are made of

 

Last year was as much a rocket launcher for future and change, as an inwards and unexpected unfolding of an old endearing photo album. The world throbbed when, from Tunisia, to Egypt, to Libya, the Middle East came into the streets protesting against war, repression and corruption, historical revolutions that may have meant the blossoming of a new era, the Arab Spring. Russia came along and the whole West kept fighting the uncertainty towards a wounded economic system, asking for a rethinking of strategies and values. Back in 1929-33, during the Great Depression, there was this big black box providing people with hope, laughs and cries, amazement. The dreamland, the movies. We can't avoid looking at this year's productions without recalling their eternal escape-providing nature, especially if we consider that three of its major masterpieces refer to the nostalgia of a golden age: Midnight in Paris, The Artist and now Hugo. A romantic comedy in the Parisian artistic circles in the twenties, a melodramatic comedy as Hollywood fostered sound and an adventure coming-of-age, praising the wizardry behind George Mélies' work.

Hugo, adapted by the exquisite craftsman John Logan from the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick, blends the passionate film buff, with the masterful filmmaker behind Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and The Aviator, with the most engaging teacher, as author of documentaries on American and Italian cinema, with the historian and restorer that created The Film Foundation. Those are all Martin Scorsese, in one of the most personal films of his career. The story of a Dickensian boy hero, Hugo, who wrestles to fix an intriguing old toy machine, which he believes may contain the last message his late father left him. When he meets Papa George and his granddaughter Isabelle, we can barely suspect the 12-year old has the key to the heart that pumped some of the most remarkable and crucial advances in film, regarding storytelling, editing and visual effects. Although he lives on a structure designed for a younger target audience, thus the very funny lighthearted reliefs from the Station Inspector, the dogs and the old couple, the story goes tenderly deeper, unveiling child-like genuine and powerful thoughts about our purpose in life. Hugo truly re-opens someone's self, rather than simply wind up a gadget, as George Mélies arcs from a grouchy, bitter man suffering with a past long gone to the glorious figure we still remember today - magician, inventor, one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.
 
"I'd imagine the whole world was one big machine. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured, if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn't be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason."

Grandiloquent crane shots and breathtaking travelings, from the world to a room, from a city to a face. Paris tickles with lights and sounds, motions fast blurring vehicles, and the first shot leaves us astounding at its clockwise cityscape, when it is suddenly replaced by the engines of a large clock in the Gare of Montparnasse. That's merely the initial glimpse of the brilliant force made by Logan's script, Martin's vision and Thelma Shoonmaker's talent. When a train crashes off the rails, it pays off Arrival of a Train to a Station by the Lumiére brothers and Mélies's A Trip to the Moon. The ending, after a third act made of a rainbowish, doc-lyrical, ultimate ode to dozens of the French director's works, translates the meta-themeline to the meta-technicae, when by using one of Georges' great discoveries, Scorsese transforms the character played by Ben Kingsley in the actual Mélies, in a screen inside a screen. An additional note of appraisal to the work of the rest of the cast, chiefly the much promising rookie Asa Butterfield, Chloë Grace Moretz, Sasha Baron Cohen, and Michael Stuhlbarg. Nice cameos by Martin himself and Christopher Lee. Beautiful score by Howard Shore and the usual ravishing photography by Richardson.

Moneyball (2011), just a taste

Just a taste because I'm planning to be back with Moneyball for a specific analysis to what I believe to be the brilliant work of powerhouse screenwriters Steve Zaillian & Aaron Sorkin. For now, let me stay with a general appreciation.

I seldom like sports movies. I find them particularly difficult to connect with, for sport breeds out of the immediacy of its single moments. The last hurdle, the last stroke, the last jump, the goal. The looming energy that powers collision between men and nature and between men themselves cannot be rehearsed and recorded sports events cannot fulfill us with the mystical satisfaction of physical conquering, if only a nostalgic flavor of it. Moneyball never tries to sell such moments as the ultimate arching goals of the story. Instead, it is driven by the backstage story of Billy Beaner while reforming baseball's management style as part of an unconscious life-examining quest. The main bases are the promising player he never became and the will and opportunity of never letting go an adorable twelve year old daughter. He is a logic cold-hearted business man as much of a temperamental intuitive heart-melted fan. He is the paradoxical faithful pragmatist and grabs Peter Brand to travel along into a journey much more about triumphing for their beliefs than storing loads of billions of dollars. We can connect with that. We take sports from the backstage all the time and during this film we're there with them. Actual footage transports us to an intermittent game precisely as Beaner deals with it. Exquisite sound editing bounces between his isolation and the cheering stadiums, as the green-yellow stripes and outfits wrap the space into a communion of a true team. I would be pleased to see Brad Pitt stepping to an Oscar and would consider the nomination for Jonah Hill and Seymour Hoffman. It is incredible the amount of masterfully held exposition we're thrown at without us even realizing it due to the sorkinesque snappy intelligent dialog, the depth of Beaner's character, the funny vein of some scenes and the wise camera and editing.

The Skin I Live In (2011)

One of the main causes for my after-dinner soap opera slumped annoyance is the sheer inability those writing teams have to take risks. In the name of their creativity, of their personal fulfillment, but specially of their audiences. I was starting to flinch at Pedro Almodóvar's filmography, fearing I could grow to a boiling point sooner than I expected, as I considered his last film, Broken Embraces (2006), and its particular meaning backdroped against its precedents. He has always crafted soap opera like: domestic melodramas, conflicted by extra-passionate and sexual characters that arched upon sensational reversals based on genre, family bonds and traumatic pasts. Plus the steaming Latino tempering. But somehow he summoned unique features to those boring, exaggerated, repetitive and lazy stories. Mainly, he distorted time to construct meaningful and propelling flashbacks, painted the colors flamboyantly and the characters quickly, and brought a balance between light and dark, but always pierce, comedy, surprising by politically flagging the feminist and the LGBT's plights on every work. He made the masterpiece Talk to Her (2002). But along with this one, I realized that the films I wanted to re-watch the most were Women on a verge of a nervous breakdown (1999) and Volver (2006). I realized these were my favorite Almodóvar films. And that goes because he took some chances there. By making something different, other than the emotional broken-down homossexual/transsexual, he created a beautiful-to-tears tale about love and communion between men and woman (Talk to Her), the most funny and sensitive portrait of the modern woman (Women on a verge), and a flaming dark comedy about death (Volver). And he never grew apart from his dearest themelines.

In The Skin I Live In, the Spanish helmer steered the wheel until he fell on quasi-brainwashed fresh new grounds. He went way beyond those three films and and never for one minute quit being himself. He now drained the colors only to sustain some reds and lustrous gold, painting soft bleak frames of a Japanese austerity and of a female finesse. The beige is the suit and the skins, the faces, the masks. It edges a curve shaped art-direction and the perfect body of Elena Anaya. The geometrics and the anatomical qualities of the visuals connect to the big plot element of the surgeries that the scary Banderas practices. Here, plastic-surgery is not a strategy, a convenience nor a science. It is an art. The art of creating. The first horror device is the outright voyeurism of the mansion: the evocative paintings on the walls; the camera on the locked room and its big-brother correspondent screens on the other rooms. Before the first major turn, the peeking exposes us (or the characters?) to a crude raping scene followed by an unruffled murder.

Elena's look and expression, which you can't say is it sexy or scared, strips you off of any ease. Bandera's sharpens it with the eyes of an insane man. He is, in fact, wickedly obsessed. Almodóvar signs another mark when he transports us to a completely flashbacked Act II. That's when you get the nastiest horror taste, with some darker sets, scenes and objects, a gruesome and freakingly unexpected midpoint and a coherent bridled bloodbath. It is payoff after payoff and it becomes more enveloping one after the another. The horror parts signal the most important reversals or enlightenment and the structure proves to be perfect as the thematic core hits us after sixty-minutes of suspense, instead of arriving as a casual turning point surprise.

He threw away almost all of the melodrama. Despite I cannot understand why we had to know the relationship between the "tiger" and Paredes, I can accept all of Banderas' motives. It is so plausible and human, within such a stylized world. And by never letting go the LGBT fight he doesn't perpetuate a mourning song nor a perverse whining for attention. Instead, he makes a very compelling frightening revenge movie where a message is eminent and undoubtedly blunt. Everything is masterfully tied up and organic, fr0m beats, to metaphors, to narrative rhymes. This is a story about the sickness of constraining others to live in a foreign skin and on a foreign person, told upon how seductive and deceiving the surfaces are, and about the strength one must endure to break out and stand up for himself, for his identity. One of my favorite films of the year and certainly one of my favorite Almodóvar films.

A Separation (2011), or why the Government won't solve the problems of Portuguese cinema

Nader and Simin: A Separation is one of the best 2011 films I've seen so far, written, directed and produced by Asghar Farhadi, 2009 winner of the Silver Bear with About Elly, among other accolades. In fact, he sort of repeated the play by conquering this year's Golden Bear, in two years attaching to his curriculum the two major awards from the Berlin Film Festival. One of the magnificent things about this work is what it is, the writing, the camera, the actors. Nader and Simin are discussing their divorce with the Judge from the usual Iranian documentary-fiction point of view, but soon is this scene turned into a mac guffin for something quite embracing and unexpected.

Within the domestic drama arises an intriguing question about who's telling the truth about an accident and before you know it, elements of thriller suspense pour from all sides, as tight and paused as lava. A low pace, tensely building a claustrophobic and uncomfortable atmosphere that won't even remind you of an actual police film or a traditional court drama. That is because the air and the senses aren't grounded on guns, cars chases or brilliant speeches, for that imprisonment is of moral and religious constraints and restrictions.

Abbas Kiarostami had to come to Europe with is latest Copie Conform (2010). Jafar Panahi was condemned to 20 years of impediment to make films by the Iranian justice and had to hide his This is Not a Film (2011) inside a traveling cake in order to get it to Cannes. An oppressive regime funded on equally oppressive religious dogmas whose condemnable actions go way beyond the seventh art and constantly erode the dignity and human rights of the citizens, specially women. Yet, this story makes its way to tell us about justice, moral and religious standards, protector love and, most of all, truth and its relativeness. Farhadi never takes sides, letting you be the Judge and bounce your verdict between several versions of what happened, somewhat Roshomon-like, despite here you end up knowing the truth and being emotionally hit by such. Maybe he had to do it that way in order to get passed the censorship but I'd bet he wanted the audience to delve into those simple actions and allegations and find a most complex life on the subjects, a more profound reflection about the country, Worldly-like. It is Iranian and middle-east culture all over, but you can't help connecting to all the characters (extraordinary performances), to this genuine, melodramatic-free tale of social and domestic life consequences. Compellingly universal.


Behind, alongside and on the front of what it is there's how it is. A Separation has been gathering awards all over the globe after its premiere in Berlin, is nominated for Best Foreign Film in the American Golden Globes and is the country's choice for the Academy's Best Foreign Film. It is only going to premiere in the United States on December 30 and has already collected more than $6.5 million, not counting with the Iranian box-office. With all the political and social instability, how is it possible ? How did it even get financed ? The film's budget is estimated to have been between the stupidly modest amount of $300 and $500 thousand. It has not one cent. of Governmental financing. No need to argue why this is an inspiring example and case-study for young filmmakers, a fact that should be known of the Portuguese film community and, most of all, of the Government's cultural-policy makers. Chiefly in the days when the Portuguese filmmakers keep whining and whining for the lack of state support for their films, because the Film and Audiovisual Institute has not announced the 2012 conditions yet, because they'll only receive €750 thousand this time, and so on and so forth.

We Have a Pope (2011)

A newly elected Pope that flees from the S. Peter's Basilica before waving his blessing to the believers and a psychoanalyst who becomes imprisoned inside it until the Holly Priest emerges on the balcony. Melville, the sincere and dense Michel Piccoli, is unexpectedly chosen on the third round and embodies all the doubts and fears the whole Concilium holds prior to the voting, going as far as making "acting" and "rehearsals" a metaphor for the Kingdom of God's best man. Professor Brezzi, the wit optimistic Nanni Moretti, is summoned to help him dealing with the shock but is hindered by the ultra-conservationism of the Cardinals, and stays to become the master of trivialization of the secrecy the priests ritually respect and because of which 100 million people suffer in anxiety. On the one side, the Father of the dogmas that cannot deal with them, withering into the nostalgia and existentialism of the common man, uncertain of what he has done and of what he has to do. On the other side, the bastion of science and progress, an enemy of the dogma, who not only is physically prisoner of the Conclave but who also is a prisoner of himself, his beliefs, his methods, just as his wife was. Two sides of the same coin, two layers of the human being, in an arrangement that, however the final discourse (change for the Church), transcends any religious beliefs. Picturing beautiful scenarios (amazing work at Cinecittá), lilting between fine detail and reactions and unexpected small set-pieces (dramatic: the theater; slapstick: the volleyball game), We Have a Pope is a whimsical but also profound essay on the Church as a system and on mankind as a species of enduring and underling beliefs.

LEFFEST'11: Carnage (2011)

Yasmina Reza stepped into the stage a few minutes before the film started and summarized the story of her friendship and collaboration with Roman Polanski, with whom she adapted her play God of Carnage into the script Carnage which we were about to watch. Right there I considered I would probably like her to come back in the end to approach her style, dialog, structure, characters, work. In the end, I only wanted her to step back in order to feel that she was completely aware of the huge applause that burst as soon as the ending credits started rolling.

Many reviewers wrote that this is no more than a play taken to the screen with a brilliant casting in order to allow a massive audience to see it. To some extent, I think so. It is in fact a play, more than a script, for everything comes out of the dialog and the mimics. The conflict travels through the words of each parent, the beats come with reactions to each line, the emotional shifts and the character arch are due to precise words and their continuous lines of interpretation and response.

Polanski doesn't create the destructive feeling of impotence from The Pianist, nor the claustrophobic nausea from Repulsion. But this is a work of huge sensibility on how to put the camera, on how to frame a face and a word and on how and where to insert a reaction. Roman had to engineer a square of people in a room and make use of the great distinction between cinema and theater (the scales - remember how Griffith departed from Mélies and Porter ?) to convey the proper emotional journey of the two couples. Sometimes the framing is slanted, sometimes the camera is shaking. A stage won't give you that. Anyway, what makes this a very good movie is the script and the actors. I laughed all the way long, at each thirty or sixty seconds. Incredibly witty, very believable, extraordinary performances (Winslet was gorgeous). An intelligent satire to middle class and to contemporary politically correctness of human relationships, which specially by the setting reminds us of The Exterminating Angel by Buñuel. The ending, with Desplat's hithereto absent notes, is genios and hilarious.

LEFFEST'11: The Ides of March (2011)

Although The Ides of March may have been sold, at some points, as the typical political drama starring George Clooney, foreseeing a much frayed genre melodramatic picture, you wouldn't have to dig too deep to find a glimpse of freshness. It all departed from the extraordinary poster, which portrayed with clearness the cynicism we would be invited to testify, but in a kind of witty and intelligent way. From there you'd peek at the rising star Ryan Gosling in a promising trailer performance and then at the old captains Philip Seymor Hoffman and Paul Giamatti in parts that could've fell by the hands of role-modeled actors like Clooney. Don't get me wrong, the acting director doesn't do a bad job. He is simply perfect for the character carved for him, and it's something we've seen him doing over and over, and not being great, he carries out well. On the other hand, Gosling draws a really great performance, the best I've watched him do (you will not forget the last shot from the film), backed up by the untouchables Seymor and Giamatti, who insistently make you want them to have more time up on the screen.

I think what makes me want to talk of the actors so much is the stylistic consistency I've tracked from Good Night and Good Luck to here. Yesterday I realized Clooney loves to work in approximate scales, namely the close up and the big close up. You're most of the times traveling on the dialogued contrivances of the plot while at the same time following a character-driven dimension of the film, from expression to expression, reaction to reaction. He does it in a pretty geometrical fashion, whether the shot is a rigorous 3/4 or a perfect profile picture, and just like he did in the film about Edward Murrow, he plays with the shadows on the faces to create a very nice suspense of what one may be thinking, feeling and hiding.

This being the first reason why I think the actors have such a particularly important figure here, now I'd like to add the well-written screenplay to the discussion. The Ides of March comprehends an intricate and in general well driven plot, which even ends up leaving you in the limb that divides the political drama and the political thriller. It opens with a very well paced twenty-minutes, with proper exposition, nicely economical, and finishes in a most fantastic third act. From the end of the first act until some point I'm not going to spoil you about, it may thank the cast for overcoming some common places and by making them yet enveloping. After this middle unexpected point (could've been much more melodramatic than it was), it is great to find that you're always wrong regarding what happens next, providing a successful way to handle the need to awake hypothesis in the mind of the audience. Although I believe in everything I've written so far, in the end I think what we will remember more intensely is not the plot or the twists, but the arch of Goslin's character, especially because of moments like the one in the kitchen, with Clooney's, when the writing (or the producing ?) surprises you by not making the latest the ultimate pretty adamant idealist politician, arising a good inner struggle in our protagonist (and avoiding an expected cliched development of Governor Morris). About the characters, I only have my doubts about the girl and her actions regarding her true situation - does it sound real, coherent ?

"I don't have a religion" and this is not the proper subtle film. Indeed, it works the desire to awake global consciousness, but I wouldn't call it moralist. It is very cynical that is, disenchanted, never letting the idealism by Morris win over the egoism of all the characters. All are good and bad, none is good nor bad. It sends you to the idea of unending circle (the arrival of the new girl) and of the weakness of mind of the engineers of the political campaigns and the political entrepreneurship of the United States, while the temporal track in which the film happens leaves you with the paradoxical assured incertainty of what had been going on till the movie began and what will be going on after it ends - a metaphor for what the worldwide citizens may feel about their society, for we're all assuredly uncertain that shit has been going on and will still be going on before and after we leave the room.