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Dramas and Genre Films Rule at MIFF 2010
All over for another year! We round up the highs and lows at this year's Melbourne International Film Festival.
Perhaps it was the shadow of last year's festival - which showed new work from filmmaking renegades like Lars Von Trier, Michael Haneke and Quentin Tarantino - but the Melbourne International Film Festival offered less food-for-thought this year, instead focusing on showcasing well-made, intelligent dramas, comedies and genre work from around the globe.
Granted, the producers of Son of Babylon asked MIFF Executive Director Richard Moore to withdraw their film from competition after learning of MIFF's affiliation with the Israeli Embassy (last year, Looking for Eric was pulled from competition for the very same reasons), and there were controversial new works like Gasper Noé‘s chilling, but ludicrous Enter the Void, Michael Winterbottom's violent psychopath drama The Killer Inside Me and Chris Morris's brave farce Four Lions, a sometimes-gut-busting comedy about rubbish jihad terrorists.
But MIFF 2010 concentrated on textured, well-written dramas and comedies that addressed modern social concerns with a great deal of intelligence and warmth, giving perspective into the shifting states of family and social structures.
Nicole Holofcener's Please Give was a modest, but highly appealing comedy that thoughtfully addressed issues like liberal guilt and infidelity. With Catherine Keener giving one of her very best performances as a well-to-do New Yorker, Holofcener's film is an extremely warm, attentive study of modern New Yorkers and their desire for change and recognition.
The Kids Are All Right, too, is a highly commercial, crowd-pleasing prospect from an independent filmmaker. Funny, warm and emotionally satisfying, High Art director Lisa Cholodenko has crafted an-almost joyous American comedy that - like the sunny, ‘70s work of American filmmakers Hal Ashby and Robert Altman - has fun with the fluctuating, unpredictable nature of the family structure. It also has five terrific performances, especially Annette Bening's exceptional depiction of a dry, analytical woman who is slowly seeing her family slip away from her.
An excellent, but underappreciated exploration of the idea of family and longing was Norwegian filmmaker Hans Petter Moland's imaginative, unexpectedly witty comedy A Somewhat Gentle Man. A terrific star vehicle for its on-form star Stellan Skarsgård, Moland and writer Kim Fupz Aakeson's wistful tale of an ex-con's attempts to assimilate back into Swedish society is the most unexpected comedy since Steven Soderbergh's The Informant. Tood Solondz's Life During Wartime and Francis Ford Coppola's Tetro also offered smart, sombre takes on family and forgiveness.
Broader comedies were also on offer. World's Greatest Dad and, to a greater degree, I Love You Phillip Morris offered belly laughs in their extremely confronting depictions of modern sexuality. In particular, the lewd, explicit Morris was a triumph of black comedy and surprisingly sweet romantic sentiment. Bad Santa writers Glenn Ficarra and John Requa's directorial debut mines a lot of the strange, sweet, but filthy sentiment of their previous screenplay, giving Jim Carrey - as a randy gay con-man - one of his best roles in years. This gay romantic comedy is part arch Rock Hudson/Doris Day date movie and part lewd sex comedy, and - like their previous film - it's a strange, involving, weirdly moving portrayal of unexpected love.
Intelligent genre films were also on display, offering first-time filmmakers the opportunity to present their skill in building tightly-directed action set-pieces with extreme tension and drama. Far more impressive than Chuan Lu's unengaging City of Life and Death - a Chinese film about the 1937 sacking and rape of Nanking by the Japanese - debut director Samuel Maoz's claustrophobic thriller, Lebanon was a terrifying, semi-autobiographical glimpse into the First Lebanon War, very much deserving the Golden Lion at the 2009 Venice Film Festival.
The Disappearance of Alice Creed - a feature debut from short film director J Blakeson - was a skilled, white-knuckle three-hander that used its growing unease and sense of paranoia for more overt genre thrills. With an unaffected, propulsive screenplay from its writer/director, Alice Creed takes a relatively straightforward plot - ex-cons kidnap spoilt twenty-something for ransom - and exerts maximum mileage from this simple idea, upturning expectations with its bold twists and economy (the worst film previewed at the Festival, The Hunter, exploited genre - the revenge thriller - for a terminally earnest portrait of corruption, positing the entire spectrum of human behaviour into ludicrous extremes).
Roman Polanski's Hitchcockian The Ghost Writer was a good, albeit more blackly comic, exploration of paranoia, applying a Tony Blair-like figure's fall from grace as the basis for a quality thriller, touching on issues of war crimes and rendition for some, at-times, truly wild speculation about the fallen leader (Blair's fall from grace is also developed more overtly in The Special Relationship, the new Michael Sheen/Peter Morgan collaboration that addresses Blair's increasingly troubled relationship with Bill Clinton). Similarly, Olivier Assayas' five-hour telemovie, Carlos was a sharp, impressive fictionalised docu-drama about infamous terrorist Carlos the Jackal, disfavouring heavy political discourse (Munich), character-orientated classicism (The Good Shepherd) or shaky cam-style verite (Che, Paul Greengrass' Bourne films) for a clean storytelling approach, deploying minimalist characterisation and skills for intelligent precision.
The Messenger was a superb directorial debut for I'm Not There writer Oren Moverman, who elicits excellent, restrained turns from Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson and the fine British actor Samantha Morton (whose good directorial debut, telemovie The Unloved, was also presented at the Festival). A subtle, nuanced exploration of the contemporary soldier, their struggles to integrate into Western society and the loved ones left behind, Moverman touches on this delicate material with a deftness and astuteness lacking in other Middle East war dramas like Jim Sheridan's Brothers.
The best film of MIFF 2010 was neither war drama nor social comedy, but the small, low-budget thriller Winter's Bone (pictured). Earning the top prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival, Debra Granik's intense, neo-realistic follow-up to her acclaimed debut Down to the Bone was interested more in the deep, complicated bonds of family and small-town American communities than standard thriller conventions, painting a spare, unflinchingly portrait of the Ozarks. Offering a star-turn for its young lead Jennifer Lawrence, this is a grim, but hopeful exploration of the Mid-West, crafting a portrait of America that is bleak, harsh and, ultimately, human and moving.