PIFF 35 Preview: MONSIUER LAZHAR

Philippe Faladeau's Monsieur Lazhar travels well-trodden cinematic ground; it's easily filed into the inspirational teacher genre, of which there are already some fairly successful models out there (To Sir, with Love and Stand and Deliver come to mind).  So it's nice to see that what could have been yet another by-the-numbers entry is, in fact, an intelligent and humanistic look at a group of students and the adults mentoring them through the healing process in the wake of a tragic event.

Bachir Lazhar (Mohamed Fellag) is a man who has recently immigrated to Quebec from his Algerian homeland.  He shows up at the elementary school where most of the action of the film takes place, seeking to replace a teacher who has recently died.  While the circumstances behind Bachir's move are complicated, they make him the ideal candidate for dealing with a classroom packed full of children who have recently experienced their own loss.

While Fellag is wonderful in the film, exuding both deep sorrow and empathy, often in the same moment, the children's performances are amazingly nuanced as well.  This is especially true of the work of Sophie Nélisse and Émilien Néron, both of whom fearlessly project a complexity beyond their years.

Monsiuer Lazhar is an excellent film with an emotional core that has the potential to resonate for all ages (however, younger children might have difficulty with the themes or the fact that the film is subtitled).  In many ways, it reminded me of Thomas McCarthy's The Visitor, another film that tackles difficult subject matter in an optimistic fashion without attempting to declaw the more troubling emotional aspects at play.

Monsiuer Lazhar will screen for the public at the Lake Twin Cinema today (Feb. 11th) at 3pm and at the Lloyd Mall 6 on Feb. 13th at 6:15pm  A final screening will occur on Feb. 15th at Pioneer Place 5 at 8:45pm.

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PIFF 35 Preview: CAFÉ DE FLORE

When writing during PIFF 34 about Le Quattro Volte (The Four Times), I noted that every year there's at least one film at the festival that seems to come out of nowhere, surprising me to no end and causing me to wonder how it escaped being caught up in the festival-circuit hype machine.  This year, Café de Flore is that film.

Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée (C.R.A.Z.Y., The Young Victoria), this French-Canadian import had me aware that I was watching a truly great film in the first fifteen minutes, something that always makes me nervous, worrying about the path that the rest of film will take, hoping that the delicate balance struck by the filmmakers doesn't dissipate before the end credits crawl across the screen.

Café de Flore did not disappoint.  Vallée is unapologetic in his attempts to wow the audience with the sheer audacity of how he intends to tell the story.  His technique is an invigorating mixture that pulls from familiar scenarios; a man who regrets where his choices have led him, while pushing the tale with a structure that offers unique thrills throughout.

At the beginning of the film, we're introduced to three characters: Antoine (Kevin Parent), Jacqueline (Vanessa Paradis) and Carole (Hélène Florent).  Thanks to the fact that dreams are heavily involved in the story; one of the three characters is a somnambulist, it's initially unclear if all of the characters are real, due to the disruptive nature of the quick shifts between sleeping and waking states and Vallée's clever use of differing color palettes.  This ambiguity, coursing through the whole of the picture, heightens the storytelling beyond the base realities of the lives portrayed.  The result is a film that dares the audience to care; a drama with all the dressings of a tense thriller.

I'll be very surprised if I am still not raving about Café de Flore at the end of the year.  So far, I've seen twenty-four of the features programmed for this year's festival.  Of that number, Café de Flore easily rests in the top three overall.

Café de Flore will screen for the public at the Lake Twin Cinema on Feb. 11th at 5:30pm and at the Lloyd Mall 5 on Feb. 13th at 6pm  A final screening will occur on Feb. 20th at the Cinema 21 at 7:30pm.

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Portland International Film Festival preview day 9: LA PIVELLINA and THE WHISTLEBLOWER

Walking into the Whitsell Auditorium on Wednesday, memories of Uncle Boonmee still dancing in my head, I really had no preconceived notions about either La Pivellina or The Whistleblower, other than thinking that the synopsis of the second film resembled Norma Rae or Silkwood meets The Constant Gardener.

Hailing from Austria but set in Italy, Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel's La Pivellina revolves around the discovery of an abandoned child on a playground swing by Patty, an aging woman with a shocking red dye job.  Patty lives in a rundown trailer park with her husband, Walter.  She brings the child home, a decision that distresses Walter, as he believes that their class position will only add to any judgment that might be brought against them if the child were discovered by others.

This is a film that is, despite what I wrote above, absolutely not plot driven.  It meanders along in a way that resembles life, even if the decision made by Patty doesn't necessarily register as something that most folks would find themselves doing. 
The image quality of the digital transfer was problematic during Thursday's screening.  The imdb.com page for the film claims that the original source material was 16mm.  What I saw at the Whitsell often looked like a consumer grade camcorder image that was falling apart.  Severely underexposed passages with jagged diagonal lines were common, as were moments where objects with strongly vertical or horizontal lines seemed to bounce in and out of the image.  These rough spots were contrasted with incredibly beautiful moments of well-lit cinematography, making it apparent that the theater's equipment wasn't to blame for the marred sections of the film.

Given that very little happens in the movie, it was a shame that these image problems occurred, since it made it difficult to become fully engaged with the meandering flow of the film.  I might have liked it more if there hadn't been so many moments where I was busy being critical about the overall look of it.

La Pivellina plays at Broadway Theater on Feb. 14th at 6:15pm, Feb. 16th at 9:15pm and Feb. 17th at 8:45pm.

Larysa Kondracki's debut feature, The Whistleblower, is based on the true story of Kathryn Bolkovac, a Nebraska police officer who takes on a position as a U.N. peacekeeping officer in post-war Bosnia.  After aiding the first successful prosecution of a domestic abuse case in the country, Kathryn is given the opportunity to work as a gender relations official.  It's not long before she discovers that what appears to be a local prostitution is actually a highly organized human trafficking ring, protected by the very people who are supposed to be aiding the Bosnian people.

The film is extremely heavy-handed in its storytelling.  Every bit of dramatic tension that can be wrung out of the story is exploited beyond its limits.  Each moment in the film seems to boldly exclaim its own significance, begging the audience to be moved by even the most minute of details.  Yes, producers and filmmakers of The Whistleblower we do realize that sex trafficking is bad.  We (and, yeah, I'm kind of speaking for the audience here) also think that a professional police officer from a major city probably would have heard of human trafficking before stumbling upon it.  We also think that Rachel Weisz and David Strathairn deserve better than the thankless roles they struggle to flesh out in this film.

The Whistleblower plays at Cinemagic on Feb. 18th at 6:15pm.  There are additional screenings at the Broadway Theater on Feb. 20th at 12pm and at Cinemagic on Feb. 21st at 5pm.

Portland International Film Festival Preview day 2: THE FIRST BEAUTIFUL THING & INCENDIES

Tuesday's press screenings paired two features involving adult children dwelling on the past history of their mothers.  Despite sharing interests in maternal themes, the films were strikingly different in tone.

The first film of the day came in the form of a sweet Italian melodrama.  Paolo Virzi's The First Beautiful Thing is a highly formal romp through the distant and messy past of a now much older and recently hospitalized woman.  Her son Bruno, a once promising poet turned teacher, has fallen into depression, drugs and drink, blaming his failures on painful memories of an unhappy childhood.  When the news of his mother's hospitalization brings him to her hospital bedside, he is forced to confront both the circumstances of his upbringing and the present state of his mother's health.
 

Refreshingly, the film doesn't try to exonerate the mother for either her poor parenting skills or the endless parade of unscrupulous men in whose beds she fell.  Bruno's remembrances of what he and his sister had to endure while in their mother's care are treated as objective renderings of their living conditions at the time.  These memories review and inspire some rather hilarious sequences in both the past and the present, such as when Bruno confesses being overcome by a feeling of emptiness and then attempts to fill it by ransacking his mother's home for any available intoxicants.

Overall, though, the film felt like a rather rote, by-the-numbers production, simply giving us what we've come to expect from this lighthearted genre of Italian film.  Everything is exceptionally pretty but none of the characterizations carry much weight--and that goes double for the predictable manner in which the story unfolds.  I left this early screening feeling more catered to than challenged, which is quite the opposite of why I usually go to the movies.  Still, I'm positive that many people will be amply satisfied by this meal.

The First Beautiful Thing plays at 8:45pm on Feb. 11th at the Broadway Theater.  There will be additional showings at the Broadway on Feb. 13th at 7:30pm and Feb. 16th at 6pm.

Next up was Incendies from Canada, the Academy Award-nominated film by director Denis Villeneuve (Maelstrom).

When Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azabal) dies, she leaves behind a will that stipulates that her children can only mark her grave if they carry out one last task for their mother's sake.  The mission involves the delivery of two sealed envelopes--one to a brother they never knew existed and another to the father they assumed was dead--in present day Lebanon.  The story deftly intertwines this journey with a harrowing retelling of their mother's life during the civil war of the 1970s

This is big, (capital "I") important storytelling that often teeters towards excess, without fully tumbling into the abyss of the sensationalistic.  Given what the final 15 minutes of the film hold for the viewer, this is quite a feat indeed.

Incendies plays at 8:30pm on Feb. 11th at the Whitsell Auditorium.  There will be an additional showing at the Broadway Theater at 4:15pm on Feb. 13th.