With thoughts on Broken Embraces, A Christman Tale, Disgrace, Jerichow, In the Loop and Paper Soldier, STEVE GARDEN continues his post-mortem of the New Zealand International Film Festival, separating the stellar from the middle-of-the-road.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: a comedy of depression.

FOR A FILM that’s remarkably depressing, You, the Living is rather funny. A dark, colourless vision of modern life, its idiosyncratic touches mean the film never feels as alienating as its subject matter. With its rich, intricate shots and understated deadpan symbolism, the film manages to elevate its subject matter into a deeply moving howl. And while it’s a little too loose in terms of its narrative, there’s no denying its idiosyncratic touch is quite something.

Premiering locally at this year’s New Zealand International Film Festival and returning to cinemas this Thursday, The Strength of Water marks Kiwi filmmaker Armagan Ballantyne’s feature debut. She takes BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM behind the scenes.

A violent quartet from the 2009 Melbourne International Film Festival. By AMY BROWN.

LIFE ISN’T always a barrel of laughs; in fact, “if you’re happy for more than ten minutes in a row, you must be an idiot”. This is a line from Baltasar Kormákur’s Icelandic dramedy, White Night Wedding, but it could apply to any of these four films from the Melbourne International Film Festival this year. Patriarchal Korean family life, adolescence in an Essex housing estate, disastrous marriage on a small Icelandic island, and a bomb disarmament squad in Iraq, provide completely different perspectives on the violence and disappointment that inevitably comes with some human interaction.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: round one of shorts by the doyenne of the French New Wave.

AGNÈS VARDA’s films are so disarming because they are at once playful and philosophical without the two strands frustrating the other. Following on from screenings of The Beaches of Agnès and Cléo 5 to 7 at the New Zealand International Film Festival, Monday’s Film Society programme played a collection of her shorts where the two elements of her films were again evident. Even if some of her political films have dated somewhat, her love of her characters and her idiosyncratic approach to filming ‘reality’ remain as compelling as her best feature-length work.

In Unmade Beds, director Alexis Dos Santos has reworked London as a bohemian rhapsody. He talks to BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM about making the film.

Love and listlessness in bohemian London. By JACOB POWELL.

RECREATING the spirit of those peripatetic uni days, Unmade Beds reveals its story amidst the aimless existence of urban 20-somethings brought together for brief spell in a sprawling London squat. Sporting a consistent tenor of muted cool, Alexis Dos Santos’s appealing new feature charts afresh the age old quest for love, connection, and meaning.

Director of Dig! and now We Live in Public – a short history of the internet through the exploits of dotcom millionaire and mad prophet Josh Harris – Ondi Timoner has made a habit of documenting egos and self-destruction. She talks to BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM.

Eight films that lead from the front at this year’s festival. By ALEXANDER BISLEY.

I’M NOT touching Antichrist with a ten-foot taiaha! I can’t curb my enthusiasm for A Christmas Tale, 35 Shots of Rum and Tyson. Five further stellar films make up my festival forward pack for 2009.

The animator of ‘Ghost in the Shell’ looks to the skies. By CALEB STARRENBURG.

The Sky Crawlers, the latest feature from master Japanese animator Oshi Mamoru, is based on Mori Hiroshi’s sci-fi novel of the same name. This is an important point, as the film seems to assume you’ve already read the book. At least, I had no idea what was going on for about two-thirds of the film. And by the time the pieces started falling into place, I struggled to engage.

A carte blanche concert film. By BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM.

All Tomorrow’s Parties essentially employs a well-known musical figure (like Sonic Youth, Mogwai, Dirty 3, Steve Albini) to run a music festival. They are given carte blanche to pick bands that they like or admire, and a three-day festival takes place in the English seaside. And the line-ups are usually fantastic. So anyone making a documentary on this festival would have a ridiculous amount of great music to wade through. But the problem this largely disappointing film has is, paradoxically, that there’s too much music in the documentary, and not enough music.

In the likes of Bluebeard, Wendy and Lucy, Jeanne Dielman and 35 Shots of Rum, women filmmakers provided much of the poetry at this year’s New Zealand International Film Festival, writes STEVE GARDEN.

Steven Soderbergh pulls off a cinematic coup. By NINA FOWLER.

Che is an achingly beautiful blend of biography, adventure-odyssey and deep social commentary, with a touch of blockbuster thrown in for good measure. This master work is not only remarkable for sheer scale – two revolutions, two parts, four hours – but because director Steven Soderbergh has managed to successfully bind these disparate components together.

Michael Haneke frames the rise of German fascism. By BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM.

MICHAEL HANEKE’s films work like bed bugs, hidden away, causing discomfort months later from when they were first introduced. His latest, deeply unsettling film was a last-minute addition to the New Zealand International Film Festival programme, and all I can say is Thank God for that. And while it certainly felt odd walking into a multiplex – a necessary detour as one the first countries to see the film since it won the Palme d’Or – this austere examination of the roots of German fascism looks anything but dour with its sumptuous digital projection. Haneke’s films are so emotionally glacial that they can alienate viewers, however those who share Haneke’s pessimism will find plenty to savour. And those already attuned to Haneke’s worldview will add The White Ribbon to the burgeoning list of great films by this Austrian master, that haunt well after they have been seen.

The outrageous espionage of OSS 117 returns. By CALEB STARRENBURG.

HE’S FRANCE’s top agent. His name is Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, better known as OSS 117, a spy whose prominent jawbone is matched only by his bloated ego. And he’s the absurd secret weapon that makes this spy-thriller parody and delicious satire of Gallic arrogance so ridiculously entertaining. OSS 117: Lost in Rio is the second film by director Michel Hazanavicius that lift its protagonist from a series of 1950s pulp novels.

Filmmaker Megan Doneman tells BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM about documenting the story of India’s most controversial woman, Kiran Bedi, and overcoming her own adversity in the six-year making of Yes Madam, Sir.

Toe-to-toe with an ex-con, hitman, and would-be martial artist. By JOE SHEPPARD.

THIS YEAR’s New Zealand International Film festival saw (at least) three very different takes on that classic genre noir – one old-school, one surreal, and one farcical. First up are the mean streets and violent prison life of 1960s Sofia, in the bleak and hard-nosed Zift. The title refers to the thick, dark resin that convicted diamond thief Moth chews, but it’s also used for holding down pavestones and it’s apparently slang for shit in Bulgarian.

Life amidst Kazakhstan's inhospitable Hunger Steppe. By CALEB STARRENBURG.

LITTLE-BY-LITTLE the simple charms of Tulpan spring up and overwhelm you. Gently comic and endearing, the debut feature-film from Kazakhstani director Sergey Dvortsevoy says more about family dynamics than the bloated vanity of Frenchman Arnaud Desplechin’s A Christmas Tale.

Lars von Trier’s preposterous new film. By BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM.

I’M NOT A PARENT, but I assume that when a kid starts throwing a tantrum, the worst thing to do is to indulge them. Yet this is what I’m going to do with Lars von Trier, precisely the reaction that he’s after with his latest film Antichrist. I’m not sure if I’ll ever come across a sillier movie, and my only hope is that this deeply un-profound film isn’t retrospectively passed off as some sort of classic by some person who should know better. But the film did teach me some things. A children’s toy entitled “grief” is meant to be symbolic of “grief”. That’s symbolism. And the bit where the child dies at the moment that his mother has an orgasm. That’s being deep. And the bit where the couple go to a place called Eden, and have written on a piece of paper “Satan” “nature” “me”. That’s being subtle. And/or spiritual. Getting audiences to see this film because they are lured on the promise of seeing graphic, non-narrative-advancing imagery. That’s being calculated (i.e. the filmic equivalent of a Nickelback track). I think the Wayans Brothers are going to do a shot for shot remake of Antichrist and call it Scary Movie 5.

Lumière’s Art Editors on three portraits. By THOMASIN SLEIGH and ANDY PALMER.

THERE’s nothing more amusing that a Very Serious Art Historian. Very Serious Art Historians love Very Serious Artists. So, because this film deals with the work of Picasso and Braque – two Very Serious Artists par excellence – a handful of these kind of art historians get screen time. There is nothing they like better than a good discussion about influence and method. In the case of Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies, it is a discussion around the influence of early cinema on the early cubist works of Picasso and Braque. And they get into it with great gusto.

Jim Jarmusch’s wandering thriller. By JACOB POWELL.

OUR SCREENING of Jim Jarmusch’s latest feature, The Limits of Control, began with some unexpected drama: the first reel of the film (about 15-20 minutes) had a problem with the audio-picture sync which saw the film’s soundtrack a full three minutes or more out from the video track! The film certainly lived up to its title – one quarter of the audience mutinied, another quarter claimed this was how the film was supposed to be, while the rest sat silent, slightly bemused. A test of the audience’s ‘limits of control’, the fact that I honestly couldn’t tell at the time whether this was intentional or not might give you some insight into the kind of cinematic experience you will be in for if you get to a screening of this intriguing picture.