TIM WONG’s festival tally yielded a lot of good, and not quite enough great. He reflects on a year of elusive magic numbers at the Telecom New Zealand International Film Festivals.


GIVEN MY consumption of nearly seventy films this year – almost half of which were sampled pre-festival courtesy of DVD imports and low-fi distributor screeners – jaded thoughts were unavoidable. That’s as large a festival sortie as any, and I’ll be the first to admit that by the fortnight’s end, alertness was down and impotence had set in. I wasn’t the only one left half-cocked either, and while I can attribute part of that to viewing much in the discomfort of my own living room – and for certain films, that’s a real mood killer – the murmured reception of the festival hardcore seemed to be just quietly flaccid come closing night. This was not a limp festival by any means, and across the board, was consistently as good as any in recent memory. But it lacked an extra spark, one or two more exceptional films to send it over the edge. Despite promises made by the festival’s tagline, this was a picture not quite complete.

More than any other year though, its programmers – whether consciously or not – interwove their selections to supreme effect. On offer were at least three karaoke power ballads; a couple of references to Ali: Fear Eats the Soul; plenty of breakout musical performances; one too many revenge movies; repeat torture sequences, twice with fingernails and rusty pliers; medical drama several times over; two instances of rotoscoping; a handful of films about and/or within films; examples of World Cup spill over; strains of global warming, revolution and war; and numerous companion pieces, which were all the rage. These fluctuated from directorial double bills (Michel Gondry, House Party/The Science of Sleep; Michael Winterbottom, Road to Guantánamo/Tristram Shandy), to highlighted DVD special features (Matthew Barney: No Restraint, The Balanda and the Bark Canoes), to films that just went well together (Shortbus/This Film is Not Yet Rated, Fateless/KZ, The New World/Ten Canoes). Needless to say, navigating the programme went hand-in-hand with connecting the dots.


Few surprises in the festival’s hot-tickets, which all delivered accordingly with the exception of Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley: contentious enough in lieu of 2005’s abrasive opener Hidden, but rather stale in hindsight (tiresomely, another stowaway capsule on retroactive politics), and a film I would have preferred benched for Bruno Dumont’s Flanders had the Cannes silver medallist been forthcoming. Both The New World and The Science of Sleep made fitting centrepieces: the former the most seductive thing I’ve seen on the Embassy screen yet (Malick really does walk the plank on the romanticism though); the latter pretty much a Gondry show off, and an extension of his videos to the power of ten. Free from the shackles of Charlie Kaufman, what’s allowed to thrive is an adorable romance; liberated, Gondry plies the simplest of devices (a protagonist who can’t distinguish his dreams from reality), and is able to go to town on the Playschool aesthetic as a result. This is nothing we haven’t seen from the Frenchman before – all that cardboard and cellophane recycled from many a creative brainstorm – but it’s all so gleefully abandoned that you wonder why he persisted with the music format for so long. Plus I challenge any self-respecting dork not to have a crush on Charlotte Gainsbourg by the film’s end. Serge, I think I want to marry your daughter.

Good times were to be had at the likes of Dave Chappelle’s Block Party and Tristram Shandy, although the Cock & Bull Story unfairly overshadowed Mitsuo Yanagimachi’s excellent Who’s Camus Anyway?: fleet-footed, non-arbitrary, and with a more impulsive movie geekology, this proudly trumped Winterbottom’s mash-up in the film-within-a-film stakes. Likewise, Hong Sang-soo’s A Tale of Cinema deserved better – his most dexterous film to date – yet seemed to puzzle certain quarters, and wasn’t nearly as well received by the Korean’s existing fan base. If his habit for the zoom lens threw some, his sardonic character study of a depressed, unsuccessful filmmaker was perhaps a little too close to home for others. Meanwhile, the jury remained out on The Forsaken Land and The Wild Blue Yonder: the Sri Lankan Un Certain Regard winner an undeniable vision of cruel beauty encumbered by a sub-Blissfully Yours monkey on its back; the Werner Herzog film a complete anomaly in the ‘documentary’ section, nevertheless imbedded with a timely global ‘warning’ throughout its dreamy sci-fi premonition.

But stranger things have happened: the oddest screening a dead heat between Shortbus and Drawing Restraint 9. John Cameron Mitchell’s number was a largely positive experience, and the true anti-porn film of the festival, even with money shots and penetration to make use of. Sex and comedy have rarely coalesced so well – almost too well, given how quickly the film’s banner for explicit sex is subdued after its opening trio of squirting orgasms. The vast and diverse audience in attendance confirmed that this was a comedy about sex, not a sex film with comedy. And as a subversion of X-Rated tropes, it ostracised the trench coats, who’ve been loyal to the likes of Anatomy of Hell in the past, and who would’ve left the theatre feeling excluded, and not nearly as dirty they’d have hoped. Though they may have found a reprieve in Matthew Barney’s swollen member, the more pornographic film of the two. Honeymooners Barney and Björk charter a Japanese whaling vessel, engaging in ceremonial foreplay until they’re ready to mate. Unlike Shortbus, there’s nothing inverse about the love making here – the film builds like a textbook adult movie to the point where man and woman writhe in unison, slicing chunks of leg flesh off each other until two becomes one. If it sounds absurd, it is. Almost forgivable for its big screen lustre, and Björk’s sub-bass tribal soundtrack.


Speaking of pornography, the programme’s most reprehensible film belonged to Ant Timpson’s “That’s Incredible Cinema”, now into its third year as a rebel subsidiary. Princess, a ghastly revenge picture of grotesque sexual mores and unthinking violence, was something of a laughingstock for me, but very much Timpson’s style. His programming, while a shadow of the anarchic Incredibly Strange days, continues to dredge up black sheep: namely, The Sasquatch Dumping Gang, which in traditional NZIFF terms would have never made the cut. But no matter, as this was the funniest entry of the festival, a real throwback to the riotous showpieces of Wet Hot American Summer and Happiness of the Katakuris, and a film totally at one with its corny teen genre trappings. Then again, local skate doco No More Heroes, though likeable, failed to register as either incredible or strange, and stood out like a sore thumb: Timpson had clearly lived this film, while I had not. In the wake of former sensations Inside Deep Throat and Z Channel, where the seventies were excavated with a heady and salacious tang, it measured up as a little too quaint for my liking. But Mr. Filmhead nonetheless made good elsewhere, with Keane, Mind Game, and even A Bittersweet Life all making solid impressions; the Kim Jee-woon film the most satisfying of the revenge quartet because it had the least to say about anything. And props must go to the acquisition of The Host, a coup direct from Cannes, and Pulse, a long time coming. Considering that a Kiyoshi Kurosawa film has never featured in the Gosden oeuvre, Timpson’s bastard child of festivals certainly earned its keep.

Although elated a Kurosawa would finally screen down under, Pulse’s view-by-date had in fact elapsed five years. Indeed, films from the past threatened to seize control of proceedings with many from the present failing to properly ignite. The cinema of Maurice Pialat – ten features in total – formed the bulk of this year’s revival programme, and as a sustained retrospective was the finest we’ve seen since in yonks. Few will disagree that Mouth Agape out-Pialated the rest: an overwhelming portrait of illness with the emotional might of a tsunami, and the purest encapsulation of his untiring pursuit of clarity and truth. That same distillation could be witnessed in Naked Childhood, Graduate First, Van Gogh and To Our Loves, all terrific, with the Sandrine Bonnaire debut at once tender and explosive, and home to one of the great dinner party scenes. The retrospective’s special reserve came in the form of Jean Pierre-Melville’s cold but thrilling The Army of Shadows, one of those rarities you’d never get to see otherwise, and one you’d beat yourself up over if you didn’t.

While comforted by the old, the shock of the new was not to be ignored – The Death of Mr. Lazarescu a phenomenal discovery. As it has bowled over critics on the circuit already, high expectations were inbuilt, though nothing could quite prepare me for how terrifying it was. Running a gauntlet of emergency rooms, ambulance commutes, and unending examination, Christi Puiu’s film harnesses the trauma of hospital wards and their white-coated gatekeepers: all the more frightening here, given those with the medical know-how pose as alarmingly blasé. Contrary to my earlier prediction that Lazarescu would be “misunderstood” – the same fate that beset Kings & Queen – audiences responded more than appropriately to this remarkable film. Death also made for an inevitable endpoint in A Lion in the House, a four-hour marathon of human resilience so emotionally gruelling, tears weren’t so much as shed as they were grieved. Yet hope floats too: the film’s hospital locale a sanctuary to Lazarescu’s purgatory; a home not to doctors and nurses, but saints. As with Li Tao’s Waves – for its astonishing filmmaker-to-subject rapport, the documentary of the section – both affirmed the undying power of people on film. Elsewhere, non-fiction peddling the Middle Eastern conflict, sweatshop workers, and other capitalist machinations left me comparatively unmoved.


Leading the way ahead: Oxhide, wielding unknown pleasures almost lost between its slender widescreen frame; Police Beat, a curious and rhythmic low-hum in mystic blue and green tints; Host & Guest, stealth art with humour, Uzak, and conscientious objections – my wildcard of the festival; and the muted, down-to-earth meanderings of Mutual Appreciation, where passing time equates to reluctance in a brave new world. Time also flies in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Three Times; ensnared by the tentative promise of future, its characters live in the moment, taking baby steps forward without ever looking too far ahead. It’s no secret I’m infatuated with this and Hou’s previous two films, Café Lumiere and Millennium Mambo – each blossoming, light-infused prisms of restless youth – and find myself totally enamoured with Three Times’ first third, A Time for Love, one of a trio of acts sculpted in the self-image of Hou, each starring Chang Chen and the object of my affection, Shu Qi. Adverse to Mambo’s woozy electronica – the impetus of that film – Hou’s playlist coaxes a slow-burn memory and desire; illuminated by a pool hall lamp, Shu arranges balls, tidies the cue rack, and pockets a few rounds in between cigarette drags and yearning jukebox nostalgia. If this weren’t sensual enough, Hou’s camera (by way of Mark Ping-bin Lee) slowly teases the green felt, letting Shu drift flirtatiously in and out of frame. When not shooting interiors as steady, Ozu-like spaces, he can be caught ogling his female lead, dwelling on her face, and capturing precious, ephemeral moments that elude most filmmakers: a glance, a smile, an innocent laugh. A third viewing cemented this as the bee’s knees for me.

And as badly disguised favouritism goes, it proved impossible ruling out Linda Linda Linda from the mix: not the best film of the festival, but most definitely my favourite. The film’s charms are obvious, but disregarding its Blue Hearts revival, those Japanese schoolgirl uniforms, and the gawky charisma of Bae Doona for a moment, its real pleasures come housed in its slumberous high school existence. True to form, Yamashita placemats the entire film away from the classroom, where the extra curriculum (under the umbrella of the school’s annual festival) becomes a makeshift rehearsal for the outside world, beyond the teen cocoon they’ll eventually have to leave. Unfolding ostensibly near the end of the senior year, events take on a melancholic, bittersweet tinge of impending departure, and of having to grow up, suggested by the film’s final montage of vacant corridors and rain soaked quads, or the running commentary of a goofy student filmmaker and his narrator lamenting their hazy last days. Elsewhere, the film is truly euphoric, edging towards two crowning punk covers of ‘Linda Linda Linda’ and ‘An Endless Song’, where the four-piece known as Paranmaum rock out, and in spirit graduate. Yamashita also generates a sweet sense of girlhood, signified by potential first loves that come and go (but are cast aside in favour of each other), and of friendship, particularly in its embrace of Korean exchange student Son, who has spread her wings by film’s end (I think Waves’ Rose would identify with this). Not only a successful transplant of Yamashita’s deadpan style into a more accessible skin, but a great negotiation of genre.


As thrilled as I might’ve been, here were two films I knowingly elevated in my mind long before they hit our screens, each towing a fair amount of Asian bias, and an established fan club president in me. That they sit at the top of my list says a lot about TNZIFF06 on reflection. Never really blindsided, sucker-punched, or knocked senselessly about, the surprise left hook of last year’s The Intruder failed to materialise. Throughout, audiences were forewarned of palpable anger and impending doom; the Society for the Promotion of Community Standards stayed away; more people exited mid-screening than ever before, the height of rudeness, but an indication of something; and Bill Gosden announced he was off on sabbatical for twelve months or more. Despite much strong cinema, I remain deflated. How to recapture the magic? Do it all again next year.

See also:
» Post-Fest Wrap ‘06 #1: Dazed & Confused
» Post-Fest Wrap ‘06 #3: Film Will Eat Itself




POSTFEST