San Francisco International Film Festival
A film review by Daniel Robinson
Copyright 1993 Daniel Robinson
The SFIFF always offers an opportunity to see foreign movies that will not get a distribution deal and this year was no exception. Last year, a movie in Arabic, THE DOVE'S LOST NECKLACE, was my pick of the best of the unseen. Here are the eight movies in the order that I saw them.
This year's pick was WHERE IS THE FRIEND'S HOME, by Abbas Kiarostami. It is about a young boy trying to return a school book to a friend who lives in a neighboring village and the adventures he encounters. Shot in northern Iran with non-professional talent, the film was a wonderful look at life in Iran. There were the usual problems of subtitles that don't convey the full story (judging from the laughs elicited from the Iranians in the audience), but I liked it. The program guide set me up for a heavy existential piece about searching, and the film is not like that (I think...).
TITO AND ME, from Goran Markovic, was my favorite movie, and will probably get art house distribution in America. Set in Yugoslavia in 1954, this movie used great production values and acting to tell the story of a boy with an imaginary playmate, Josef Tito. The music was great (Joe Bob Briggs would describe it as xylophone-fu) and the acting was first-rate. There were many minor characters with five to ten lines that were still fully described. The program set this movie up as a dry political piece, but it was funny and heart-warming. If I get a chance, I will see this movie again. This is a great film, and deserves Oscar notice.
Christine Pascal's THE LITTLE PRINCE SAID was a major disappointment. The director, a former actress (Bernard Tavernier's THE CLOCKMAKER) didn't seem to understand story concepts and wanted to take a position. I prefer movies that make observations and don't take positions: if the observations are well founded, then there will be only one position to take. The basic story is about a divorced Swiss doctor-researcher whose daughter becomes deathly ill. He pulls her out of the hospital to try to tell her something about himself in the little time she has left. This was a muddled mess and I do not recommend it.
Werner Herzog's double bill was one of the highlights of the show. BELLS FROM THE DEEP is his look at Kuwait after the liberation. He shows people who suffered, and fires as they were being extinguished. The look of the piece was documentarian, but it was not cut that way and didn't try to be a documentary. It was as if an Impressionist painter painted real life scenes from any of the large scale tragedies that have occurred in this century. Herzog's choice of music was always deft. LESSONS OF DARKNESS is about religion and spirituality in Russia. Herzog went to Russia and got some glimpses of things that are not on the evening news. This movie also looks like a documentary, but is a wonderful collection of images and interviews that paint a great picture. I was amused by the realization that Christianity has been changed by the cultures that it encounters, rather than the other way around. FAITHHEALER is a subdialect of any language {:>) Werner Herzog was on hand for a question and answer session and I was impressed by his manner and attitude. I had never seen a Herzog movie before, but I intend to see more of them.
DARK SIDE OF THE HEART is a wonderful movie from Eliseo Subiela. This is my runner-up as best of festival. It is about a poet who consults in advertising in Buenos Aires. His real goal in life is to find a woman who "flies." The movie is about poetry, and I'm willing to bet that this movie will be remade in Hollywood with Alex Baldwin or someone like him in the lead role. It is blackly funny, but a little long. I will probably see this film again.
Yve Montand's last movie does not serve him well. The movie looks incomplete, like the director, Jean-Jacques Beineix (DIVA), didn't so much finish it as just stopped filming and started cutting. Character motivation, reasoned action and insight into the human condition are replaced by style, wistful looks and energetic lunges at ideas. I do not recommend it.
THE BLUE EYES OF YONTA from Flora Gomes is about life in Guinea-Bissau. It is an honorable attempt, but by contemporary standards, it misses badly. The plot centers around a young man who wants to meet a woman, Yonta. She is played well but the rest of the cast is rather wooden. This is only the third feature film to be released from Guinea-Bissau since it won its independence from Portugal in 1974. There were probably things that I didn't understand (when you are reading subtitles, it is hard to read between the lines) but I would not recommend this film.
There was an interesting story to be told in ABOUT LOVE, TOKYO by Mitsuo Yanagimachi. But he didn't tell it. He had lots of good imagery that could have set up a tragedy, but he didn't follow through on it. Neither did he redeem the protagonist. The story is about a Chinese student studying in Japan. Ho-Jun kills cattle in a slaughterhouse and studies at night. He has been seduced by the fast life of Tokyo and cheats at the pinball gambling houses. He has an affair with a Chinese woman who has lived in Japan all of her life. She was a more compelling character, but the story uses her to talk about Ho-Jun. A major theme in the movie is the discrimination by the Japanese against all foreigners. It is handled well, as observation and not a position, but it is not enough to carry the movie. This movie has many interesting scenes, but I won't see it again.
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