The Wedding Song: Grade A

A
The Wedding Song (2008)

Lizzie Brocheré, Olympe Borval, Najib Oudghiri; Writer-Director Karin Albou. (Arabic and French; subtitled).

The Nazis have occupied Tunisia in the early 1940’s and have begun rounding up the Jews. In Tunis, two young women have formed a deep friendship, one an Arab Muslim (Borval), the other a Sephardic Jew (Brochere). The middle class but economically stressed, French-speaking woman is betrothed to an older, wealthy physician, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Paris, but she hates him. The servant-class Arabic woman carries on a torrid sexual affair with her fiancé, but marriage is forbidden by her father until the young man gets a job, which he finally does, as a Nazi informer on the Jews. Can the girls’ friendship survive the stresses of matrimony, religion, social class, colonialism, and wartime occupation?

In addition to the compelling story of friendship, the movie is highly instructional about Tunisian Arabic and French colonial culture, especially with regard to the tribulations of female sexuality in both cultures. Naked females are starkly exposed on screen but the nudity is neither glamorized nor prurient. Rather it is used to make intimate and disturbing comments on the plight of the women and on the meaning of marriage in general.

Writing and directing (Albou) are both excellent in this zero-budget film, but the cinematography suffers from what is probably low budget technology, so many of the movie’s images are dark and muddy, to the point of being difficult to see. Nevertheless, individual scenes and sets are well-composed and photographed, when you can see them. Acting is very strong by all the players, and overall, the complex, intimate, and emotional story line will keep you glued.

Fraulein: Grade A

A

Fraulein (2006)
Mirjana Karanovic, Marija Skaricic; Director Andrea Staka. (Serbian & German, subtitled).

A young woman (Karanovic) who lived through the Bosnian war, makes her way from Sarajevo to Zurich to seek her fortune. She gets a job at a tiny restaurant/cafeteria run by an older woman(Skaricic) who migrated from Belgrade. The young, happy-go-lucky woman gradually softens the gruff and unemotional older one until they eventually form a close friendship. There is a tragic theme that brings sharp drama to the story, but basically it is about the friendship, set against the background of the wars that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia and the fact that technically, the two women were on opposing sides of one of the nastier struggles. But you don’t really have to know that history to appreciate how beautifully and lovingly this film portrays these characters and their friendship.

Let the Right One In: Grade B

B
Let the Right One In (2008)
Kåre Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson; Director Tomas Alfredson. (Swedish, Dubbed)

Oskar is a 12 year old, bullied terribly at school. He meets Eli, a 12 year old girl who moves into his apartment building. They strike up a friendship, but soon it becomes apparent that she is a vampire. Oskar is horrified but being so alone, he likes her anyway. She likes him well enough to avoid biting him, and she encourages him to strike back at the boys who bully him. These two themes are explored separately, the bullying and the vampire life, in a charming relationship story that seems quite ordinary except for the awkward detail that Eli must kill someone every day. This counts as a horror film for sure -- plenty of blood -- but the story is so gentle in its own way that it takes you by surprise. The final scene was obviously an afterthought designed to avoid ending on a completely down note, but it is not satisfactory. Too bad, because 20 minutes could easily have been pulled out of the rest to allow for a properly developed ending. Another complaint is that the voice actors were terrible. Animations can get good voice actors, why are they not available for dubbing? Maybe it was a cost constraint. Fortunately, this is a quiet film with not much dialog, so the bad dubbing is tolerable. I would much rather have enjoyed the Swedish language and read subtitles. Despite some obvious logical loopholes in the story, this is a well-made and surprisingly enjoyable movie.

The Lucky Ones: Grade A

A
The Lucky Ones (2008)
Tim Robbins, Rachel McAdams, Michael Peña; Co-writer & Director Neil Burger

Very strong acting distinguishes this story of three wounded army soldiers returning from the Gulf. Thrown together by a cancelled airline flight, they rent a van and embark on a long road trip. Robbins’ home is visited first but he learns that his wife wants a divorce and his son needs $20K in three weeks for Stanford tuition. McAdams’ expectations are also dashed as she discovers that her dead army boyfriend was a complete fraud. Peña’s character re-thinks his commitment to the army. Along the way, sharing their laughter and tears, the three become friends. We also get several snapshots of how civilian America views its soldiers. The movie conveys a sense of the characters’ simple, uncomplicated, but earnest attitudes and their fish out of water feeling in the “real” (non-military) world. That’s good writing. McAdams is dazzling in this performance, and Robbins is as good as I’ve ever seen him. The film is reminiscent in structure to Heroes, a 1977 film with Henry Winkler as a returning Viet Nam vet, but Lucky Ones lacks the poignancy. The wounds are not severe and are treated with humor. The characters are disoriented and socially inept, but not shunned. This is a lightweight film lacking pathos or message, but the great acting makes it a winner.

4 months, 3 weeks, and 2 days: Grade A

A
4 months, 3 weeks, and 2 days (2007) (Romanian, Subtitled)
Anamaria Marinca, Laura Vasiliu. Writer-director Cristian Mungiu.

In Romania, just before the fall of communism, a college student (Vasiliu), needs an illegal abortion. Her roommate and friend (Marinca) helps her through the whole process, which is completed successfully. At one level then, it is a story of friendship, in which the implicit understanding of what it means to be a woman, especially in this environment, pulls the women through almost unimaginable stress.

Is it a pro-choice statement? An abortion does take place, but the extremely bleak environment, the unblinking anti-sentimentalism of the cinematography, emotionally honest dialog, and difficult consequences of the story make me wonder if it is. It could as well be an anti-abortion message. I’d say it is neutral on that dichotomy. I don’t think that was the issue being addressed.

It is also about Romania under communism. The bare winter trees and slushy roads describe the cultural climate, while the scenes of making hotel reservations convey the stifling bureaucracy perfectly, and we feel the background of paranoia that permeates everybody’s life. The movie succeeds on that level as well.

But at it’s core, the story focuses on the conflict between the roommate’s (or any woman’s) socially defined personality, and the biological facticity of reproduction. For these women, conception is a biological punishment for the social act of sex, but in a horrific scene, we also see that the social value of sex can be used to regain control of the body. This conflict between a woman’s biology and personality is the driver of the story, all the more remarkable for it having been written and directed by a man.

Brilliant cinematography, directing, acting, and editing tell the story as well as the dialog. The roommate has dinner with her boyfriend’s parents, where there is joking, singing, story-telling, and wine, in a warm, brightly-lit atmosphere of educated people surrounded by books and laughter. In the next scene, in a stark hotel, the quack doctor negotiates his price. Then it is the harsh reality of the procedure. We are, with the protagonist, plunged from the socially constructed world of the dinner party, ten stories down a chute to the biological foundation of reproduction, with such suddenness that we are disoriented, as are the two women. In the final scene, the women sip water in the hotel restaurant, waiting for the only food left on the late-night menu. They can hardly speak to each other, they are so stunned by what has happened. The waiter brings the food, what was served at the concurrent wedding party: cooked brains, liver, and marrow, a healthy, high protein meal, no doubt. The dish is pushed aside without a word.

Half Nelson: Grade A

A
Half Nelson (2006).
Ryan Gosling, Shareeka Epps, Anthony Mackie. Co-writer, Director: Ryan Fleck.
A young junior high school teacher (Gosling) is a drug addict who means well by the kids but can’t focus on the curriculum. In fact, it’s not believable that he could hold down that job at all, although we do see him become increasingly disturbed as the movie progresses. He strikes up a special friendship with a 13-year old student (Epps) whose brother is in prison, her single mom desperately trying to make ends meet, and drug dealer family friend (Mackie) providing financial support. The drug dealer and the teacher know each other and vie to protect the child. The drug dealer is the more sympathetic character, his occupation just a value-neutral "job," with no connection to the destruction of the teacher's life, portrayed as a lifestyle choice. That complex theme could have been developed a lot more. The friendship between teacher and student is tender and mostly unspoken, and not at all sexual, like Lost in Translation. The acting is fantastically good, especially by Epps and Gosling. The down side includes long, pointless musical interludes, and mind-numbing domestic scenes such as feeding the cat, making the bed. When we see Gosling's parental family wickedly satirized in a domestic scene, that defines his character, but there is no need to show mindless domestic chores. The audience has more imagination than that. If I see one more person brushing his or her teeth, I am going to spit. A classroom theme highlighting social intolerance and government malfeasance in American history takes up a lot of screen time for no purpose. This movie was developed from a short but they puffed too much air into it. The great characterizations and fine acting carry the day however.