Gangleri – filmreviews

Jensen is connected to almost any Danish film production as a writer. He himself made only a few films so far and “The Green Butchers” is one of them. This film is a bit of a lighter version of the masterpiece “Delicatessen“. The latter is funnier, but also a lot darker. “The Green Butchers” is a quite typical Danish comedy with an absurdistic ‘realistic’ story. Two weird characters open a butchery accidentally finding a product that people line up for. Not great, but not a boring watch either.

The second film of this Icelandic director that I review. Just as “Noi Albenoi” a film about people having problems living in the modern world. Daniel manages to maintain with having only 7 Danish Kroner income in four years time, while his friend Morfar (Nicholas Bro, the bad guy in “Mørke“) tries to maintain a regular job. When Daniel falls in love with Franc(esca) life gets more complicated. Just as in his debut film Kári has a minimalistic style in filming and in story and uses subtle and quite typical Scandinavian humour with a magnifying glass on modern living. The film starts quite humorously, but becomes more melancholic towards the end. An arthouse film, undoubtely, not brilliant, but pretty good, especially if you like Scandinavian films.

“Look Both Ways” is a film about death, a film about the modern obsession with death according to the box. Further on the box is a comparison with “Magnolia” and a remark that inspite of the subject, but film is relatively light. I do not agree with the last remark, but I do see the comparison with “Magnolia”. In fact, if you remember that film, you will remember its pressing and melancholic atmosphere. “Look Both Ways” has a similar atmosphere. Watt’s first ‘normal film’ is -in a way- a film about the banalities of life, you get to see ordinary people with ordinary problems, but just as in “Magnolia”, not in the best phase of their lives. Normal filming is mixed with animations (Watt’s usual style) and rapid photo montages, which is a bit too much in the beginning, but well done and very fitting. “Look Both Ways” is quite a good film, not as good as “Magnolia”, but still; a bit the same, a bit different.

The yup Ah Jie has lost his touch on the stockmarket and lives as a pot-smoking hermit in his confiscated appartment. He falls in love with the phone-voice of Chyi, mistaking her for the beautiful Shin who he starts to stalk and have fantasies about. “Help Me Eros” is a very nice Taiwanese arthouse film with a critical view on modern society, showing girls with strange professions and weird Tai habbits and contains a couple of relatively explicit and surrealistic erotic scenes. There is humour and drama, good characters and funny situations. Not bad at all!

Hm, my first Icelandic film? In a remote village in the inhabitable landscape of Iceland we follow the young man Nói who has no clue what he wants with his life. The film has the (typical?) Scandinavian sense of absurdity and weird humour and is amusing in its simplicity.

So in Singapore they also make typical arthouse films? “Be With Me” is made mostly by people with English first names and is mostly spoken in English. The setup is quite typical nowadays: cut-up stories mixed up. The stories are about love and solitude. Not bad, but nothing special either. Quite melancholic too by the way.

So yesterday we were in the city of Den Bosch and there appeared to be a new (?) arthouse with theatre, film and a restaurant. A nice place in an old chocolate factory. The two filmrooms play a bit too typical arthouse dramas, so when choosing which film to see, we saw an a bit too typical arthouse drama. As the title suggests, the film is about Coco (Gabrielle) Chanel (played by Audrey Tatou). We see the early life and how Chanel became the fashion-diva everybody knows her for. A nice look into the decadent lives of the rich people around the turn to the 20th century and how a young woman, annoyed by the frills in fashion starts to design more minimalistic cloths. A bit of a ladies film of course, not boring, but (here I go again), a bit a too typical arthouse drama.

“Estômago” (which seems to mean nothing more than “stomach”) is a Brazilian film, spoken in the strange language Portugese. This highly acclaimed arthouse film is about food and eating mostly. Nonato is discovered as a great cook by accident and we alternally see two parts of his life. This is actually all there is to say about the story. The film is quite nice. There is nice subtle and sometimes rather dark humour. The characters are nicely found and worked out, the acting is good and the subject original.

If you are looking for some experimental filmmaking, this might be something for you. In 1967 Jørgen Leth made the experimental film “Det Perfekte Menneske” (“The Perfect Human”). Leth was the teacher of Lars von Trier and however they came to this experiment (a bet or something, this does not become clear), Von Trier has Leth remake his film, but with “Five Obstructions”. Obviously Von Trier tries to see if he can get Leth to leave his usual system of making films. There are some pretty bizare demands and Leth does his utmost to make a short film with them to the liking of Von Trier. What you get in this film is discussions between Von Trier and Leth, making offs, the films themselves and of course the original film. I did not like the talks between Von Trier en Leth much, but the films that Leth came with are mostly quite nice to watch. In style they varry from cut-up images to animation.

I expected another kind of film after reading the box, more scifi or horror or something, but “4″ actually reminds me more of “Taxidermia“. A grim look into the strange daily life in a remote area with some nice humour, absurd elements that are hardly worked out, cut-up stories and shifting main characters and the weirdest people and habbits. This all is pretty much magnified resulting in sometimes touching scenes, sometimes in grim scenes. If you like the first two stories of “Taxidemia” I think you will also like “4″.