Gangleri – filmreviews

when fish fall in love
Aziz has been in prison and travelling around for many years, but eventually he returns to his small hometown. He meets all his old friends, but initially avoids his wife. Of course she heard about her husbands return and fears that he will come to claim his possessions, including the house in which she meanwhile built a well-running restaurant. To me it isn’t entirely clear if Aziz changed his mind or that he had good intentions from the start, but he silently works for some surprises in the family.
It is said that “When Fish Fall In Love” is a film about food, but personally I don’t think that this plays a too big role. It is more like a simple story and a charming view of daily life in a small, Afghan town.
-3-

Here we have another Belgian film, but this time spoken in Western Flemish. An extravagant writer thinks it is an interesting experiment to play the drums in a band with three lowlife idiots. He uses his ‘adventures’ to write a book (which later became this film). What you get is “Anyway The Wind Blows”, squared. Antisocial, mouth-filthy morons having fun with metal/punk-like music, beating up eachother, “janets”, women and whoever is in their way. This results in short explosions of bloody violence in the beginning of the film, working towards a very violent end. There are some crazy findings in filming and in the story and if you understand what the actors are saying, the dialogues are very amusing. “Ex Drummer” appears to be a scum version of the earliers works of Tarantino (but bloodier) layered with filthy music and characters that make the youths of “Trainspotting” look like mother’s favourite. “Ex Drummer” is a step further than most comparable films. Is this a path filmmakers should continue? Well, I had a few good laughs here and there, but overall I don’t find it necessary that film directors are trying to find the boundaries of when people actually get shocked (and I think “Ex Drummer” will do the trick for many people).
-2.5-

Many years ago I fell into these series when they were broadcasted by the BBC. I believe that I joined with the second episode. I loved the elaborate stages and costumes, the weird atmosphere and characters and that fictional historical twist. Around that time I was in the UK and saw Gormenghast goodies of all kinds, so I asumed that it was a big thing over there and would probably become here too, so the series would most likely be picked up by a Dutch station. Not so! Some years in wait for a repeat on the BBC also proved to be vein, so for all these years I had these series in mind, hoping to run into them on DVD some time. Every once in a while I checked if the series were available on DVD, found out that “Gormenghast” is actually a pretty popular series of three books (that are available in Dutch), but no DVD. When in New York a couple of weeks ago, we were in the Virgin Megastore, I checked for Gormenghast and finally I found it! Not cheap, but who cares with this Dollar/Euro-rate? Seeing the series again after seven years, I remember quite a few things from them, but I also forgot a lot. Gormenghast remains a magnificent and expensive BBC production with outrageous visuals and a nice atmosphere, but it doesn’t blow me away like it did when I first saw it. I guess the many years of waiting have risen my expectations a bit too much. In any case, Gormenghast is about a castle complex with a crazy queen and a more even crazy staff leading it. One low-life boy works himself up on the ladder and starts to sabotage the system. This results in the most amusing scenes, oddest dialogues and weirdest situations, making Gormenghast a pleasure to watch. Four episodes of about an hour to enjoy (I thought there were more…). The DVDs are not too easy to get. You will have to order them from the US or UK or find some import shop. I haven’t found any non-English versions (with subtitles for example), but I’m glad that I was finally able to watch these series again.
For those who know the books I have to add that the series are based on only the first two books (from 1946 and 1950) of three (five were planned) and that Steerpike has been promoted to main character instead of Titus. From the Wikipedia summery of the books, it seems that the series are further based on them only losely.
-4-

The versatile Korean director Ki-Duk Kim (or Kim Ki-Duk) this times comes with an original and wonderfull drama. In his usual slow pace and minimalistic style, Ki-Duk shows us a story of a young, ‘good burglar’ who meets a young model who is suppressed by her husband. The burglar continues his ‘hobby’ together with the girl. When the couple is caught by the police, the woman is returned to her husband and the young man further develops certain abilities (which would give away too much if I mentioned them). The film is full of amusingly surprising moments, but is far from a comedy. The two main characters hardly speak and the film is in large parts completely silent. As you may expect from Ki-Duk, the shooting is beautiful. If you like the films of Ki-Duk, I am sure you will also enjoy “3 Iron”, as the international title goes.
-3.5-

I have a friend who should actually have a filmreviews site. He always has the weirdest films, most unknown titles and the rest a year earlier than most people. This time he brought me a Belgian film which premiered in France in 2005 and in most other countries in 2006. “Nuit Noire” (“dark night”) is a strange film of a director probably from French-speaking Belgium (the film is in French). At first sight it seems that the film goes back and forth the ‘real world’ and the mind of a man who thinks his sister died at a young age, but soon it becomes clear that the ‘real world’ isn’t quite normal either. The film is pretty dark and plays at night(s) and is very minimalistic in dialogue and sound. This creates a nice, pressing atmosphere which slowly works towards more a kind of mystery so it is not that strange to take David Lynch as comparison. The story (if there is any) gets more and more confusing and weird. Between the dark shots of the film, crystal clear close-ups of insects are put which are either symbolic or just have to add to the strange atmosphere. “Nuit Noire” turned out very well and I can recommend it to people who like dark thriller/horror movies and who do not need a straight and understandable story.
-4-

Earlier this year we were at the Fantasy Film Fest in Germany. Before the second film that we saw started, there was a trailer of “La Antena”. I immediately loved the weird black and white filming, strange atmosphere and odd music, so I decided that I had to see the film. It took me a while before I found out which film it was (I only remembered “Antena” and didn’t know the director) and a friend told me that the film would be on DVD in September. Last week I had to think about the film, started to search the web, noticed that the film actually premiered at the Fantasy Film Fest and opened the Rotterdam Film Festival and that it is available on DVD only in Germany. So that means a Spanish film with German subtitles or German overdub… Fortunately “La Antena” is mostly a silent film.
In fictitious sci-fi 1950′ies a nameless city is ruled by a mr. TV and his staff. They took away the peoples voices as one of the means of control, of course a few people start to rebel. “La Antena” brilliantly used a 50′ies way of filming and a 50′ies atmosphere together with great visual jokes mostly around the text that people speak now in text on the screen. The film reminds me a bit of “Sin City”, but also a bit of “Dark City” and sometimes a flinch of “Delikatessen” or “Les Triplettes De Belville”, but “La Antena” is very different from all of them. There is a beautiful high-contrast black and white stage, you will see the weirdest characters and costumes and nicely fitting music. There are two people in the film that can speak and of course I now had a Spanish and German film (subtitles for written spoken words), so you may have to wait for a version in English or your own language, but the film surely is a spectacle that you have to see sooner or later. Very original and well-done.
-4.5-