Something for everyone

The Other Side of Hope. Photo: supplied
The Other Side of Hope. Photo: supplied

The 41st New Zealand International Film Festival brings sounds and visions from around the world. Film reviewer Christine Powley looks at the offerings. 

Is it really possible to have too much of a good thing?

The organisers of the New Zealand International Film Festival don’t seem to think so and have added an extra week.

While that makes it harder for me, it is a bonanza for everyone else.

The festival runs from August 8 to 30.

A Fantastic Woman. Photo: supplied
A Fantastic Woman. Photo: supplied

DIRECTORS

A Fantastic Woman
A few festivals back, the life-affirming film Gloria was a big draw and Chilean writer/director Sebastian Lelio is back with another story of the trials of womanhood.

A Ghost Story
David Lowery is as much at home in a big studio movie (Pete’s Dragon) as an independent he knocked up himself. This is on the weird side of things, as Casey Affleck puts a sheet over his head and yet somehow still manages to convey every shade of meaning in his ghostly predicament.

The Beguiled
Sofia Coppola has won plenty of fans for her girl-centric films. In her latest film, based on the book of the same name by Thomas P. Cullinan, a wounded Union soldier is only of interest for the feelings he inspires in his female hosts. Stars Nicole Kidman and Kirsten Dunst as repressed Southern belles getting hot under the collar.

6 Days. Photo: supplied
6 Days. Photo: supplied

6 Days

Toa Fraser gave us a Maori-themed martial arts movie in 2014’s The Dead Lands, so he knows a thing or two about making an action film. Here he breaks down the event that saw the birth of the SAS - the 1980 siege of the Iranian embassy in London. No-one who saw the news footage of the SAS commandos swinging through the window of the embassy could ever forget it.

The Other Side of Hope
Finnish writer/director Aki Kaurismaki has a knack of making films that seem as depressing as anything you can imagine, but actually leave you feeling oddly cheerful in the end. His previous films - Le Havre, The Man Without a Past and Leningrad Cowboys Go America - were popular in Dunedin and this one is unlikely to be different.

Unrest
Jennifer Brea is probably the most unusual director in the line-up. She made this movie because she got sick and her doctors told her it was all in her head. Not one to take that lying down, Brea began filming her own medical procedures and reaching out to other suffers of whatever was ailing her. For anyone who remembers Tapanui flu, the anguish of sufferers and the incomprehension of those charged with their medical care is still topical.

Unrest. Photo: supplied
Unrest. Photo: supplied

ACTORS

Human Traces
Mark Mitchinson has stunned us in recent years with his electrifying performances in a range of true crime dramas. He is a commanding presence yet has that rare ability to melt into a character. I’m looking forward to seeing what he can do with a fictional character.

Let the Sunshine In
When serious director Claire Denis turns to romantic comedy it certainly helps that her star is Juliette Binoche, an actor who radiates empathy even when playing a villain. Binoche plays a divorcee looking for love who keeps meeting jerks.

Maudie
I think it is a reasonable rule of thumb to always go and see anything that has Sally Hawkins in it. The story of beloved Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis is no jaunty fairy tale, yet Hawkins makes Lewis cheerfully indomitable as her artistic aspirations make her oblivious to her less than helpful circumstances.

Maudie. Photo: supplied
Maudie. Photo: supplied

The Midwife
Another festival, another Catherine Deneuve film, and, as always, her acting makes it worth your while. Here she is ably assisted by Catherine Front, another French actress who can hold the screen. Their characters have history and do not necessarily like each other, which only adds to the journey they take us on.

The Party
When you have Kristin Scott Thomas, Timothy Spall, Emily Mortimer, Cillian Murphy and Patricia Clarkson all in one movie it is rather a surfeit of talent. Bruno Ganz and Cherry Jones round out the seven characters. Director Sally Potter anchors them in one location and lets the acting pyrotechnics commence.

The Party. Photo: supplied
The Party. Photo: supplied

20th Century Women
If you have a taste for dramas about the family life of affluent, liberal Californians then Annette Bening is your go to woman. Here the old dilemma of loving someone without necessarily understanding them is expertly mined for comedy and pathos.

Una
Translating the stage to the screen is notoriously difficult. This was originally a controversial play called Blackbird that has had audiences debating the rights and wrongs for more than a decade. Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn has never been afraid of playing unlikable and he is ably assisted here by Rooney Mara as his collaborator and/or victim.

Ethel and Ernest. Photo: supplied
Ethel and Ernest. Photo: supplied

SUBJECT

Ethel & Ernest
This is the most personal work of beloved children’s writer and illustrator Raymond Briggs: the story of his parents. All his other books, such as When the Wind Blows and Father Christmas, have become animated Christmas staples in Britain. Now this hand-drawn animation completes the set. The detailed minutiae of Ethel and Ernest’s lives will leave you with a lump in your throat for a generation whose values and certainties have all been swept away.

Frantz
In these four years of centenaries we are still processing what happened in those distant trenches in Europe. Set immediately after World War 1, the visit of a French soldier to a German soldier’s grave creates a moral panic. The reason he gives for his unusual behaviour reassures the alarmed family of the dead soldier, but is it true?

The Lost City of Z. Photo: supplied
The Lost City of Z. Photo: supplied

The Lost City of Z
Even today with the benefit of modern medicine and outdoor equipment, plunging into the Amazon jungle is no light undertaking. In 1925 Col. Percival Fawcett, an internationally famous explorer, had the world on tenterhooks waiting to learn the results of his latest mission to locate a lost city he had named Z. He and his party, which included his 20-year-old son, vanished into the jungle, never to be heard from again.

Summer 1993
A summer holiday spent in the Spanish countryside should be delightful, but if the holiday is actually your new reality there might be cause for complaint. As adults we comfort ourselves that a 6-year-old will quickly forget, but maybe they just learn to stop asking questions. Frida knows she is not being told the whole story of her change in circumstances.

Wind River
The Wind River Indian reservation in Wyoming is occupied by two tribes, the Eastern Shoshone and the Northern Arapaho. The Shoshone negotiated the reservation for themselves then had the Arapaho foisted on them when the white Americans broke a promise to give the Arapaho their own reservation. The two tribes control everything in a 50/50 partnership but the Arapaho far outnumber the Shoshone. So a film about a murder in the reservation has rich seams of resentment to explore.

Summer 1993. Photo: supplied
Summer 1993. Photo: supplied

KIWI CONNECTIONS

Bill Direen: A Memory of Others
For Flying Nun fans of a certain generation, Bill Direen and the Bilders will ring all sorts of bells. Direen has never liked to be one thing for too long, which means he has had a varied career as a musician, novelist, poet and theatre composer in different countries. In keeping with this ethos, the Bilders have been continuous except with different spellings and members. Instead of relying on archival footage, we follow Direen’s most recent national tour to gain some insight into one of New Zealand music’s great mavericks.

Kobi
Kobi Bosshard has been making elegant modern jewellery since 1966 and needs no introduction in Dunedin as he was one of the co-founders of Fluxus Contemporary Jewellery in 1983. Now living in non-retirement in Central Otago, this documentary was shot by his daughter Andrea, so has an insiders ease with it's subject.

Bill Direen: A Memory of Others. Photo: supplied
Bill Direen: A Memory of Others. Photo: supplied

My Year with Helen
For years after she left the stage, Helen Clark continued to poll highly in preferred PM surveys and she still casts a long shadow in New Zealand. Gaylene Preston started off to make a film about Clark's career at the United Nations and then found herself with something deeper when Clark announced she was going to have a tilt at the top job.

No Ordinary Shelia
Most recently Shelia Natusch's claim to fame has been her life-long habit of bathing in the sea every day. It is a very small component of her interesting and long life but of course cat nip for magazine television programmes. Owhiro Bay in Wellington Harbour is not the warmest but as she told Kim Hill: ``I can tell the difference between cold and bloody cold''. A wonderful look at the sort of New Zealander we all like to believe we are.

Bang! The Bert Berns Story. Photo: supplied
Bang! The Bert Berns Story. Photo: supplied

DOCUMENTARIES

Bang! The Bert Berns Story
Bert Berns, an alumni of the famous Brill Building, wrote songs that we all know, but he died young and so remains an insider's songwriter. Berns wrote, produced and had his own label - Bang records - and cast a far longer shadow on 1960s music than his name recognition would suggest.

Dries
In an industry that craves the flamboyant, Dries Van Noten is a rare beast: a fashion designer without a profile. He never advertises and runs his business from his home town of Antwerp. He does not believe in haute couture, and instead all his designs are ready-to-wear and available to buy on eBay. In his downtime he likes to make jam. He may be an anti-fashion fashion designer, but his clothes and accessories are divine.

The Farthest. Photo: supplied
The Farthest. Photo: supplied

The Farthest
The journey of the spaceship Voyager - going where no human has been before - is actually more riveting than any episode of Star Trek. It was launched 40 years ago and the technology used seems incredibly primitive to us now, but it worked and has been sending back invaluable information about our closest planets since late 1977.

House of Z
If Dries Van Noten has had a 30-year career as a designer without any hype, Zac Posen was a superstar at 21. It is easy to look at wonder-kids such as Posen and dismiss their success as a fluke, especially when they can not sustain the buzz, but Posen has hung on in there. No-one can stay the hot new thing forever, but Posen has responded to loosing his sizzle by putting his head down and keeping on working. As we all know, fashion is not for sissies.

The House of Z. Photo: supplied
The House of Z. Photo: supplied

Kedi
Cats may have recently taken over the internet, but they have long ruled on the streets of Istanbul. In an inspired move, Ceyda Torun decided to show us one of the world's great cities through the eyes of the cats that call it home.

Whiteley
Australia has produced one badly behaved genius painter, Brett Whiteley. In New Zealand we tend to ignore Australian culture (just as they ignore ours) and he is not that well known, but if you want to see a cautionary tale of a self-destructive genius, Whiteley easily out performs any of the usual European or American examples and the thing is he was very, very good.

Kedi. Photo: supplied
Kedi. Photo: supplied

JUST BECAUSE

Pop Aye
A road trip with an elephant as the side kick. Who could resist? Yes, hitting the road with your childhood elephant pal is one cure for the middle-aged blues we all wish we could take.

Swallows and Amazons
Forget the America's Cup, this is the true stuff of sailing. Yes, Arthur Ransome's famous sailing stories still stack up. On the principle that they don't make movies like this any more, you should round up the children and force-feed them some good old-fashioned fun. You will like it and, odds are, they will to.

Pop Aye. Photo: supplied
Pop Aye. Photo: supplied

 

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