Ferdy on Films, etc.

One Punch, Twice the Damage: The Double Bill Blogathon

The Films THE MAN Doesn’t Want You to See

Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971)/Baadasssss! (2003)
Directors: Melvin Van Peebles/Mario Van Peebles

By Marilyn Ferdinand

Right after we finished viewing Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, the hubby’s brother turned to us and said, “That’s the weirdest movie I’ve ever seen." Obviously, the brother doesn’t spend enough time with us. If he did, he’d recognize this film for what it is—the almost prototypical fever dream of the independent filmmaker.

One interesting thing about Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song is that it came on the heels of a hit film Melvin Van Peebles made for Columbia Pictures called Watermelon Man, in which a white bigot wakes up one day to discover that he’s turned into Godfrey Cambridge. It’s not clear what drove this black director off the course of mainstream success, but his next effort, largely financed with his own money, was nothing short of revolutionary for the film industry. Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song launched the genre known as blaxploitation (can anyone explain that term to me?), which brought a slew of heroic black enforcers and sexy black women to the screen for the mass consumption of a large, previously ignored black audience.

The explanation for Melvin's change of direction is suggested in Baadasssss!, son Mario's docudrama about the making of Sweet Sweetback. There was a lot of political foment in the world, and several heroes of the black community in America—Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, JFK, RFK, Medgar Evers—had been slaughtered. The black community was up in arms and looking for a life in the United States on their own terms. For Melvin Van Pebbles (the "Van" is an affectation to signal his self-proclaimed stature in America), the decision to make Sweet Sweetback was both a political statement and a shrewd move to cash in on an audience he knew was not being served. His move paid off; Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song made $15 million dollars, the highest-grossing independent film in its release year.

So what is it that black audiences wanted in 1971-72? The story of Sweetback starts when he was taken off the streets of Los Angeles by the kind-hearted residents of a house of prostitution. We watch as they fawn over the raggedy Sweetback and feed him full to bursting. The brothel becomes Sweetback's home and the place where he gets his sexually charged name when a prostitute initiates the young man (Mario Van Peebles) and uses the term for him as they have sex.

Fast-forward to the adult Sweetback (Melvin Van Peebles) who is a regular part of the live sex show that turns a tidy profit for his employer Beetle (Simon Chuckster). Two white cops to whom Beetle pays protection come by and ask to borrow one of his "boys" for the evening to show headquarters they're working on a case. Beetle complains that he's shorthanded: "George is sick." The cops wait to get an eyeful of the sex show, then borrow Sweetback.

The cops arrest a young Black Panther named Mu-Mu (Hubert Scales) and drive to a place where they can rough him up. Sweetback is handcuffed, for appearances, to one of the cops. One of them apologizes to him and unlocks one of the cuffs so he doesn't have to be part of the beating. Sweetback watches silently and makes a life-changing decision. He wraps his hand in the open cuff and uses it like brass knuckles to beat the cops senseless and help Mu-Mu escape. From that moment on, Sweetback is a man on the run who is dedicated to protecting Mu-Mu, who he sees as the future of the black community.

The search for Sweetback by the police gives Van Peebles a chance to showcase the faces of ordinary members of the black community in all their variety as the police canvass them for information. One particularly brutal part of this search has the cops burst in on Beetle as he plays happily with two kittens and permanently deafen him by firing a service revolver next to each of his ears. This man who unself-consciously sat on the toilet in a shower cap as he spoke to Sweetback is the first of several affecting sacrifices in the film.

Van Peebles packs the movie with plenty of Sweetback sex, which if we are to judge from the worker compensation claim the director filed for getting gonorrhea from one of the girls, was not simulated. One sex scene in which Sweetback, captured by a white motorcycle gang, is forced to have sex with the female head of the gang is just plain bizarre. The gang pretend to hide Sweetback and Mu-Mu but actually call the police. Sweetback is forced to kill the cops; a black motorcyclist played by John Amos happens by and carries Mu-Mu to safety as Sweetback heads through the California desert toward Mexico.

This is a good-looking film, despite the 16mm stock that Van Peebles was forced to use to keep costs down. The film has a driving pace set by quick cuts, chase sequences, and frame insets set to a funky score written and performed by the budding group Earth, Wind, and Fire. Van Peebles wrote several primitive-sounding songs as well, and the line "You bled my Momma--You bled my Poppa--But you won't bleed me" sounds again and again as Sweetback eludes capture.

At the beginning, Van Peebles projects a title card that says "Dedicated to all the Brothers and Sisters who have had enough of the Man." The famous title card at the end promising, "A Baad Asssss Nigger Is Coming Back to Collect Some Dues" speaks for all of the murdered and abused black characters in the film. In a way, I suppose he also meant it to avenge all of the maid, shoeshine boy, and Oreo characters Hollywood forced on its black actors and actresses before Melvin Van Peebles changed everything.

By the time Mario Van Peebles was ready to tell the story of Sweet Sweetback, the lot of the independent filmmaker had changed. Indies were a hot commodity in the industry, with the Sundance Fim Festival a high-profile event for both independent filmmakers and studio honchos looking for the next sensation. Mario Van Peebles was a bonafide star among black actors, and his father was (and is) revered in some circles for paving the way for black filmmakers. Baadasssss!, therefore, boasts first-rate production values, known performers, and advances in storytelling technique that reflect its purer pedigree.

A telling quote from the movie about sums up the trials Baadasssss! depicts. Mario Van Peebles, playing his father Melvin, says to Priscilla (the wonderful Joy Bryant), his production secretary and an actress who puts on mini-auditions every time she comes near him, "Is this something negative, Priscilla? Because if it's negative, I can't even deal with it right now. I'm a broke, pissed-off nigger from Chicago, and I'm down to my last cigar."

Of course, Melvin doesn't start out that way. Baadasssss! shows Melvin holed up in a room for several weeks struggling to give shape to his vision. In one particularly inspired moment, Melvin steps through a mirror into a sepia-toned black neighborhood, looking at all the faces and focusing on a young boy bouncing on a trampoline while wearing angel wings. This boy will become his guardian angel, singing "You bled my Momma..." at various points to keep Melvin on track. The moment also will inspire him to call the black community the stars of his film.

Melvin's early attempts at financing are set up by a hippie named Bill Harris (Rainn Wilson). All are disasters, particularly one in which Melvin visits the Malibu home of someone identified only as Bert who, as camped to the hilt by Adam West, comes on to Melvin by disrobing at poolside and suggesting they take a swim together. Eventually, Melvin decides to use his own money, which changes the production considerably.

Cutting the shooting schedule to under 20 days, Melvin also gets around union rules by fooling the production shop stewards into thinking he is shooting a porn movie. The union considers such films beneath them. Melvin goes so far as to hire a porn producer named Clyde Houston (David Alan Grier) to act as his assistant director.

The most controversial part of the shooting is Sweetback losing his virginity. Melvin's girlfriend Sandra (Nia Long) can't think he's serious about using Mario in the scene. Melvin is so driven by his ambition for the film, as well as alienated from his son who normally lives with his mother, that he sees nothing wrong with it. He even instructs Nora (Les Miller), the make-up supervisor, to cut Mario's afro and shave patches in it to make it look as though Sweetback has ringworm. Throughout the course of the film, the growing closeness between Melvin and Mario becomes a secondary, but important story and one that makes Baadasssss! distinctively the work of its director.

The film has some great comic moments. When Big T (Terry Crews), a meat smoker of prodigious size, is told he will be reporting to Bob Maxwell (Robert Peters), a short, white sound engineer, he goes all black power on Melvin. The physical contrast of this odd couple makes for several great sight gags; in the end, the pair go on to work together in more films. In fact, Mario documents a great moment in moviemaking by recounting the crew Melvin put together, a full 50 percent of which was composed of minority workers.

The most dramatic moment of Baadasssss! comes when Melvin learns from his distribution company, a no-name outfit called Cinemation, that because of its X rating, the film will open in only two theatres, one in Atlanta and one in Detroit. Melvin decides he has to make a pitch to the theatre owners, twin brothers named Goldberg, both beautifully played by Len Lesser. This blogathon concerns double bills, but in Goldberg's urban theaters, triple bills were the norm because the public demanded the most bang for its dollar. Melvin convinces the Goldbergs to run Sweet Sweetback alone. If the film doesn't draw an audience, he will buy them both suits from the tailor of their choice.

The first showing brings in one man wearing a beret and dark glasses, as well as an older married couple. The man walks out; then the couple, scandalized by the motorcycle gang sex scene, leave as well. The Goldbergs are already preparing to change the marquee, when a group of 23 come up to the ticket booth. "We don't issue refunds," the nervous ticket taker says. "We want to buy tickets," says the leader, the same Black Panther who was in the theatre earlier. Soon the theatre fills to capacity, and every showing has people lined up around the block. The emotional involvement of the audience in Sweetback's escape is breathtakingly captured. And the Goldbergs buy Melvin a new suit.

Baadasssss! is a richly detailed, funny, and important document of a maverick filmmaking experience. Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song is a thoroughly independent affair that bursts with energy and urgency. They make a great double bill. If you want to try for a triple bill like the Goldbergs used to do, add the documentary How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It) for Melvin in all his sassy splendor. l

One Punch, Twice the Damage: The Double Bill Blogathon

Four Hours of Hard Labor You’ll Love!

Matewan (1987)/Harlan County U.S.A. (1976)
Directors: John Sayles/Barbara Kopple

By Marilyn Ferdinand

Gautam Valluri’s Double Bill Blogathon is a wonderful idea, particularly for the film geek community. I don’t know how many times I wished I had my own theatre so that I could show the double bills I’ve paired in my head. I have to admit, however, that like my taste in films, my double bills are more offroad than not.

The typical double bill would feature horror films, actioners/thrillers, or weepy women’s pictures—but not for me. I feel fairly confident that the pairing I am suggesting is the only labor movement double bill in history. Interestingly, these films have been linked far longer than my consideration here. The director of Matewan, John Sayles, instructed his cast and crew to view Barbara Kopple’s Oscar-winning documentary Harlan County U.S.A. to gain an understanding of the struggle to certify union locals in the coal-mining industry. It’s clear that although the Matewan Massacre occurred in 1920, and Harlan County U.S.A. documents a Kentucky coal strike that took place in the early 1970s, nothing much had changed for American coal miners.

Matewan, like Harlan County U.S.A., opens in a coal mine. The rigors of mining with shovel, pick axe, and bare hands are captured in the moody cinematography of Haskell Wexler, who garnered an Oscar nomination for his work on this film. Switch to a train and a passenger we come to learn is Joe Kenehan (Chris Cooper), an organizer for the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). He has been asked to come to Mingo County, West Virginia, to organize the miners working for the Stone Mountain Mining Company, referred to throughout the film as “The Company."

The train stops outside of town, and a group of black miners brought in by The Company to work in place of the striking miners are told to get off. A large and older miner called “Few Clothes" Johnson (James Earl Jones) asks why they aren’t being taken into town. The Company guards tell him to shut up. At that moment, a group of striking miners run out of the woods and attack the scabs with rocks, sticks, and fists. This is a taste of what they can expect if they try to help break the strike.

When the train pulls into Matewan, Kenehan gets off and is greeted by Bridey Mae Tolliver (Nancy Mette), a young woman with not much to do but watch the trains come into town since her husband was killed in a mine collapse. Joe says he’s looking for the boarding house. Bridey Mae says it's run by Elma Radnor (Mary McDonnell) a real “sourpuss." As Joe takes his leave, he says, “See you later." Bridey Mae sighs as she watches him walk away and says, “I sure hope so!"

Elma, also a coal miner’s widow, runs the Company-owned boarding house where she lives with her mother (Ida Williams) and son Danny (Will Oldham), a teenage miner and budding preacher. Although worried about trouble, she rents Joe a room, and soon they become friends and confidantes. The arrangement doesn’t last long, however, when two gun thugs named Hickey (Kevin Tighe) and Griggs (Gordon Clapp) from The Company’s security force, Baldwin-Felts, muscle their way into the boarding house and work by any means necessary to break the strike.

For me, Hickey and Griggs are the nastiest bullies I’ve ever seen in a feature film. They seem like an exaggeration until you meet Basil Collins, a real strikebreaker captured in all his malice in Harlan County U.S.A. They call Bridey Mae “mountain trash" to her face, pull a gun on Danny when he won’t pass the peas at the dinner table, tell Elma she’d be peddling poontang on the side of the road if The Company hadn’t let her run the boarding house, laugh openly in church as Danny preaches a story that reveals a lie they've told to divide the miners, and go out on shooting raids against the miners in the otherworldly mountain mists Wexler captures with his camera.

The white miners are loathe to welcome into the union the black miners and Italian immigrants brought in earlier to work the mines. Joe admonishes them: “You want to be treated like men? You want to be treated fair? Well, you ain’t men to the coal company, you’re equipment. They'll use you till you wear out or you break down or you’re buried alive under a slate fall and then they'll get a new one, and they don't care what color it is or where it comes from." The world to Joe is made up of workers and exploiters—“yes, I guess I am a Red," he admits one tense night to “Few Clothes"—and workers need to follow a nonviolent path to equality. Preaching cool heads in the county where the Hatfields and the McCoys feuded long and hard is not an easy sell. In the end, gunpowder smokes the sky during the shootout between the Baldwin-Felts gun thugs and Matewan sheriff Sid Hatfield (David Strathairn), mayor Cabell Testerman (Josh Mostel), and striking miners.

Many bloody confrontations between miners and hired thugs would take place over the years, right up to and including the Harlan County strike of 1972. However, it was not Barbara Kopple’s original intention to cover this strike. She originally proposed to focus on the upstart campaign of Arnold Miller and Miners for Democracy, who were attempting to oust UMWA president Tony Boyle after Boyle had been implicated in the murder of his rival for the presidency, Joseph Yablonski, Yablonski’s wife Margaret, and their 25-year-old daughter Charlotte. Kopple, however, went to Harlan County and began a labor of love that would last nearly four years.

Kopple opens the film inside the Brookside mine to capture the difficult and dangerous life of a miner. She also recounts a 1968 explosion and cave-in at the nearby Mannington (Farmington) mine that trapped 78 miners. After a few days’ attempts at rescue, the coal company decided to call off the efforts and seal the mine. The Brookside strike was not over wages, but rather over safety. Rather than negotiate with the striking miners, Duke Power called in the scabs, some of whom were rapists and armed robbers taken from prison specifically to work in the mines.

During the initial 16-month strike, Kopple and her crew lived with the miners, got up before dawn to hit the picket lines, sat in on their meetings, and followed them to Wall Street where they attempted to encourage investors to divest themselves of Duke Power stock. An interesting exchange between one of the strikers and a NYC beat cop was recorded in which the cop told the miner that his “good money" was $2 less an hour than the cop was paid for fairly routine work. The cop was equally incredulous that the miners got no dental coverage.

He might have been further surprised to see the living conditions of the miners. The company-owned housing had no running water or indoor toilet facilities. Kopple shows a girl who has grown too large for the washtub getting a very uncomfortable bath from her mother. The housing in Matewan was positively luxurious by comparison, even the tent city Sayles created for the miners who were thrown out of Company housing. During a press conference, Duke Power official Carl Horn explained to reporters that he had been trying to upgrade “our people. And make no mistake, they are OUR people" to trailer living. The tone is unmistakably like that of a master talking about his slaves. One gets the same impression from Matewan, when the black workers are brought to the mine and told that the cost of everything, including their transportation to Matewan, uniforms, and mining supplies, would be deducted from their pay and that they would be paid in scrip redeemable only at The Company store.

As the strike continues, gun thugs headed by Basil Collins start intimidating the miners and their women, openly holding pistols in their pockets. Eventually, a machine gun is stationed at the usual picket location. One predawn morning, the gun thugs rush the camera crew. A light shines into Collins' truck, and he is clearly seen pointing his pistol directly at the camera. Kopple’s voice can be heard yelling, “Don’t shoot." She will still face a beating before the film wraps.

So many fly-on-the-wall moments occur in Harlan County U.S.A.: the fearless Lois Scott inspiring the Brookside wives and yelling “I’m not afraid of you" at Collins, a smuggled microphone and shooting through a cracked door of the county courthouse where a judge is accused of doling out justice only in favor of Duke Power, the inspiring appearance by Florence Reece to sing the song she wrote, “Which Side Are You On?" Matewan mimicks the spontaneous music-making Kopple’s film portrays and includes the haunting songs and voice of Hazel Dickens, a huge contributor of atmosphere and lyrics about the lives of coal miners in both films.

Unions have come under fire and almost been destroyed by the rightist policies of the past 25 years. Given the fatal mining disasters that have occurred in the last century in West Virginia alone, it’s high time to treat yourself to this double feature of Matewan and Harlan County U.S.A. to rediscover what’s good and necessary about unionism. l

2007 Chicago International Film Festival

Sweet Dreams Are Made of This

By Marilyn Ferdinand

This is the time when I'm supposed to wrap up this year's Chicago International Film Festival. I'm supposed to tell you what I liked, what I didn't, who won what, what personal appearances impressed me, and what it all means.

Well, if you want to see what I liked and didn't like, read the reviews linked below. They'll also tell you about the guests—a palty number of them again this year—and what I learned from them. You can find the list of winners here.

So that leaves me with what it all means. Damned if I know. I know that something that has been in existence for 43 years ought to mean something, but like the great edifices of the ancient world—the Coliseum in Rome, the Pyramids of Egypt—perhaps the CIFF just endures. The films on display through the years have heralded the arrival of some new talents in the film industry who have gone on to great careers or faded to black rather ignominiously. I'm not sure it's the job of a film festival to cultivate the filmmakers of tomorrow, but if it were, that's what “it" all would mean.

Rather, I tend to think film festivals feed a mania certain of us have to be told stories and shown pictures in the dark. Not just any stories and pictures, mind you. If that's all we wanted, we'd head to the cineplexes and enjoy what the mainstream of moviegoers enjoy. No, we want something we haven't seen before. We're curious explorers. We're avaricious collectors of rarities. We're looking for that untapped oil well.

We're film geeks.

So I'll just say that my belly is more than full, and I'm long overdue for a deep, drawn-out nap. My dreams will be of my own creation rather than those of the artists and lesser lights alike who have been burning my retinas for the past two weeks. When I've had my rest, I'm sure I'll be back for more.

In the meantime, sweet dreams to you all, no matter where they come from. l

Previous CIFF coverage:

Yella: A mysterious, atmospheric tale of a troubled woman. (Germany)

Atagoal: Cat’s Magical Forest: A family-friendly anime about a fun-loving fat cat and the battle to save the world. (Japan)

4 Elements: A documentary that shows amazing footage of four dangerous occupations that seek to conquer earth, air, fire, and water. (The Netherlands)

Tehilim: A wife and her two sons struggle to understand the sudden disappearance of the man of the house and reconcile their grief and guilt with the Torah's teachings. (Israel/France)

Her Wild Oat: Newly discovered and restored silent comedy starring the magical Colleen Moore as a lunch wagon owner with a yen for the good life—and handsome leading man Larry Kent. (United States)

Hallam Foe: A voyeur with a mommy complex finds true love through a pair of binoculars. (United Kingdom)

Lucky Miles: Desert survival meets a comedy of errors for illegal immigrants and the reservists sent to round them up in the desert of Western Australia. (Australia)

4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days: A harrowing tale of how an illegal abortion brings out all-too-human frailties in a woman, her best friend, and her lover. Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. (Romania)

You, the Living: A visually wacky satire on Swedish society. (Sweden)

Wolfsbergen: A privileged but (what else?) dysfunctional family acts out when its patriarch decides to kill himself. (The Netherlands)

Becky Sharp: Thackeray’s feisty social climber gets a definitive portrayal by Miriam Hopkins in this, the first three-strip Technicolor film ever made. (United States)

My Brother’s Wedding: A 30-year-old man is forced to come of age in this gem by independent African American filmmaker Charles Burnett. (United States)

I Served the King of England: Sumptuous memory film about a little waiter who could, living through the decadence and insanity of Europe in the 20th century. (Czech Republic/Slovakia)

Faro: Goddess of the Waters: Mystery fans and explorers of traditional cultures should love this tale of an educated villager who returns to his tribe and the angry goddess who seems to resent his presence. (Mali/France/Canada/Burkina Faso/Germany)

2007 Chicago International Film Festival

Faro: Goddess of the Waters (Faro: La Reine des Eaux, 2007)
Director: Salif Traoré

By Marilyn Ferdinand

Faro is a real goddess of a real tribe (the Bamana) in the West African country of Mali. In a landlocked country like Mali, covered in part by the Sahara Desert, water is a resource that can never be taken for granted. The Bamana village in Faro: Goddess of the Waters not only sits on a riverbank, but also depends for much of its food on fish from the river. Faro is the dominant character in this film, the unseen force for which all action takes place.

On its surface, Faro: Goddess of the Waters seems like a conflict between tradition and modernity. The protagonist of the film is Zan (Fily Traoré), a young man who has been away from the village for years getting an education and earning money and position in the larger world. His departure was not entirely voluntary because he is a bastard, and such children are allowed to stay until they can survive on their own and then are cast out because they are bad luck. One day, he drives his SUV into the village and moves into his mother Niele’s (Rokia Traoré) house.

Many of the village elders are scandalized that Zan would return, predicting trouble and complaining about the lack of discipline among the villagers in upholding the traditions of the tribe. Another worry for the village is the behavior of Kouta (Maimouna Hélène Diarra), a widow originally from another village who feels no compulsion to mourn the way the village wants her to.

Meanwhile, back on the river, fishing is bad and there is a strange current that has the villagers scared. Kouta’s daughter Penda (Djénéba Koné), sad at the loss of her father and trying to dodge her former fiancé Boura (Michel Mpambara), goes to the river with her friends to wash clothes. There, it appears that her wash bowl is snatched from her hands by something in the water; then it goes after Penda. She is rescued from drowning, but appears bewitched by the spirit of Faro. The village chief (Sotigui Kouyaté) declares the river off limits until he can consult with the shamaness Hamady (Balla Habib Dembélé) to find out what Faro wants.

Zan, trained as an engineer, has abandoned his belief in Faro the goddess, but not his reverence for the importance of water. He also has been deeply hurt by the branding of bastard and seeks to find some justice from the village. He comments ruefully, “The world evolves but nothing changes here." Despite himself, he pays attention to the rituals and tests conducted in the village to root out the evil that is blighting the river and Penda.

In fact, the village is really not so different from the outside world. The social relationships between the villagers, the secrets and hurts and passions, all rule the daily life of the village much more than its religious customs. At its heart, Faro is a very human story. But it also offers a window onto an authentic village society whose customs make a great deal of sense within their context and are more progressive in their own way that life in more developed communities. For example, one of the village men burns down a sacred roof. Until the roof is rebuilt, the power of the chief transfers to Hamady. She passes her bowl of wool, signifying feminine power in the domestic realm, to the chief and gets in return his canoe paddle, signifying male authority derived from fishing. I was very moved by this male/female balance in Bamanan society.

Although some scenes didn’t seem to follow logically, as though they were edited badly, the film is very compelling to watch. It’s a bit like a whodunit, and has a strong narrative drive that pulls you along. I really felt I understood these people, this village, both of which are completely alien to my experience and culture.

The creative team and actors in this film are responsible for some of the finest films to have come from Africa in recent years. Faro: Goddess of the Waters is another fine showing from this rich film center. l

There are no more showings of Faro: Goddess of the Waters. Look for it at your local arthouse.

Previous CIFF coverage:

Yella: A mysterious, atmospheric tale of a troubled woman. (Germany)

Atagoal: Cat’s Magical Forest: A family-friendly anime about a fun-loving fat cat and the battle to save the world. (Japan)

4 Elements: A documentary that shows amazing footage of four dangerous occupations that seek to conquer earth, air, fire, and water. (The Netherlands)

Tehilim: A wife and her two sons struggle to understand the sudden disappearance of the man of the house and reconcile their grief and guilt with the Torah's teachings. (Israel/France)

Her Wild Oat: Newly discovered and restored silent comedy starring the magical Colleen Moore as a lunch wagon owner with a yen for the good life—and handsome leading man Larry Kent. (United States)

Hallam Foe: A voyeur with a mommy complex finds true love through a pair of binoculars. (United Kingdom)

Lucky Miles: Desert survival meets a comedy of errors for illegal immigrants and the reservists sent to round them up in the desert of Western Australia. (Australia)

4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days: A harrowing tale of how an illegal abortion brings out all-too-human frailties in a woman, her best friend, and her lover. Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. (Romania)

You, the Living: A visually wacky satire on Swedish society. (Sweden)

Wolfsbergen: A privileged but (what else?) dysfunctional family acts out when its patriarch decides to kill himself. (The Netherlands)

Becky Sharp: Thackeray’s feisty social climber gets a definitive portrayal by Miriam Hopkins in this, the first three-strip Technicolor film ever made. (United States)

My Brother’s Wedding: A 30-year-old man is forced to come of age in this gem by independent African American filmmaker Charles Burnett. (United States)

I Served the King of England: Sumptuous memory film about a little waiter who could, living through the decadence and insanity of Europe in the 20th century. (Czech Republic/Slovakia)

2007 Chicago International Film Festival

I Served the King of England (Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále, 2006)
Director: Jirí Menzel

By Marilyn Ferdinand

Sometimes ignorance is bliss. I guess I should be ashamed of never having heard of Bohumil Hrabal, the novelist who wrote I Served the King of England (1971), considered by many to be one of the greatest works of Czech literature. Having never heard of Hrabal, it follows that I never read the book either. It seems that those who have were disappointed with this adaptation by Jirí Menzel, a film interpreter of five other works by Hrabal, including Closely Watched Trains, which won the Best Foreign-Language Picture Oscar in 1966. According to Kate Connelly, a film critic for the UK’s Guardian Unlimited, “The film has been attracting large audiences across the Czech Republic, but even there critics have admitted to its long-winded and sugary nature."

I think I know what those flocks of audience members know—this film is a visual and emotional pleasure of the first order. If it does not live up to the lofty ambitions of the culture mavens who report on it or capture something edgier in the book (which I suspect it doesn’t), it certainly does create a sensuous, sumptuous world all its own. And after all, how often have all of us heard, “It’s not as good as the book." Putting it in its true context—film—it is as good as the best films I’ve seen at this year’s festival, and that’s saying a lot.

I Served the King of England traverses the fascinating and full life of Jan Dítě (Oldřich Kaiser). The tale begins at the gate of a prison where a voiceover by Dítě tells that this is the day of his release. He was sentenced to 15 years, but due to a general amnesty, only served 14 years and 9 months. We watch as Dítě walks through the prison gate. The gate slams shut behind him, catching the strap of Dítě’s bag. We leave this scene with Dítě banging on the metal door to open up again. The smile this scene put on my face never left until the more serious parts of the film kicked in at about the halfway mark.

Dítě has been given the keys to a property near the border between Czechoslovakia and East Germany. When he arrives, an abandoned, ramshackle pub stands before him. The door is broken. Dítě holds up the keys and tosses them away. He steadily cleans the place up and makes it habitable, intending eventually to reopen it as a pub and guesthouse. He crushes rocks himself to build a road. While he is wheeling the rocks, he encounters Marcela (Zuzana Fialová), a young woman who has accompanied a small group to the woods surrounding the pub to look for music in trees, that is, timber to build musical instruments. Marcela is attractive and flirtatious, and Dítě is pleased that she has managed to arouse passion in him after all those years in confinement. He returns to memories of his youth and his one desire in life—to become a millionaire.

Most of the film from this point on is told in flashback with Ivan Barnev playing the young Dítě. He’s a very short, very blonde, odd-looking fellow who begins his fortune in the 1920s by failing to make change for a hundred for a train passenger who buys a hot dog from his makeshift stand. The train pulls away while Dítě pursues the passenger with the bills in his outstretched hand. He also inadvertently drops some coins on the ground. Several people scramble to pick them up. Fascinated by the willingness of perfectly respectable people to get down on their hands and knees for the sake of a few coins, Dítě starts tossing handfuls of them around town just to see the reaction.

He eventually lands a job in a guesthouse where he serves businessmen who have the money he covets. One day, a beautiful woman seeks shelter from the rain in his pub. Her name is Jaruska (Petra Hrebícková), a hooker at Paradise, the local brothel. All eyes are on her wet and shapely form. After giving the men an eyeful, she skips back out. Dítě determines to make her his. A virgin, Dítě says after his first time that "it's nothing like doing it myself." He visits her as frequently as possible, delighting her one day by covering her body artfully with flowers from a nearby vase. This type of decoration will become his playful art of love with all of the women he beds.

One day, a familiar face confronts Dítě from one of the booths in the pub. It is the man whose change he didn't make, a certain Mr. Walden (Marián Labuda) who will turn out to be his benefactor throughout his career. Walden orders everything on the menu except the lungs and tells Dítě to bring four bottles of mineral water and a pound of salami up to his room later. Dítě thinks he's off the hook about the change he failed to make, but Walden has not forgotten the incident. He tells Dítě that he's seen him throwing coins. "You have to learn where to throw them so they'll come back to you in bills." When Dítě goes to his room to deliver the water and salami, he (and we) are greeted by a magical sight—Walden placing paper money in long rows to cover his entire floor. In a scene of comic grace, Walden, having run out of one stack of bills, stretches out and log rolls to a suitcase, where he removes another stack and rolls back to resume his pastime. Dítě, enchanted, decides to take up the pastime of laying his bills on the floor and leaves the guesthouse to make his fortune.

He lands a job at the Hotel Tichota on Walden's recommendation and serves the needs of the very rich and hedonistic, all under the watchful eye of Tichota (Rudolf Hrusínský), a small and pleasant fellow who wheels gracefully through the hotel in a motorized wheelchair. Tichota makes available a bevy of gorgeous prostitutes who pair off with the moguls, dancing, playing, teasing, and making love with them with delightful abandon. The General (Pavel Nový) brings his girl up to his room, sees another coming down the hall, turns her around to examine front and back, and pushes her into his room as well. In the morning, thoroughly "satisfied," he pays for about 4,000 crowns worth of damage and, when left with a large stack of unspent bills, hands them to Dítě. "I knew it would be time to go," Dítě observes ruefully.

He lands an even better job in the Hotel Pariz in Prague and meets the man who will be his great inspiration, Skrivánek (Martin Huba), the maitre d'. The man can predict what every patron will order and can apparently speak every language known to man. Dítě wonders how he became such a Hercules of the hospitality industry. "I served the King of England."

Sadly, hard times are soon to come. When the first Nazis show up in the dining room of the Hotel Pariz, Skrivánek refuses to serve them. Germans in the street are hassled, their uniform knee-high white stockings torn from their legs. Dítě goes to the aid of a young German woman whose stockings are in jeopardy, Líza (Julia Jentsch). They start a romance, with Líza trying to instruct poor Dítě on racial purity and Hitler's master plan. Once Czechoslovakia capitulates to Hitler, property confiscations and deportations begin to occur. Dítě searches for evidence that he might have German blood so that he can marry Líza. Although tormented by the fate of his countrymen, he wants Líza, who's the only woman short enough that he can look her in the eye.

The film grows more grim as Dítě sees old friends deported, the hotel Tichota confiscated and turned into a breeding laboratory for the Master Race, and Líza taking all the fun out of sex with her determination to provide a perfect Aryan to Herr Hitler. A scene where she and Dítě try to conceive is hilarious, as Líza moves Dítě's head out of the way so that she can gaze on a heroic portrait of Hitler hanging on the wall. Dítě's fortunes rise and fall during and after the war, but Communism puts him right back to square one.

This film is literally a visual feast. If you go to see it hungry, you'll be chewing your arm witnessing all the lavish meals served at all the fine establishments where Dítě works. There are some transcendent moments of visual trickery, such as when Dítě the elder empties a box of stamps and they float lifelike on the breeze. The Czechs do sexual playfulness extremely well, and each act of physical love is a rather complete and innocent delight, even between Dítě and Líza.

Physical comedy abounds, such as when the Ethiopian ambassador, shorter even than Dítě, tries to place medals around Skrivánek's neck in thanks for an exotic and sumptuous banquet and ends up awarding them to Dítě, who slowly bends his knees to clue Skrivánek to move to meet the ambassador's eye level. Dítě and Head Waiter Karel (Jaromír Dulava) dip, spin, and weave in quick motion with their trays full of food as they serve their patrons in the Hotel Pariz. When Dítě trips Karel, and Karel loses one plate from his tray, he proceeds to smash plates and upends tables on his way to the exit. He grabs a small bud vase, ready to smash it, then looks tenderly at it, replaces it on the table, and leaves. "He had no choice," says Dítě in voiceover, "it was a matter of honor."

Líza's character was, for me, the most horrifying in the film. Her reflexive racism, her rabid devotion to German purity, and her utter callousness in robbing from "deported" Jews all made me cringe every time she opened her mouth. Dítě is ambitious, but he is also playful and clearly revolted by the Nazis and their occupation of his country. Why he jumped through so many hoops for his Nazi lover, why he wanted to marry her in the first place, remain complete mysteries to me. The critics who called this film "sugary" may have been referring to this inconsistency. The rich men who made women their playthings and indulged their every whim also were more lovable than decadent. As seen through narrator Dítě's eyes, however, these men were his heroes and role models, so this characterization is not inconsistent.

This densely packed film moves with the grace, speed, and charm of Dítě twirling his tray of delectables. I highly recommend I Served the King of England. l

There are no more showings of I Served the King of England. Look for it at your local arthouse.

Previous CIFF coverage:

Yella: A mysterious, atmospheric tale of a troubled woman. (Germany)

Atagoal: Cat’s Magical Forest: A family-friendly anime about a fun-loving fat cat and the battle to save the world. (Japan)

4 Elements: A documentary that shows amazing footage of four dangerous occupations that seek to conquer earth, air, fire, and water. (The Netherlands)

Tehilim: A wife and her two sons struggle to understand the sudden disappearance of the man of the house and reconcile their grief and guilt with the Torah's teachings. (Israel/France)

Her Wild Oat: Newly discovered and restored silent comedy starring the magical Colleen Moore as a lunch wagon owner with a yen for the good life—and handsome leading man Larry Kent. (United States)

Lucky Miles: Desert survival meets a comedy of errors for illegal immigrants and the reservists sent to round them up in the desert of Western Australia. (Australia)

4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days: A harrowing tale of how an illegal abortion brings out all-too-human frailties in a woman, her best friend, and her lover. Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. (Romania)

Hallam Foe: A voyeur with a mommy complex finds true love through a pair of binoculars. (United Kingdom)

You, the Living: A visually wacky satire on Swedish society. (Sweden)

Wolfsbergen: A privileged but (what else?) dysfunctional family acts out when its patriarch decides to kill himself. (The Netherlands)

Becky Sharp: Thackeray’s feisty social climber gets a definitive portrayal by Miriam Hopkins in this, the first three-strip Technicolor film ever made. (United States)

My Brother’s Wedding: A 30-year-old man is forced to come of age in this gem by independent African American filmmaker Charles Burnett. (United States)

2007 Chicago International Film Festival

My Brother’s Wedding (1983)
Director: Charles Burnett

By Marilyn Ferdinand

The CIFF has, for more than a decade, presented a program called Black Perspectives that brings the stories and work of Africans and their descendants in other countries to the attention of the movie-going public. This is an important program for Chicago because it helps the city’s large African and African American community access their often-hidden heritage in filmmaking. The program helps the rest of us recognize the legacy of great films this community has produced.

One of the most outstanding African American filmmakers working today is Charles Burnett. His name is barely a blip in the minds of movie-goers of all races and ethnicities, and that’s a real crime. Burnett has created some of the most original portrayals of the lives and culture of the African American community available today. However, like most independent filmmakers, he is chronically short of funding and distribution options. Therefore, it was a great service for the CIFF to revive one of his earlier films, a thoroughly independent affair populated with amateur actors and family members called My Brother’s Wedding.

For days now, I’ve confused the name of this film in my head, calling it “My Brother’s Keeper." This mistake isn’t only the product of my aging mind. It goes pretty much to the heart of this film’s central dilemma. Pierce Mundy (Everett Silas) is 30 years old, lives at home with his parents, and works at their dry cleaning business in a poor section of Los Angeles. His failure to launch stems from training in a line of work (heavy equipment operator) that had more applicants than jobs and his own immaturity. He doesn’t have a girlfriend and looks forward to the day he can knock around with his ne’er-do-well best friend Soldier (Ronnie Bell), due to be released from prison in a couple of weeks. When Soldier returns, Pierce faces a difficult choice: will he choose to support his real brother or his best friend, the “brother" whose keeper he has always tried to be?

Pierce’s mother (Jessie Holmes) is a no-nonsense matriarch who, nonetheless, puts very little pressure on Pierce to get out and make something of his life. She puts up with the random wrestling matches her husband picks with Pierce in the back of the shop and only instructs Pierce to visit his grandparents and see that they get their medication and any other help they might need. Her older son Wendell (Dennis Kemper) is her pride—a lawyer engaged to marry Sonia (Gaye-Shannon Burnett, the director’s wife), a lawyer from a well-to-do family.

Pierce despises Sonia and her family. He doesn’t feel comfortable in their middle-class milieu and takes every opportunity to insult Sonia. When he is compelled to have dinner with their family, he accuses them of being crooks and exploiters; the only person he treats with respect is their Latino maid. It is pretty apparent, however, that Pierce’s sense of aimlessness, inferiority when compared with Wendell and Sonia’s social class, and loyalty to the ’hood are affecting his behavior rather than any strong social convictions.

Soldier does return, and he and Pierce wrestle and run through the streets like 10-year-old boys playing hooky from school. When the pair reaches Soldier's home, Soldier embraces his mother and father with warmth and sincerity, promising that he is home for good and won’t get sent away again. Unfortunately, Pierce’s attempts to find Soldier a job have been unsuccessful. One prospective employer says it’s too bad Soldier is getting out: “He’s one fellow they should have locked up and thrown away the key." Predictably, Soldier returns to carousing, even shocking Mrs. Mundy by using her store when he thought she wouldn’t be around and lying on newly cleaned clothes to have sex with his latest conquest. This funny scene has Soldier call to Pierce to bring him and his lady a glass of water while they are in flagrante. Pierce’s apparent nonchalance signals that this isn’t unusual behavior for Soldier.

In an unexpected twist, Soldier is killed in a car accident. His funeral is scheduled for the same day as Wendell and Sonia’s wedding, for which Pierce is to act as best man. Pierce clearly would rather skip the wedding, but his mother is furious to have him own up to his family responsibilities. Pierce pathetically tries to get Sonia to reschedule the wedding. Then he has hopes the funeral can be postponed, but out-of-town relatives are coming in. His choice, like his life, is muddled. In trying to be both brothers’ keeper, he fails them both.

This film clearly was made on a shoestring in real locations that give the film the breath of life. Some of the film’s humor comes from a teenage girl who hangs out at the dry cleaners talking to Pierce about her “stomach" (aka, menstrual) pains and asking Pierce to go with her to the prom in two years, when she’s old enough to have a prom. This young girl is a real natural in her awkward flirtation and baldfaced resentment at not being taken seriously.

Another humorous scene has two men enter the shop to try to rob it. Mrs. Mundy, a cool customer, reaches for her gun under the counter, but never has to show it. She just shoots a warning gaze at the pair, and they take off. Hilariously, the scene continues in the getaway car, as a hoochie girl and her boyfriend complain that they were counting on that money and give these sad sacks a very hard time.

You can’t say any of the “actors" give a performance. Their line readings are flat and stilted. But because they know these characters, are these characters, the film is rich in atmosphere. Silas and Holmes, in particular, anchor this film with their son/mother relationship that’s as true as life.

Few directors of any race or ethnicity are able to tell stories that bring an entire community alive. Burnett has a very different take on similar territory that Spike Lee explores. His is largely apolitical, more interested in culture than outright polemics. Nonetheless, in his simply complex tales, he makes his points about the place of African Americans in the larger society. l

This was a one-time-only special presentation. A DVD box set issued this year contains Burnett’s Killer of Sheep and My Brother’s Wedding, plus three short films. Your local arthouse may also host a Burnett retrospective.

Previous CIFF coverage:

Yella: A mysterious, atmospheric tale of a troubled woman. (Germany)

Atagoal: Cat’s Magical Forest: A family-friendly anime about a fun-loving fat cat and the battle to save the world. (Japan)

4 Elements: A documentary that shows amazing footage of four dangerous occupations that seek to conquer earth, air, fire, and water. (The Netherlands)

Tehilim: A wife and her two sons struggle to understand the sudden disappearance of the man of the house and reconcile their grief and guilt with the Torah's teachings. (Israel/France)

Her Wild Oat: Newly discovered and restored silent comedy starring the magical Colleen Moore as a lunch wagon owner with a yen for the good life—and handsome leading man Larry Kent. (United States)

Lucky Miles: Desert survival meets a comedy of errors for illegal immigrants and the reservists sent to round them up in the desert of Western Australia. (Australia)

4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days: A harrowing tale of how an illegal abortion brings out all-too-human frailties in a woman, her best friend, and her lover. Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. (Romania)

Hallam Foe: A voyeur with a mommy complex finds true love through a pair of binoculars. (United Kingdom)

You, the Living: A visually wacky satire on Swedish society. (Sweden)

Wolfsbergen: A privileged but (what else?) dysfunctional family acts out when its patriarch decides to kill himself. (The Netherlands)

Becky Sharp: Thackeray’s feisty social climber gets a definitive portrayal by Miriam Hopkins in this, the first three-strip Technicolor film ever made. (United States)

2007 Chicago International Film Festival

Becky Sharp (1935)
Director: Rouben Mamoulian

By Marilyn Ferdinand

Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray’s microscope on Georgian hypocrisy, has long been a favorite property for actresses looking for a meaty role to sink their teeth into. Hollywood has produced a succession of Becky Sharps since 1911. Most recently, Oscar winner Reese Witherspoon took her turn as the scheming orphan determined to crack high society, no matter what the cost. However, for me, 1935’s Becky Sharp contains the definitive portrayal of Becky. The fabulous Miriam Hopkins turned in an Oscar-nominated performance that is energetic, sexually adventurous, and devil-may-care, while providing a pertinent social commentary on the gap between rich and poor that must have put Depression-era audiences solidly in Becky’s corner.

Becky Sharp also holds the distinction of being the very first three-strip Technicolor movie. This advance in color technology finally allowed movies to reproduce the color blue and, according to the ever-fascinating American Widescreen Museum Web site, “eroded the widespread commercial viability of all other methods of color photography for nearly 20 years. The picture was produced by Pioneer Pictures in collaboration with Technicolor Corporation in an effort to demonstrate to studios that had tired of imperfect and complex systems that films could be photographed in full color." A complete explanation of the three-strip Technicolor process—and specifically as it relates to Becky Sharp—is given at the American Widescreen Museum Web site. This important film, therefore, was one Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation put high on its list for preservation. This restoration, along with Jean Renoir’s restored The River, were contributions to the CIFF by the Film Foundation.

The film opens at a girls boarding school, with an overhead dolly shot of girls surrounding a beautiful young woman. She is graduating and heading out into the world. In this classic style of introducing our heroine, we are instead redirected to another young woman sitting on the far side of the room—Becky Sharp (Hopkins). She is speaking to the only girl who has chosen to sit by her side. This girl assures Becky that she will get the same warm send-off as the other young lady, Amelia Sedley (Frances Dee). Becky assures her that the headmistress will not be conveying her back to the warm bosom of a family she doesn’t have and a suitable marriage; she will, in fact, admonish the orphaned Becky to be grateful for having had a roof over her head and being treated to an education far above her station. She also will be told to go out into the world and take up a useful profession.

All comes to pass exactly as Becky predicted. The headmistress presents a beautifully bound dictionary to Amelia, who promises to “sleep with it every night under my pillow" (ouch!). The only rub in the arrangement is that Becky fires back, accusing the headmistress of taking Becky in because she was useful and saved the school money by doing chores for free that hired staff would have done. The headmistress perfunctorily presents Becky with a dictionary as well. Then, Amelia’s brother Joseph (Nigel Bruce) comes to retrieve her. When Becky says she has no one coming to get her and nowhere to go, Amelia insists that Becky come with them. As Becky starts out the door, she turns back to the headmistress and says, “There are a million words I could say now, but this will have to do" and throws the dictionary at the headmistress’s feet.

To paraphrase Bette Davis in All About Eve, Becky Sharp is going to be a bumpy ride.

Things at the Sedleys are agreeable enough for Becky, who enjoys living in a luxurious home and being treated with some deference. She plans to make it permanent by trying to induce Joseph to marry her. Unfortunately, Joseph, though tempted, flees from her entreaties all the way to India to avoid incurring his father’s wrath. In the meantime, Amelia chooses between two suitors. Humiliated, Becky accepts a position as governess at the home of Sir Pitt Crawley (George Hassell), an undisciplined and jolly country squire with an armful of rowdy children. Becky is about to decline the position when Crawley’s son Rawdon (Alan Mowbray) walks in the door. Becky’s unabashed lust for him is a wonderful cinematic gem. She changes her mind and soon becomes the dashing soldier’s wife.

The Crawleys live far above their means primarily through Becky’s charms. She flirts with men who end up owing gambling debts to Rawdon, borrows from Rawdon’s minister brother and anyone else she can, and gets her admirers to pay for her flocks and adornments. One day, one of Rawdon’s debts catches up with him. Becky does the one thing Rawdon cannot accept; she suggests to the evocatively named Marquis of Steyne (Cedric Hardwicke) that she will have sex with him if he forwards the money needed to cover Rawdon’s debt of honor. Rawdon, refusing Becky’s declarations of love, leaves her.

Becky is reduced to singing in a bawdy house, where she bombs big time. Coincidentally, Joseph is at the performance, and goes to her humble rooms. Amelia comes, too, and Becky apologizes for the callous way she always treated Amelia. Like the Unsinkable Molly Brown, Becky rises again to the challenges of life.

Miriam Hopkins brings a world of energy and ingenuity to the role of Becky Sharp. She plays this brazen opportunist without a hint of humility or regret. Becky’s appetites are all on display, her envy and resentment of her “betters" driving her as much as her enjoyment of the finer things in life. Hopkins makes her love for Rawdon genuine even as she flirts openly—largely with his approval—with anyone she thinks will give them money or position.

Frances Dee is the more typically compliant woman of her time. Her husband George (G. P. Huntley) makes overtures to Becky right under her nose—overtures that Becky accepts out of spite—and yet Amelia never complains or fights back. Being a lady also means never stooping to unladylike behavior to hold on to one’s husband. She even comes close to choosing propriety over love when another man courts her after George’s death in battle. Becky has to push Amelia to stop shrinking from life, her one act of repentance to a friend who never deserted her.

There are some incredible set pieces in this film as well. A dress ball takes place on the eve of and within sight of the Battle of Waterloo. The almost hysterical gaiety is emphasized by the way the characters weave through the ballroom, arranging introductions and trysts that put this ball in good company with those in Jezebel, Gone with the Wind, and even The Leopard. The guests try to convince themselves that some booming from without is thunder; then a dramatic gust of wind blows open some room-length French windows, admitting the storm of war. Panicked guests seek their carriages and escape from Napoleon’s troops. Becky, half French and hot-blooded, thrills at the idea of Bonaparte at war with the society she despises, and we feel that adrenalin rush with her.

The supporting cast play their roles with relish, and I particularly liked Nigel Bruce, who is good-natured rather than his more typical buffoonishness. Mamoulian’s slightly heavy hand actually works to great effect in this film. While a more subtle Becky would certainly be a valid interpretation, his direction of Hopkins makes Becky live up to her last name—a force of nature that could mow down all in its path.

I would have liked it if one of the UCLA restorers had been on hand to explain the process by which this film was returned to its glory. The colors of Becky’s yellow frock, blonde hair, and green lace trim popped and added to the flamboyance of her character. While not as crisp as the black-and-white restorations of silent films I’m used to, Becky Sharp and The River reveal just how much can be done by expert restorers if they are given the time and the tools. It’s great to have this important piece of film history and cracking good movie back and looking so great. l

This was a one-time-only special presentation. Look for the restored Becky Sharp at your local arthouse.

Previous CIFF coverage:

Yella: A mysterious, atmospheric tale of a troubled woman. (Germany)

Atagoal: Cat’s Magical Forest: A family-friendly anime about a fun-loving fat cat and the battle to save the world. (Japan)

4 Elements: A documentary that shows amazing footage of four dangerous occupations that seek to conquer earth, air, fire, and water. (The Netherlands)

Tehilim: A wife and her two sons struggle to understand the sudden disappearance of the man of the house and reconcile their grief and guilt with the Torah's teachings. (Israel/France)

Her Wild Oat: Newly discovered and restored silent comedy starring the magical Colleen Moore as a lunch wagon owner with a yen for the good life—and handsome leading man Larry Kent. (United States)

Lucky Miles: Desert survival meets a comedy of errors for illegal immigrants and the reservists sent to round them up in the desert of Western Australia. (Australia)

4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days: A harrowing tale of how an illegal abortion brings out all-too-human frailties in a woman, her best friend, and her lover. Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. (Romania)

Hallam Foe: A voyeur with a mommy complex finds true love through a pair of binoculars. (United Kingdom)

You, the Living: A visually wacky satire on Swedish society. (Sweden)

Wolfsbergen: A privileged but (what else?) dysfunctional family acts out when its patriarch decides to kill himself. (The Netherlands)

2007 Chicago International Film Festival

Wolfsbergen (2007)
Director: Nanouk Leopold

By Marilyn Ferdinand

I really want to be fair to Wolfsbergen. I saw it late last night after viewing the superb 1983 Charles Burnett feature My Brother’s Wedding (more on that in another review). I’ve been fighting a cold, and my throat was sore. The film started about 15 minutes late. It was Sunday night, and I had work the next day. These are circumstances that don’t lend themselves too well to slow, nearly wordless expositions on the meaning of life, which is sort of what Wolfsbergen seems to want to be. OK, so now you know my backstory, so to speak. I still don’t like this movie.

Wolfsbergen focuses on a dysfunctional upper-middle-class family with an unusual problem—the patriarch of the family, Konraad (Piet Kamerman), in the throes of grief over the death of his wife Lara, intends to commit suicide at the end of the summer. He announces his decision in letters sent to his immediate family: his middle-aged daughter Maria (Catherine ten Bruggencate) and her husband Ernst (Jan Decleir); granddaughter Sabine (Tamar van den Dop) who is married to Onno (Fedja van Huêt), has two daughters, Haas (Merel van Houts) and Zilver (Carmen Lith), and is having an affair with Micha (Oscar van Wounsel); and his other granddaughter Eva (Karina Smulders), whose letter he actually never posts.

Maria reads her letter on a plane she is taking to a European Union conference in a French-speaking country, maybe Belgium. She reacts to the news by going to a doctor and having her thighs liposuctioned and then refusing to let her husband see her body when she comes back home. Sabine won’t talk to Onno about it; she prefers to visit Micha. Eva cries a lot, just on general principle it seems, since she doesn’t know about her grandfather’s plan. Rejected by Sabine, Onno becomes close to Eva, who is extremely life-challenged and needs him. They fall in love. Sabine is furious, even though she’s been carrying on with Micha for years (he’s her ex-lover), because Onno takes up with her sister. Haas breaks things and eventually ends up chewing the lip off a water glass. Ernst goes to Konraad’s house and tends to him as he carries out his plan by refusing fluids. Eventually, the whole family shows up and says their good-byes.

This film has some very lyrical shots in it. I particularly loved the opening shot, a lingering look at a pine forest with birds chirping in its limbs. The interior shots are very revealing of the characters who inhabit them: the upscale homes of Maria and Ernst, of Konraad, of Onno and Sabine, for example, contrasted with the provisional bachelor pad of Micha and the barely livable loft of the ego-depleted Eva. We understand from these settings why, for example, Sabine married Onno—for material comforts she always knew with her dentist father and government official mother. When Onno asks her if their whole life—I assume including their two children—has been a lie, it’s hard not to think it has. But then Sabine doesn’t like to face unpleasant truths. None of Konraad’s blood relatives—including Konraad—like to do that.

But so what? I felt nothing for these over-privileged, self-indulgent ciphers. Their pain, while certainly worthy of consideration as human beings, was presented in such an arthouse cliché that I thought they should have all hired shrinks and stopped wasting my time. Why “serious" directors seem positively averse to giving audiences some dialogue and action to keep them engaged, why we are constantly challenged to look below the surface to characters who are internalizing everything is a mystery. The actors are supposed to be using The Method, not the audience.

I’m not a lazy viewer, nor do I need constant movement. One of my favorite films, A Brighter Summer Day, is four hours long and unspools its story in the natural rhythms of life—which sometimes has a little speed to it. If the intent is to numb the audience to match the emotional numbness of these repressed characters, then Leopold has succeeded admirably. A good-looking, artfully composed film, which anyone with some film school training can achieve these days, and lots of empty spaces “pregnant" with meaning are classic rookie conceits. This film is a pretentious bore. l

There are no more showings of Wolfsbergen.

Previous CIFF coverage:

Yella: A mysterious, atmospheric tale of a troubled woman. (Germany)

Atagoal: Cat’s Magical Forest: A family-friendly anime about a fun-loving fat cat and the battle to save the world. (Japan)

4 Elements: A documentary that shows amazing footage of four dangerous occupations that seek to conquer earth, air, fire, and water. (The Netherlands)

Tehilim: A wife and her two sons struggle to understand the sudden disappearance of the man of the house and reconcile their grief and guilt with the Torah's teachings. (Israel/France)

Her Wild Oat: Newly discovered and restored silent comedy starring the magical Colleen Moore as a lunch wagon owner with a yen for the good life—and handsome leading man Larry Kent. (United States)

Lucky Miles: Desert survival meets a comedy of errors for illegal immigrants and the reservists sent to round them up in the desert of Western Australia. (Australia)

4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days: A harrowing tale of how an illegal abortion brings out all-too-human frailties in a woman, her best friend, and her lover. Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. (Romania)

Hallam Foe: A voyeur with a mommy complex finds true love through a pair of binoculars. (United Kingdom)

You, the Living: A visually wacky satire on Swedish society. (Sweden)

2007 Chicago International Film Festival

You, the Living (Du levande, 2007)
Director: Roy Andersson

By Marilyn Ferdinand

Roy Andersson is an extremely individual director. His mordant perspective and visual sensibility put him in step with the grotesque commentaries of painter Ivan Albright (who, by the way, produced the painting used in the 1945 version of The Picture of Dorian Gray, which I’m sure Andersson must have seen during his formative years). I was knocked out by Andersson's apocalyptic take on the year 2000 panic, Songs from the Second Floor. When I heard that this low-output filmmaker had a new picture that would be at the CIFF, it was Number One on my must-see list. Sadly, there’s no getting around it—I was kind of disappointed with You, the Living.

The film opens in a room. The camera lingers for a bit, then a man pops awake in terror. He says he's had a dream that bombs were falling. Next, we see a fat biker chick sitting on a park bench and complaining that nobody understands her or likes her. Her enormous biker boyfriend stands to the rear of her telling her that he likes her and that their dog likes her. He encourages the dog to walk to her. She tells them both to go away. Repeatedly. Insultingly. She wants to get away. She would if she had a motorcycle. He says he's having a veal roast later. She says she might come by.

A school teacher comes to class. She sits at her desk, then begins to sob. She runs out of the room. Her very young charges come out and ask her what's wrong. "I had a fight with my husband. He called me a hag." "What's a hag?" asks one of the children. "Go ask him." Switch to a carpet store where a couple asks a salesman for a 3-meter-long rug in green. "We don't have green, but we have red." He pulls the red carpet out and stretches it out. "Is that 3 meters?" asks the husband. The salesman measures. It's 1 meter too short. He asks his coworker if he sold any of the red carpet. "Yes, I sold a meter this morning." "You have to change the tags when you do that!" the man admonishes. "I had a fight with my wife," he says to no one in particular, "and I called her a hag." I don't remember what she called him, but the female customer says, "Hag is worse." They leave.

An older couple is in bed having sex. While the woman grinds away on top, all the man can do is talk about how the value of his retirement account has gone down 34 percent.

A man goes into a barber shop and asks for a trim. The Arabic barber starts trying to get creative, asking if he wants a part. The man says he's in a hurry and that if he wanted a part he'd have asked for one. The barber says his hair falls to the left. The man, impatient, says, "Why to the left? Is that because you people read from right to left?" Insulted, the barber takes his electric clippers and cuts a stripe down the middle of the man's head.

A young woman is infatuated with a musician named Micke Larsson. They have drinks, but he doesn't call again. She goes to the tavern where they met. She has a dream about him in which they get married. Their home appears to be on a train track because it moves and comes into a station where a huge crowd of people have gathered to wish them good luck.

These and other vignettes, totaling 50 in all, comprise the gloomy and absurd world of Roy Andersson. What's great about Roy Andersson films is their look. Andersson has fashioned a color palette that is washed-out blues and yellows, the colors of the Swedish flag. His characters look pasty or deformed. This film features a lot of short people, especially men. He revels in putting strange actions at the edges of the screen or in the background, making the experience of watching his films a bit like a game of Where's Waldo.

However, You, the Living goes off the tracks in choosing its targets. In Songs from the Second Floor, Andersson took aim at corporate hot shots and government officials for their mendacious, clueless behavior. His satire was barbed and appropriately savage. Unfortunately, You, the Living takes aim at ordinary people. Andersson, who also wrote the script for the film, makes fun of curious customs (strange movements to a song sung at a formal banquet), infirmaties (a man using a walker pulling a dog hopelessly entangled in its leash), and annoying behaviors (playing a tuba in the house). These bits are laugh-out-loud funny, but they are cheap shots nonetheless and rather pointless. Yes, some people will never be satisfied, and we might just blow ourselves up because we don't seem to know any better. But seeing the world as populated with miserable grotesques is more than a caricature; it's a deeply misanthropic world view that really doesn't offer much to movie audiences but a chance to feel mean and superior, too.

The film begins with a title card containing a quote by Goethe: "Be pleased then, you the living, in your delightfully warmed bed, before Lethe’s ice-cold wave will lick your escaping foot." I think there is another not-so-lofty saying that's a lot more to Andersson's point: "Life's a bitch, and then you die." l

There is one more showing of You, the Living on Thursday, October 11, at 4:30 pm.

Previous CIFF coverage:

Yella: A mysterious, atmospheric tale of a troubled woman. (Germany)

Atagoal: Cat’s Magical Forest: A family-friendly anime about a fun-loving fat cat and the battle to save the world. (Japan)

4 Elements: A documentary that shows amazing footage of four dangerous occupations that seek to conquer earth, air, fire, and water. (The Netherlands)

Tehilim: A wife and her two sons struggle to understand the sudden disappearance of the man of the house and reconcile their grief and guilt with the Torah's teachings. (Israel/France)

Her Wild Oat: Newly discovered and restored silent comedy starring the magical Colleen Moore as a lunch wagon owner with a yen for the good life—and handsome leading man Larry Kent. (United States)

Lucky Miles: Desert survival meets a comedy of errors for illegal immigrants and the reservists sent to round them up in the desert of Western Australia. (Australia)

4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days: A harrowing tale of how an illegal abortion brings out all-too-human frailties in a woman, her best friend, and her lover. Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. (Romania)

Hallam Foe: A voyeur with a mommy complex finds true love through a pair of binoculars. (United Kingdom)

2007 Chicago International Film Festival

Hallam Foe (2007)
Director: David Mackenzie

By Kathryn Ware

Freud would have a field day with Hallam Foe. Two years after the death of his mother, 17 year old Hallam spends much of his time creeping down alleys, lurking in doorways and windows spying on neighbors, friends, and family, peering at them with his binoculars and scribbling notes and drawings in his journals. He seems to focus a lot on breasts. He sleeps in a tree house under a blown-up photograph of his mother, uses her make-up to war paint his face, and occasionally wears her favorite dress.

When we first meet Hallam (Jamie Bell), he’s spying on two teenagers having sex in the forest below his tree house. He dons a badger skin headdress, streaks his face with red lipstick, and swings down on the amorous couple with a war whoop. You could say he has a few issues.

Hallam lives on an estate in the Scottish Highlands owned by his father, a successful architect played by the always capable Ciaran Hinds. Shortly after his wife’s death two years earlier, Hallam’s father married his beautiful secretary Verity (Claire Forlani, who expertly underplays her role as the evil stepmother.) Since then, Hallam has retreated from the world, nurturing a hatred for his stepmother, whom he believes caused his mother’s suicide. After his sister leaves home, Hallam perceives Verity’s offer to find him a job in London as an attempt to get rid of him, and he announces to them both that he won’t be going to college. He plans to stay right at home.

Soon after, Hallam’s tree house shrine is trashed by the two teens he’d earlier interrupted in the forest. The padlocked trunk with his most prized possession, including his journals, headdress and mother’s belongings, is untouched, and he moves it into the house for safe keeping. When Verity finds the keys, she breaks into Hallam’s trunk. Armed with copies of the journal’s more damning passages, she climbs into the tree house to confront Hallam, and Hallam Foe takes its first disturbing turn. Events transpire that compel Hallam to leave.

Friendless and homeless, Hallam spends the first of many nights prowling the rooftops of Edinburgh. The next morning, peering off the roof for a way back down, he catches sight of Kate (Sophia Myles), who reminds him of—you guessed it—his mother. He follows her, slipping in through the door when she enters a hotel service entrance.

Hallam may be a Peeping Tom and a recluse, but he’s also bright and charming. Kate is the HR manager of the hotel, and Hallam talks his way into a job working in the kitchen. Smitten by Kate, he resumes his voyeuristic habit, following her after work to see where she lives and climbing up and over the building to spy on her through windows and skylights. He sneaks into the hotel clock tower where he finds a perfect view across the rooftops to Kate’s apartment. Hallam sets up residence in the clock tower to spy on Kate with his binoculars through a crack in the clock face.

While admittedly creepy, Hallam seems harmless enough—a danger more to himself than to others. He’s in love, and what better way for him to move on—unless, of course, you hold it against him that the girl bears a startling resemblance to his own mother.

Hallam Foe, written by David Mackenzie and Ed Whitmore, and based on the book by Peter Jinks, succeeds by continually pulling back from the brink of conventional romantic drama. Just as an interjection of humor and lightheartedness leads you to believe things just might be okay, that Hallam isn’t such a troubled bloke after all, the film abruptly pulls the rug out, revealing some new facet of Hallam’s dark, impulsive nature.

As the film progresses, Hallam does well in his job. His relationship with Kate develops. But anyone with romantic feelings for a woman who resembles his mother, who spends every free moment spying on her through binoculars, and who still harbors the certainty that his stepmother drugged his mother and drowned her in the loch, is just a time bomb waiting to go off. When he does, the film runs its greatest risk of veering off the tracks into over-the-top melodrama; thanks to Jamie Bell’s strong performance, it never does. Bell anchors the film with a believable mixture of maturity and immaturity that makes the character of a boy mourning his mother while on the verge of becoming a man a compelling and sympathetic character.

Hallam Foe is as far from a traditional coming-of-age tale as it is from the usual romantic drama. It successfully weaves dysfunctional family issues and twisted psychosexual drama with a dash of humor and fine location shooting to make for a complex personal story and an absorbing night at the movies. Whether or not Hallam has successfully “moved on" by the film’s conclusion is for each viewer to decide. l

There are no more screenings of Hallam Foe.This film stands a good chance for a commercial release, so look for it at your local arthouse.

Previous CIFF coverage:

Yella: A mysterious, atmospheric tale of a troubled woman. (Germany)

Atagoal: Cat’s Magical Forest: A family-friendly anime about a fun-loving fat cat and the battle to save the world. (Japan)

4 Elements: A documentary that shows amazing footage of four dangerous occupations that seek to conquer earth, air, fire, and water. (The Netherlands)

Tehilim: A wife and her two sons struggle to understand the sudden disappearance of the man of the house and reconcile their grief and guilt with the Torah's teachings. (Israel/France)

Her Wild Oat: Newly discovered and restored silent comedy starring the magical Colleen Moore as a lunch wagon owner with a yen for the good life—and handsome leading man Larry Kent. (United States)

Lucky Miles: Desert survival meets a comedy of errors for illegal immigrants and the reservists sent to round them up in the desert of Western Australia. (Australia)

4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days: A harrowing tale of how an illegal abortion brings out all-too-human frailties in a woman, her best friend, and her lover. Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. (Romania)

2007 Chicago International Film Festival

4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days (4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile, 2007)
Director: Cristian Mungiu

By Marilyn Ferdinand

Fourteen hours after the end of 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days, and I’m still stunned. This urgent Romanian film, whose narrative drive is a welcome change of pace from many languid offerings at the CIFF this year, is so real, so nerve-rattling, that it creates a sense memory that’s hard to shake. I’ve viewed other films in the CIFF’s main competition—and fine film they are, too—but nothing compares with 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days. If it doesn’t capture the Gold Hugo Award the same way it captured the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, I’ll be very surprised.

The handheld digital camera establishes a shaky restlessness in the opening scene. Two young women are moving like mice around their dorm room, seeming to be moving objects from one place to another and back again. This is only an illusion, however. Their actions are purposeful. Gabriela (Laura Vasiliu) moves a fish tank with a couple of goldfish and about two inches of water from the table and folds up the plastic tablecloth. Her roommate Otilia asks if that was the tank someone gave her a while back. Yes, but different fish. She asks her roommate Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) to get one of their dorm mates to feed the fish. “We won’t be gone long. The fish can survive without food for two days." The dubious look on Gabita’s face tells Otilia that she’d better make arrangements for the feedings. Something tells me the other fish died because Gabita forgot to feed them. Otilia asks Gabita if they have any soap. Gabita says no and then tells her what kind of soap to get; she has sensitive skin. Otilia also must get Kent cigarettes. They’re the only kind Gabita likes.

Otilia makes the rounds of the dormitory to fetch Gabita’s hair dryer from another girl and to visit the Arab student who runs a small sundries store from his dorm room. He doesn’t have Kents. Off Otilia goes, racing to catch a trolley to help her complete her chores.

She visits her boyfriend Adi (Alexandru Potocean), who teaches at her school. He gives her a passionate kiss and gropes her. She asks him to stop, that it embarrasses her, but she’s obviously very taken with him, too. He reminds her to be at his home at 5 p.m. for his mother’s birthday party. She says she can’t come. He can’t believe she’d slight his parents, to whom he planned to introduce her for the first time. She is insistent that she can’t. He asks her what's going on. She won't tell him. He presses her. She still refuses. He becomes distressed, and she agrees to come to the party. “I don’t know how I’ll manage it, but I’ll be there." She promises to bring flowers, then asks him if he knows where she can buy some Kents. He suggests the black marketer at a nearby hotel. She nods matter-of-factly.

She goes to the hotel to check on a room reserved under the name “Drugat." The clerk finds this an unusual name, probably suspecting it to be a pseudonym. In any case, there is no reservation under that name. The reservation was made by phone and no confirmation was secured. Despite Otilia’s best attempts to suggest that the person who took the reservation made a mistake, she is turned away. As she leaves, she approaches the black marketer, who is standing nonchalantly in the lobby. He sells her a box of Kents.

She finds another hotel and persuades the clerk to rearrange her reservations to secure a room for three days. The rate is rather high, and Otilia balks. The clerk becomes abrupt and asks her if she wants the room or not. Otilia agrees. She calls Gabita and tells her to borrow more money because some of the money they had needs to go for the hotel room. Gabita then informs her that Otilia must meet a Mr. Bebe for her and gives her an address. Otilia tells Gabita to meet her at the hotel and then hurries to the location and meets the suspicious Mr. Bebe (Vlad Ivanov). He asks her why Gabriela didn't come herself, as they had agreed. Otilia makes up a story and gets into his car. He insists that she trust him because he is trusting her. With what? With keeping their secret. Mr. Bebe is to perform an abortion on Gabriela.

Abortion is illegal in Romania, so we get a visit to the bad old days of girls in trouble at the mercy of back alley abortionists. Mr. Bebe is probably no worse than some of his other "colleagues," but he's still a threatening presence who carries a switchblade along with the tools of his trade and demands sexual favors in lieu of shortfalls in cash. He assures himself of getting this fringe benefit by refusing to discuss money with his potential clients, saying only that they'll "work something out." He's especially harsh with Gabita and Otilia because Gabita has lied about how far along she is—saying two months when she's well into her fourth month. The three of them could face a charge of murder if caught.

After Bebe inserts the probe that will terminate the pregnancy and leaves, Gabita comes clean about more discrepancies to Otilia. She says she wasn't "up" to meeting Bebe, that she said Otilia was her sister because it seemed like the right thing to do, that she picked Bebe instead of a woman because she thought Otilia didn't care one way or the other. Otilia denies ever mentioning anything about her preferences. Angrily, she warns Gabita not to "think" so much again. But the damage has been done.

Otilia leaves the hotel to keep her promise to Adi, but she's angry, traumatized, and irritated by his bourgeois family and guests who seem to look down on her working-class origins. With the fall of Communism, the put-upon intellectuals and professionals like Adi's parents feel free to vent their spleen. Finally, when Adi and Otilia are alone, she faces him with a hypothetical decision—what would he do if she got pregnant. He's confused and horrified and wholly unprepared to give her any security. It is then that she tells him she helped Gabita get an abortion.

The carefree life of the dormitory, the close friendship of Gabita and Otilia, the sensuous romance of Adi and Otilia—all have turned rancid for Otilia. She sees Gabita as a weak, careless, demanding creature. Adi, she thinks, is a man who can love as long as he and Otilia don't have any bumps in the road. Whether these assessments are entirely fair, they certainly have surfaced in some fashion during this ordeal. Otilia herself is revealed to be a self-sacrificing martyr who was finally asked to do too much.

What is so compelling about 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days is its profound reality, its avoidance of cheap melodrama, and its feeling for the surface and undercurrents of Romanian life. There's no blunting the force of this powerful work of art. It's a bonafide masterpiece. l

There are no more showings of 4 Months, 23 Weeks & 2 Days, which sold out both its screenings. This film must certainly return to Chicago for a regular run, so watch for it.

Previous CIFF coverage:

Yella: A mysterious, atmospheric tale of a troubled woman. (Germany)

Atagoal: Cat’s Magical Forest: A family-friendly anime about a fun-loving fat cat and the battle to save the world. (Japan)

4 Elements: A documentary that shows amazing footage of four dangerous occupations that seek to conquer earth, air, fire, and water. (The Netherlands)

Tehilim: A wife and her two sons struggle to understand the sudden disappearance of the man of the house and reconcile their grief and guilt with the Torah's teachings. (Israel/France)

Her Wild Oat: Newly discovered and restored silent comedy starring the magical Colleen Moore as a lunch wagon owner with a yen for the good life—and handsome leading man Larry Kent. (United States)

Lucky Miles: Desert survival meets a comedy of errors for illegal immigrants and the reservists sent to round them up in the desert of Western Australia. (Australia)

2007 Chicago International Film Festival

Lucky Miles (2007)
Director: Michael James Rowland

By Marilyn Ferdinand

The United States isn’t the only country with its panties in a bunch about immigrants, legal or otherwise. Over the last 10–15 years, Australia’s policies with regard to immigrants have slipped from relatively open to fairly hostile. While the politics of the country today seem to be favoring a return to a more liberal approach to immigration, there is still much resistance.

Lucky Miles was made as a kind of wake-up call to Australia. Rowland deliberately sets most of the action in the year 1990 to help Australians recall that it wasn’t so long ago when asylum seekers and boat people were dealt with in a more balanced way. Far from being a liberal polemic, however, Lucky Miles is a rich and entertaining film that tellingly won the Audience Choice Award at the 2007 Sydney Film Festival.

The film is based on real-life accounts of illegal immigrants who survived their journey to Australia in barely seaworthy boats, only to be dumped in the empty deserts on the northwest coast of the continent in the state of Western Australia. The film begins, however, in Cambodia in 1972, as an Australian soldier bids farewell to his Khmer lover. He gives her a business card and tells her to call the number if her family gives her a hard time. He also promises to return in a few weeks.

Flash-forward to 1990 and a jerrybuilt putt-putt filled with Iraqi and Cambodian refugees and their Indonesian mules. The boat pulls up to shore. Large sand dunes stretch as far as the eye can see. When one of passengers questions the location of the drop-off, lead mule Muluk (Sawung Jabo) assures them that just over the top of the dunes is a road where they can catch a bus into town. Khmer refugee Arun (Kenneth Moraleda) asks if the bus goes to Perth, where his father lives. He pulls out a business card to show the address. Muluk assures him it does. While the Iraqis and Khmer celebrate their arrival in a democracy where they can claim asylum, Muluk and his crew slip away.

Naturally, there is no road, no bus, nothing at all but endless desert. The Iraqis and Khmer head in opposite directions down the beach, hoping to walk to the nearest town. The Khmer manage to find a road. They see a sign, shot through with bullet holes, that puzzles them. They also see empty beverage cans along the road. One throws a rock at a can, and all of the Khmer crouch and cover their heads as it hits the can. This is comical to watch, but reflects the reality of unexploded bombs these Khmer faced in their own country. The Khmer follow the road and find a roadhouse. As they sit drinking free refreshments at the roadhouse, the owner slips off to call the police. All the Khmer are rounded up except for Arun, who was outside filling his water jugs and who runs for his life. He’s used to police who shoot first and ask questions later.

Meanwhile, the Iraqis are having troubles of their own. Yousif (Rodney Afif) bristles at the orders given by the self-appointed leader Hussam (Majed Abbas). When the pair go to collect fire wood, Hussam pulls a knife out. Realizing that Hussam was one of Saddam Hussein's death dealers, the people who killed his entire family, Yousif runs and falls over a cliff. Yousif brings the “sad" news back to the camp of Youif's demise, claiming to have called out and made a thorough search. The men, convinced by his story, continue on without thinking more about it.

Yousif, scraped and stunned, survives and starts walking. He collides squarely with Arun, who is running at full speed away from the “bad town." Arun, who has water, spares a few precious gulps for Yousif, and the men decide to join forces. Yousif wants to go back to the town, but Arun insists this would be a mistake and since he holds all the cards—the water—the men set off for Perth.

Meanwhile, back at the boat, Ramelan (Sri Sacdpraseuth), Muluk’s nephew, is playing with a cigarette lighter. He accidentally loses his grip on it and sets the boat on fire. The trio of smugglers must swim to shore. Muluk refuses to let Ramelan come with him and Abdu (Arif Hidayat), punishment for sinking the boat. Now we have several groups of illegal aliens wandering around Western Australia.

Add to the mix a trio of Army reservists who are sent to track the refugees' whereabouts. A city mouse Aboriginal named O'Shane (Glen Shea), a country mouse Aboriginal named Tom Collins (Sean Mununggurr), and country mouse white Australian Greg Plank (Don Hany) are in pursuit after reports of the smugglers' boat are made. The film makes droll comedy out of the fact that O'Shane is an Aboriginal who cannot track; he constantly asks Tom where the refugess have gone. The trio are a less physically abusive version of the Three Stooges whose misadventures, including dropping their Land Rover in a water hole, keep them one step behind Yousif, Arun, and forlorn and abandoned Ramelan, who joined the duo with promises to lead them to civilization.

This is a film that makes certain light of the dumb luck and misfortunes of its characters without caricaturizing them or diminishing the plight they are in. Although Arun wishes to avoid the police at all costs, they are his best hope for survival in the harsh outback. Yousif, "a fully qualified structural engineer" who was reduced to driving a cab in Iran for five years (a job Ramelan covets), seeks control at all costs. When, after splitting up in anger, the trio accidentally reunites in an abandoned shack, Yousif spends all his time trying to get a rusted, broken truck to run again. It seems hopeless, but he has a Westerner's sense of individual responsibility and determination.

Eventually, the reservists catch up with Yousif and Ramelan in a hilarious, realistic chase sequence that has to be seen to be believed. When news of their ordeal hits Australia's airwaves, pub dwellers near the site of their capture hand it to the little buggers for