Metamorphosis: Film Review

MONTREAL The absurdist fables of Franz Kafka present a tremendous challenge to filmmakers hoping to adapt them; perhaps none more so than The Metamorphosis, whose protagonist is a traveling salesman who turns into a giant bug. Writer/director Chris Swanton, perhaps fueled by a first-timer's ambition, tackles this tale with a film that's quite faithful to the book. But while its source material will surely draw attention, the film is unlikely to satisfy many Kafka fans.

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Envisioning a man-sized cockroach -- and how it will interact with the humans it once called family -- is the most obvious challenge here, and Swanson's solution is a pretty silly-looking beast. The CGI bug is effectively icky in some respects, but in order to make it a functioning protagonist the designers have given it large, expressive eyes and a mouth that can almost smile or frown. A presumably modest effects budget means the critter often doesn't look like he's actually touching the set and props, but that might be forgiven if it were convincing in other ways.

Interactions between the former Gregor Samsa and others are similarly difficult to move from the page to the screen. Swanson encourages a heavily mannered, theatrical style in his actors, and in more dramatic moments actors resort to poses of menace, grief and shock taken straight from the silent age of cinema. These affectations mesh poorly with the lushly dramatic classical music used here; without the Mahler and Beethoven, the performances might have generated a self-contained weirdo reality that let us accept what was happening.

Production Companies: Attractive Features, Rockkis Digital Media Entertainment Ltd.

Cast: Robert Pugh, Maureen Lipman, Laura Rees, Chloe Howman, Alistair Petrie, Janet Henfrey, Aidan McArdle, Paul Thornley

Director-Screenwriter: Chris Swanton, based on the book by Franz Kafka

Producers: Chris Swanton, William Rockall, Lesley McNeil

Director of photography: John Daley

Editor: Chris Toft

No rating, 105 minutes

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The Gatekeepers: Telluride Review

You can scarcely believe what you're hearing and seeing at first: Six former heads of the Shin Bet, Israel's historically secretive internal intelligence agency, telling stories out of school about secret operations, the cultivation of informers, interrogation techniques, targeted assassinations, successes and failures and the dangers posed by the Israeli far-right. The most senior of them, who believes that the future is bleak, ends by lamenting that the nation's army is now a brutal occupation force that is similar to the Germans in World War II. In other words, this is one hot, provocative, revelatory and astonishing documentary, one sure to provoke enthralled interest and controversy wherever it is shown worldwide. After initial festival exposure at Telluride, Toronto and New York, Sony Classics will release the film in the United States later in the year.

Given that the agency's motto is The Unseen Shield and that its only publicly known member at any given moment is its director, of whom there have 13 over the course of Israel's history, one immediate question is: How is it that all these men jointly decided to spill the beans about so much concerning the organization's operations and methods? A likely answer is that they are alarmed about where things are headed. It's probably no coincidence that four of them Ami Ayalon, Avraham Shalom, Yaakov Peri and Carmi Gillon jointly gave an interview in 2003 warning of catastrophe unless a two-state solution to the Palestinian issue was implemented, as the inevitable alternative would be a form of apartheid. They're no happier today.

Cinematographer-turned-director Dror Moreh leaves such sentiments for the very end, as he uses the frank and informed views of his seen-it-all participants to assemble a riveting history of a singular organization. Criticized for borderline torture techniques at times and blamed for not preventing the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, the Shin Bet, ideological issues aside, seems overall to have done an impressive job, especially given that it serves a democracy, of obtaining information and thwarting what is estimated as 90 per cent of attempted terrorist attacks under circumstances as challenging as any in the world.

A key early passage puts the viewer in the position of spymaster. As overhead black-and-white surveillance coverage shows a vehicle allegedly containing terrorists making its way through urban streets, pertinent questions are posed before a decision to attack is made: Do we know who's on board and how many there are? How much time do we have? Will there by any collateral damage? Then a silent explosion is witnessed. A button has been pushed. People are dead. Someone played God.

The historical panorama begins in the aftermath of the Six Day War in 1967, when one million Palestinians came under Israeli control in the West Bank, Gaza and the old city of Jerusalem. Israel quickly took a census, which enabled it to determine who and where everyone was, laying the basis for an excellent list of potential informers. Shin Bet agents were sent in to live among the Palestinians, learned Arabic so well they could tell when code or other evasions were being used and developed a staggering network of agents and prisoners with information.

Mostly black-and-white newsreel footage provides vivid images of Palestinian towns and settlements at the time, of Israeli soldiers rounding up detainees and of the forbidding former Turkish prison in Jerusalem where allegedly moderate forms of physical duress kept the intelligence flowing. Even tough old bird Shalom, who headed the agency from 1980-86, adamantly favored a two-state solution from early on, although he was done in when, under his watch, two terrorists were killed by Israeli agents in the wake of a bus hijacking.

Such incidents occasion debates about the legality and morality of killing, both to prevent and punish terrorism and, in a political sense, whether the Shin Bet operated on its own or at the direction of the prime minister. Through it all, the former agency chiefs, who also include Yuval Diskin and Avi Dichter, evince a profound awareness of these issues but, more than that, an enlightened pragmatism that, in such a job, must no doubt be applied everyday.

The Shin Bet began showing its weaknesses with the First Infitada in the late 1980s, which caught it unawares, the beginnings of bus bombings and other atrocities, the emergence of the more extreme Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements, which were much tougher to infiltrate than Fatah, and most of all with Rabin's murder, which revealed the threat posed by the Israeli far-right. One fascinating passage describes how the Shin Bet managed to catch right-wingers who were about to blow up 250 Arabs and Palestinians in buses in Jerusalem as well as to bomb the Dome of the Rock, an act which, one says, would have brought all of Islam down upon Israel.

The agency emerged from all this turmoil by shifting its priorities from field operations to hi-tech expertise, which has paid great dividends in fighting terrorism. An amazing interlude describes the 1996 assassination via cell phone of the Shin Bet's number one most wanted at the time, Palestinian bomb maker Yahya Ayyash, while another describes how in 2003 it missed, out of government timidity, nailing about a dozen top terrorists in a single action.

Still, for all the exploits and moments of success, the prevailing tone at the end is one of near-despair over the future of Israel on the part of knowledgeable patriots who have spent their lives manning the ramparts. The climactic comments of all six participants lament weak-willed leadership, an Israel that's become a police state, and a point at which We've become...cruel.

Ayalon, who also served as command-in-chief of the navy and member of the Knesset and comes off as the most intellectually exacting of all the participants, sums it up this way: The tragedy of Israel's public security debate is that we don't realize that we face a frustrating situation, in which we win every battle, but we lose the war.

Venue: Telluride, Toronto, New York Film Festivals
Distribution: Sony Pictures Classics
Production: Dror Moreh Prods., Les Films du Poisson, Cinephil, Wild Heart Prods.
Director: Dror Moreh
With: Yuvall Diskin, Avraham Shalom, Avi Dichter, Yaakov Peri, Carmi Gilon, Ami Ayalon
96 minutes

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Last Rhapsody (Utolsó Rapszódia): Film Review

MONTREAL The final days of composer Franz Liszt are the subject of speculation in Bence Gyngyssy's Last Rhapsody, which imagines a 1911 stage production about Liszt's death being interrupted by a mystery woman bent on correcting its account. Respectful but not exactly spirited, it may interest hardcore classical music fans but lacks the romantic sweep needed to succeed in theaters.

The film opens on rehearsals for the about-to-open play, whose script hews to the then-accepted (and since disputed) account of Liszt's death from pneumonia. A stranger shows up backstage, claiming to have been the pianist's "last pupil" and intimate companion; setting cast and crew down, she tells them about a May/December relationship that had been erased from official biographies.

Though this Nina (Ilona Nagy) describes the relationship in terms of muses and soulmates, any physical romance is only hinted at -- with the exception of one scene toward the end, when Nina proffers her naked body to a man clearly nearing the end of his life. Prior to that, what we get is mostly family politics, with Liszt's jealous daughter Cosima (Andrea Sptei) -- who was married to Richard Wagner and organizing a production of Tristan and Isolde after his death -- working imperiously to keep the young woman out of her father's home. This is fairly dry stuff, set in handsome estates but having the look and feel of a TV production.

As we watch this story through Nina's eyes, the roles are played by the same actors cast in the play she is interrupting; this double-casting doesn't help viewers lose themselves in the illusion. Particularly distracting is the long white wig Tams Jordn wears as Liszt; real-world photos of the composer don't look this cartoonish.

Production Company: Utols Rapszdia Ltd.
Cast: Tams Jordn, Andrea Sptei, Piroska Molnr, Pter Klloy Molnr, Ilona Nagy, Tibor Gspar
Director: Bence Gyngyssy
Screenwriter: Tibor Fonydi
Producer: Bence Gyngyossy, Barna Kabay
Director of photography: Sndor Csuks
Production designers: Viktria Horvth, Zsolt Nnssy
Music: Franz Liszt
Costume designer: Mnika Kis
Editor: Kroly Szalai
No rating, 75 minutes

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Wadjda: Venice Review

A real discovery from the Middle East and a film that will be one of the most-seen Arab-language films of the year, Wadjda has the distinction of being the first feature film ever shot in Saudi Arabia. And perhaps even more significantly, it is the first feature written and directed by a Saudi Arabian woman, the talented Haifaa Al Mansour.

Her tale about a 12-year-old tomboy who wants to buy a bike would be a small jewel of tone and story-telling in any country, but its Riyadh setting and unapologetic feminist intent is the main attraction, throwing open closed doors on womens lives.

Bowing in Venice Horizons, it has the appeal to cross over to international theatrical in controlled situations, and is bound to start a fresh dialogue with the Mideast at film festivals in the wake of the Arab Spring. Backed by the Jordanian Royal Film Commission, the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, the Dubai Film Markets Enjaaz, Sundance Institute and a host of other prestigious bodies, the film presents the very best face of a Middle East interested in change and an equitable future for women.

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Wadjda (Waad Mohammed) is a rebellious free spirit who lives with her glamorous mom (Saudi Arabian TV star Reem Abdullah) in a luxurious home. Daddy (Sultan Al Assaf) is a handsome guy who turns up very occasionally. Though he obviously adores his wife and daughter, he and his family (never seen, though they live across the street) want a son his wife cannot have. The undercurrent to the story is whether he will take a second wife, emotionally abandoning them.

Much of the action takes place in Wadjdas all-girl school, run by a scowling wicked witch, Ms. Hussa (Ahd), who singles the girl out as a troublemaker. By filming inside the school, Al Mansour throw open a curtain on a previously closed world not that different, in the end, from certain religious schools in the West that some viewers may have attended. There is the same obsession with sex on the part of the teachers, who are no angels themselves, and the same attempt to regiment happy young children into narrow social roles. If they succeed on the whole, there are always special cases like Wadjda who slip through the tight net, giving the story a decidedly upbeat ending.

Among the surprises is Wadjdas sudden "conversion to religion and her attempt to win the schools annual Quran contest so she can buy the bike she covets. This part of the plot culminates in one of the most beautiful recital of Quranic verses on film. Another delightful subplot is her tomboyish friendship with the little boy next door (Abdullrahman Al Gohani), whose deep-seated admiration for her spunk is a most encouraging sign.

The three excellent main actresses are subtly directed, yet leave an indelible impression of the different paths womens lives can take. Producers Gerhard Meixner and Roman Pauls distinguished Razor Film (Waltz with Bashir, Paradise Now) adds another feather to its cap with fine production values from a top-flight German tech team, who allow the empty, wide-open spaces of the city to speak for themselves.

Venue: Venice Film Festival (Horizons), Aug. 30, 2012

Production companies: Razor Film in association with High Look Group, Rotana Studios

Cast: Waad Mohammed, Reem Abdullah, Ahd, Sultan Al Assaf

Director: Haifaa Al Mansour

Screenwriter: Haifaa Al Mansour

Producers: Gerhard Meixner, Roman Paul

Director of photography: Lutz Reitemeier

Production designer: Thomas Molt

Editor: Andreas Wodraschke

Music: Max Richter

Sales Agent: The Match Factory

No rating, 97 minutes.

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7sex7: Montreal Review

MONTREAL An erotic anthology with enough flirtatious humor to keep it out of the art-porn zone, Irena kori's 7sex7 doesn't succeed on all fronts but should have something to stir the interest of nearly any date-night arthouse patron.

Seven unrelated stories bump up against each other, with five heterosexual scenarios and one each involving gay men and a lesbian couple (the latter having recruited a "human vibrator" for a special occasion). Some stories begin in bed and go afield; some begin with sex looking highly improbable. None shows anything that could be called sexually explicit, and in one or two cases little attempt is made to make simulation look like more than just that.

The movie's softcore nature is acknowledged slyly in the first episode, where a frustrated woman tries to conquer her boyfriend's fixation on the Emmanuelle series. This tale sets the bar for humor here, which is low-key but almost always present, even in stories that, as a couple do, go south. (One turns obliquely violent, two involve betrayals of some sort.)

The stories range from juvenile fantasies (the record nerd who scores in his favorite music store -- though he'd have preferred a Czech girl to a Hungarian) to scammy set-ups that would make even a porn customer's eyes roll. But most of the tales manage a moment or more of heat, and a couple sustain it.

Darko Heric's often haphazard handheld photography lends a real-world sloppiness (as do the largely ordinary-looking cast members) but does little for the film's sensuality quotient. kori's choice to end with the film's most mean-spirited story is further proof she's not out to make a straightforward aphrodisiac for highbrow moviegoers.

Production Company: Artizana Film

Cast: Robert Kurbasa, Jelena Percin, Ivan Glowatzky, Frano Maskovic, Scilla Barath Bastaic, Marinko Les

Director-Screenwriter-Produce-Production designer-Costume designer: Irena kori

Director of photography: Darko Heric

Music: Berislav Sipus

Editor: Mislav Muretic

Sales: Irena kori

No rating, 81 minutes

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Have You Seen Lupita? (¿Alguien A Visto A Lupita?): Toronto Review

MONTREAL A sort of holy-fool adventure that seems only to decide what it wants to be somewhere past its midpoint, Gonzalo Justiniano's Have You Seen Lupita? isn't as lucky in finding its way as its heroine, a not-all-there sweetie who every ten minutes escapes some kind of terrible fate. The pan-Latin production has meager prospects Stateside, though Spanish-language audiences might embrace it on a small scale.

Dulce Mara plays Lupita, an attractive young woman who (perhaps thanks to big brother Maxi's carelessness with his drug stash years ago) can't quite navigate the world without assistance. Pushed into institutionalizing her when their mother dies, Maxi (Cristin de la Fuente) soon has second thoughts, stupidly checking Lupita into a hotel with orders to stay put. Within hours she's on the run with his credit card.

The film's tone is essentially realistic in the first half, with Lupita narrowly escaping the lust and avarice of men who decide she's just too sweet to molest. Justiniano cuts back and forth between present-tense misadventures and the family politics that got Lupita here, suggesting a narrative in which the pieces currently on the table will eventually fit together. Mara offers a winning combination of guilelessness and sex appeal, and doesn't lean too heavily on the little girl act -- she always seems a tiny bit smarter than people believe, and we're eager to see how she'll pull this situation together.

But midway through, the pic takes a turn toward exaggerated satire, literally sending Lupita into a gunfight to rescue a child, with onlookers declaring immediately they've witnessed a saint in the making.

The script (penned by Justiniano and Marina Stavenhagen) does a clumsy job establishing the phenomenon that grows from this event forward, with a couple of unconvincing encounters leading to an even less credible quasi-religious stardom. More successful is the continuing presence of Chepita (Carmen Salinas), the sharp-tongued older woman who befriends Lupita on a bus and finds ways to thrive as things get weird.

Production Company: Sahara Films Cine Sur

Cast: Dulce Mara, Carmen Salinas, Cristin de la Fuente, Schlomit Baytelman, Anglica Castro

Director: Gonzalo Justiniano

Screenwriters: Gonzalo Justiniano, Marina Stavenhagen

Producers-Sales: Gonzalo Justiniano, Daniel de la Vega

Executive producers: Cristin de la Fuente, Diego Dubcovsky

Director of photography: Miguel Bunster

Music: Jorge Arriagada

Editor: Carolina Quevedo

No rating, 85 minutes

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Paradise: Faith: Venice Review

VENICE Put together a subversive filmmaker like Ulrich Seidl with the subject of religious fanaticism and youre bound to get something provocative. But Paradise: Faith, the second part of the Austrian directors trilogy about three women from the same family on different quests, is possibly more interesting to think about and discuss afterwards than to sit through. Depending how you look at it, theres a pitch-black comedy buried in here or a redeeming shred of empathy at the tail end of two grueling hours. Either way, its strictly for the faithful.

The film follows Paradise: Love, which premiered in competition at Cannes and dealt with a middle-aged frau on the prowl for romantic fulfillment among the sex tourists of Kenya. Seen briefly in the earlier film, that characters sister, Anna Maria (Maria Hofstatter), is the key figure in Faith, while her daughter is the center of the forthcoming third part, Paradise: Hope, about a zaftig teen at fat camp. In each freestanding film a vacation forces the protagonist to confront herself and her longing for happiness.

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Taking time off from her job as a medical facility technician, Anna Maria plans to spend her break doing missionary work. She travels to immigrant neighborhoods in the far-flung suburbs of Vienna, hauling a foot-high statue of the Virgin Mary along in a personal crusade to bring Catholicism back to Austria. Her hair shellacked into a severe updo that makes her look like the warden in a 1960s womens prison movie, shes a bizarre character, played with fierce conviction by Hofstatter.

Seidl wastes no time showing us the extent of Anna Marias devotion as she strips to the waist and self-flagellates before a crucifix, or straps herself into a restrictive belt and shuffles around the house, praying on bruised knees.

The line between holy and sexualized devotion is blurred throughout. Anna Marias bedtime conversations with the portrait of Jesus on her nightstand have an unsettling intimacy, but they pale next to her behavior later on, when her desire for Christ is quite literally demonstrated. Nobody is ever going to accuse Seidl of going Hollywood.

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But as in Love, the directors lack of economy is problematic. Scenes run on and on, and as Anna Maria goes door to door with her prayer book and holy water atomizer, being admitted only because the responder is intimidated, crazy, drunk or spoiling for a fight, the film becomes effortful and repetitive. Is Anna Maria an object of curiosity, scorn, ridicule or sympathy to the filmmaker? For much of Faith, its hard to say.

The more interesting stuff happens when Anna Marias husband Nabil (Nabil Saleh) returns unexpectedly after a two-year absence. An assimilated Egyptian-born Moslem, he has been a paraplegic since an accident. He is shocked by the coldness of her greeting and her refusal to allow him into their marriage bed.

Its a refreshing twist that the Moslem here initially represents the moderate view while the Christian is the rigid fundamentalist, professing herself grateful for his accident as it allowed her to rediscover her faith and expunge sin from her life. But Seidl is too thorny a cultural provocateur for such neat reversals.

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Nabil begins his gradual assault by challenging Anna he drops the Maria, thus negating her piety about the holes in her ideology. Eventually his acts of rebellion become more aggressive, smashing all of his wifes religious icons and amusingly raising a glass of beer to the Pope before knocking the pontiffs portrait off the kitchen wall. Anna Maria responds by removing Nabils wheelchair to curtail his mobility, effectively establishing domestic warfare. In a droll echo of her earlier atonement ritual, he drags himself around the apartment floor.

Seidl has little use for subtlety or nuance. Many of the films scenes are grotesquely funny, shocking, cruel, harrowing, or all of the above.Laughter that might have been nervous or glib accompanied much of the first Venice press screening.

Among the more entertaining interludes is an exchange between Anna Maria and an argumentative couple (Dieter and Trude Masur), happy to thrash out their dissenting views on chastity, adultery, contraception and divorce. On the more punishing side is a visit with a depressed, abusive Russian alcoholic (Natalija Baranova). The scene is seemingly intended to suggest the poignancy of Anna Marias frustrations, but the effect is bludgeoning. In one moment sure to spark comment, she hears sexual grunting on the way through a park at night and finds a group having a boisterous al fresco orgy, shown in explicit detail. This causes Anna Maria to clutch her rosary before rushing home to scrub down in the bathtub.

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Untrained actor Saleh brings haunting dignity in physically and emotionally difficult circumstances for his character. The films pathos, such as it is, is largely generated by Nabils confusion and escalating anger about the radical change in his wife during his time away. Only in the concluding scene, when the test of faith that his return represents to her has cracked Anna Marias armor, are we encouraged to feel something for her.

That will be too little for most audiences, though the rigorousness of Seidls aesthetic remains commanding. Faith is very much of a piece with Love and with the filmmakers work in general. Developed out of unscripted scene outlines, the action plays out in static shots, filmed sequentially and artfully framed by collaborators Wolfgang Thaler and Ed Lachman. Its a cinema of asceticism that seeks beauty in harshness and ugliness. What it does to illuminate religious fanaticism is open to debate.

Venue: Venice Film Festival (In Competition)

Production companies: Ulrich Seidl Film Produktion, Tat Film, Parisienne de Production

Cast: Maria Hofstatter, Nabil Saleh, Natalija Baranova, Rene Rupnik, Dieter Masur, Trude Masur

Director-producer: Ulrich Seidl

Screenwriters: Ulrich Seidl, Veronika Franz

Directors of photography: Wolfgang Thaler, Ed Lachman

Production designers: Renate Martin, Andreas Donhauser

Costume designer: Tanja Hausner

Editor: Christof Schertenleib

Sales: Coproduction Office

No rating, 113minutes

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Stories We Tell: Venice Review

VENICE -- After establishing herself as a writer-director with 2006's double Oscar-nominated Away From Her and last year's followup Take This Waltz, Canadian child-star-turned-actress Sarah Polley now makes an audacious leap into autobiographical documentary with the long-gestating Stories We Tell. Making very public a long-buried family secret regarding Polley's origins, this playfully complex and gently slippery analysis of memory and personal narrative manages to engage us in what's essentially the private business, some might even say the dirty laundry, of total strangers.

Debuting at Venice days before its North American premiere in Toronto, the picture's sleight-of-hand structure and lurid autobiographical aspects are talking-points that could translate to decent arthouse box-office in Canada. Abroad, Polley's enduringly cultish status as a performer and the steady success of her two previous directorial outings bode well for both distribution and small-screen sales. Further festival exposure is a given.

As in her previous screenplays, Polley's focus is squarely on a married couple coping with various crises in their relationship over a period of time. Here that couple happen to be her own parents -- her mother Diane and the man who may or may not have been her biological father, Michael.Diane died in 1990 when Polley was just 11, but had already been labeled "Canada's Sweetheart" thanks to TV smash Road to Avonlea, in addition to high-profile roles in films such as Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988).

Stories We Tell makes little mention of Polley Jr.'s remarkable precocity, and is instead largely an oral biography of thespian pair Michael and Diane, much of it narrated by salty septuagenarian Michael himself from his own writings. Various family-members and friends are also on hand to chip in with their talking-head reminiscences and perspectives, in a picture which unpretentiously deconstructs its own assemblage by means of frequent cutaways to Sarah "directing" her dad's vocal performance.

Polley and editor Michael Munn also delve into a stunningly comprehensive 8mm archive of home-movie footage chronicling Michael and Diane's professional and personal lives in the Canadian theater world of the 1970s. Indeed, so exhaustively are such doings recorded by these unidentified camerapersons that many viewers will start to intuit that all isn't quite what it seems.It turns out that there some degree of "fabrication" here, one which for a time this casts doubt upon the veracity of everything else on view. Could the whole project actually be some cruelly elaborate, rug-pulling game with audience expectations and prurient curiosity?

Polley's overall vision and concept, however, ultimately prove sufficiently strong to support the considerable degrees of ambiguity which she riskily deploys. This is also in no small part due to the outstanding technical assistance she receives from offscreen collaborators including cinematographer Iris Ng, costume-designer Sarah Armstrong, art director Lea Carlson, hairstylist Josie Stewart and casting-directors John Buchan and Jason Knight. But specifying exactly why and how these folk, along with actress Diane Jenkins, are so crucial would spoil the delicately unfolding narrative pattern Polley has conceived, one whose impact is inversely proportional to the viewer's degree of foreknowledge.

Venue: Venice Film Festival (Venice Days)
Production company: National Film Board of Canada
Director/screenwriter: Sarah Polley
Producer: Anita Lee
Executive producer: Silva Basmajian
Director of photography: Iris Ng
Art director: Lea Carlson
Music: Jonathan Goldsmith
Costume designer: Sarah Armstrong
Editor: Michael Munn
Sales agent: National Film Board of Canada, Montreal
No MPAA rating, 109 minutes

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Ornette: Made in America: Film Review

Free Jazz legend Ornette Coleman gets an appropriately out-there tribute in Shirley Clarke's Ornette: Made in America, a 1984 doc just restored as part of Milestone Films' "Project Shirley." Very much a work of its time, the doc offers unique perspectives for fans of both the saxophonist and the pioneering filmmaker, but is unlikely to attract a broad audience beyond those camps.

A project that Clarke began in the late '60s and evidently would have abandoned if not for the prompting of a Texas arts organization in the '80s, Ornette combines relatively straightforward music-doc fare with experiments in both content and form. The whole thing is built around a 1983 concert in which Coleman's group joined the Fort Worth Symphony in one of Coleman's sprawling, challenging compositions.

Borrowing its structure from this piece, "Skies of America," Clarke offers an impressionistic collage combining various ways of telling this uncategorizable artist's story: two young actors reenact a few of Coleman's memories of growing up in Fort Worth, Texas (these younger Ornettes occasionally share the screen with the real one); family members talk about how much rejection he faced before being hailed as a genius; performance clips with various groups show some of the forms his music has taken; and episodes invoking Buckminster Fuller and William S. Burroughs show how heavily Coleman's musical philosophy was influenced by thinkers in other realms.

Scenes in which Coleman directly addresses that "harmolodic" philosophy, though, will be hard for the uninitiated to follow. Clarke isn't interested in being a stand-in for the square world, and doesn't push him to speak in plain terms. Just the opposite: In scenes employing then-daring, now-dated video effects (and sometimes using simple machine-gun editing to jarring effect), she attempts to echo Coleman's no-rulebook techniques in visual terms.

These experiments may not have aged well, but Milestone's restoration of the film is top-notch. Their long-term project, to bring the work of this unfairly neglected filmmaker back into the public eye, should be celebrated by anyone interested in the history of American independent film.

Production Company: Caravan of Dreams
Director-editor: Shirley Clarke
Producer: Kathelin Hoffman
Director of photography: Ed Lachman
Music: Ornette Coleman
No rating/ rating, 77 minutes

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Liv & Ingmar: Film Review

MONTREAL One of cinema's most significant romances is eulogized with reverence in Dheeraj Akolkar's Liv & Ingmar, which might more rightly be titled Liv on Liv & Ingmar. Cinephiles of a certain age (and younger ones with tastes shaped by the Criterion Collection) will lap it up, and Hallvard Braein's cinematography is certainly lush enough to justify a big-screen run before the doc gets to video.

Late in the film, Liv Ullmann admits to occasionally resenting the fact that, after all these years, people still can't talk to her without asking what it was like to work with Ingmar Bergman. The director once consolingly insisted that such questions tacitly acknowledged her own gifts as well: "You are my Stradivarius," he told her. Liv & Ingmar is only concerned with the art the two left behind in this sense, as an outgrowth of their intense offscreen relationship. (Throughout, stages of the couple's emotional evolution are illustrated with clips of their films, with Max Von Sydow -- if Ullmann was a Stradivarius, what was he? -- and Erland Josephson standing in for Bergman.)

Akolkar focuses largely on the first five or so years of their relationship, which began on the set of Persona when she was 25 to his 46. He takes Ullmann back to the island of Fr, and the film is well served by his heavy reliance on this interview footage: Sitting in the house they shared and elsewhere on this storied isle, she offers an intimate and clear-eyed account of their time together. Describing things in the kind of poetic terms that can only come after some rumination (the film's voiceover borrows from her memoir Changing), she describes the immediate bond that caused both director and actress to forsake their spouses, then what it was like to live with Bergman -- who needed to spend his days working in solitude, but refused to let her have visitors or leave their walled-off property.

Though the director isn't alive to speak for himself (and one suspects he wouldn't have done so), Akolkar frequently quotes Bergman's own memoir and his letters to Ullmann, showing his awareness of and frustration with the personal failings that would soon drive her away. After their split, Ullmann speaks with tenderness and self-aware humor of how passions were transmuted, over time, into a deep and artistically productive friendship.

In addition to excerpting their films, Akolkar indulges himself with atmospheric insert shots that give the doc a commercial polish but are usually unnecessary. The same impulse leads him to slow down the final frames of some film clips, worried that we'll miss a look of anguish or fury in an actor's eyes if he doesn't slow to a freeze-frame. Anyone inclined to see Liv & Ingmar is probably well acquainted with the emotions these films stir, and the parallels they have to the auteur's inner life.

Production Company: Nordic Stroies AS
Director-Screenwriter: Dheeraj Akolkar
Producer: Rune H. Trondsen
Director of photography: Hallvard Braein
Music: Stefan Nilsson
Editor: Tushar Ghogale
Sales: Rune Trondsen
No rating, 84 minutes

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The Iceman: Venice Review

VENICE A densely plotted account of the life and crimes of Richard Kuklinski, who murdered more than 100 victims before he was apprehended in 1986, The Iceman is a vivid evocation of a remorseless sociopath sustaining a double life as a contract killer and devoted family man. Gritty, gripping and unrelentingly intense, Ariel Vromens film boasts richly detailed character work from an ideal cast. But the driving force is Michael Shannon in the title role, showing once again that he can explore the darkness within like few actors working today.

Theres considerable overlap here with crime sagas from Goodfellas to The Sopranos, and while his film is certainly not quite up there with the classics of Scorsese or Coppola, Vromen paints from his own palette. In tone, The Iceman perhaps most closely resembles the early work of James Gray in its neo-noir edginess and contagious fascination with the dourest and most dangerous of milieus. One of its most bracing characteristics, established from the outset, is the fluid juxtaposition of tenderness and violence.

The screenplay, by Morgan Land and Vromen, was based on a fictionalized book by Anthony Bruno and on James Thebauts 1992 HBO documentary, The Iceman Tapes: Conversations With a Killer. That source is reflected in a framing device in which the aged, bearded Kuklinski responds to questions in prison, with Shannon looking like a fine-grained Rembrandt drawing in the half-light.

PHOTO: 'Iceman' Poster Stars Michael Shannon as Menacing Killer

The duality of Polish-American Richies existence is illustrated right off the bat during his first date, in Jersey City in 1964, with his future wife, virtuous Catholic girl Deborah Pellicotti (Winona Ryder). She coaxes Richie through his conversational reticence to declare shyly, Youre a prettier version of Natalie Wood. The sweetness of that scene invests us instantly in the films central relationship. A barroom interlude follows in which a pool player aggravates Richie, who calmly slits his throat in the back alley afterwards, suggesting this is far from the first time he has killed.

Richie convinces Deborah that he works dubbing Disney films, but he actually bootlegs porn videos. Before long he gets on the personal payroll of steely unaffiliated gangster Roy Demeo (Ray Liotta), who admires his ability to keep cool while staring down the barrel of a gun. After testing his loyalty by having him dispatch a homeless guy, Roy hires Richie to watch his back, collect debts and send messages. As Richie and Deborahs family grows with the birth of two daughters in the Jersey suburbs, his emotionless efficiency carrying out kills is expertly chronicled.

Here and elsewhere, the work of editor Danny Rafic is hypnotic in weaving together the separate strands of Richies personal and professional life, underscoring the radical contrast between them.

When Roys filial-like minion Josh Rosenthal (David Schwimmer) angers rival Mob families by robbing and taking out drug couriers during an exchange, Roy comes under pressure from their mediator Leo Marks (Robert Davi). This indirectly puts Richie in an awkward position that ends with him being shut out of the operation and unable to continue providing for his oblivious family, who think hes in finance.

Land and Vromens script delves into intriguing details in the developments that follow, when Richie teams up with another free-agent killer, Dutch-Irish Robert Pronge (a stringy-haired, virtually unrecognizable Chris Evans), whose cover is running a Mr. Freezy ice-cream truck. They begin using cyanide spray as an undetectable murder method, freezing the bodies to dump later, mutilating them to fit the profile of an existing serial killer. In one memorable scene Richie carries out a hit by employing just a strategic cough on a crowded disco dancefloor, accompanied on the soundtrack by Blondie.

However, when Roy becomes aware that Richie is back in the game, he closes in, for the first time compromising the safety of his former henchman's beloved family.

Vromens handle on this incident-packed story is unerring, with cinematographer Bobby Bukowski bathing the world in grim, chiaroscuro shadow and bled-out, murky colors that conjure the environment and the time from the 1960s through the mid-80s with arresting yet visually unfussy style. The gracefulness and composure of the camerawork even through some of the more volatile action shows highly assured craftsmen at work. Production designer Nathan Amondson and costumer Donna Zakowskas understated period reconstruction is similarly focused. Another invaluable contribution is Haim Mazars score, which molds a sense of unpredictable violence and dread without drawing undue attention to itself.

But the films chief asset is without question its performances. Its terrific to see Ryder back in such a juicy role and she brings a lovely ethereal quality to Deborah, as well as a certain willful blindness that allows her to ignore the inconsistencies in Richies front until very late. Actors like Liotta and Davi have often been unimaginatively used in these kinds of roles, but theres a measured quality to their menace here that makes them extremely compelling.

Evans brings an unforced toughness and immorality that couldnt be more distant from his recent Captain America turn in The Avengers, while an equally transformed Schwimmer, with porn stache and greasy ponytail, plays effectively against type. James Franco and Stephen Dorff have one riveting scene apiece, respectively as one of Richies assigned hits, praying for his life, and as the estranged brother with whom Richie ends up sharing a cell-block address.

But the smoldering center of the drama is Shannon. While we receive fragments of information about the violent conditioning of Richies brutal childhood only an hour into the film, its clear from the outset that this is a complex man whose capacity to kill as well as to love have both been cemented by harsh experience. Shannon is no less consumed by his role here than he was in Take Shelter. Its a tribute to this astonishing actor that no matter how vicious his actions, Richie remains an antihero with an unyielding grip on our attentions.

Venue: Venice Film Festival (Out of Competition)

Production companies: Ehud Bleiberg, Millennium Films

Cast: Michael Shannon, Winona Ryder, James Franco, Ray Liotta, Chris Evans, David Schwimmer, Robert Davi, Danny Abeckaser, Stephen Dorff, John Ventimiglia, Jay Giannone, Ryan ONan

Director: Ariel Vromen

Screenwriters: Morgan Land, Ariel Vromen, based on the book The Iceman: The True Story of a Cold-Blooded Killer, by Anthony Bruno, and the documentary The Iceman Tapes: Conversations With a Killer, by James Thebaut

Producers: Avi Lerner, Ariel Vromen, Ehud Bleimberg

Executive producers: Lati Grobman, Laura Rister, Rene Besson, John Thompson, Danny Dimbort, Rabbit Bandini Productions, Trevor Short, Boaz Davidson, Mark Gill

Director of photography: Bobby Bukowski

Production designer: Nathan Amondson

Music: Haim Mazar

Costume designer: Donna Zakowska

Editor: Danny Rafic

Sales: Millennium Films

No rating, 97minutes

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Cherry on the Cake (La Cerise sur le Gâteau): Film Review

MONTREAL A rom-com where strategic-deception farce coexists with a strong undercurrent of bitterness and the suggestion that relationships mightn't be worth the effort, Laura Morante's Cherry on the Cake has its charms but sometimes feels like the work of someone who wants love less than she wants to want it. A good-looking European sheen helps prospects at the arthouse, particularly for viewers who appreciate a romance that focuses on a woman in her mid-fifties without making an issue of her age.

Morante, who co-wrote and makes her debut as director, stars as Amanda, who friends suspect of "androphobia," an inability to be happy with a boyfriend. The film's take on this question is vexingly unclear: The plot relies on an assumption that her friends are right, but when we meet Amanda's current lover, he's indeed thoughtless in ways that would give any reasonable woman pause.

In any event, Amanda winds up connecting with a stranger (sad-eyed, sober Antoine, played by Pascal Elb) at a New Year's Eve party and begins seeing him often; her friend Florence (Isabelle Carr) is delighted, until she realizes Amanda's only comfortable with Antoine because she mistakenly believes he is gay. A plan is hatched to exploit that misperception until Antoine, who has fallen for Amanda, becomes so important to her he can reveal his love without fearing she'll flee.

Morante and co-screenwriter Daniele Costantini have a storyline fit for a conventional rom-com, but they neither milk it for laughs nor pace it for maximum effect. (The movie's grabby pretend-he's-gay conceit, for instance, doesn't arrive until quite late, and almost no real gags emerge from it.) It's hard to tell if this restraint is intentional; it doesn't seem to be at the climax, which clearly hopes we'll be rooting for the pair to wind up together.

Also unusual is the film's unwillingness to turn Amanda's romantic complaints into exaggerated comic neuroses. She's genuinely annoyed, not amusingly exasperated, by the clod who gives her a fancy lighter for Christmas when she's pledged to quit smoking for New Year's. Score one for moviegoers who don't like seeing the heroine belittled -- but Morante's hard-eyed performance makes her disgust for the world of straight men a little too convincing. The punchline-like scene that ends the film, which both backs up and pokes fun at her point of view, admits in a very un-Hollywoodish way that, for Amanda at least, real romantic contentment may indeed be impossible.

Production Companies: Nuts and Bolts Production, La Maison de Cinma, Soudaine Compagnie
Cast: Laura Morante, Pascal Elb, Isabelle Carr, Samir Guesmi, Ennio Fantastichini, Patrice Thibaud, Frdric Pierrot, Vanessa Larr
Director: Laura Morante
Screenwriters: Laura Morante, Daniele Costantini
Producers: Francesco Giammatteo, Bruno Psery
Director of photography: Maurizio Calvesi
Production designer: Pierre-Franois Limbosch
Music: Nicola Piovani
Costume designer: Agata Cannizzaro
Editor: Esmeralda Calabria
Sales: Films Distribution
No rating, 82 minutes.

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My Name Is Not Ali (Jannat' Ali): Film Review

MONTREAL Setting out to introduce us to one of the most intriguing characters in the circle of Rainer Werner Fassbinder but finding little more than a cipher, Viola Shafik's My Name Is Not Ali touches on the dark side of the director's famously rambunctious social/creative process but will be of interest mainly to obsessives.

Best known for playing Ali, the young Berber laborer whose relationship with an older German woman is recounted in Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, El Hedi ben Salem was credited on close to a dozen Fassbinder films and was the director's lover for some time. Meeting some of their collaborators at the start of the doc (one of whom shared Fassbinder's sexual attention with Salem in a short-lived "trio"), we first seem to be hearing the sad rise-and-fall of an affair in which Salem had no hope of becoming an equal partner.

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Then Shafik travels to Tangiers, meeting many members of Salem's family and spending far too much time discussing Fassbinder's misguided decision to bring Salem's two teenaged sons to Germany -- handing them off to actors to raise while viewing them as his own sons. It's an ugly story, but one that is poorly explored here and tells us much less about the boys' biological father than we might expect.

Haphazard consumer-grade video footage doesn't help the film's lack of focus. Neither does the suspicion that, somewhere out there, there are people or documents that might have brought this enigmatic man to life.

Director-Screenwriter-Director of photography: Viola Shafik

Producers: Onsi Abou Seif, Viola Shafik

Editor: Doreen Ignaszewski

Sales: Mec Film

No rating, 92 minutes

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Betrayal (Izmena): Venice Review

VENICE -- The human heart yet again proves the unruliest of organs in Kirill Serebrennikov's adultery-themed Golden Lion candidate Betrayal (Izmena), at best a longshot to follow up Faust's Russian triumph from last year. Trump card in a technically accomplished affair is Franziska Petri's precisely modulated performance in the demanding central role, this striking German actress balancing ice and fire rather more fluently than the picture itself. Level of jury favor will likely dictate the extent of further festival play, but with critical support likely to be soft at best, distribution outside the Motherland looks a dicey prospect for this adults-only affair.

Perhaps seeking to give a universal feeling to their story, scriptwriters Serebrennikov and Natalia Nazarova avoid character-names and set events in unspecified, unfamiliar areas of Russia which aren't quite urban and not quite rural. Indeed, the post-Soviet architectural backdrops are a constant source of atmosphere and even fascination, as captured by ace cinematographer Oleg Lukichev. What goes on in front of these backdrops is unfortunately somewhat less reliably involving, the nameless characters and their fickle emotions always kept at a certain chilly distance in a film which is full of distorted reflections, mirrors, and observations through windows.

Turning up for a routine medical checkup, 'He' (Dejan Lilic) is calmly informed by examiner 'She' (Petri) during a cardiac test that her husband is having an affair. Then she delivers a casual bombshell, "He cheats on me with your wife," which sends the unsuspecting patient's heartbeat sky-high. The man is, like us, for some time unsure whether or not to believe this total stranger, but his investigations reveal that the infidelity is indeed taking place. But even then it's not clear what the motivations or expectations of 'She' may be. Nevertheless, and somewhat abruptly, 'He' and 'She' quickly drift into a sort-of affair of their own, in a film where many major developments either happens off-camera or are ambiguously presented by Sergei Ivanov's elision-punctuated editing.

But such brain-teasing touches result in frustration and confusion rather than intriguing enigmas, with further levels of distancing added by a broken-backed screenplay that, just as it should be moving towards a climax, takes a sudden disorienting leap forward in time by six or seven years. All that follows in this over-extended closing 'act' feels arbitrary and somehow inorganic, as though the characters have become elements in an archly ironic intellectual exercise rather than living, breathing individuals we can connect to and care about. That's absolutely no fault of the actors, the Hitchcockianly strawberry-blonde Petri and prominent Macedonian stage star Lilic doing their best to navigate the tortuous convolutions of their characters' emotional pathways from reserve towards all-consuming amour fou.

Serebrennikov is best known for Hamlet update Playing the Victim, which took top honors at Rome's inagural film-festival back in 2006. His direction here is stately, sensitive and elegant, capable of virtuouso moments and eyecatching compositions, largely eschewing music apart from sparingly judicious use of Rachmaninov's boldly haunting Isle of the Dead. These classical grace-notes recall the Philip Glass interludes that so elevated Andrei Zvyagintsev's superb Elena from last year, though overall such lofty comparisons can only serve to emphasize Betrayal's shortcomings.

Venue: Venice Film Festival (Competition)
Production company: Studio Slon
Cast: Franziska Petri, Dejan Lilic, Albina Dzhanabaeva, Andrei Schetinin, Arturs Skrastins, Guna Zarina
Director: Kirill Serebrennikov
Screenwriters: Natalia Nazarova, Kirill Serebrennikov
Producer: Sabina Eremeeva
Director of photography: Oleg Lukichev
Production designer: Irina Grazhdankina
Costume designer: Ulyana Polyanskaya
Editor: Sergei Ivanov
Sales agent: Elle Driver, Paris
No MPAA rating, 120 minutes

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Enzo Avitabile, Music Life: Venice Review

Director Jonathan Demmes enthusiasm for Neapolitan multi-musician and composer Enzo Avitabile is catching in this simple, straightforward documentary centered around a jam session that features extraordinary talents of contemporary world music playing rare and bizarre instruments. Though Avitabile, who has worked with James Brown and Tina Turner, has a popular following in Italy where the doc should be well appreciated, this salute to a unique artist and a jazz fusion pathfinder will be a tantalizing introduction for non-Italian audiences on the festival and theme TV circuit.

Like an ideal cross between his Neil Young concert docs and his hymn to the indomitable spirit of New Orleans in Im Caroline Parker, Demmes graceful style effortlessly interweaves Avitabile and his native city, leaving the viewer with a sensory impression of Naples shabby slums and eccentric street denizens. It isnt hard to see what attracted the director to the talented 57-year-old musician, a hyper-creative, mile-a-minute talker who sports a fuzzy haircut, a days stubble and a dangling crucifix earring. His grasp of musical instruments and genres is surprising, and the clincher is when he tumbles into the back seat of a car and hands the driver a CD, explaining he likes to begin the day with Maestro Pergolesi.

The jam session is held in a Baroque church lined with paintings and altars where, one by one, twelve high calibre world musicians arrive to perform his music. Enzo sings in his singular voice and sometimes plays the saxophone with Eliades Ochoa, Naseer Shamma, Gerardo Nunez, Ashraf Sharif Khan Poonchwala, Trilok Gurtu, Luigi Lai, Zi Giannino Del Sorbo, Amal Murkus, Djivan Gasparyan Trio, Hossein Alizadeh, Daby Toure and Bruno Canino. Almost all bring a rare instrument to play (Murkus and Del Sorbo are extraordinary vocalists) and great musical feeling.

As Demme shows, Avitabiles gifts are not limited to musical experimentation. His passionate involvement with the poor and oppressed is expressively rendered in a song illustrated by real-life police photos of murdered bodies lying on Naples streets, and the vocal repetition of the phrase, I have a dream.

Venue: Venice Film Festival (out of competition)
Production companies: Dazzle Communication in association with Rai Cinema
Cast: Enzo Avitabile, Eliades Ochoa, Naseer Shamma, Gerardo Nunez, Ashraf Sharif Khan poonchwala, Trilok Gurtu, Luigi Lai, Zi Giannino Del Sorbo, Amal Murkus, Djivan Gasparyan Trio, Hossein Alizadeh, Daby Toure, Bruno Canino
Director: Jonathan Demme
Screenwriter: Jonathan Demme
Producers: Davide Azzolini, Jonathan Demme
Directors of photography: Enzo Pascolo, Charlie Libin
Editor: Giogio Franchini
Production designer: Carmine Guarino
Music: Enzo Avitabile
Sound: Max Carola
Sales Agent: Rai Trade
No rating, 80 minutes.

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The Reluctant Fundamentalist: Venice Review

Three days before terrorist attacks toppled the World Trade Center, Indian director Mira Nair won the Golden Lion for best picture in Venice with her warm family comedy Monsoon Wedding.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist, based on the novel by Mohsin Hamid, is just as colorful; convincingly rooted in Pakistan, its generally gripping drama painfully confronts the great cultural divide in peoples thinking created by the tragedy of 9/11.

Meant to be thought-provoking, William Wheelers screenplay also aims to attract international audiences, presumably by sliding the books casual meeting between a militant Pakistani professor and an American reporter into a Hollywood framework familiar to the point of clich. How much this will effectively broaden the audience after its bow in Venice and Toronto remains to be seen, because it is still a serious-minded film whose politics demand soul-searching and attention.

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Certainly Nairs vision of the cultural differences between East and West is a lot more subtle than an Islamic-American tolerance-telegram like My Name Is Khan; on the contrary, the first part of the film builds suspense by blurring the right/wrong line between a suspiciously bearded young prof with burning eyes, Changez Khan (British-Pakistani actor Riz Ahmed) and seasoned Yank scribe Bobby Lincoln (Liev Schreiber), who seems to have all the cool values.

The place is Lahore and the action kicks off with the abduction of an older American professor by an al-Qaeda-like political group, setting the scene for tension and violence. In a dazzlingly edited kidnapping scene, the teacher steps out of a movie with his wife and is spirited away while Khan participates, Godfather-style, in an ecstatic Sufi music concert with a group of family and friends.

The latters involvement in the crime is clearly suggested, and he initially emerges as a villain. But when the journalist meets him for an interview in a cheap student hotel, surrounded by Khans protective and menacing entourage, the Pakistanis first words are, "Looks can be deceiving." And so it turns out as he recounts his life to Bobby in long flashbacks, from his outstanding academic success at Princeton to being hired as a financial analyst at a famous Wall Street firm.

His brilliance and ruthlessness make him the pet of his employers, and for every company he dismembers, promotion follows. While in New York, he meets sophisticated photographer Erica, played by a red-haired Kate Hudson, who turns out to be the bosss niece. This unnecessary coincidence is a warning light that their relationship will hit all the most easily foreseeable notes, including her inability to forget a dead boyfriend and his wanting to give his parents grandchildren. The absence of chemistry between the two may underline their cultural diversity, but certainly doesnt enliven the scenes they share.

More intriguing is the strange bond that links the young analyst to his boss and mentor Jim Cross, played with sinister intelligence by Kiefer Sutherland. Riz Ahmed is relaxed and appealing even in the negative role of his star pupil blindly pursuing the American Dream. Only later, after 9/11, is his conscience shocked awake by the change of attitude in America and the humiliating treatment his name and nationality earn him. A business trip to Istanbul, where he is asked to shut down a 30-year-old publishing house, marks a decisive stage in his inner journey towards his cultural roots.

As a wave of xenophobia washes over America, the balance between Changez and Bobby in Lahore begins to shift. About the only doubt most viewers will harbor is just how far Khan has allowed himself to be drawn into the militant radicalism of his university.

Nair is extremely careful not to demonize the American or the Pakistani but rather to suggest how much they have in common, had politics not put them on opposite sides of the table sipping tea, but inches away from a loaded gun.

Not as magnetic a presence as Ahmed, the scruffy Schreiber turns the role of the expat journalist into a complex, convincing character with solid reasons for the choices he has made, proving an apt catalyst for the final stages of Changezs transformation.

A fine supporting cast that includes Indian stars Om Puri and Shabana Azmi and Turkish actor Haluk Bilinger are subtly on target. Lensed between New York, Atlanta, Pakistan, India and Istanbul, Declan Quinns confident cinematography coupled with Michael Carlins dense production design give the film an unusual international realism.

Though born in India, Nair sidesteps the clichs in depicting Pakistan as a place with its own rich cultural tradition and warm family life. Judicious, never banal musical choices by composer Michael Andrews enrich the exotic soundtrack, which concludes with a song by Peter Gabriel.

Venue: Venice Film Festival, Aug. 29, 2012

Production companies: Mirabai Films, Cine Mosaic Production in association with the Doha Film Institute

Cast: Riz Ahmed, Live Schreiber, Kate Hudson, Kiefer Sutherland, Om Puri, Shabana Azmi, Martin Donovan, Nelsan Ellis, Haluk Bilginer, Meesha Shafi, Imaad Shah

Director: Mira Nair

Screenwriter: William Wheeler based on the novel by Mohsin Hamid

Producers: Lydia Dean Pilcher

Executive producer: Hani Farsi

Director of photography: Declan Quinn

Production designer: Michael Carlin

Costume designer: Arjun Bhasin

Editor: Shimit Amin

Music: Michael Andrews

Sales Agent: K5 International

No rating, 128 minutes

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The Possession: Film Review

Weve had zombies, demons, vampires and ghosts. Why shouldnt a dybbuk--the Judaic version of the possessing spirit--have a chance to finally shine again on the big screen? Representing a sort of equal opportunity religious variation on an all-too-familiar theme,The Possessionis a Jewish-themedExorcistthat, if nothing else, should discourage the practice of buying antique wooden boxes at flea markets.

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Such a box, carved with Hebrew inscriptions, causes no end of havoc in this low-rent horror film receiving a typical dog days, end of summer release. It comes into the possession of the Brenek family, or rather the splintered Brenek family, since father Clyde (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) has been separated from his ex-wife Stephanie (Kyra Sedgwick) for a year, causing predictable emotional difficulties for young daughters Hannah (Madison Davenport) and 10-year-old Em (Natasha Calis).

Em persuades her dad to buy her the ominous looking box, unaware that its previous owner, an elderly woman, has wound up immobilized in bed after being handled rather violently by the dybbuk inside it.

Said dybbuk soon finds a new host in the innocent young girl who, likeLinda Blairs Regan, starts displaying violent, anti-social behavior. But while at first her symptoms prove hardly distinguishable from those of a typical troubled adolescent, an invasion of giant moths in her bedroom prove the need for drastic measures, or at least a good exterminator.

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After a quick consultation with a professor, Clyde heads to Borough Park, Brooklyn, here depicted as so awash in Hasidim that it resembles a 19thcentury Polish shtetl. There he enlists the aid of a rabbis son, Tzadok (played, in a canny bit of casting, by the Hasidic hip-hop/reggae starMatisyahu).

After a medical procedure that reveals that dybukks are visible on MRIs, they get down to the inevitable business of a Jewish exorcism, performed in perhaps the most poorly securitized, empty hospital in North America.

DirectorOle Bornedal(Nightwatch) indulges in the usual cheap scares induced by ear-shattering bursts of volume, frequently punctuating scenes with blackouts and ominous piano chords. But despite young thespian Calis impressive ability for malevolent staring, her character is never all that frightening, with her possession often signaled by dark eye shadow that makes her look mainly like a young goth chick.

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The adult performers go through their properly anguished paces with professionalism, with Morgan displaying his usual relaxed charisma and Sedgwick displaying even more levels of anger than she did as the hard-boiled deputy police chief inThe Closer. But Matisyahu, while a likeable screen presence, seems to have been cast less for the quality of his acting than for his copious facial hair.

Much is made of the fact that the film is based on a true story, with the press notes even including an excerpt from the original ad on Ebay attempting to sell the infamous box. But there surely must be easier ways to drum up the price.

Opens August 31 (Lionsgate).

Production: Ghost House Pictures.

Cast: Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Kyra Sedgwick, Madison Davenport, Natasha Calis, Grant Show, Matisyahu.

Director: Ole Bornedal.

Screenwriters: Juliet Snowden, Stiles White.

Producers: Sam Raimi, Robert Tapert, J.R. Young.

Executive producers: Stan Wertlieb, Peter Schlessel, John Sacchi, Nathan Kahane, Joe Drake, Michael Paseornek, Nicole Brown.

Director of photography: Dan Lausten.

Production designer: Rachel OToole.

Editors: Eric L. Beason, Anders Villadsen.

Costume designer: Carla Hetland.

Music: Anton Sanko.

Rated PG-13, 93 min.

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Penance (Shokuzai): Venice Review

Kiyoshi Kurosawas made-for-TV serial drama Penance is a wild, uneven ride through the oddities of the Japanese psyche, as much as it is a psychological thriller examining the far-reaching after-effects of a little girls murder. Complexly plotted, elegantly shot and orchestrated, this is the kind of long-winded, intermittently involving festival package that will earn the director of Tokyo Sonata more critical appreciation, but will struggle to find a theatrical audience. For a film that requires nearly five hours of viewing investment, it feels terribly stingy on the emotional payoff. Divided into five interlinked chapters, it aired on Wowow television in January, shored up by an all-star cast and the morbid fascination and human interest of bestselling author Kanae Minatos original book.

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The theme linking the string of tragedies might by synthesized as faulty education at home and at school, and indeed the story has its roots in a teachers college back in the Seventies, where three friends have a little falling out. Only at the end of the opus does it become apparent how an evil chain of cause and effect destroys the life of almost every character.

In a fifteen minute preface, innocent little 9-year-old Emili, the daughter of a rich industrialist and his wife Asako (glamorous dark lady Kyoko Koizumi), is enticed into the school gym and brutally murdered, while her four playmates wait outside in agony for her to return. They have seen the face of the killer but are too young to describe him to the police. Irrationally, and with fatal consequences, the cold-blooded Asako curses the kids to each pay her a penance for letting her daughter die.

Flash forward to fifteen years later. The four girls, now in their early twenties, bear deep emotional scars from the trauma plus guilt trip they have grown up with. Though the pattern repeats in each of the four stories, Kurosawa is remarkably versatile in varying the mood and tone, making it impossible to second-guess the developments. The first episode, French Doll, is a creepy love story between the beautiful Sae (Yu Aoi), unable to accept her body or sexuality, and a loosely wired young suitor (Mirai Moriyama) who is emotionally frailer than she is.

Teetering on the ridiculous as heralded by its title, Emergency PTA Meeting describes the dangerous psychological rigidity coupled with deep-seated fear in teacher Maki (Eiko Koike), who scares the daylights out of her young charges and almost kills a knife-wielding psycho on a rampage. The teaching staffs public apologies and self-immolation in front of outraged parents is trs Japanese. Once again, Asako reappears at the end of the episode like a bird of ill omen, or perhaps the heroines conscience.

The surly sass of punky Sakura Ando carries Brother and Sister Bear, a straight, heart-breaking drama about the grown-up Akiko, who has retreated into a childish fantasy world to protect her psyche from the memory of Emilis murder. Its realism, accented by eerie Scottish bagpipe music, makes it the darkest and most memorable episode. The heavy gloom is fortunately dispelled in the change-of-pacer Ten Months Ten Days that audaciously tosses comedy and tragedy together. Yuka (Chizuru Murakami) is the only girl who tries to turn the tables on Madame Asako, sniffing at her threats; but it soon becomes apparent that she is extremely insecure and her sexual liberty only a mask.

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Audiences will yearn for closure to this tale as much as the protagonists do, but the final chapter, Atonement, is a mixed bag Asako takes center stage, the police finally step in and mysteries are solved in a David Lynch-like finale. Yet the satisfaction remains cerebral, not visceral, and the films paradoxical end leaves mainly a cold feeling of admiration for the excellent cast, the nuanced female roles, the cinematic appeal of the art direction and photography based on variations of the color white, the unexpectedness of Yusuki Hayashis score and the boldness of the whole project.

Venue: Venice Film Festival (out of competition)
Production companies: Wowow Inc., Nikkatsu Corp., Django Film
Cast:Kyoko Koizumi, Teruyuki Kagawa, Yu Aoi, Eiko Koike, Sakura Ando, Chizuru Ikewaki, Mirai Moriyama, Kenji Mizuhashi, Ryo Kase, Tomoharu Hasegawa, Ayumi Ito, Hirofumi Arai, Tetsushi Tanaka
Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Screenwriter: Kiyoshi Kurosawa, based on a novel by Kanae Minato
No rating, 280 minutes.

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Hollywood to Dollywood: Film Review

Dolly Parton has played many roles in her film career, but up until now The Wizard of Oz hasnt been one of them. At least until Hollywood to Dollywood, depicting the titular road trip undertaken by aspiring screenwriters Larry and Gary Lane to personally present the country legend with the screenplay theyve written especially for her and make their dreams come true. Ultimately, however, the documentary is less about the destination than the journey.

Gay identical twins from North Carolina, the Lane brothers are a charming and endlessly enthusiastic duo who are lifelong fans of Dolly due in no small part to her acceptance of the LGBT community. Its a fandom shared by such friends as actors Chad Allen, Beth Grant and Leslie Jordan, as well as Oscar winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, all of whom make cameo appearances.

The film revolves around the brothers renting an RV, which they promptly dub Jolene after one of Partons hit songs, and traveling along with Garys boyfriend, Mike Bowen (the films producer) to deliver their original screenplay to Parton when shes scheduled to make a personal appearance at her Dollywood amusement park in honor of its 25th anniversary.

Much of the films running time is taken up with interviews with the brothers, who freely and movingly discuss the prejudice they suffered during their upbringing in the deep South as well as their mothers inability to fully accept their lifestyles. But director John Lavin also mines some unexpected drama along the way, notably footage of a water-logged Nashville after the devastating effects of the 2010 flood that dampened much of Tennessee.

Its no spoiler to reveal that Dolly, seen in clips from a Larry King talk show appearance, does show up in the films final act, displaying the winning charm and personality that have long made her beloved. The machinations involved in the brothers attempts to present their screenplay--of which we hear no details but, judging from its sheer size, must be quite the magnum opus provide some amusing moments towards the end.

Although celebrity worship hasnt exactly been a neglected documentary topic, as anyone whos seen My Date With Drew can attest, Hollywood to Dollywood overcomes its thematic limitations with an endearing, casual charm that only the most curmudgeonly could fully resist. Especially since the film also features excerpts from many of Partons classic recordings.

Opens August 31 (Bloodrush Films)
Director/editor: John Lavin
Producers: Michael Bowen, Gary Lane, Larry Lane
Director of photography: Jennifer DUrso
Production design: Michael Bowen
Music: Greg Delson
No rating, 79 min.

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Dead Europe: Melbourne Review

MELBOURNE -- Australian director Tony Krawitzs debut feature, adapted from compatriot Christos Tsiolkas ambitious and disturbing third novel, is a riddle wrapped in ugliness and shrouded in spite. A morose mood piece tracing a young Greek-Australian mans ill-fated return to his ancestral homeland, Dead Europes impenetrable narrative and dogged bleakness make it a decidedly uncommercial prospect.

It is, however, proficiently made, and festival audiences will find plenty of big themes -- history, guilt, poverty, migration and entrenched bigotry, among them -- to chew on. Following its screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival, the Australian-English production heads to Toronto next month to screen in the Contemporary World Cinema program, and further festival play is a given.

Isaac (Ewen Leslie, star of Krawitzs 2005 short Jewboy) is a gayart photographer heading to Athens for a gallery exhibition of his work. His father, Vassili (William Zappa), a former Communist Party member, reacts violently to news of Isaacs planned trip abroad, eating a fistful of dirt before driving off in his car at a suicidal speed. It is after Vassili dies in a subsequent car crash and Isaac voices his desire to take his ashes back to his Greek birthplace that he learns of a family curse.

Hell is for Jews and Muslims, his mother (Eugenia Fragos) announces at this point, flagging a deep anti-Semitic stain that seeps through the film, sporadically given voice by characters seemingly created for this sole purpose.

Dead Europe is the latest in a line of Tsiolkas novels adapted for the screen, the most successful being the popular and critically acclaimed 2011 television series The Slap. Scripter Louise Fox here wrestles the complexities of what is arguably his knottiest storyline, one that skips across time and embraces supernatural elements, into a frustratingly obscure, trancelike narrative. It is difficult to follow.

Emotionally distant as he engages in random sex and drug-taking, Isaac drifts through an unsightly Europe, a cemetery of ghosts and dark secrets, peopled by wary, hostile observers. In Athens, he unwittingly awakens a phantom in the form of a young Jewish boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee of The Road) who appears to him intermittently thereafter, a symbol of the dark secret from his fathers past.

A creeping horror pervades the film as the story moves -- artificially, it must be said -- from Athens and the mountains of Greece, through Paris to Budapest, where Isaac tracks down his estranged older brother, Nico (a typically excellent Marton Csokas), now a junkie working in the porn industry.

Tsolkias view of Europe, embraced here by Krawitz, is of an irredeemably bleak continent full of racism, criminal activity and political apathy. Drug addicts and pimps, people smugglers and prostitutes merge into one incoherent blast of nihilism.

Wan, sickly lighting, Jed Kurzels troubling, bass-heavy score and restless camerawork by cinematographer Germain McMicking set the tone, but in the end mood is all, and its a bummer.

Venue: Melbourne International Film Festival
Production companies: See-Saw Films, Porchlight Films
Cast: Ewen Leslie, Marton Csokas and Kodi Smit-McPhee
Director: Tony Krawitz
Screenwriter: Louise Fox
Producers: Emile Sherman, Iain Canning, Liz Watts
Director of photography: Germain McMicking
Production designer: Fiona Crombie
Costume designer: Emily Seresin
Music: Jed Kurzel
Editors: Alexandre De Franceschi, Scott Gray
Sales: Wild Bunch
No rating, 84 minutes

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Somewhere Between: Film Review

Four bright teenage girls represent a generation of intercontinental adoptees in Linda Goldstein Knowlton's Somewhere Between, an affecting look at the wave of children displaced by China's One Child Policy. Full of accessible human drama and likable (if not particularly colorful) characters, the film should benefit from good word-of-mouth among documentary fans and the large pool of families who'll see themselves reflected here.

Bookending the story with her own experience adopting a Chinese infant, Knowlton wisely stays out of the movie otherwise -- though one wonders if she's subconsciously expressing optimism for her own child by selecting four subjects who have coped so well with their situation. It isn't that they're completely without angst -- they speak, occasionally with mild adolescent self-absorption, about conflicted racial identity and the stigma of having been abandoned. But these girls have been well served by the adoption process and can realistically dream of being, say, the first Asian fiddler to play the Grand Ole Opry.

A large chunk of time is spent on how the teens wind up processing emotions about their roots: One, touchingly, becomes attached to a Chinese orphan with cerebral palsy and keeps tabs on her for years as an American family adopts her. Another goes hunting for her birth parents and, rather surprisingly, finds them. The large reunion scene is awkward but less so than one would expect of an encounter in which an adoptive mother asks, "We wanted to know, who actually abandoned her?"

The film's perspective might be intentionally narrow, playing down questions about what motivates the adults on both sides of the equation and completely ignoring larger geopolitical questions. (In another recent documentary, this one focused on escalating Chinese power, an American man who adopted a Chinese girl wonders if he has in fact done her a favor.) But adoptees themselves almost certainly will find Somewhere Between an empowering reminder that tens of thousands of kids have walked this path before.

Production: Ruby Films
Director-producer: Linda Goldstein Knowlton
Executive producers: Bobby Chang, Jon Fitzgerald
Directors of photography: Nelson Hume, Christine Burill
Music: Lili Haydn
Editor: Katie Flint
No rating, 88 minutes.

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Bad Seeds (Comme Un Homme): Film Review

PARIS -- A bizarre amalgam of psychological thriller, family tragedy and Haneke-style teensploitation flick, Bad Seeds (Comme un homme) attempts to be many films at once, but never quite flowers into a credible whole. Nonetheless, this relatively intriguing and well-realized effort from genre-jumping director Safy Nebbou (Dumas, Mark of an Angel) has enough appeal to warrant minor art house and ancillary play following its mid-August French release.

Adapted from a 1970s novel by Boileau-Narcejac (the duo behind Clouzots Les Diaboliques and Hitchcocks Vertigo), the film stars real life father-son actors Charles Berling (Summer Hours) and Emile Berling (A Christmas Tale) as a high school principal and his wayward teenage son, Louis, who we quickly learn is involved in a rather dubious extracurricular activity: the kidnapping of an English teacher, Camille (Sarah Stern), under the guise of his troubled best buddy, Greg (Kevin Azais).

Bounding, gagging and eventually sequestering their victim in a remote log cabin, the two seem to lack any real motivation (passing mention is made of a previous altercation between Greg and Camille) beyond the desire to do something evil. But just when the film seems to be headed into Funny Games territory, Nebbou and regular co-writer Gilles Taurand switch gears, introducing a backstory involving Louis mother, who we learn died in a car accident a few years prior, casting a shadow of doom and gloom over the household.

When Greg gets in a near-fatal crash on the very same road (talk about coincidences), Louis is left to deal with Camille on his own, and his actions throw a new light on the problematic relationship he shares with his dada man who buries himself in books and Beethoven to avoid the awful truth about his crumbling household.

Its certainly a strange form of family therapy that Les Berlings have chosen to undergo here, but youve got to give them credit for participating and performing quite well in a project as offbeat as this one. Lucky for them, Nebbou has the chops to provide a steady dose of suspense up through the closing act, with Pierre Cottereaus cool widescreen cinematography adding plenty of atmosphere, especially in the misty swamplands where much of the drama plays out.

Where Bad Seeds doesnt quite work is in its constant plot shifts, oscillating between icy adolescent antics and deeper emotional content, to the point that one never quite knows what sort of movie is being played out. But as tweeners go, the tone is stable enough, and the craft solid enough, to make for a laudable attempt at crossing various genre boundaries toward unexplored terrains.

Production companies: Diaphana Films, Samsa Film, Artemis Productions, France 3 Cinema
Cast: Emile Berling, Charles Berling, Sarah Stern, Kevin Azais
Director: Safy Nebbou
Screenwriters: Safy Nebbou, Gilles Taurand, based on the novel Lage bete by Boileau-Narcejac
Producer: Michel Saint-Jean
Director of photography: Pierre Cottereau
Production designer: Cyril Gomez-Mathieu
Music: Jerome Reuter
Costume designer: Magdalena Labuz
Editor: Bernard Sasia
Sales: Memento Films International
No rating, 93 minutes.

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The Apparition: Film Review

Todd Lincoln's suburbia-set ghost flick The Apparition, which involves various fungus-like manifestations of the otherworldly, is in a couple of ways like dealing with a black-mold problem: You have to be a certain kind of person to get very disturbed by it, and once it's over you're quite likely to feel cheated. It may draw in the reliable genre audience on opening weekend, but word-of-mouth won't serve it well.

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Stars Ashley Greene (as Kelly) and Sebastian Stan (Ben) start off on shaky ground, exhibiting no chemistry as a young couple who, moving into a newly built home Kelly's parents own, have nothing more interesting to banter about than trips to Costco.

As they settle into their new digs, though, Lincoln finds his genre groove: Some skimpy (but PG-13-friendly) nightclothes here, some autonomously-moving furniture there -- this new house is so evil it even kills the neighbors' shaggy dog, which must be particularly galling for Kelly, who wants to be a vet.

Eventually we learn this haunting's source: Back in college, Ben and his classmate Patrick (Tom Felton) did some tech-enhanced communing with the ghostly plane and opened -- wait for it -- "a rift between our world and theirs." Once contacted, Patrick brings over all sorts of broadcasting and amplification gear, convinced that playing recordings of the original experiment in reverse will send the baddies back to Purgatory.

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What Patrick's version of Bose Ghost-Canceling technology actually does, though, is shut the movie down. Lincoln's script has no knack for the pacing of cinematic exorcisms, and the truncated climax he does offer is short on action and scares. A stylish credits sequence, unspooled at the picture's end, seems to have received more attention than the story's third act.

Production Companies: Warner Bros., Dark Castle Entertainment
Cast: Ashley Greene, Sebastian Stan, Tom Felton
Director-screenwriter: Todd Lincoln
Producers: Alex Heineman, Todd Lincoln, Andrew Rona, Joel Silver
Executive producers: Daniel Alter, Sue Baden-Powell, Steve Richards
Director of photography: Daniel C. Pearl
Production designer: Steve Saklad
Music: tomandandy
Costume designer: Kimberly Adams-Galligan
Editor: Harold Parker
PG-13, 82 minutes

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The Revenant: Film Review

Combining elements of everything from An American Werewolf in London to Zombieland to Death Wish, D. Kerry Priors horror comedy features the intriguing premise of zombies turned vigilantes. The sort of effort that attracts lots of attention at horror film festivalswhere its been kicking around for three years--and seems specifically designed to achieve cult status, The Revenant ultimately suffers from an uneven execution and repetitive overload. But its hard to totally dismiss a horror film that includes a scene of a disembodied head talking with the help of a vibrating dildo applied to its throat.

The film begins realistically enough, with American soldier Bart (David Anders) falling victim to an ambush while serving in Iraq. His body is shipped home and buried, but he soon rises from the grave and seeks the company of his best friend, Joey (Chris Wylde), a slacker type with a wisecrack for every occasion.

And this occasion certainly prompts plenty of them, as the pair comically tries to deal with the fact that Bart is now a revenant, a sort of combination vampire/zombie whos both undead and has an insatiable thirst for blood. At first they try to satisfy Barts urges by stealing blood from a hospital, but when they stumble on a convenience store robbery and kill the assailant, another solution comes to mind. Theyll roam L.A.s streets at night and do away with bad guys, thereby providing Bart with a steady supply of fresh blood from their victims and solving the citys crime epidemic in the process.

Its a clever gimmick, made more so when Joey also becomes a revenant after one of the duos crime-stopping efforts goes wrong. Reveling in their immortality, they becomes sort of undead superheroes, albeit ones who quickly lose perspective when their literal bloodlust gets the better of them.

Running nearly two hours, the film eventually wears out its welcome, especially in its endless scenes of vigilante-style violence that reveal some uncomfortable racial overtones. But the freewheeling profane banter does display flashes of anarchic wit, and the ultra-gory special effects are extremely impressive despite having been executed on an obviously low budget.

Opens August 24 (Paladin Films)
Production: Putrefactory, Lighting Entertainment
CAST: David Anders, Chris Wylde, Louise Griffiths, Jacy King
Director/screenwriter/editor: D. Kerry Prior
Producers: Liam Finn, D. Kerry Prior, Jacques Thelmaque
Director of photography: Peter Hawkins
Production designer: Thomas William Hallbauer
Costume designer: Charlotte Kruse
Rated R, 110 min.

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Premium Rush: Film Review

An asphalt-action tale as unadorned as the fixed-gear cycle its hero rides, David Koepp's Premium Rush supplies just enough dramatic rationale to set a series of Manhattan bike chases in motion and then follows without pretending it cares much about anything beyond the adrenaline. A quick pace and always-enjoyable lead Joseph Gordon-Levitt will please moviegoers, even if the pic's ticking-clock approach isn't as invigoratingly pulpy here as in the Koepp-penned Snake Eyes and Panic Room.

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Gordon-Levitt plays Wilee, a law student-turned-bike messenger who blew off the bar in favor of battling traffic for peanuts. His bike, lacking fancy gear-shifts or even a brake, is dumb steel compared to the slick cycles his coworkers ride, but Wilee and the film embrace its stubborn brand of constantly-forward motion as an existential imperative.

Sent uptown to his alma mater, Columbia University, to fetch an envelope destined for Chinatown, Wilee becomes the targetof a bad cop (Michael Shannon) bent on stealing the package -- which contains a marker for $50,000, intended as payment for smuggling a refugee from China to the U.S. Koepp's script, co-written by John Kamps, zips back in time occasionally to explain itself -- showing, for instance, how the package's sender (a Chinese Columbia student who happens to be the roommate of Wilee's girlfriend) wound up fretfully entrusting this valuable slip of paper to a daredevil on two wheels.

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But the main attraction of these narrative detours is the time they afford us with Michael Shannon, who chews scenery while accumulating massive debt in Chinatown gambling dens, then desperately setting out to repay it by intercepting Wilee's package. Shannon and Aasif Mandvi (as Wilee's dispatcher) are high points in a supporting cast that otherwise fails to add much to one-note roles.

Gordon-Levitt sets aside much of his boyish charm to play a character who relies less on wit than nerve. As he hurtles down New York streets, the actor's alert eyes are as vital in conveying the kinetic geography as is Mitchell Amundsen's camera, and Koepp's occasional time-outs -- stopping action to visualize possible routes through vehicle-and-pedestrian chaos before settling on the least hazardous one -- are effective in getting us on Wilee's hyper-perceptive wavelength.

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Whether Wilee is being chased by Shannon's unmarked cop car, trying to catch up to competitive co-worker Manny (Wol Parks, who with a bit more charisma could have made a mark here), or dodging the odd out-of-nowhere cab door, the cycling action is consistently invigorating, clearly relying on actual stunt work instead of CG (and recalling a time when that would have gone without saying).

Though he cheats his geography from time to time (weaseling Harlem's elevated train tracks into scenes set further downtown, say), Koepp clearly enjoys setting his action on actual NYC streets. For all the gains planners and activists have made in carving bike lanes into the city's grid, it's strangely comforting to see that some riders will always find exciting ways to make them unsafe.

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Production Company: Pariah

Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Shannon, Dania Ramirez, Wol Parks, Jamie Chung, Aasif Mandvi

Director: David Koepp

Screenwriter: David Koepp, John Kamps

Producer: Gavin Polone

Executive producer: Mari-Jo Winkler

Director of photography: Mitchell Amundsen

Production designer: Thrse DePrez

Music: David Sardy

Costume designer: Luca Mosca

Editors: Derek Ambrosi, Jill Savitt

PG-13, 90 minutes

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Hip Movements: Locarno Review

LOCARNO - A broody young woman resorts to desperate measures to become pregnant in this dark comedy from the actor-director Herv-Pierre Gustave, aka HPG, who also co-stars. A former porn star who later crossed over into directing, Gustave is a maverick figure in French cinema, with a spotty track record mostly consisting of experimental shorts and narcissistic documentaries. All the same, his second narrative feature is far more watchable and conventional than his dramatic debut We Should Not Exist, which made a minimal splash at the Directors Fortnight in Cannes six years ago.

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Hip Movements is an uneven affair, with a tone that lurches between caustic humour and surreal melodrama, but it also has an irreverent charm and a strong authorial voice. Opening in France next month following its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland two weeks ago, Gustaves unorthodox comedy could appeal to more open-minded members of the established worldwide audience for Francophile cinema. The presence of football legend Eric Cantona and his off-screen wife Rachida Brakni in the cast may also boost the films modest commercial prospects.

Brakni plays Marion, a fiery young woman who leaves her husband when he refuses to collaborate in her motherhood plans. Her subsequent clumsy attempt at becoming pregnant via a drunken one night stand leads her to an unlikely lesbian affair, a sperm-stealing raid on a hospital and a fateful encounter with Herv (Gustave). An intense loner and martial arts obsessive recently fired from his zookeeper job for depressing the animals, Herv now works as a night-watchman at a warehouse. Cantona gives an edgy comic turn as his boss, a sentimental sadist with a lucrative sideline pimping out his monstrous wife, played by the busty transsexual Marie dEstres.

There are distant echoes of vintage John Waters and Pedro Almodovar here, but Gustave is less of a self-conscious stylist than either, his excursions into campy excess appearing more accidental than artful. He also lightens the mood with some zippy visual flourishes, punctuating longer scenes with recurring footage of martial arts quick-step exercises that are both dainty and hilarious. Though its plot may be heavy-handed and its characters cartoonish, Hip Movements still skips along with an agreeably goofy, cultish energy.

Venue: Locarno Film Festival screening, August 9

Production companies: Capricci Films, HPG Production, Le Fresnoy

Cast: Rachida Brakni, Eric Cantona, Joanna Preiss, HPG, Marie dEstres, Jrme Le Banner

Director: HPG

Producer: Thierry Lounas

Writers: HPG, Thomas Wallon

Editor: Isabelle Prim

Music: Gry Petit

Sales company: Capricci Films

Rating TBC, 86 minutes

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