ABCs at the Movies: The Doubles Round!

[oilgun]

Germany / UK / France

Plot Outline:Dark fairytale about a demonic doctor who abducts a beautiful opera singer with designs on transforming her into a mechanical nightingale.

[southendmd]

France

Loosely translated "What are we waiting for to be happy?"

[MaineWriter]

Japan

I know, I've played two Japanese movies back-to-back but I couldn't resist this cover and I am a bit of a Kurosawa fan.

[oilgun]

Austria

IMDB Comment: Arguably, no greater cinematic interpreter of alienation exists in the world today than Austrian director Michael Haneke. Haneke shows us characters whose response to the world around them has deadened, people who have forgotten how to feel, how to love, how to care. The Seventh Continent, the first film of the trilogy that, with Benny's Video (1992) and 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994), depicts what Haneke has called "my country's emotional glaciation." Based on a true story of the disintegration of a middle class Austrian family, the film has little plot, only incident and observation. Divided into three parts and shot in episodic fragments, as in his 2002 film Code Unknown, each fragment is tenuously connected by fadeouts in which scenes start and end abruptly. A mood of banality is established early in an extended sequence in which a car moves through a car wash showing all the details of detergent sprays, high-pressure washers, and rotating brushes. At the end of the car wash is a travel poster beckoning tourists to visit Australia with a peaceful scene of sand and water, a motif that is repeated periodically during the film.

The Schobers, husband George (Dieter Berner), wife Anna (Birgit Doll), and daughter Eva (Leni Tanzer), are the happily married family living next door. George is an engineer and Anna an optician. Eva is a bright child of about eight with deep, expressive eyes. The family moves through their morning ritual with precision -- brushing their teeth, feeding the fish, and eating breakfast with little conversation or emotional interaction. The camera avoids their faces, focusing on mundane objects such as a bowl of cereal, an alarm clock, a fish tank, a package of congealed broccoli. This preoccupation with objects underscores the lack of connection between the characters and the things they have acquired. We get our first hint that something is not right when Eva pretends to her teacher that she has lost her eyesight. Anna questions her about the incident, promising not to harm her if she tells the truth but, when Eva admits to the lie, suddenly slaps her across the face ignoring the fact that she is a very troubled little girl. It is from here that the cracks begin to widen.

Depicting ritualistic actions like counting of money at a supermarket, the distractions of television, the meaninglessness of work, the film reflects the powerlessness and isolation of people in modern society. Haneke chronicles a family enslaved to the structures they have created, operating in a morass of emotional vacuity. The first hour may seem slow but it builds considerable tension until it reaches a shattering climax. Little by little the family disengages. George quits his job and writes letters to his parents hinting of something dark about to happen. In the absence of a spiritual core, without the possibility of meaningful action, the family sinks deeper into an abyss, unraveling and discarding the tightly woven structures of their life. Similar in theme to Todd Haynes' 1995 film Safe but with three times the power, The Seventh Continent is a ruthlessly intelligent film that burns its way into your psyche, leaving an indelible mark that will forever haunt your dreams.

[memento]

UK

[MaineWriter]

France

[Fran]

Japan



From IMDb:

This film opens in a convenience store where the pretty, but exhausted looking, Hayakawa Rei finishes off her daily ritual by purchasing a bottle of wine and a bottle of gin. A bit unstable, Rei continuously talks to herself and is almost unable to distinguish if she speaks out loud or not. The alcohol helps to silence the voice in her head, but it always returns. While browsing the bottles and wondering why there is no red German wine available, a trucker wanders into the store and Rei becomes entranced with his boots that look like those of a fisherman. The trucker immediately notices that Rei has an interest in him, so he wanders by her and taps her on the backside before returning to his truck. Rei follows and the two strangers soon engage in a sex.

The next day, instead of heading back home to her job as a freelance writer for magazines, Rei asks the trucker, Takatoshi, if she can accompany him on his deliveries. Takatoshi agrees and soon the couple begins their journey across the frosty winter back roads of Japan's countryside. Surrounded by the natural beauty of the country Rei and Takatoshi tell each other of their struggles, Rei, besides being an alcoholic is also bulimic and Takatoshi tells of his days working for the yakuza. Rei seems to be happy, but her inner demons soon overpower her. Can a bleached-blond trucker truly help her?

Based on a novel by Akasaka Mari, Vibrator is a highly sexualized film without being raunchy. The scene where Rei and Takatoshi sit together in a bathtub is very touching. Taking place almost exclusively in the environs of Takatoshi's truck, the film is little more than a dialogue between two characters, however, it is quite an enjoyable trip watching the relationship between the two characters grow. The film also has an awesome soundtrack. Check it out if you get the chance.

[southendmd]

UK/France/South Africa

IMDb:"Every family has its own language."

Set at the end of the '60s, as Swaziland is about to receive independence from Great Britain, the film follows the young Richard E Grant, at 12, through his parents' traumatic separation, till he's 14. It is based on true events from Richard E Grant's childhood.

[southendmd]

Spain

AKA "La ley del deseo".

IMDb:  "Fatal attraction without the bunny."

You will find all the familiar Almodovar devices here: telephones, drug use (cocaine in particular), dysfunctional families, sexual ambiguity, pedophile priests, and hospitals. These themes permeate his work, but they are woven intricately throughout this film.

Pablo (Eusebio Poncela) is a writer/director of fantastic movies. He gets into the snares of an obsessive (Antonio Banderas in a great performance) who has a fatal attraction and will kill for his love. At the same time, he has to deal with his transvestite sister played by Carmen Maura (Volver, Women on the Verge, Matador) in another magnificent role.

It is a melodrama about love as that is the overriding need for Banderas and for Maura, who has given up on men since her father left her. It is also about family. Of course, there is a crossing of genres as there is some comedy, but that is minor.

Another magnificent Almodovar film.

[oilgun]

Russia
aka: You, I love

IMDb Plot Outline: Vera and Tim are successful young professionals living fast-paced lives in ultra-modern Moscow. Their lives crackle with the capitalist energy of excess, anxiety, consumption, and stress- and they are in love. Everything changes one night when Tim accidentally drives his car into Uloomji, a young Kalmyk day worker. (The Kalmyks are a semi-nomadic people of Mongolian decent.) The two men begin a torrid affair that involves howling and knocking over a lot of furniture. Tim is attracted to Uloomji's exotic demeanor and liberated by his impulsiveness and lack of inhibition. To Uloomji, Tim embodies a kind of class and refinement he sees only in magazines. Vera struggles to comprehend their bond and her boyfriend's erratic behavior. She is dragged reluctantly into a bizarre love triangle. Before long, all three lives unravel, exemplified by a visit to a Buddhist healer, a three-way in the bathroom of a gay bar, a faked death and a kidnapping.



==COMMENT==
Don't be fooled by the cool poster, it's a dreadful film.  At least it must be because all I remember about it  is not being able to sit through the whole thing.