Crossing the Bridge: The Music of Istanbul

There is no question this documentary celebrating the joyous meeting of Eastern and Western musical traditions lands differently now than when it first screened nearly twenty years ago. It would surely have a very different tone were it produced today, after almost ten years of Recep Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian rule. Much has changed since Hamburg-born Turkish-German filmmaker Fatih Akin visited the homeland of his ancestors with German Industrial-fusion bassist Alexander Hacke, almost all of it for the worse, but most of the music still holds in Akin’s Crossing the Bridge: The Music of Istanbul, which premieres on MUBi this Friday.

As Hacke explains, while he was scoring Head On, the previous film Akin shot in Turkey, he fell in love with the music and musicians he encountered in Istanbul. He subsequently became a sort of ambassador, who introduces viewers to many of his friends and musicians he admired, but only knew by reputation.

By far, the richest and catchiest music prominently features Turkish and Eastern instrumentation, such as ouds and tablas. Perhaps the exception is Roma musician Selim Sesler. Yet, his distinctive clarinet often sounds like an exotic woodwind, such as a pungi. Interestingly, Sesler and musical colleagues are referred to as “gypsies” throughout Bridge, even amongst themselves, rather than Roma or Sinti, at least according to the translated subtitles this review is based on. Regardless, it is nice to see their culture celebrated.

The same is very definitely true of the Kurdish music championed Aynur Dogan, who performs an arresting Kurdish “lament” in an acoustically pristine 18^th Century Hammam bathhouse. It is a lovely scene in all respects.

In contrast, the segment on Turkish rap is a big nothing. Their claims to aesthetic superiority due to their politically charged rhymes is also dubious. We have plenty of abrasively didactic rappers here as well. Yet, there is an image seen in passing, of graffiti reading “No hip hop yes Muslim” that feels like a portent of things to come when seen from the vantage point of 2024.

Regardless, it is fun to watch the proggy Baba Zula jamming on a barge, after practically making Hacke a full member. It is also cool to see clips of revered saz-player Orhan Gencebay’s cheesy soft-core potboilers, as well as an appealingly intimate and laidback performance. Fittingly, Sezen Aksu, “the Voice of Istanbul” closes the film in proper diva style.

Dupieux’s Yannick

Everyone is a critic, right? And that is our right, since we buy our tickets. That is certainly how a extremely socially-awkward parking lot night watchman sees it. However, he will take things a step further, by holding the cast and audience hostage, so he can re-write their play in Quentin Dupieux’s Yannick, which releases today on Mubi.

The truth is Yannick is not wrong about the mediocre sex farce he refuses to quietly sit through. Watching it in English subtitles probably does not help, but the jokes are still corny sitcom-level material. Not surprisingly, the sparse audience is only half-heartedly laughing. That is why so many do not object when he interrupts.

At first, the three players treat Yannick like a heckler. They almost convince him to leave, but when the diva-ish Sophie Denis starts mocking his complaints regarding his fifteen-minute walk and forty-five-minute bus commute to arrive at the theater, he pulls out a gun. After commandeering a laptop from a likely perverted patron, Yannick starts writing his own pages for them to play.

Compared to his previous weird and wacky output, Yannick is by far Dupieux’s most realistic and grounded film to-date. In our current world, where people regularly get accosted on-stage (even during the Oscars), something like this could very well happen. However, Yannick is definitely way out there—in a manner that is very unique to himself (or at least we can only hope).

In fact, it is rather overstating matters to describe the film as meta. There are maybe ironic parallels when the themes of jealousy that drive the corny play-within-the-film resurface during the hostage crisis. Perhaps understandably, Denis’s leading man, Paul Riviere, starts to resent Yannick apparently winning over many in the audience. Stockholm Syndrome will be a factor, probably because the original play was so bad.

Yannick has been Dupieux’s biggest box office hit in France, but Mubi is a good distribution fit for it in America, given its limited running time. It barely exceeds one hour, or comes up just shy of sixty minutes, if you exclude the closing credits. Frankly, the shorter, concentrated format suits Dupieux’s eccentric sensibilities. The audience can enjoy Yannick’s absurdity, before the full implications of his actions kill the vibe. You can only sustain Stockholm Syndrome for so long.

Ann Hui’s Love After Love

The CCP refuses to admit Hong Kong was once a colony, because that would entitle it to special consideration under the rules of the United Nations. Of course, the UN is compliant, asking “how high” when the CCP says “jump.” Yet, the era recreated in Ann Hui’s latest film is as decadent and colonial as the bad behavior of British settlers dramatized in White Mischief. The main characters are not even British, but the scandalous Hongkongers definitely believe in doing things “the British way” in Hui’s Love After Love, which premieres Friday on MUBi.

Ge Weilong is bright, pretty, but not the least bit worldly. Nevertheless, the Shanghai native will approach her disgraced and disgraceful Aunt Liang, requesting shelter in her stately home, so she can finish her studies in Hong Kong. Essentially, Liang is a self-styled courtesan, who inherited the wealth of her late lover. She is still a player in colonial society, mostly for her own amusement (the carnal kind, first and foremost).

Recognizing Ge could be useful, Liang takes her in and slowly starts grooming her in the indulgent customs of colonial society. Ge is a better translator than her, but she is slow to pick up on all the gameplaying around her. In fact, she even falls in love with George Chiao, a playboy, who stands to inherit little from his wealthy father, due to the many other heirs in-line ahead of him, both legitimate and illegitimate.

The film looks lovely and the cast is all very pretty, including Eddie Peng as the caddish Chiao, but it is mostly surface beauty. Although adapted from an Eileen Chang novella, Love After Love was probably envisioned as a film in the tradition of Dangerous Liaisons, but as a Chinese-approved production, it is never able to generate sufficient sexual heat. It is also problematically low on the scheming and manipulation. If you want to see a Republican Era take on Valmont and company, check out Hur Jin-ho’s Dangerous Liaisons instead.

Lanthimos’s Nimic, on MUBI

If you have to be stalked by a doppelganger, they should at least make an effort to look like you, right? Not necessarily in Yorgos Lanthimos’s world. As a result, he might just be the perfect filmmaker to represent late election-year 2020, when someone might be conspicuously out of place, but people perversely refuse to recognize the obvious. A symphony cellist finds himself the victim of such a phenomenon in Lanthimos’s short film Nimic, which is now streaming on MUBI.

The “Father” thought he had a healthy relationship with his wife and three children. Yet, when the strange woman he encounters on the subway tries to take his place, nobody seems to be able to tell them apart. Yet, they look radically different and her cello player sounds like fingernails on a blackboard.

It turns out Matt Dillon is highly compatible with the idiosyncratic Lanthimos aesthetic. As the Father, he projects an appropriate morose dejection, while still maintaining the extreme deadpan we have come to expect from films like The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Likewise, the crazy eyes of Daphne Patakia’s mimic are truly unsettling, yet she maintains a similarly stoic demeanor.

Tripping with Nils Frahm, Recorded Live

Musician Nils Frahm's photographer father Klaus Frahm produced covers for a handful of ECM jazz records, including one of their biggest hits, Pat Metheny’s As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls, as well as the hidden gem, Tom van der Geld’s Path. Nils Frahm’s music could be described as a fusion of electronic-ambient and classical, so it could well appeal to a lot of ECM fans’ aesthetic sensibilities. Clearly, he has hooked plenty of others listeners too, because his concerts always become sold-out events. Benoit Toulemonde capture a particularly notable concert at the historically significant Funkhaus Berlin in Tripping with Nils Frahm, which premieres tomorrow on MUBI, with the accompanying live album releasing simultaneously.

There are no talking head soundbites in Tripping—just Frahm’s music. Frankly, breaking away from what is clearly a carefully thought-out set list would be a terrible distraction. It is much wiser to let Frahm make his own case through his music. In addition to the piano, Frahm mixes in a number of keyboards and synthesizers (some of which could even be considered retro). Yet, the overall effect of his sonic layering feels fresher than a lot of ambient-techno music.

Frahm establishes the trance-like mood right from the start with the hypnotically catchy “Fundamental Values.” “My Friend the Forest” has an almost pastoral vibe, but the classical influences are even more pronounced in “All Melody,” especially in its synthesized chorale elements. A little later in the set, astute ears might recognize “Says” from executive producer Brad Pitt’s Ad Astra, quite appropriately, given the space age vibe.

Throughout the evening, Frahm demonstrates impressive technique on the piano and assorted keyboards, as well as a shrewd conception of how to incorporate and “play over” multi-tracks and overdubs. He has a fine touch, but he can also power his way home with cascading runs that build towards the concluding climax of “More.” Frahm doesn’t merely wear a set of headphones and press a button—he really plays.

MUBI/My French Film Festival ’19: Keep an Eye Out

Commissaire Buron is the kind of cop who reminds us both the bumbling Inspector Clouseau and the cypher-like postmodern detectives of Alain Robbe-Grillet are French. He inspires little confidence, but he might just out Columbo Inspector Colombo, while turning reality on its ear in Quentin Dupieux’s Keep an Eye Out (trailer here), which streams as part of From France with Love, MUBI’s showcase of films selected by the 2019 My French Film Festival.

Buron is supposedly interrogating Louis Fugain, but his mind seems to be elsewhere. In fact, he seems rudely disinterested in the civilian, but he still perversely refuses to let the hungry civilian leave to get something to eat until he finished his statement. Oh, those civil servants.

Initially, we assume Fugain is there is a witness, but we eventually learn he is Buron’s prime suspect. Alas, Fugain’s version of events is such an unlikely series of Rube Goldberg events, it is hard to believe he made them up—unless, of course, he did. This is a Quentin Dupieux movie, after all, so all bets are off. Inconveniently, Fugain’s chain of unfortunate events continues beyond Buron’s field of vision, which forces him to do some desperate improvising.

Although Eye starts out as the smallest film of Dupieux’s filmography, in terms of scope, it does not take viewers long to discover how weird life is in Fugain’s world. We are talking even stranger than his playful confections Wrong and Reality. Unless you are deeply steeped in post-structuralist philosophy and the wacky excesses of contemporary pop culture, Eye will be a real head-scratcher of a viewing experience. It could even make older patrons’ heads explode.

Hopefully, they could still appreciate the bone-dry humor of Benoît Poelvoorde’s performance as Buron. He manages to segue from clueless bumbler to sinister authoritarian to apathetic shirker without breaking a sweat. Grégoire Ludwig maintains a similarly weird, hard-to-peg consistency as Fugain, while Marc Fraize also deserves credit for playing it scrupulously straight as Philippe, a rookie cop with an impossible to describe eye affliction.

Frankly, the police station setting and ostensive procedural narrative are highly compatible with Dupieux’s gamesmanship. You can see his kinship with works like Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound and Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman, but Dupieux has a flair for visual mischief that is all his own. That is what makes his films so amusing. Recommended for fans of his surreal head-tripping comedy, Keep an Eye Out streams through February 18^th on MUBI and via other platform partners of this year’s My French Film Festival.

MUBI: Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania

The Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center in Vilnius is named in his honor, but there was a time when the icon of avant-garde cinema was not so welcome in Lithuania. He and his brother had fled likely arrest by the Germans during WWII, but their émigré status made them suspect in their native land. However, Mekas was able to return to his home village in 1972 for a family reunion he duly documented in Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania, the second in a twofer of Lithuanian-related films programmed by MUBI.

In some ways, Reminiscences is a perfectly representative Mekas film, but it can also be considered an outlier. It is not, strictly speaking, one of his “diary” films, but it is acutely personal. It features his rather idiosyncratic (and sporadic) narration, which also makes more of an exception within his oeuvre.

Although he briefly touches on his time in Williamsburg (which is like a foreign country) and Vienna, the core of Reminiscences consists of “100 Glimpses of Lithuania.” Instead of a smooth narrative structure, they provide and series of telling images and episodes, much like the fragmented memory of an exile.

Viewers watching Reminiscences who know Mekas by reputation might be struck by how easily “Mr. Anthology Film Archives,” the living dean of living experimental filmmakers, re-acclimated himself to life in rural Semeniškiai village. In 1972, his mother still did the cooking outside, over an open fire. Yet, Mekas is clearly nostalgic for his old home.

Inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry, Reminiscences is sort of the thin edge of the wedge for avant-garde film. Even if Mekas and “Saint” Peter Kubelka (who joins Mekas in the final ten minutes) mean nothing to you, the film serves as a time capsule of early 1970s life in rural Lithuania, including the collective farms. Mekas has an eye for both significant and mundane details that together really paint a full, immersive picture.

It is hard to imagine the Semeniškiai Mekas visits could remain frozen in time all these years. In most ways that is probably a good thing (starting with the country’s political independence from their Soviet oppressors), but the hearty peasants performing traditional dances most likely also represent a rarity today. Mekas edits it all together with a rather sly sense of humor. His aesthetic is an acquired taste, but if you only see one of his films, this is the one to choose. Recommended for viewers receptive to the intimate and the experimental, Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania starts its 30-day MUBI rotation this Monday (Christmas Eve).

MUBI: Frost

They really should have just done an AIDS walk. Instead, Rokas Vysniauskas and his girlfriend Inga Jauskaite agree to deliver a van-load of humanitarian aid to the Ukrainian defense forces battling “separatists” (a.k.a. Russians) along the porous Donbass frontline. It will be a much more dangerous mission than they initially expect in Sharunas Bartas’s Frost (trailer here), which premieres tomorrow on MUBI.

Vysniauskas is not very political, but he agrees to make the delivery on behalf of a friend, more or less for what-the-heck reasons. He also seems to think it will be a way to strengthen his strained relationship with Jauskaite. However, his plan seems to backfire during a stopover in Poland. During a party with Ukrainian relief workers and international journalists, they both initiate flirtatious encounters with other guests.

Nevertheless, they continue on their way, but the closer they get to the front, the more rigorously they are vetted at check points. Some of the Ukrainian self-defense volunteers see them as little more than dilletantes—and neither Bartas, co-screenwriter Anna Cohen-Yanay, or their characters are much inclined to argue.

It is probably safe to say Frost cautiously sides with Ukraine. It certainly is not pro-Russia. However, its most pointed criticism is directed at the young Lithuanians’ gawking war zone tourism and their naïve do-gooder attitudes. Wars are serious business, as everyone will eventually see first-hand.

Ironically, Vanessa Paradis steals the show with her brief but significant appearance as a photo-journalist with whom Vysniauskas chastely spends the better part of a night. Their ships passing dialogue is conducted in halting English, but it definitely connects on an emotional level. It is also the only time Mantas Janciauskas comes out of his Nordic-like Baltic shell. As Vysniauskas, he is glacially reserved. In contrast, Lyja Maknaviciute is a bit more passionate and quite a bit more neurotic as Jauskaite.

When Bartas finally stages scenes of warfighting, they are frightening and confusing in the right, deliberate kind of way. Admittedly, Frost is a small, uneven film, but it has enough interesting things going for it, particularly for MUBI subscribers. Recommended accordingly, Frost starts its 30-day MUBI rotation tomorrow (12/20).

Canada’s Next Generation: The Art of Speech

A little post-modernism can be a dangerous thing. Here it is wielded like a club. Ironically, the protagonist, Koroviev would be well-equipped to crack down on such abuses, as the instructor in Quebecois poetry for Montreal’s newly instituted poetic-police. His interest in New Left cultural figure Pierre Maheu causes unforeseen complications in Olivier Godin’s The Art of Speech (trailer here), which starts streaming this Thursday on MUBI, as part of their series, Canada’s Next Generation.

Koroviev wears an eye-patch, drinks coffee, and refuses to sit down—ever—because of the potential damage it might cause his pancreas. His boss, Margerie (a.k.a. “The Singing Policeman”) has recently come out of a coma and is already back on the job. Koroviev’s latest assignment is surveilling Clement, a hipster of interest.

He was supposed to just watch Clement in next Margerie’s door office, through a hole in the wall. However, he quickly just invites himself over when he learns his subject has a connection to Maheu. Apparently, Clement owns a country bungalow where Maheu was lived. It is now inhabited by the sister of Coriandre, a platonic friend of Clement. Koroviev will be quite taken with her when he seeks her out. His boss Margerie also enjoys calling to serenade her late at night.

Tonally, Speech feels very odd, because it tries to marry goofy whimsy with knowing postmodern gamesmanship. The upshot is viewers are constantly taken out of the story by both low-end humor and high-end deconstructive mischief-making. There is literally something to irritate and confuse everyone in this film.

Nevertheless, there are several scenes that are quite clever when considered in isolation. Yet, the best aspect of the film is the soundtrack, featuring licensed music by Steve Lacy and solo performances by actor-musician Adam Kinner. In both cases, we are talking about the avant-garde at its most accessible: the unadorned tenor and soprano saxophone, raw and plaintive and ever so expressive.

With his eye-patch and dark suits, Michael Yaroshevsky is certainly cinematic-looking as Koroviev. As his namesake, Adam Kinner is only seen performing on-stage, but he sounds great. Frankly, Michel Faubert’s Margerie quickly starts to annoy the rest of us just as much as he does to Koroviev, but Jennyfer Desbiens is strangely haunting as Coriandre. At first, Etienne Pilon’s Clement merely seems like another nauseating hipster, but he takes an indescribably weird turn in the third act that he largely sells. It is like a riff on Shakespearean comedy, but more contemporary and random.

By now you should have a very good idea whether Speech is your cup of tea, unless you are a Steve Lacy fan with conventional tastes in all other respects. This film sounds terrific, but it is too cute for its own good. Offering more frustrations than rewards, The Art of Speech is really only meant for the post-structuralist elect when it premieres this Thursday (8/16) on MUBI.