ND/NF ’14: The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears

Sometimes you have to wonder if Fifty Shades helped normalize some downright dangerous behavior. This is one of those times. Sex and violence are intimately linked in Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani’s latest Benelux giallo pastiche, but it is not clear whether this is intended to horrify or titillate the audience. Fasten your restraints, because The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears (trailer here) will be a heck of a bumpy ride for most viewers when it screens during this year’s New Directors/New Films, co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA.

Dan Kristensen is in for it. Returning from a business trip, he finds his creepy Brussels flat is chained from the inside, but his wife Edwige is missing. When the cops finally show up, he has roused all his neighbors and heard a rather unhelpful story from the old lady in number seven, explaining how her presumably late husband also disappeared under similarly murky circumstances. Naturally, the flatfoot suspects Kristensen, especially when he subsequently wakes up in bed, next to her severed head.

So, Tears would be downright plotty compared to the Grand Guignol memory play, Amer, Cattet and Forzani’s previous valentine to the giallo genre, if it were not for their myriad excesses. Repetitive cycles are a really big deal for them, but it is hard to feel much suspense or dread when the same crummy things keep happening to Kristensen, with only mild variations that make matters progressively worse for the poor slob each time.

There is no question the filmmaking couple has quite the eye for composition and cinematographer Manu Dacosse gives it all a lushly lurid look. Even though they are not original, the musical hat-tips also set quite the mood. However, their constant jump cuts, violent expressionistic interludes, and is-this-a-dream game-playing hobble the film’s pacing, narrative cohesion, and basic sense of flow.

Frankly, despite all the stylistic madness going on around him, Klaus Tange still gives an admirably presentable performance as Kristensen. Nonetheless, it is production designer Julia Irribarria’s team that takes the honors, creating a truly creepy, yet luxuriant backdrop, like the Belgian (or pseudo-Italian) equivalent of the Dakota in Rosemary’s Baby. With its marble floors, gold paneling, and Mucha-esque screens (much like the awesome one-sheet), it might just be worth losing the occasional spouse to live there.

On a technical level, Tears is quite polished. Cattet and Forzani accomplish everything they set out to do, but the resulting film is deathly static. Masterful visuals are all very nice, but they cannot compensate for ill-defined characters and muddled plot points. Instead of a sensationalistic indulgence, it becomes a rather taxing chore to watch. Recommended for fans of the Maria Beatty fetish films John Zorn scored, The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears screens again tomorrow (3/30) at the Walter Reade, as the 2014 edition of ND/NF comes to a close.

ND/NF ’14: Trap Street

It is the street where Guan Lifen works, but young Liu Qiuming’s attraction to Forest Lane is still a lot like the old Lerner & Loewe standard. However, this side street is mysteriously invisible to GPS systems. Infatuation will lure him back to Forest Lane, but it will also bring him to the attention of China’s security and surveillance apparatus. That will not be a happy turn of events in Vivian Qu’s Trap Street (clip here), which screens during this year’s New Directors/New Films, co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA.

Liu has had some bad luck, but he is chipping away at his debts through his jobs as a digital surveyor and a surveillance system installer (and sweeper on the side). Then he saw Guan Lifen walking along Forest Lane. Much to his delight and his older partner’s displeasure, they must redo the sleepy side street the next day, because the system disallowed their data. Liu’s lingering pays off with the opportunity to give Guan a lift home. Better still, the business card holder she left in the back seat gives him an excuse to contact her again. Unfortunately, it will be her condescendingly gracious boss who comes to retrieve it.

Of course, Liu is not ready to abandon his strategy of loitering on Forest Lane. For a while, it appears his efforts might bear fruit, until things go very wrong indeed. Small fries like Liu simply are not equipped to defend themselves when the state lowers the Kafkaesque boom. Frankly, he lacks the sufficient confidence or vocabulary to even protest his situation.

Right off the bat, Trap earns points for not indulging in clichéd as-seen-through the grainy black-and-white CCTV lens sequences. In fact, the surveillance and paranoia motifs are introduced relatively slowly and subtly. Likewise, Liu’s history of victimization extends beyond his immediate problems with the secret police, giving the film even wider significance.

Like many independent Chinese films, Trap does not exactly move at the speed of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, but there is quiet power in the scenes shared by Liu and Guan. Lü Yulai (looking maybe two thirds of his youthful thirty one years) and He Wenchao (a filmmaker in her own right) develop some genuine screen chemistry together, while the latter still maintains an alluring air of mystery.

Even if you consider them a guileless patsy and his femme fatale, nearly every viewer will get pulled into their predicaments. Previously known as an indy producer, Qu shows an impressive command of mood and tension in her feature directorial debut. Granted, the epilogue might be too ambiguous for its own good, but Trap still offers up a compelling mixture of intrigue and social criticism, all of which cinematographers Tian Li and Matthieu Laclau give an appropriately noir luster. Highly recommended for China watchers and discerning cineastes, Trap Street screens tomorrow (3/28) at the Walter Reade and Saturday (3/29) at MoMA, as part of the 2014 edition of New Directors/New Films.

ND/NF ’14: Fish & Cat

Even in Iran, you can find sketchy backwoods types out in the provinces. In one true-life incident, a provincial restaurant actually served up human flesh. That is what you call rustic. It is also easy to see how this sensationalistic episode could easily be adapted for the big screen. However, Shahram Mokri takes his lurid inspiration in a cerebral art-house direction with the marathon one-take, circular narrative, Fish & Cat (trailer here), which screens during this year’s New Directors/New Films, co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA.

There seems to be a lot of offal and detritus littered about Babak and Saeed’s greasy spoon. They also act highly suspicious when a carload of college students stops for directions. Deciding there are “too many of them,” they send the kite festival goers on their way. Instead, they start hassling Kambiz (another festival entrant) and his emotionally stunted father. For all viewers know, they eventually kill the old man. Kambiz just leaves him there and he is one of the few characters Mokri never revisits.

Making his way to the campsite, Kambiz starts interacting with other students participating in the festival. Mokri will move from one character to another Slacker-style, periodically doubling back to an early to an episode or conversation we have already seen, but showing it from a different perspective—all within the same continuous tracking shot. In addition to the intersecting narrative, Mokri also plays games with characters’ interior monologues that often obscure as much as they illuminate.

Yet, F&C is an oddly tense film, ever mindful of its macabre elements. Mokri deliberately plays on the sense some serious slasher business is always about to erupt, particularly during the nerve-wracking sequence in which Babak lures one of the young women into the woods on a dubious pretext. There is no question F&C is a highly accomplished work. Mokri just pushes his luck, taking one too many spins around the narrative track. The film clocks in at one hundred thirty-four minutes, but it really should have been twenty minutes shorter. Frankly, some of the characters Mokri introduces right before the final “pay-off” are not nearly as compelling as those we have been following since the first and second acts (roughly speaking). The unbroken chain of crisscrossing narratives also just gets exhausting over time.

Still, you have to admire Mokri’s ambition and his execution. The whole thing hangs together remarkably well and his cast (mostly drawn from the stage) rises to the challenge quite commendably. Ostensibly, there is nothing of a political nature for state censors to object to in F&C, but it is still somewhat surprising it has not been run afoul of the authorities, who have been known to object to any “negative portrayal” of Iranian society. A film about hillbilly cannibals would not exactly fit their Lake Woebegone vision of contemporary Iran, where everybody is above average.

Of course, nobody would wish him trouble and we should all be glad to have F&C screening openly for international audiences. Combining elements of We Are What We Are and Before the Rain, Fish & Cat is rather highly recommended for patient and adventurous viewers. It screens tomorrow (3/27) at MoMA and Friday (3/28) at the Walter Reade as part of the 2014 ND/NF.

ND/NF ‘14: The Story of My Death

Remember Tony Curtis in the naughty Euro-farce, The Amorous Mis-Adventures of Casanova? Sure you don’t, but forget it anyway. This incarnation of the aging rogue is worlds removed from Curtis’s leering carouser. It is the end of the party and the close of the Enlightenment era for Casanova, announced by none other than Dracula himself in Albert Serra’s defiantly dense and stately slow The Story of My Death (trailer here), which screens during this year’s New Directors/New Films, co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA.

Casanova has become a dirty, sacrilegious old man. He still pursues his pleasures where he may, be they pomegranates or chamber maids. Initially, this all seems like a good gig to his new manservant, whose primary duties appear to listening to Casanova pontificate on whatever. However, he becomes somewhat disillusioned with his master during their questionable Carpathian holiday. Naturally, Casanova starts trifling with the daughters of a suspiciously accommodating land owner, but the undead Count also has eyes for the lasses.

On paper, Death probably sounds like a super commercial mix of sex and gothic blood-sucking, but Serra’s approach is unapologetically meditative, bordering on the explicitly experimental. This is not Anne Rice or even Chelsea Quinn Yarbro.  It is one hundred fifty-eight minutes—and viewers will feel each and every second.

Serra might have a healthy contempt for narrative, but he has an eye for composition. Frame after frame intentionally evoke the Old Masters with their chiaroscuro effect and Serra’s extraordinary attention to mise-en-scene. Even though the score is credited to four composers (count them: Ferran Font, Enric Juncá, Joe Robinson, and Marc Verdaguer), there is not a lot of music heard during Death’s two and a half hours. Yet, in a rare genre concession, what there is sounds surprisingly distinctive and creepy.

Heading a typical Serra cast of non-traditional actors, poet Vincenç Altiaó rather livens up the proceedings, hedonistically chewing the scenery and relishing his self-consciously wicked dialogue. Eliseu Huertas also has an intriguing screen presence as the Count and his high-pitched keening is truly unsettling. Still, it is strange that he looks as old (or older) than Altiaó’s Casanova, yet his Dracula is supposed to represent coming era of Rousseau’s Romantic savagery.

Death could be considered the Hammer Horror film Terrence Malick has yet to make. Few vampire films feature half as many scenes of wind rustling through the grass. Frankly, Serra’s work demands to be considered solely on its own terms. Maddening and anesthetizing for the uninitiated, Death still takes viewers from one specific point to another. Selectively recommended for hardcore fans of Malick and Ben Rivers, The Story of My Death screens this coming Wednesday (3/26) at MoMA and next Saturday (3/29) at the Walter Reade, as part of the 2014 ND/NF.

ND/NF ’14: A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness

You have to do something to while the time away in the northern reaches of Scandinavia and the Baltics. A Brooklyn based musician will chew the fat in a hipster commune, soak up the wonders of nature, and play a death metal gig in a grubby little club, but less adventurous viewers will still look in vain for narrative hooks throughout Ben Rivers & Ben Russell’s A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness (trailer here), which screens during this year’s New Directors/New Films, co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA.

Any decent sized festival ought to serve up some properly labeled experimental offerings just to prove their depth and breadth. Spell certainly fills that niche, but if you have a taste for hardcore metal, the final segment of the triptych will also give you plenty to bang your head to. Viewers will follow Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe as he wanders through northeast Europe, starting in an Estonian hippie colony. Amidst the bull sessions, one Finn tells a very funny story that we cannot describe in a family outlet, but could nicely stand alone as an amusing short.

In fact, there are a number of “lucid” moments in Spell, as when said Finn sheepishly prefaces his tale by apologizing for its length. However, his interlocutor insists stories are supposed to be long—that is the whole point of telling them. He has a point. After all, storytelling is a ritual that harkens back to the mead-grogged Vikings orally transmitting the epic of Beowulf. Ironically, the nearly narrative-free Spell helps viewers develop the vocabulary to explain why the avant-garde so frustrates them.

After leaving the commune, Lowe will spend Spell’s relatively short second movement communing with nature in the wilds of Finland. Visually, these are the most striking sequences (bringing to mind vintage ECM album covers), but they are also the most cinematically static.

Eventually, it is time for Lowe to get down to business in a small Norwegian club. As the Bens pan and re-pan the on-screen audience, we see considerably older cats than we might expect for such a fierce show, but when an out-of-town band comes to play, the locals probably go regardless. It is also worth noting the poster of Sun Ra in the backroom, which speaks well of the club’s hipness.

There is an awful lot of grasping at small details in the above analysis, but a film like Spell openly invites viewers to impose their own meanings where they may. It has some interesting bits, but it is specifically intended for a small, self-selecting audience. Deliberately languid and deliberate, A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness is recommended for those who embrace the lulling effect of video installations more than conventional bourgeoisie narratives when it screens Saturday (3/22) at MoMA and Tuesday (3/25) at the Walter Reade, as part of the 2014 edition of New Directors/ New Films.

ND/NF ’14: The Babadook

Whenever a strange book mysteriously turns up, google it before cracking it open for a bedtime story. Like Candyman, the protagonist of a creepy picture book arrives when bidden and there will be no getting rid of him in Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook (trailer here), which screens during this year’s New Directors/New Films, co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA.

Six years ago, Amelia husband was killed in a traffic accident as he was rushing her to the hospital. She survived to delivery Samuel, their physical healthy but deeply maladjusted son. Naturally, celebrating his birthday is always awkward affair. Prone to acting out, Samuel is a real handful. Lately, he is pushing his still grieving mother to her breaking point. Then a rather peculiar picture book titled Mr. Babadook appears.

Since Samuel is fascinated by magic and old school magicians, the hirsute creature in a top hat depicted on the cover initially suggests it might be his cup of tea, but its true nature quickly becomes apparent. Both mother and son are soon plagued by Babadooky nightmares. Before long, the Babadook seems to take corporeal form, constantly lurking in the shadows. Try as they might, they cannot lose or destroy that infernal book and its constant reminder: “you can’t get rid of the Babadook.”

On paper, Babadook might sound like an atypical genre selection for ND/NF, but former Australian TV thesp Kent is indeed a new director. She also takes a stylish approach to the material. Max Schreck’s Nosferatu would feel at home in Amelia’s severely gray, creaky old house. In a nice hat tip, the magically themed films of George Méliès are often seen on television, further setting the mood. Likewise, Alex Juhasz’s Babadook illustrates are creepy and eccentric, recalling the better work of Tim Burton before he lost his edge.

By genre standards, Babadook is an unusually accomplished production, but its two tormented leads really try a viewer’s patience. Admittedly, some serious paranormal skullduggery is afoot, but Essie Davis’s Amelia becomes rather problematically overwrought, flirting with outright melodrama. Usually, moms are the level-headed ones in times of crisis, but not here. Likewise, the clammy bug-eyed presence of her partner in this near two-hander often undercuts the drama.

On the plus side, Kent’s instincts were on spot-on perfect when determining how much of Bobby Duke she would show and in what context. The look and mechanics of the film are quite strong (with considerable credit also due to cinematographer Radek Ladczuk), but viewers might find themselves rooting for the little hobgoblin rather than against him, which is not necessarily a terrible thing. Recommended for horror fans inclined to grant style points, The Babadook screens this Saturday (3/22) at the Walter Reade and Sunday (3/23) at MoMA as part of the 2014 ND/NF.

ND/NF ’14: Quod Erat Demonstrandum

In Communist Romania, it was not what you knew, but who you knew and whether you informed on them. One gifted mathematician will prove the point in Andrei Gruzsniczki’s Quod Erat Demonstrandum (trailer here), which screens during this year’s New Directors/New Films, co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA.

Sorin Parvu is a genius, but he is not a Party member. Hence, he has not been allowed to publish or complete his Ph.D. Increasingly frustrated, he somehow manages to smuggle a paper to a western academic journal. It has absolutely nothing to do with politics, but the Securitate still has a fit when it is printed.

Ironically, the man tasked with investigating Parvu is largely in the same boat. Alecu Voican is overdue for a promotion, but his commanding officer holds him back for the sake of his own convenience. Voican quickly uncovers a link between Parvu and Elena Buciuman, a married colleague, whom he has long carried a torch for. Ever since her husband defected while attending an academic conference in France, Buciuman has jumped through bureaucratic hoops, fruitlessly trying to obtain the necessary permits to join him. It is exactly the sort of weakness Voican intends to exploit in his campaign against Parvu.

One of the most striking aspects of QED is the characters’ lack of ideological motivation. Parvu is clueless when it comes to politics. Frankly, none of it would have come to pass had he been allowed to pursue his work for the greater glory of Romania. However, there is no denying the realities of Communism Gruzsniczki so drably recreates. Shortages, blackouts, and the trappings of Ceausescu’s personality cult are ever-present and inescapable.

While powerfully conveying the oppressive tenor of the time, QED still manages to be a remarkably subtle drama. Much is exchanged in glances and hearts are forced to break with quiet restraint. Sorin Leoveanu and Ofelia Popii develop genuine screen chemistry as Parvu and Buciuman, projecting a real sense of their years of ambiguous shared history. In contrast to their tragic dignity, Florin Piersic Jr. and Dorian Boguta vividly portray the debasing self-contempt wrought by collaboration, as Voican and Lucian Amohnoaiei, Parvu’s former friend turned informer.

QED is exactly what the doctor ordered for Romanian cinema. Granted, it hardly wears its heart on its sleeve, but it is still a tightly focused, emotionally engaging film, with real stakes involved for all its characters. It is an accomplished work of cinema and an uncompromising examination of the everyday details of Ceausescu’s police state, with particular credit also due to Christian Niculescu’s design team. Potent fare for both mind and soul, Quod Erat Demonstrandum is highly recommended when it screens Thursday (3/20) at the Walter Reade and Saturday (3/22) at MoMA, as part of ND/NF.