EIFF Day 3

Way too tired (already!), this'll be short…

On the way to the cinema at one point today I walked past a family who were taking photos of themselves in and around one of those bicycle cab things. The husband, in his best Prince Philip accent, was trying to persuade the cyclist to stand by his cab and "make slitty eyes". Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge hubbie is still alive.

Natural City
(Min Byung-chun / South Korea / 2003 / 112 min)
"Shades of Blade Runner in this stunning futuristic tale of cops on the trail of rogue humanoids." — EIFF

This owes a lot to Blade Runner, and some to Aliens (for its fight scenes) too: less sympathetic to the cyborgs though, and I don't think as atmospheric. Nevertheless, very entertaining and with plenty of polished special effects. After laughing my way through the melodrama (reminiscent of The Killer at points) and a pop video moment near the end I discovered that the woman sitting next to me was a friend of the director. Didn't seem to take it too badly though, think she was laughing too. Phew.

In The Dark (documentary trio)
(Sergei Dvortsevoy / Russia & Finland / 2004 / 41 min)

Preceded by Tom Collinson's Flying People, wherein a champion kite flyer has introduced his blind day-job boss to the joys of kite-flying — interesting, highly specialist stuff — and Julia Daschner's Lormen, a video of a deafblind couple having a conversation using their hands (the "Lormen" tactile hand alphabet apparently). Mikes were attached to (or near?) their hands and amped way up, so there were good thumpy scratchy slidy noises accompanying all the hand movements. This was fascinating to watch, particularly the etiquette of offering your upturned palm to the other person's hand for them to speak, which would get dropped during intense moments of conversation — imagine trying to get a word in edgeways when you have to stop listening in order to speak…

Then there was In The Dark, about a blind man (seemingly recently bereft) living in a Moscow appartment with his cat. Tough mixture of funny (mainly because of the cat) and extraordinarily sad. Winner of the "first tears of the fest" award for me anyway.

Take My Eyes (Te doy mis ojos)
(Iciar Bollain / Spain / 2003 / 106 min)
"Sensitive treatment of a difficult subject; winner of six Spanish Goya awards, including Best Film of 2004." — EIFF

So who wrote this scheduling program that it followed up a trio of documentaries about blindness with something called "Take My Eyes", huh? I keep thinking Skynet… Rivetingly acted drama about a woman and her abusive husband, this builds traumatising levels of tension with alternating reconciliation and abuse, with blessedly minimal physical violence — its threat more than anything else kept me permanently on edge when the couple were together. The relationship portrayed is convincing and passionate, and both roles are substantial and deep, set against a coherent background of family and friends. The tension is leavened with wonderfully well-observed (and often comic) dialogue and scenes at intervening points. One of the best so far.

The director's presence was welcome, fractionally marred by a festival interviewer who was too anxious to ask her own questions.

Los Muertos
Lisandro Alonso / Argentina / 2004 / 78 min)
"New Argentine cinema finds its poet and master in Lisandro Alonso" — Variety

Utterly gorgeous film about a man leaving twenty-five-odd years of prison and travelling up a river to find his daughter. Peaceful, beautiful, very straight and unsentimental, there's a darker undercurrent it's easy to lose in the sheer wonder of watching. The journey involves meeting a number of people and fending for himself as he travels. It's just unlike anything else I've seen in a long time. (Warning: an animal was most certainly killed in the making of this film)

During the director's Q&A afterwards I felt he hadn't quite successfully communicated the subject's darkness since I was so taken with the film's loveliness that I didn't really feel the underlying threat/ambiguity/disconnectedness of the central character until the end (that's not a spoiler: I'm not saying that something happens, just that the dark mood became a little clearer to me at the end).

Skinned Deep
(Gabriel Bartalos / USA / 2003 / 97 min)
"Why DO people drive in the woods, anyway? Don't they know that it never ends well?" — EIFF

Up there with Street Trash (They Melt!) and Spontaneous Combustion for low-budget silliness, this slashery horrory romp features apple pie Americans and geriatric Hell's Angels being gleefully murdered by all kinds of freaks and weirdos including the bastard offspring of Oddjob and Mini-Me. Scores lots of points for 1) having Sean Connery voice its archvillain (uh, well, it sounds like him), 2) the director throwing plastic plates at the audience while it was showing, and 3) the inspired closing credits soundtrack, which had the audience in hysterics. Worth waiting for, as the satanic adexec would say.