Upon walking into some class or other when I was in grad school, I remember hearing a classmate complaining that his roommate was under the mistaken notion that, if the film was foreign, it had to be good. And so, said classmate apparently spent a fair ammount of time avoiding his own living room after his roommate's hit-or-miss visits to Casa Video. And it's true-- while bad foreign films do not always play by the same rules as bad domestic films, they can be oh-so-bad, just the same. And then, there are always the little gems that keep drawing me back into that lonely aisle...
Really, I don't have much to say about any of these that I've been watching lately so, in lieu of directional thumbs, I'm offering brief "yeas" and "nays" on my recent viewings.
First something French: Novo: Nay
OK, so, this wasn't exactly my cup of Cafe Au Lait. The basic storyline goes something like this: random beautiful women take advantage of a handsome guy who's lost his memory by having lots of sex with him. And he sorta, maybe, falls in love with one of them. But he can't really remember. I don't know-- the whole thing just didn't make much sense to me. The guy was kinda cute and all... by why are all these women aflutter, exactly? And what was the deal with his wife? I don't know. I'll entertain the possibility that I just wasn't paying enough attention... but I'll also entertain an alternative possibility that the storytelling was just plain old sub-par.
And now, two Italian pieces:
First, Don't Tell: Yea, with reservations due to lack of ingenuity in terms of approach:
This movie was up for the foreign language Academy Award a couple of years ago, I guess. And it's a well-shot little movie about a father sexually abusing his kids. Perhaps I've been watching too much of this sort of thing, but it all felt like so much re-tread, only in Italian this time around. It's a nice little film but doesn't have the impact of something like Mysterious Skin and it certainly isn't the sucker-punch of Hard Candy.
And then, Don't Move: Yea, for the most part
Actually, by the time this movie wound it's way around itself, it won me over. They sure managed to ugly up poor Penelope Cruz-- but it's worth it: she is a ravaged woman. But the most interesting thing to note is that Cruz's character gets raped early on in the movie. And then she procedes to fall in love with her rapist. And he with her. This is a concept that gives me the willies all over the place. And it's the primary reason why I ended up giving this movie a "yea".
And from South Africa, Tsotsi, of course: a quiet Yea
This is a very simple story and it's well-shot and well-told. "Tsotsi" means "thug" in Afrikaans and noting the American cultural infiltration in even this most distant of locales is unavoidable. This thing won the Best Foreign Film statuette last year-- the same year that the Turkish Head-on (Gagen Die Wand) came out. As Head-on wasn't even nominated, I don't suppose Tsotsi was such a bad choice. But it's safe and rather unadventurous in both its plot and treatment. Seriously, though, if you can get your hands on Head-on, rent it. It's one of the best, most complex, sexy, engaging, gravitationally tumbling movies I've seen in ages.
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