The Latasters' MISS KIET'S CHILDREN: kids on film in a fine and helpful Netherlands school

The earlier documentary of which the new one, MISS KIET'S CHILDREN, should most remind you is probably that fine French kids-in-school doc, To Be and To Have, which let us spend some time in a one-room, mixed-grade schoolhouse in the French countryside.

Among the differences between that doc and this new one are the country we're in (The Netherlands), the larger size of the school, and the fact that most of the kids here are recent immigrants (several from Syria) -- which addresses a subject that has grown hugely in importance throughout the European Union over the fifteen years since the release of that earlier film.

The product of filmmakers Petra Lataster-Csisch and Peter Lataster (shown above, left and right, respectively), the film offers no narration -- written or voice-over -- nor any talking-head interviews, but is simply a you-are-there, let's-watch-these-kids-and-the-interaction-with-their-teacher approach. It works. The children, for the most part, seem either unaware of the camera or so used to it that it makes little difference to them. Only one of these -- a very funny young fellow named Jorj (shown below) -- occasionally seems to be playing to the camera. And, damned if he isn't very good at it!

That titular teacher, Miss Kiet (above and below), seems a font of inspiration and warmth, yet stern enough when more control is necessary. Early on in the film she makes the point that the differences between us all is something beautiful, and this idea is quietly carried on throughout, as we watch the kids learn mathematics, movement, spelling and even how to tie a shoelace.

More than merely teaching reading, writing and arithmetic, however, what Miss Kiet excels at most, it seems, is problem-solving. She is near constantly helping these kids learn how to solve their problems without resorting to anything that approaches fighting or violence. Later she will explain to them: "For every problem, there is a solution!" And, by god, she's there to demonstrate this fact.

From near the opening moment, when a little girl arrives at school having fallen down outside into what must have been a mud puddle and now has on wet and dirty pants, to the Christmas pageant, complete with song and dance, which the kids rehearse and then put on near the film's conclusion, various problems arise and are handled by Kiet and eventually by the children with understanding and a slowly acquired skill.

The movie deals mostly with those children from Syria, though one young boy (above) hails from Macedonia. As we watch the little girl Liane (or Leeann, as it is sometimes spelled here) on the playground, and see her flinch again and again and look up into the sky when any loud noise is heard, we can't help but wonder if she is remembering the bombs and violence of her native land. Finally the teacher talks with Jorj about why he has trouble sleeping, and, sure enough, this started back in Syria. "There is no 'bang bang' here, is there?" he is asked. No, but his sleep remains troubled.

Miss Kiet's Children will appeal most, I suspect, to teachers and/or anyone who harbors the instinct for teaching, and then to those who love watching the faces of children for all the unbridled emotions these can show. The faces here are marvels indeed, and the filmmakers have captured them in all their troubled glory. Finally though, the documentary seems to TrustMovies not quite as accomplished a To Be and To Have. The fact that it sticks mostly with only four or five of these kids made me wish I had seen more of the rest of the class and how the others interacted with these five. You can't have it all, of course, not even within a two-hour framework of this film's two-hour running time.

On the same bill with the full-length documentary is a seven-minute animated short entitled WHEN I HEAR THE BIRDS SING by Trine Vallevik Håbjørg, with animation by Øyvind Tangseth and Ms Håbjørg. Using simple animation that suddenly turns gorgeous, colorful and inspired, the soundtrack offers up snippets of interviews with children of the Côte d’Ivoire in West Africa who were left homeless and/or nearly killed during the violence that followed the 2010 election. They talk of their ambitions, as well as of their travails. In its simplicity, style and beauty, the film is a small but sublime accomplishment.

From Icarus Films and in Dutch with English subtitles, Miss Kiet's Children opens tomorrow, Wednesday, December 13, at Film Forum in New York City for its U.S. theatrical premiere, and then on Friday, December 15, at Laemmle's Music Hall 3 in Los Angeles. 

Roar Uthaug's THE WAVE: a swift, smart tsunami blockbuster made for 6-1/2 million

Eat your heart out, Hollywood. For almost 17 times the budget of the excellent Norwegian special-effects thriller, THE WAVE,  Hollywood managed to give us last year's CGI-crammed blockbuster, San Andreas. Yes, those special effects were good -- if still problematic because of the far-too-high-def quality that the best CGI often provides -- but the story, writing and direction all seemed typical, obvious and, well, second rate. When set against this relatively little (though certainly big-budgeted for any Scandinavian country) film, thanks to its tight plotting, smart dialog and the kind of realistic performances that pull you in and make you care about the protagonists, the silly time-honored coincidences and last-minutes "saves" of San Andreas seem mostly ridiculous.

Director Roar Uthaug (shown at right) knows how to set up his situation for maximum potential: a family man about to leave his job as geologist and protector of a popular tourist town in the Norwegian fjords suddenly grows worried about the seismic activity in the area. Sure enough, some-thing bad is afoot, and it will take every bit of his strength and endurance to save his family, friends and coworkers (below) from a watery grave.

Not everyone does get saved, by the way, and how all this happens -- quickly, sometimes shockingly -- provides surprise, occasional humor, and a larger, more jolting dose of deep feeling than you find in most movies of this popular genre.

The leading players seem drawn from a real family, just as does our hero (Kristoffer Joner, above) and his co-workers, all of whom appear as savvy geologists. The screenplay wastes little time on anything not germane to either the family, the crisis or the post-crisis (and even more disturbing) outcome.

The special effects provide everything that is called for, and while they are used quickly and rather sparingly, when compared to what we get from our home-grown product, they work all too well, providing fright and shock aplenty. And filmmaker Uthaug knows how to ratchet the suspense to keep us on those proverbial tenterhooks. Yet nothing seems to go on too long. (The film lasts but 104 minutes, considerably shorter than most of our versions of the disaster blockbuster.)

From Magnolia Pictures, The Wave opens all across the country this Friday, March 4, and will reach even more cities and theaters in the weeks to come. (Click here to view all playdates, cities and theater scheduled so far.) The movie is everywhere, in fact, except down here in Florida. Maybe the distributor feels it would be just too much for us coastal folk. So I guess Floridians will have to wait for DVD and streaming.

Eskil Vogt's startling and original new film takes us far and fiercely into the mind of the BLIND

What an unusual -- and unusually intelligent and psychologically astute -- movie is BLIND, the first full-length film to be directed by Eskil Vogt, the fellow who earlier co-wrote two other highly-regarded Norwegian films, Reprise and Oslo, August 31. Most films about the blind use this handicap for purposes of thrilling us (Wait Until Dark), plucking our heartstrings (At First Sight) or, more lately, showing us how the loss of one valuable sense only leads to the heightening of all the others (Netflix's brilliant new comic book-based series, Daredevil).

What interests Mr. Vogt, shown at left, is something else entirely: the state -- mental, physical, sexual, spiritual -- of being blind and what this can do to the suddenly no-longer sighted. That's a big order. What makes Blind even more impressive is how quietly and intelligently the filmmaker manages this. He allows his heroine, Ingrid, (Ellen Dorrit Petersen, shown below) to narrate, bringing us into her life in her own quiet manner, and we're of course with her all the way. Poor girl.

The key, she tells us, lies is in remembering things correctly. Such as the dog -- a German Shepherd -- or a department store. And so she remembers both. But wait: What is the dog doing inside the department store? Oh, yes -- and the poor girl's husband: addicted to porn web sites and voyeurism! The first fifteen minutes of the film, in fact, are practically a voyeur's delight. What with all the porn we see, and that sleaze of a hubby.

And then there's the neighbor (Vera Vitali, above) -- a divorced mom with a young son to care for. Wait a minute: I'm wrong. She has a daughter. And about that husband: there are actually two of them, one portrayed by that excellent actor, Henrick Rafaelsen (of The Almost Man), below, left, and the other by Marius Kolbenstvedt, below right, and also first-rate. There is so much going on here, but Mr. Vogt juggles it all quite snazzily, with superb visual flair underpinned by psychological realism and performances that make the bizarre seem almost credible.

Fantasies abound -- of being watched, of being highly sexual, of being another person entirely -- and the movie offers a surprising amount of humor, too. (Does that device for sorting laundry when you're blind actually exist? If not, someone should invent it!) And because the characters here are cultured and au courant, there are references aplenty for us to latch onto (the director's cut of Mask figures in rather prominently).

Oddly, as the movie grows weirder and crazier, it also becomes clearer what is going on. This juxtaposition works with surprising brilliance, finally offering up a film that is about as original a look at the world of one very particular blind person as you are likely to encounter.

From KimStim and Fandor, Blind opens this Friday, September 4, in New York City (at the IFC Center) and next Friday, September 11, in Los Angeles (at the Cinefamily), simultaneous with its debut on Fandor.
However you choose to see it, do. 

Erik Skjoldbjærg's PIONEER proves a would-be paranoid thriller that ends up dead in the water

The unreliable narrator has a deserved place in the history of cinema. But when everything he's surrounded by -- story, script, direction, performance -- seems equally unreliable, the viewer is in trouble. So it is with PIONEER, the new film from Erik Skjoldbjærg, the Norwegian director who earlier gave us Insomnia (the original) and Prozac Nation, two other films with unreliable narrators. In Pioneer, however, the subject is the 1980s Norwegian oil boom due to the discovery of the dark and greasy substance under the North Sea, America's rather odd and little-known involvement in this, and maybe murder-made-to-look-accidental in order to sway control over the project from a small Scandinavian country to that of a rather large super-power.

Director Skjoldbjærg -- shown here, who also co-wrote the film, along with a quartet of other screenwriters -- offers up a tale rife with weirdness right off the bat, as we see a pair of deep-sea-diving brothers, assured but competitive, jockey for position in both life and work. The latter involves diving for the joint American/ Norwegian project team, led by Stephen Lang, in which a surly American diver (Wes Bentley, below, left) makes his presence felt, along with one of those brothers (André Eriksen, below, right).

Bad things happen almost immediately, and a cover-up appears to have begun. At least that is the opinion of the other brother, the actual star of the film, Aksel Hennie (below), the Norwegian actor who was so good in the lead role in Headhunters, and has pretty much made a career out of playing jumpy, bizarre, sometimes violence-prone characters (from his early Uno to the recent Hercules, in which he played, and very well, the crazy "hero" Tydeus.

Mr. Hennie begins the movie a little "off" and continues growing even farther afield until everyone and everything around him seems ready to pounce. This makes for some thrills and oddities but mostly it guarantees confusion and finally out-and-out silliness.

Really,  who among intelligent, thoughtful folk would not by now imagine American the Beautiful capable of some of the worst atrocities and hypocrisy currently going? So it is no big step to suppose us as the villains here. Mr. Lang (above) can be impressively nasty, as can Mr. Bentley, whom the screenwriters have seen fit not to give a shred of real character besides his nastiness. Why waste an actor like this in such a dismal role?

So we get chases, and break-ins, and murder, and betrayal, and near-death, and much else. To no avail. The plotting jerks from arbitrary to nonsensical and back again. If the villains here really wanted to succeed, our would-be hero wouldn't stand a prayer. Instead, they miss their opportunities (or for some dumb reason refuse to take them to their logical conclusion) time after time after time.

Eventually, you'll shrug your shoulders, crunch down in your seat to nod off or maybe visit the refreshment stand for something to keep you awake. There are rumors afoot that an American remake of this film is planned. Unless it turns out one hell of a lot better than this one, you've got to ask, why? (That's Mexican actress Stephanie Sigman, below, playing one of the several characterless women who also dot the movie.)

From Magnolia Pictures, in English and Norwegian with English subtitles, and running a long 111 minutes, Pioneer opens this coming Friday, in New York City at the Cinema Village, in Los Angeles at the Landmark NuArt, and then in Florida, San Francisco and San Diego in the weeks to come. (You can view all currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters, by clicking here.) 

DVDebut: Female desperation gets a workout in Iram Haq's haunting, disturbing I AM YOURS

She's pretty, she's voluptuous, she's smart, she may even be talented (she wants to act), but above all she's needy, and it's that last one that controls her life. "She," a young woman named Mina, of Pakistani heritage now living in Norway, is played by Amrita Acharia, (shown at right and below) in what may be the role of her career -- destined to be seen by few, I'm afraid, as the film in which her performance is the centerpiece, is going straight-to-DVD-and-streaming via Film Movement. Still despite having no theatrical screenings, and hence no critical "push," her film is at least now viewable by American audiences. It title, I AM YOURS, (Jeg er din) could double as Mina's watchwords: from what we see of her choice of men, she'll glom on to literally any fellow who seems to like her.

The writer/director, Iram Haq (shown above, right, with her leading actors: that's Ola Rapace in the center) is of Pakistani heritage, I am guessing, for she details Mina's family life with a smart combination of caring and annoyance (the initial scene with Mina's mother is enough to drive the girl and us viewers up the wall).  How tradition binds us so strongly and terribly, making it difficult to exist in a different, more modern culture, is well-drawn here.

Mina has a six-year-old son (above, being twirled: a lovely and very believable performance from newcomer Prince Singh) from a former relationship. The father, a successful architect, is clearly a responsible fellow, and one of the weaknesses of the film is that it slights Mina's history in ways we would like to know more about. Her mother insists Mina lost this guy due to her flirtatiousness, but mom is not necessarily to be believed. So all we have to rely on is Mina's desperately needy behavior, and so most of the "blame" for her ever more precarious position seem to fall on her own shoulders. She's a little girl who is now a mother and yet she herself must grow up. (Therapy is in order here, and since the location is Norway, one would imagine it can and would be provided by the state.)

Still, that pull between the eastern tradition of family culture against life in a modern Western state must be extremely difficult to bear, and the movie, without insisting too much, makes this situation clear. (There is also a nod to feminism and women's place -- again, without undue push.)

As a psychological character study within a particular time and place, I Am Yours succeeds best. From the looks of things, there does not seem to be much hope for this but I suspect you'll be rooting, against the odds, that Mina will eventually be able to realize and declare, I am mine.  In any case, the movie, worth seeing and mulling, will be available to own (or, in some cases, rent) on DVD and digital platforms come this Tuesday, November 11. And as is often the case, the film should appear soon after on Netflix Streaming.

Martin Lund's THE ALMOST MAN: this original from Norway offers a very "late" coming-of-age

"Can you dance without irony?" asks Mia to her boyfriend, Henrik, as he dances "in quotes," and this strange but interesting question resonates for the remainder of the THE ALMOST MAN, the new and weirdly captivating Norwegian movie written and directed by Martin Lund. As this tale of a very overgrown 35-year-old child/man proceeds, we slowly begin to wonder if Henrik can do anything without irony -- without having to comment and/or act facetiously about, well, nearly everything he encounters. Henrik (clearly not named after Ibsen) is a plum role played to creepy perfection by an actor named Henrik Rafaelsen, who took the Best Actor prize at the 2012 Karlovy Vary Film Fest (the movie itself won Best Film).

Filmmaker Lund, shown at right, packs a punch (a number of them, actually) and a lot of information and characters into his 75-minute movie, which feels neither rushed nor too brief, as it details the relationship between Tone (a lovely performance from Janne Heltberg Haarseth, below) and her "almost" man. Initially, Henrik seems pretty charming and funny, yet the succeeding scenes belie both his charm and the fun, as Henrik -- whether due to abject fear at the prospect of becoming a parent when he himself is still a child or something even deeper -- appears to be disintegrating before our (and his) very eyes.

The movie opens with Henrik in the bathtub. His body, which in time we see all of, is oddly without definition. He's neither over- nor under-weight, but almost completely undefined. Rather like his character.

We see this seemingly lovey-dovey pair (above) first at their new home, and later in the supermarket and partying with friends. We view Henrik at work, with his bad-boy buddies (below), and with his overprotective mom. Scene by scene, the man appears to be losing it until he very nearly crosses a boundary he can't uncross.

Through it all, actor Rafaelsen does a yeoman job of putting us off yet holding us fast so that we hope he'll somehow manage the tightrope on which he's placed himself. This may be an extreme case of the Peter Pan syndrome, but it's a memorable one.

The writer/director has chosen his scenes and events wisely for maximum effect, for resonance and for guiding us from initial laughter into something not so funny at all.

Will our boy make it to manhood, even at this late date? Opinions may differ about the outcome here, but I think most audiences will agree that Mr. Lund has given us an unusual, provocative little film.

The Almost Man -- from Big World Pictures -- has its U.S. theatrical premiere this Friday, August 1, here in New York City at the Village East Cinema. Elsewhere? To learn of any additional screenings, click on this link, then click on Viewing (under the Donation link at the top) and scroll down ..... 

Jannicke Systad Jacobson's TURN ME ON, DAMMIT! Teen-age love 'n lust in Norway

Have raging hormones ever been portrayed quite as delightfully as in TURN ME ON, DAMMIT!, the new, Norwegian, not-quite-coming-of-age movie from a relatively new filmmaker -- Jannicke Systad Jacobson -- who should, if she lives up to the promise of this quirky little wonder, be around for a long time to come. Several things make this film special, and the first is that it gives us an up-close-and-personal look at exactly how those hormones rage in the mind and spirit of a 15-year-old girl. We just don't see this that often -- in America it is almost always the guys who get to show us the hormone ropes -- but how much more unusual (and fun!) is it to see this from the female perspective.

Ms Jacobson, shown, left, doesn't ignore the guys. In fact, she offers a believable & smart, if slightly stand-offish, look at two of her leading character's classmates: Artur, the hunk-in-training for whom she's got the hots (played by a very appealing Matias Myren, below, right) and a beyond-quirky but char-ming (if you hold your nose) outsider named Kjartan (Lars Nordtveit Listau, two photos below). Our horny heroine, Alma (yes, that means "heart") is given amazing grace, beauty and a fine sense of goofiness by Helene Bergsholm, below, left.

All three kids are first-time actors, by the way, as are, I suspect, most of the younger cast. The older kids and the adults are played by professionals, and the filmmaker handles both her newcomers and her pros with the same easy grace so that their connections to each other are genuine and their performances truthful and funny, straight across the board.

Among the other "special" things about the film, I would rank high its unique combination of honesty concerning the sexual fantasies and needs of adolescent girls (and boys) -- it certainly tells it like it is -- and the out-and-out charm and often sweetness with which these kids struggle to reach some kind of fulfilling sexual goal. The tone here is always on the mark, no matter how bizarre (sometimes nearly gross) are the machinations of our Miss Alma.

The difficulties that the older generation has with the younger's appetites are delightfully shown, as well  (Henriette Steenstrup makes a wonderfully confused but in-there-trying mother to Alma), while the macho -- or whatever word the Scandinavians use for this -- posturings of the young males make a funny/sad counterpoint to the richer fantasy life of the females, cleverly pointing up how different seem to be the needs of the two sexes.

The wonderful screenplay, also by Ms. Jacobson (from the novel by Olaug Nilssen), makes some drop-dead funny use of the phrase dick-Alma, a new moniker with which our heroine is christened via her response to Artur's sudden, oh-so-male romantic gesture. Dick-Alma follows her along, coming to true fruition in a song composed on the spot by a smart, helpful older fellow who knows how to turn a turd into taffy.

There is so much that's wonderful about this film -- including an understated, feel-good climax that works perfectly -- that I refuse to over-praise it (what -- I already have?). It's short (75 minutes) and sweet and, by certain American standards, dirty (the phone sex scene at the beginning; Artur's very present and visible cock). And yet it is truthful, and dear and real, the kind of film I'd have taken my daughter -- hell, her entire class -- to see in her own adolescent days/daze.

Turn Me On, Dammit!, from New Yorker Films, opens this Friday, March 30, in New York City at the Angelika Film Center and The Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center. Look for it to open mid-April in the Los Angeles area at The Landmark and various Laemmle theaters. To learn all the currently scheduled playdates, click here and then click on the IN THEATERS link on the bar just below the visuals for the film.