Corneliu Porumboiu's POLICE, ADJECTIVE gets a theatrical/On-Demand run

A very good, very subtle, and finally very powerful movie, POLICE, ADJECTIVE by Romanian filmmaker Corneliu Porumboiu (shown below), which was part of this year's New York Film Festival, makes its theatrical & On Demand debut now. It's slow -- but, for me, never uninter-
esting because the moral question at its center becomes obvious early on, and once it grabs you, everything in the film is

then directed toward that question and/or spins off from it: What is the right, the best, thing to do for everyone concerned in this particular situation in which a student is smoking an illegal substance but is not dealing in its trade.

The person most involved in handling this situation is the police detective assigned to trail the student. We see him at work, in the field and at home with his wife, parrying with his co-workers and his bosses, trying to convince the latter of the importance of not dealing too harshly with this young man and -- in the process -- destroying his life. The detective is not a happy camper.

I was not as taken with Porumboiu's earlier 12:08 East of Bucharest as were some (it proved a little heavy-handed for me), but I found his new film remarkable: quiet and contained, full of surprise and the steady unfolding of a view of society -- Romanian -- still trapped in and enrapt with its fascist tendencies (and why not? The film is set in and around a police department). The country and its society also remain, the movie makes clear, a slave to the old laziness of the Communism work ethic, despite Romania's slowly opening up to more western, "democratic" mores.

A police procedural-cum-moral dilemma in which very little happens but what does counts for much, the film is so beautifully photo-
graphed that viewing it puts you in an almost constant state of pleasure (the crisp cinematography by Marius Panduru makes the absolute most of color, wherever it can be found). The acting by lead Dragos Bucur, above left, and Irina Saulescu (above, right) who plays his wife, as well as by Vlad Ivanov (the abortionist from 4 months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days who here plays the man in charge) is terrific, and Porumpoiu's dialog is spare until it is needed. At that point you'll want to stop and hit the rewind button, so pointed yet simultaneously on-target and obfuscatory the words become. You may also want to scream rebuttals at the screen.

Police, Adjective uses words and their "meaning," as well as their "power," in a manner I have not seen another movie manage. Like The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (though not as encompassing nor enlarging a film), it's another top-of-the-line movie from Romania.

Opening theatrically at the IFC Center tomorrow, December 23, it is concurrently screening On-Demand via local TV reception providers in various locations. View its complete release schedule here.

SCN: Isona Passola's CATALONIA VS SPAIN -- plus a quick post-series round-up

TrustMovies would not have imagined that a documentary about the conflict between Spain and one of her "nation-states," Catalonia, would make such a fitting end for this year's FSLC series Spanish Cinema Now. But there it is. This short film (75 minutes, including credits) should pretty consistently hold you rapt, even if, as was my case, you know little to nothing about the conflict between the mother country and one of her pieces. (And here I thought that most of the Spain's problems had to do with the ETA, Cantabria and Basque Country separatists.)

In CATALONIA VS SPAIN (Cataluña Espanya), writer (with Joan Dolç) and director
Isona Passola (shown above) interviews a large and diverse bunch of talking heads to get at the problems of why, in the words of several of the interviewees, Catalonia keeps complaining so much and so often. Seems to this viewer, at least, that it have a lot to complain about -- including, as early members of a certain other nation once noted, "taxation without representation." Though in Catalunya, it seems to be more a matter of not enough representation.

There's also a language problem: Catalan or Spanish, how these are taught and accepted has long been a thorn in the side of most Catalans. (There's even a little goofing on the language "barrier" in the deliberately misspelled title of the movie.) Land -- who owns it and why (the Duchess of Alba, and not the Goya version, comes up during this section!) -- also figures in the equation, as do things like the country's current Constitution (it's a bad one, some say); the lack of proper transportation in and out of a hugely important and major city like Barcelona (no major airport, a fast train (shown below) that took ages to get into operation); even culture itself is slammed around. Posited here: Catalonia has its own special cul-
ture, while Madrid does not. On that last point, I would have to agree: one of the few films in the current series to deal with Cata-
lunya (Little Indi) is set in the region and indeed seems to sport a culture so different it could be taking place in another country.

In its short running time, Catalonia vs Spain crams in, by my count, some 27 different speakers (one is shown two photos above, another just below), many of whom appear again and again. Yet what they all have to say seems interesting and germane, so listening to them and trying to sort out their meanings proves salutary. Unfortunately, for non-Spanish- (let alone non-Catalan-) speaking folk like me, the movie's subtitles-upon-subtitles (one set to identify the current speaker, another to translate what that speaker is saying) is often daunting. I'm sure I missed a number of points along the way. Yet I did retain enough to realize the prob-
lems here and to have some hope that over time they'll be righted.

Ms Pasolla, a Catalan filmmaker, uses brisk pacing and a sense of humor; her take on all this seems one of amused, ironic anger, as seen in the charming-and-a-little-nasty, semi-animated credit sequence that opens and closes her film. For an American, this smart little movie offers a respite from watching and listening to our own crass and catbird-seated politicians dither and destroy-by-bits a possible health care initiative (Spain, of course, offers it populace health care), after following our former, unlamented administration into two stupid and mishandled trillion-dollar wars. (Spain, then under its right-leaning leader, followed us the the middle east, suffered its own terrorist attack, and quickly ditched that regime for one that's more Socialist-- several years and another election before we managed the same smart trick.)

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Another SCN series has drawn to a close, and after viewing 17 new films and one program of shorts, I'm sorry to see it go. If the ETA, which last year themed two of the series' better films, was present only as hostage bargaining chips in the terrific prison movie Cell 211, there was still plenty of ideas about Spain today to capture our attention. More than 30 years have passed since the death of fascist dictator Francisco Franco, and the country he ruled via torture and an iron fist is now yet another of the world's troubled democracies. Watching, via the SCN films, this country come to terms with continuing growth and change is, as usual, enlightening and disturbing, humorous and sad.

In terms of quality, this year proved one of, maybe the best I can recall: only two losers in the pack (The Dancer and the Thief and A Good Man, with the latter, according to another attendee I spoke with, "the best film in the festival." Go figure.) The remainder ranged from Don't-Miss status (Bloody May, Camino, Cell 211, Woman Without Piano) to plain excellent (The Good News, Gordos, Mediterranean Food, Paper Castles, The Shame, Stigmata) to very much worth seeing (Catalonia vs Spain, The Condemned, Hierro, Little Indi, V.O.S. and the shorts program).

Why, you may have asked, does TrustMovies spend so much time on a festival that can only be seen by New Yorkers (or those film buffs located in the tri-state are), the movies of which will likely not be shown again? It's partly because most of these movies, as good as they are, may not appear on these shores again. Yet they deserve to be seen, talked about and written about -- even if only as a record that, hey, they were here! Maybe, with any luck they will find their way to DVD or cable, and seeing their titles, you'll remember that you read about them, wanted to see them, and so will take a look.... Let's hope.

Let’s Go to Prison! Trapero's LION'S DEN, Edel's THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX

Two fascinating movies – fascinating especially because they will seem so for-
eign to most Ameri-
can eyes – came to DVD two weeks back and are very much worth watching and ruminating over. Both deal with prison, in Germany and in Ar-
gentina, yet neither quite fits the term “prison movie,” al-
though LION’S DEN comes closer to that genre than does THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX.
Baader Meinhof deals with the RAF (no, not the UK’s Air Force but the Red Army Fac-
tion), a surprisingly popular (if the movie is to be believed, and in general and in many specifics, I think that it is) left-wing, radical terrorist group that came into being during the late 1960s and lasted into the 70s. The group, seemingly made up of as many wo-
men as men, bombed, kidnapped and as-
sassinated a number of important people and/or places across Europe. Its goal, a-
mong other things, was to stop West Ger-
many (where the RAF began) & Europe from assisting the USA in its useless and murderous Vietnam War, a good one so far as this re-
viewer is concerned. As usual, ends don’t always justify means.

The movie succeeds at giving us rapid-fire information on how the disparate group came together and how new generations of converts came aboard, as older member crashed and burned. Whether this is completely true, I cannot say, but the scene near the beginning (above), as a peaceful group, protesting the visit to Germany by the Shaw of Iran are set upon first by the Shaw’s own group and then by German police, beaten and in one case simply shot, is imminently believable in showing us how some of those protesters came to realize that they must mimic the methods of the police. This scene also helps us identify, at least early on, with the RAF. But as the terrorist acts build and multiply, this identification lessens considerably.

The arguments between members, while making use of much political jargon of the time, also ring true, and make us understand that these positions were extremely important to the RAF (one of them being not to kill innocent working class citizens – which happened in the bombing of German publishing house Springer-Verlag). The final third of the film finds a number of the RAF members in prison awaiting trial, and this section maintains interest due to the differences between the German prison system and our own, and from the way the members interact during this time – still arguing and fighting but also finally taking more “permanent” steps.

The film, directed by Uli Edel (shown in black-and-white, just below the poster, top) is full of action, violence, nudity and sex – which seems to have put off some critics around the globe. But if ever a group warranted this approach, it was the RAF, and god knows, all this helps the film’s 2-1/2 hour running time to speed by. The cast is a good one, too, with Martina Gedeck, Moritz Bleibtreu (at left, two photos up), Bruno Ganz and Alexandra Maria Lara probably the best-known on our shores.

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The Argentine film Lion's Den, on the other hand, features no performers you’ll probably have ever heard of -- which is all to the good as concerns making the movie seem realistic and documentary- like. In it, a young woman wakens in something of a stupor, looking bruised and bloodied; she showers, still in that stupor, and goes to work. Later, at her job, when her head begin to bleed, she returns home to find her roommates dead and wounded. She calls the police, but with no suspects other than herself on tap, it’s off to prison with her. From this point, the film -- directed by Pablo Trapero (shown at right, who made the very under-seen Rolling Family) -- becomes the story of the prisoner, Julia, beautifully played by Martina Gusman (below, center, and above on poster), beginning from a state of haziness then moving into anger, resignation and finally acceptance and growth. It turns out Julia has mother problems, and we meet that mother soon enough. Doing some kind of penance for her earlier abandonment of her daughter, mom ingratiates herself with the newly-found Julia, who herself is pregnant. Argentine law decrees that pregnant women prisoners can give birth and keep their children with them in prison up to the age of four. So we follow Julia and her cellblock-mates as they bond, raise their children together and become “family.”

All the while, Julia, certain of her innocence in any murder, tries to persuade the court of this, and the look inside the justice system in Argentina that the movie proffers seems both more and less fair than ours here in the USA. A number of twists, none of them predictable but all of them believable, keep the plot moving along, and the film’s ending seems particularly thoughtful and expansive. Lion’s Den compares to no other film I can readily recall. It is definitely worth a watch.

THE SHAME, David Planell's parenting film, winds down Spanish Cinema Now

Parenting, respon-
sibility, guilt and growing up are among the several themes tackled by one of the best entries in this year's FSLC roster of Spanish Cinema Now, which draws to a close tomor-
row. THE SHAME (La Vergüenza), written (with the collaboration of Santos Mercero) and directed by David Planell (below), although it is tightly focused on a "family" of four (husband, wife, soon-to-be-perhaps-adopted child and the housekeeper/nanny), its breadth eventually reaches out to include a large por-
tion of society, from public utilities to social services.

That Señor Planell is able to accomplish this within the time frame of a single day makes his movie even more impressive. It seems a "normal" day yet contains almost everything that will decide this family's fate. How the filmmaker connects his people and events is artful and smart, with almost no dependence upon coincidence and everything instead proceeding from character and need. The one symbolic moment of decision and release might seem too much -- were it not for the possibilities remaining for both good and bad to come out of this latest turn of events (including the turn of a faucet).

Opening with the clock radio informing us of "the death of four workers, with an investigation pointing to" -- and then Mom turns the radio off. Not that this investigation would ever lead to anything concrete. What is concrete is that Dad finds himself in the middle of a shower when the water goes off -- for the third time in a month. That, and the family's Peruvian maid (above right), who, it appears, has been stealing. Or not. Most concrete of all is Manu, the young boy with some severe behavioral problems that this twosome may soon permanently adopt.

A dental appointment, a report due for school, a birthday party, money and a wristwatch gone missing, lunch to be made without any water, the glue needed for a chair repair, and a scheduled visit from the social worker (above, right) in charge of the adoption: All these sound like juggling pins to be kept aloft in some kind of farce. But in the hands of Planell, they become part of a wonderfully rich day of discovery and change.

The Shame is the kind of movie in which everyone is trying his best -- and failing -- with the responsibility that of both the individual and the system. Trying to make up for past mistakes, while commendable, does not seem particularly productive. And deceit seems necessary but equally unproductive. Planell has created his movie in nearly real time, with events telescoped only slightly and the up-close camera work lending a documentary feel to the events that we witness.

The cast of (basically) five -- mom, dad, son, social worker and nanny -- is peopled with actors who seem especially attuned to the needs of this story. As the father, Alberto San Juan (above, right), last seen in SCN two years ago in Under the Stars and Casual Day, is one of Spain's leading men most fearless about emotions and the showing of them. Everything -- from his sudden temper to tears, fears and joy -- is within San Juan's reach. As Mom, Natalia Mateo (above, left) offers an intriguing combination of need, aggression and protection, as she negotiates the Scylla and Charybdis of her husband and the social worker. In the pivotal role of the maid and nanny, Norma Martínez (below, left) is especially strong and effective, never more so than when, at last, she can let her hair down, symbolically and for real. As the troubled youngster, newcomer Brandon Alexander Lastra Cobos (below, right and just above, who will shorten that name soon, no doubt) is very good at remaining a mystery, even as we slowly warm up to the kid.

As much as everything has changed by the end of the movie, nothing is wrapped up, let alone with any neat bow. Life will go on, all right, but there are plenty more changes in store for this "family," including its fish. How will things turn out? This is the movie's strength: It sets up the problem, initiates as much growth as might be possible with these particular characters, and then adds a dash -- and only that -- of hope.

The Shame plays once more only: tonight, Saturday, December 19, at 8:30 -- at the Walter Reade Theater.

SCN: In THE DANCER AND THE THIEF Fernando Trueba mixes genres...

...and falls on his face. But very artistically: This is a mighty pretty movie. THE DANCER AND THE THIEF (El baile de la Victoria) is also the one full-fledged clunker of the Spanish Cinema Now series. Why? Let me count the ways. Its mash-up of genres -- the way it conflates the prison movie with the heist movie with the thriller with the romance with -- yes! -- Flashdance with the hostage film, with National Velvet is, well, unusual, to say the least. That almost none of this makes good sense, let alone works as cinema, is bizarre enough. Eventually, it almost seems as though the co-writer and director Fernando Trueba had so many stories and plot strands to work out that he decided, if he just kept going, things would somehow find closure. But no: They just get screwier. And while this approach makes the movie a very long haul, it does not help it coalesce.

Señor Trueba has had what we might call a checkered film career, a lot of it in Spanish television. After working for some years, he produced and directed Belle Epoque, which unaccountably won our Best Foreign Film in 1994. It wasn't bad, but it also wasn't that good. He went on to make one somewhat enjoyable financial flop here in the U.S. (Two Much), then bounced back, in Spain at least, with some OK movies like The Girl of Your Dreams, Calle 54 and The Shanghai Spell. And now here we are with this fine mess.

I could detail the plot for you, as certain reviewers never fail to do, but I swear, you would only say, "What?" So I will just note that the film leaps off from a day in Chile (rather than, as I had formerly stated, Spain: thanks Patrick, for your comment, below) where some sort of prison "amnes- ty" is given, in which certain prisoners, figured to be non- violent and who have served a portion of their term, are released. Ricardo Darin (shown above, right, and bottom, left), the fine Argen- tine actor, plays one of these: a world-famous safe-cracker. Ano- ther young man, Ángel (called "Cupid" by the prison staff, played by the cute, round-faced actor Abel Ayala, shown just above) who has evidently been raped by the prison warden, is also released. Do their paths cross again on the outside, along with that of the warden? Ah, you've seen a few movies in your day!

Other paths cross, too. The dancer of the title (played by Miranda Bodenhofer, above) makes her appearance very soon, with her own back story about the "disappeared" that could choke a horse (maybe the one in this movie!) and has already been used in a number of other films. That naughty warden keeps weaving in and out, and in one of the movie's least believable moments, though he imagines his life is in danger, he takes a public bus home from work. Well, maybe Spanish prison wardens make no money. Or perhaps we can chalk it up to the needs of a poorly-imagined screenplay. The co-writers, by the way, are Antonio Skármeta and Jonás Trueba (Fernando's son), so we'll let them argue over the script's many (de)merits.

Overall, the movie, though dreadful, is watchable due to the gorgeous cinematography of Julián Ledesma, of whose work we shall certainly being seeing more, and the crazier-by-the-scene genre mash-up, which I admit begins to provide some dumb fun. And don't even try to figure out the ending: My "take" is that they're all in heaven and that the friendly condor is really god. The Dancer and the Thief plays one more time, tomorrow, Saturday, December 19, at 6pm at the Walter Reader Theater.

SCN: Cesc Gay's V.O.S., the "movie-movie" rom-com about the making of a rom-com

There have been plenty of movies made about movies and movie-making, some of which play with what's real and what's not, fracturing time, place and reality. But none, I think, have done it quite to the extent that Spanish filmmaker Cesc Gay manages in his new V.O.S. (which signifies "version original, subtitled" and is Spain's most-used designation for an "art film."
Señor Gay (shown below) seems to be simultaneously making fun of and having fun with art films and romantic comedies, and perhaps asking us why these can't be -- at least once in awhile -- one in the same? He's also forcing us to consider the difference between living and acting -- aren't we often (maybe always) doing both? The whole world is a movie set here, from the hospital in which a birth begins the film to apartments, country homes, highways and more. Even the movie set is a movie set, of course, or he couldn't be filming it. Ohmigod, will all this artifice, these Russian dolls and Chinese boxes, never end?!

Fortunately the movie is short -- coming in well under an hour-and-a-half (plus credits) -- and the writer/director contrives to do some very clever stuff with his what's-real-what's-not, taking it occasion-
ally into the realm of fantasy. (My favorite moment involves an out-
door snow scene that comes suddenly indoors -- an utterly enchan-
ting expression of what it's like to realize you are in love, and how bizarre this can look to an outsider who isn't feeling the same way.) His cast is quite good and quite photogenic, as well: Àgata Roca (shown above, right, who bears a resemblance to Leonore Watling) and Vicenta N'Dongo (center, left) as the ladies, Andrés Herrera (center, right) and Paul Berrondo (at left) as the guys.

If this new film does not come near Gay's amazing In the City (En la ciudad, one of the finest ensemble movies I've ever seen) in its exploration of urban humanity in all its troubling hypocrisies and sad attempts at connection, well, V.O.S. is a rom-com, so what do we expect? I suspect Gay has a rather dark -- read realistic -- view of humanity. His last film Ficció, shown at the 2008 Spanish Cinema Now, also played around with reality and fiction, with the view tending toward the gray.

TrustMovies may sound a little iffy about V.O.S. This is only because Gay' most recent films have seemed to slant more toward exercises than to full-bodied stories/character studies -- as did his earlier two, In the City and Nico and Dani (Krampack) -- with much more importance invested in what was happening on-screen. Here, the dialog too often alternates between argumentative and playful, and after while I began to tire of these characters and their games with each other and themselves. I'll watch whatever Gay chooses to make -- he's too interesting a filmmaker to pass up -- but the fuller and deeper are his films, the more I'll enjoy them.

V.O.S. plays today Friday, December 18, at 1pm; again tonight at 7pm; and Sunday, December 20, at 6. The venue is the Walter Reade Theater.

Blunt's sharp as THE YOUNG VICTORIA in Jean-Marc Valée's intelligent film

How good are Emily Blunt in the title role and Rupert Friend as the German royal fellow who quietly becomes indispensable to her in THE YOUNG VICTORIA, the new history-over-lightly film by Jean-Marc Valée (shown below)? Very, very. These two actors -- one under-rated (Mr. Friend) and the other usually given her due -- are so fine, separately or together, that they offer the moment-to-moment specificity and strength needed to bring to life M. Valée's pretty much by-the-numbers rendition of the early days of England's most beloved Queen.

I don't mean to put down Valée's work-
manlike but effective job. He does what must be done in 100 minutes to make his movie mainstream, Masterpiece Theater-level entertainment (the equally efficient screenplay is from Julian Fellowes). It looks good, features a host of fine actors all doing a fine job, and tells an interesting story -- selecting its moments wisely to put together a picture of why and how a young and not-just-sheltered but deliberately-repressed girl found the strength and smarts to begin her rule.

Valée comes from a much-loved but little seen (in the U.S.) French-Canadian movie called C.R.A.Z.Y., which, in the subject, time and tone, would seem about as far from The Young Victoria as possible. Which makes this director a very interesting choice. How did the producers realize that he could handle all this: the sets and locations, the actors, the story, the time-frame, the works? He's done it, I think, by hitting all the notes that make up the standard-issue bio-pic, but just hitting them a little better, sometimes harder, than usual. He uses certain cliches -- soaring music, for instance -- in a damn-the-torpedo manner that works surprisingly well. It would take actors as strong as Ms Blunt (above, right) and Mr. Friend (above, left) to compete with this sort of thing, but by god they do -- and win.

He has drawn superb performances from his two leads. Blunt is always first-class, and here she captures both the character's vulnerability and her slowly growing strength. "I'm stronger than I look," she says at one point, and, boy, do we believe it. Friend is a more versatile actor than he is given credit for being: a sweetie pie in Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, he switched to action hero for The Last Legion and a callow youth in Chéri. Here, as the smitten but uncertain suitor for Victoria's hand (and not the one favored by the powers-that-be) he's better than ever.

In the supporting cast, many shine: Paul Bettany, Miranda Rich-
ardson (center, in chartreuse), Jim Broadbent, Mark Strong (left), Harriet Walter and Thomas Kretschmann, to name a few. You'll pretty much know what you're in for when you sit down to watch The Young Victoria, but this does not mean that you won't be able to simply scrunch down in the chair, relax and enjoy every minute.

The new distribution firm Apparition (nice name!) is handling the movie. Over the past few months, it has given us Bright Star, Black Dynamite, the Boondock Saints sequel and now this one. Was ever a new distributor more diverse? We shall continue to watch this little company with much anticipation. Meanwhile, The Young Victoria opens in major cities across the U.S. on Friday, December 18. Click here and then insert your home zip code to learn if the film is playing near you.