by RUPERT BOTTENBERG, MALCOLM FRASER, MATTHEW HAYS, CHLOE ROUBERT and MARK SLUTSKY

13 (Tzameti)

A nail-biting neo-noir from Georgian director Gela Babluani. Sebastian (George Babluani, the director’s brother) is a young immigrant living in France, getting by on light construction work. When his employer dies of an overdose, the desperate young man steals an envelope containing a train ticket and terse instructions, on the promise of a criminal enterprise with a big payoff at the end of the line. But once he arrives, the job proves worse than he ever could have expected. To reveal more would be to spoil one of the movie’s excellent, macabre surprises. Shot in stark black-and-white, with a cast comprised largely of desperate-looking Eastern European men, Tzameti is exquisitely tense and suspenseful. A concise, sharp little thriller. (MS)

After the Wedding

Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier has crafted a truly jarring family melodrama. After the Wedding introduces us to a family in deep crisis. Mads Mikkelsen plays an idealistic man running an orphanage in India, when his boss recalls him to Denmark. There, the boss introduces Mikkelsen to his family and makes him an offer that seems too good to turn down. There are loads of strange plot twists here, and the script is well written. Some may have trouble with the sheer bombast and operatic tone of the film, however. This is a very bathetic film, though solidly acted. (MH)

Daratt (Dry Season)

Atim leaves his village with a gun and heads to N’Djaména, capital of Chad, to avenge his father, who was killed during the civil war by a man named Nassar. As Atim tries to execute his plan, he becomes Nassar’s apprentice and discovers a devout Muslim, a settled husband and a generous baker who hasn’t come out of combat intact either. An uncertain father-son relationship eventually develops between the two. Mahamat-Saleh Haroun captures colourful and elegant imagery, delivering a subtle story about forgiveness, pain and discovery, with moving portrayals of two men, brilliantly played by Youssouf Djaoro and Ali Barkai. A graceful and complex Chadian tale. (CR)

Offside

A beautifully poignant and funny film from Iranian director Jafar Panahi, Offside is set on the day of the Iran-Bahrain 2006 World Cup qualifying match. As women aren’t allowed into the soccer stadium, a disparate group of them conspire to get in, one even going so far as to steal and don a soldier’s uniform. Their attempts aren’t wildly successful, and most of the movie has them arguing and chatting in a holding pen set up by soldiers guarding the match (with one notable set piece involving a trip to the bathroom). A sweetly sad revelation at the end colours this lovely, angry little film. (MS)

August Days

Marc Recha directs and stars as himself in this peculiar Spanish endeavour, traversing the Catalan landscape with his brother on a nebulous quest that’s never completely fleshed out or explained. A woman’s voice-over gives sparse narrative context often unrelated to the events onscreen, along with occasional references to Spanish history and local folk mythology. Otherwise, the film consists of vague dialogue and a lot of scenery, which looks so amazing that it nearly makes up for the film’s meandering pace. If you have a lot of patience, enjoy big-screen images of mountains and rivers and thought Gerry was a thrill ride, this is for you. (MF)

Sur la trace d’Igor Rizzi

This movie, set in the last weeks of Montreal’s chilly and gloomy winters, is about a retired, destitute French soccer player, who, after his lover’s death, roams the streets of our dear city, robbing, regretting and trying to kill a man named Igor Rizzi. Although the story is tedious at times, Noël Mitrani offers a tranquil yet agonizing contemplation of existence by capturing beautifully bare images that embrace Montreal’s desperation and the protagonist’s (perfectly played by Laurent Lucas) deep solitude. A debut feature that gives hope for Canadian cinematography. (CR)

Away From Her

Sarah Polley proves, were there any doubt, that she’s more than just the blonde actress of the moment. In her feature directorial debut, she takes on the lofty challenge of adapting an Alice Munro short story about an aging woman (Julie Christie) who is placed in a home by her husband (Gordon Pinsent) when she starts to forget things. While there, she forgets hubby completely, falling for another man in the institution. Beautiful performances and Polley’s confidence in the director’s chair make Away From Her an exceptional filmgoing experience. (MH)

La Belle bête

Karim Hussain’s adaptation of Québécois author Marie-Claire Blais’s novel portrays a severely dysfunctional family holed up in a rural estate. Mom Louise (Carole Laure) rocks a slutty-goth style the better to get creepily close with her slow-witted son Patrice (C.R.A.Z.Y.’s Marc-André Grondin). Daughter Isabelle-Marie (Caroline Dhavernas), neglected and riven with jealousy, devises various acts of cruelty to perpetrate on them. Ponderous and directionless, La Belle bête often feels like a Saturday Night Live parody of a pretentious art film. The tedium is punctuated with occasional bursts of nauseatingly gory violence, making this a thoroughly grim experience from beginning to end. (MF)

Elementary Particles

Written and directed by Oskar Roehler, this adaptation of the novel by controversial French author Michel Houellebecq gets almost everything wrong. Houellebecq is known for his dry, cold and tightly controlled tone—its almost scientific detachment—and Roehler messes that up royally here, presenting his tale of two sexually damaged brothers as part wacky comedy, part melodrama. A very misguided adaptation with a ludicrous post-script that vainly tries to incorporate the book’s key framing device but fails completely. (MS)

Heads of Control: The Gorul Baheu Brain Expedition

Reactions to this lo-fi, bilingual local production will range from fascinated to exasperated, but one thing’s for certain—psychedelic cinema is alive and well. Pat Tremblay’s digital dilemma involves a psychiatric drug, anthropomorphized as a pair of masked weirdniks, injected into the brain of a messed-up dude. The duo’s “quest” is punctuated by a series of encounters with disconcerting freaks and oddballs—their host’s alternate personalities?—whose rants and antics are no more enlightening than the freaky, pseudo-scientific chatter bookending these episodes. No matter, though. Tremblay’s nutty gambit was to capture an assortment of real-life strangers, lured by a newspaper ad, as they improvised freakouts for him, then green-screen them onto hallucinatory backdrops of ocular oddness. The results prompt more questions than answers, but mostly provoke giggles of demented delight at the hyped-up, harebrained madness of it all. (RB)

El-Banate Dol

The teenage girls in this doc have left their homes and now live in the dusty parks and streets of Cairo. They’ve had to learn how to survive in the utmost poverty and under constant sexual and physical threat. Some have cut their hair to look like boys, others have given birth alone—they scream, they sniff glue, they play and they bleed. Director Tahani Rached does a superb job of sinking us into these girls’ everyday lives with great objectivity—the audience neither pities, nor hates, nor loves these girls. One observes and must cope with the shock. The film gives them a voice, which none of them ever thought they had. (CR)

Remembering Arthur

This long-overdue feature documentary ode to Arthur Lipsett, the phenomenal NFB filmmaker, has arrived, and it is incredible. Little wonder that it was made by Martin Lavut, who was a friend to Lipsett—the filmmaker captures the mystique behind the artist. Lipsett directed such classics as Very Nice, Very Nice, films that juxtaposed jarring and disturbing images and experimented with the relation between sound and visuals. A couple of years ago, Laurence Green created a brilliant documentary on Ryan Larkin, called Alter Egos. This doc does the same for Lipsett (also an Oscar nominee), who committed suicide just before his 50th birthday in 1986. (MH)

For info on screenings and tickets, see www.nouveaucinema.ca

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