RETURN TO RETRO: OSS 117: Rio ne répond plusby MALCOLM FRASER and
CHRISTOPHER SYKES
Everlasting Moments
After more than five decades behind the camera, Swedish auteur Jan Troell (The Emigrants, The New Land) remains a master of conveying emotion through subtlety. Always shunning cinematic excess in a typically Scandinavian manner, he once again allows for his carefully constructed script and his impeccable choice of actors to carry his film.
A gripping portrayal of life in early 20th-century Sweden, Troell’s Everlasting Moments is a somewhat difficult film to categorize. Essentially a look back at the life of his great aunt Maria Larsson (played by the incredible Maria Heiskanen), the film delicately advances through a narration by her daughter Maja (Callin Öhrvall) as if she is explaining entries from her mother’s diary.
Heiskanen is unhappily married to the abusive Sigfried (a tour de force performance by Mikael Persbrandt) yet remains faithful to her husband though a potential suitor takes a very keen interest in both her person and her secret hobby: photography. When Heiskanen wins a primitive camera in a lottery, she tries to sell the camera to local photographer Pedersen (Jesper Christensen) to pay bills. However, Christensen convinces her to take up the hobby as a means of expression. No longer simply a mother, Heiskanen begins to live through her art in spite of Persbrandt’s abuse and negligence.
The film is undeniably heavy as Heiskanen continues to live only for her art and her children due to the cruelty of her husband. Yet Troell’s able direction never bogs the film in melodrama—only genuine remorse over Heiskanen’s fate. (CS)
PHOTO REALISM: Everlasting Moments
The Ugly Truth
As I sat watching the latest Katherine Heigl vehicle, it dawned on me. I was—for better or for worse—witnessing a change in the mainstream cinematic vanguard. Crass is no longer the domain of frat-house college pics marketed towards horny teenage boys. It’s crossed the gender divide thanks, at least initially, to the Sex and the City crew, and further sped along by the success of the universally praised Judd Apatow.
That’s the best way to sum up this new chick flick: a non-Apatow Apatow comedy marketed towards the ladies. Whether you’re from Mars or Venus, if you’re not a fan of the F-bomb, Truth is not for you. In fact, the pic, penned by three female scribes, is by a wide margin the dirtiest R-rated film I’ve seen this year.
Heigl plays a control freak TV producer whose ass is saved when a charming, tell-it-like-it-is host (300’s Gerard Butler) joins her show offering the dirty truth about how guys think. Ratings soar. She takes his advice and gets the man she’s after. Butler then falls for Heigl. Heigl hates Butler. Then Heigl loves Butler. Roll credits.
All said and done, it’s a pretty shitty movie, but consider this the ultimate cinematic litmus test. If you glance over at your date and they’re laughing their ass off while Heigl is writhing mid-orgasm due to an encounter with vibrating panties in front of her boss, chances are you’re in for a pretty strenuous night after leaving the theatre. If not, best make sure you have access to your own... er, “device.” (CS)
SONG AND STRIFE: Youssou N’Dour
Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love
The famous Senegalese singer (even those unfamiliar with African music know his voice from Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes”) is captured in this documentary from director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi. After a brief introductory biography, the film dives into the controversy around N’Dour’s album Egypt, a tribute to the founder of Sufism, the mystical Islamic sect, which is the majority religion of Senegal. N’Dour’s attempt to paint a corrective, positive picture of Islam has an unexpected backlash, with fundamentalists in his own country attacking him even as the album is praised in the West.
Vasarhelyi shoots N’Dour’s U.S. and European tour for the album, in which he collaborates with a group of Egyptian orchestral musicians, whose more traditional religious beliefs contrast with the Senegalese version (in which, as one local puts it, people have no problem going from the mosque to the nightclub). Woven throughout are scenes with his family at home, giving a glimpse of the vibrant culture he springs from.
A fairly unabashed hagiography, the film idealizes its subject and doesn’t bother giving any airtime to his critics. I could have done with less band-on-the-road footage (without the Western decadence we know and love, there’s not a whole lot of offstage excitement) and more musical and cultural information, particularly about griots, the traditional caste of singer-storytellers that N’Dour descends from. But these criticisms aside, the film is definitely informative—particularly in its intriguing picture of the internal strife between different schools of Islam—and a great showcase for N’Dour’s amazing musicianship and inspiring ethic. (MF)
OSS 117 – Rio ne répond plus
France’s favourite secret agent makes a triumphant return to the big screen—and, mercifully, I’m not talking about Inspector Clouseau. The great Jean Dujardin reprises his role as Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, otherwise known as agent OSS 117, in this second well-crafted spoof of the Bond franchise.
Shipped off to Brazil to track down a microfilm containing the names of Nazi collaborators who remain at their posts back in Paris, Dujardin must work together with bombshell Mossad agent Dolores (Louise Monot) to hunt down the baddies.
It’s the constant double-speak that makes Dujardin’s character so nuanced and downright hilarious: chivalrous (because it gets him laid) yet shockingly misogynistic. Just (natch, he’s the good guy), yet unabashedly racist. Ever-willing to flash his 1,000-watt smile even when he doesn’t get what he’s smiling at.
Just as Brüno is so clearly an anti-homophobic film that dissects the United States’ self-adorned hubris—proudly calling itself a safe haven for all colours, creeds and sexualities—Rio is an anti-machismo look back at a France still struggling to accept its complicity with the Nazi occupation of its own country and its role in unjust military endeavours like in Algeria (Rio takes place one year before the May ’68 eruption that took De Gaulle’s government to the brink of collapse). This is much, much more than just a francophone version of Austin Powers. The use of ’70s-style split screen and some psychedelic wipes contribute enormously to the film’s groovy, retro aesthetic. (CS)
ALL FILMS OPEN THIS FRIDAY, JULY 24
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