Out with the new

Highlights and happenings at the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma’s closing weekend

RADICAL REVOLT: United Red Army

By MALCOLM FRASER

The 38th annual Festival du Nouveau Cinéma wraps up this weekend with a typically varied program of films and events, including work from cinematic icons, iconoclasts, newcomers and local notables.

Among the big names, Mika Kaurismäki, part of a Finnish film dynasty with brother Aki, delivers his latest, Three Wise Men, a drama which combines the brothers’ patented minimalist style with Cassavetes-esque spontaneity; the film was shot in five days with no script. High on anyone’s list of inspirational late-in-life achievers is Manuel de Oliveira, the 100-year-old (!) Portuguese director. His latest, Eccentricities of a Blond Haired Girl, is a magical-realist romance.

One of current cinema’s great love-’em-or-hate-’em directors, Catherine Breillat, returns to the FNC with her latest, Barbe bleue, a retelling of the Bluebeard fable woven through an autobiographical coming-of-age tale. Expect Breillat’s usual mix of atmospheric intensity and provocative sexual politics. Tales From the Golden Age is a collaborative project, helmed by five directors and spearheaded by Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days). Each story adapts a popular Romanian urban legend, reflecting on the legacy of the Ceausescu dictatorship.

German director Andreas Dresen broke one of the few remaining onscreen taboos with last year’s Cloud Nine (which some wits referred to as “Old People Fucking”). His latest, Whiskey/Vodka, if you can get past the harsh hangover implications of its title, is a romantic romp taking place on a film set. (The Goethe Institut is also partnering with the FNC to present a retrospective of Dresen’s work this Thursday and Friday, Oct. 15–16). On a more sombre note, veteran French director Alain Cavalier brings us Irène, an autobiographical documentary portrait of his onetime muse who tragically died in 1972. CanCon fans should check out Crackie, a female coming-of-age story set in Newfoundland from writer-director Sherry White, starring CBC maven Mary Walsh and newcomer Meghan Greeley.

FATAL FABLE: Barbe Bleu

Shocking, possibly offensive

The fest’s Temps 0 series brings together a selection of renegade filmmakers with a tendency to shock, provoke and possibly offend. Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, renowned for their experimental shorts, make their feature debut with Amer, a three-part pastiche of the Italian giallo horror genre. Kôji Wakamatsu, the Japanese director whose controversial work and radical politics have gotten him banned from the friendly country to the south of us, blazes up the screen with United Red Army, his retelling of the true story of an extremist left-wing student group in ’70s Japan and their notorious, blood-soaked mountain training retreat.

The thriving local documentary scene has a strong showing. There’s Le Chômeur de la mort, a portrait of legendary Québécois poet/madman Claude Péloquin, and Né pour être sauvage, about veteran Chicoutimi rockers WD-40. Viva el Cubec libre is media prankster François Cronen Gourd’s satirical meditation on national identity, in which he proposes that Quebec and Cuba form a joint country, while Élégant is Yan Giroux’s chronicle of Montreal franco-garage-rockers Chocolat’s self-destructive trip to the Magdalene Islands. Then there’s Wapikoni, escale à Kitcisakik, a record of the Wapikoni Mobile project, a multimedia caravan that visited the remotest parts of Quebec to train First Nations kids in audio-visual production. And in case Guy Laliberté’s space-capades haven’t sated your hunger for Cirque du Soleil material, Zed in Tokyo documents the troupe’s first permanent production in Japan.

Speaking of local crews who’ve made good, lo-fi cinema collective Kino celebrates its 10th anniversary in tandem with the fest, mounting a series of their patented 72-hours filmmaking sessions, the last of which screens Friday, Oct. 16. The next night, Ninja Tune alumnus Bonobo raises the roof with a closing night dance party. The fest’s afterparties have been pretty rocking affairs thus far, with good tunes, visuals, cheap drinks and a chance to hang with Montreal’s filmmaking community, so this should be a good bet to see out the most vibrant and daring of the city’s many film fests in style.

THE FESTIVAL DU NOUVEAU CINÉMA
RUNS UNTIL SUNDAY, OCT. 18. FOR
MORE INFO, SEE NOUVEAUCINEMA.CA