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>> The World Film Fest offers up the sexy,
funny and downright bizarre

by MATTHEW HAYS

The news couldn’t help but be a bit crushing for World Film Fest organizers. Jean-Luc Godard, French New Wave visionary, Euro-god and confounding intellectual heavyweight, called fest director Serge Losique early in the weekend to make the announcement. Due to ill health, the 72-year-old director was going to have to cancel his sojourn to Montreal.

Thus there will be no appearance by the anti-star star, the man whose work has profoundly influenced several generations of filmmakers. Sad, but this year’s fest has made up for it in some unusual ways. While I’ve generally never bought Losique’s line about the films being the stars at the WFF-it seemed an excuse for the World’s inability to compete with the Toronto International Film Fest-this year’s lineup feels downright anti-Hollywood, in the best sense of the term. And the filmmakers themselves seem to be backing that up. Everyone’s got a grudge to bear. Everyone, it seems, is taking issue with a trend or a tyranny of conformity. Everyone wants to buck the system.

Native narrative

Take film director Phillip Noyce, who’s here to premiere his Rabbit-Proof Fence, which is a terrifically poignant look at the plight of three aboriginal children who, in the ’30s, were taken away from their mother to be re-programmed in a gruelling orphanage miles away from home. The three young girls, determined to return to their own family and culture, managed to escape the fortified orphanage and trek back to their home, surviving somehow over nine whole days. The best part is, it’s all a true story-the film is based on the book by Doris Pilkington Garimara, a daughter of one of the women whose story is recounted in the film. The film has already opened in Australia, where it played to strong box office and much discussion about the government’s treatment of the nation’s aboriginal population. (There are clear and obvious parallels to Canada’s situation, making this essential viewing in our native land as well.)

Scanning Noyce’s CV, he doesn’t seem too anti-Hollywood at all-his credits include helming Clear and Present Danger, Patriot Games and the shot-in-Montreal Bone Collector. But don’t get him started. “I got tired of telling other people’s stories in Hollywood,” he explains. “Eventually you get sick of eating candy, even. I’d had enough of that. Of the tyranny of the system. It’s a factory. You’re basically working for whatever star happens to be in the film you’re doing. This film felt like an antidote to that. Here, we could make our own stars.”

While some were reacting to Hollywood, others were reacting to Euro strains of filmmaking they were tiring of. Ole Bornedal, the Danish director behind I Am Dina, had a few things to get off his chest about Dogme 95, the manifesto that calls for no artificial lighting, no ridiculous plot twists and bare-bones production values (a manifesto, it must be noted, that was co-penned by Bornedal’s Danish filmmaking brethren Lars von Trier). “There are so many daily-life movies in Europe right now: husband leaves woman, woman leaves husband. Daily-life something. I’m not going to say something against those movies, but I wanted to make a movie that was too much. A melodrama, in the old classic sense of melodrama as we remember it.”
So you’re a counter-revolutionary. “I hope so! There were people in Denmark who said, ‘This film is too much.’ And I said yes, it’s too much, but I think there’s too little of too much. I want much more too much. I wanted to make an emotional action movie. A film that will put constant pressure on you-not on your brains and intellect, but on your emotions and your chest bone. To grab hold of your instincts, and twist them around and contort them. That’s the whole concept of the movie.”

Page-to-screen epic

It seems to be working. Based on the novel Dina’s Book by Herbjorg Wassmo, the narrative has one little girl, Dina, being scarred for life when she inadvertently causes an accident that kills her beloved mother. The film is wrenching and intentionally overwrought, an epic about fate, love, sex and the inevitability of death. Set in the 1860s, the film is also a reaction to the stuffiness Bornedal feels has permeated way, way too many period films in general.

Another filmmaker being fêted at the fest is Jean-Marc Barr (who made his first splash as an actor in ’87 in The Big Blue), who is actually embracing Dogme in a huge way. Though I can hear what Bornedal is saying about Dogme fatigue, Barr (and his filmmaking partner Pascal Arnold) have managed to come up with a fresh angle on the style. And Barr might know a thing or two about von Trier’s style, having acted in three of the Danish director’s films, Europa, Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark. Barr and Arnold’s trilogy, Lovers, Too Much Flesh and Being Light, are mesmerizing, wondrous films shot on DV (and transferred to 35mm) which serve as reminders that the American fringe continues to produce some true creative genius. Barr is stunning in Too Much Flesh, playing a man who stopped having sex during high school because the one woman he slept with said his penis was too large and thus he might hurt someone with it. (No, I’m not making this up.) Cut to 20 years later, and Barr is married to Rosanna Arquette, who’s more than happy to have had an entirely platonic relationship with him. When a sultry French woman (Elodie Bouchez) visits their repressed southern town, however, Barr soon discovers the joys of poon tang. The rest of the film is made up quite literally of plenty of flesh-on-flesh sequences, including Barr inviting his buddy to join in on a threesome with his newfound French babe. “I wanted people who watched this movie to feel like having sex after watching it,” Barr said, acknowledging porn as a major influence. Hey, it worked! Barr adds he means the films to be an ode to George W. Bush, lamenting that America is heading into an era of repression and oppression. Bravo to the festival for featuring these brave films in a well-deserved tribute.

Sweet dreams
While on the topic of the overlooked and non-mainstream, it should also be noted that there are some outstanding short films at the fest (I listed a few of them here last week). The Bed, called “a cautionary tale in 12 minutes,” should join that list. It’s a funny and inspired little short about one couple’s romantic/sexual relations and how they correlate to the piece of furniture that supplies this film’s title. A nice piece of work by Vancouverite John Penhall. :

The World Film Fest wraps up on Monday, Sept. 2. Schedules are free and showtimes are also posted online at www.ffm-montreal.org

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