Nisimazine Karlovy Vary #4

4

Nisimazine Karlovy Vary special

The Girl from the Wardrobe Ain’t Them Bodies Saints Rithes Batra

picture of the day

Editorial Mirona Nicola (Romania)

The personal favorite posters have already been ripped off the walls of the Thermal. They shall hang on walls and adorn wardrobe doors in festival goers’ homes. We all came here in the search for love of the film-kind and these posters will be like the wedding album of these love stories. As it always happens with love, with war, and with film some were desired by many, and others just got torn to shreds in the process.

The three films included in our last KVIFF 2013 newsletters are all in the first category. There’s The Girl from the Wardrobe, a Polish first feature by Bodo Kox- a film of great visual imagination which tackles both selfishness and selflessness. We also reviewed Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, starring Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck, a story of outlaw love. For the interview, you can read about Ritesh Batra’s attempt to show that Indian film is not all Bollywood with The Lunchbox.

The posters are neatly rolled and, except for the dresses, ties, and party shoes, the bags are half packed as ridiculously long queues still form in front of the screening rooms. And after the closing ceremony later tonight some will be proud to decorate their home with the poster of a winning film.

NISIMAZINE KARLOVY VARY SPECIAL

28th June- 6th July 2013 /# 3

A magazine published by NISI MASA in the framework of a film journalism workshop for young Europeans.

EDITORIAL STAFF

Director Fernando Vasquez Editor: Mirona Nicola Layout: Lucía Ros Photography and cover: Lucía Ros

CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE

Nino Kovačić, Fernando Vasquez, Laura van Zuylen

NISI MASA

99, rue du Faubourg Saint-Dénis 75010, Paris, France Phone: +33 (0)9 60 39 63 38 in Cannes: +33 (0) 6 32 61 70 26 europe@nisimasa.com www.nisimasa.com

reviews The Girl from the Wardrobe

Bodo Kox (Poland) – East of the West

The capability of film to be a visual shortcut to the most extravagant parallel and alternative realities, as well as to present the possibility of escapism from the everyday is probably the most potent characteristic of the film media. In The Girl from the Wardrobe, a Polish debut by Bodo Kox, that potential is used up with unusual visual creativity and care for the characters.

In this tragicomic story of three very different people and their specific types of loneliness, a common thread of unselfish love is tangled between them. It is there for the viewer to follow and untangle it in the way he or she prefers. Jacek takes care of his brother Tomek who has the savant syndrome, and partly to this, Jacek is unable to have a stable relationship.

Across the hallway lives Magda, suffering from severe social anxiety and drug-induced hallucinations. She spends most of her time sleeping and hallucinating in the closet. At times we get immersed into Tomek’s and Magda’s alternative worlds, into scenes that seem to be projected directly from the cortex of the characters; a hyper-realist space that is, nevertheless, part of the same film reality. While Tomek observes the sky full of Zeppelins, a rainforest portal is opened for Madga in her closet.

The Girl from the Wardrobe is not only visually haunting at times, but holds a steady pace throughout, particularly due

to well written dialogues. Also, well directed and timed comic moments and very good performances by all of the main and side cast make the film easy to follow and fun to watch. A disciplined and convincing role of the autistic Tomek, played

by Wojciech Mecwaldowski, communicates well with the role of his brother Jacek, performed without a fault by Piotr Głowacki, making the two a loveable duo on screen.

Since the film was both written and directed by Bodo Kox, due to his specific sense of stylization and imaginative filmmaking we can look forward to his future takes on alternative universes when it comes to intimacy and relationships.

by Nino Kovačić (Croatia) great love affair on hold, is thrown into the mix, forming a not all too convincing love triangle.

You would think that the occasional plot failures and some of its predictable outcomes, would make Ain´t Them Bodies Saints an avoidable experience, but you would be wrong in this case. The film will undeniably charm many with its melancholic, dreamlike pace.

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints David Lowery (USA) - Horizons

One of this year´s Sundance favourites, alongside Ryan Coogler´s Fruitvale Station (screened at Cannes in Un Certain Regard), David Lowery´s second feature, Ain´t Them Bodies Saints, stands out from the pack for its scent of nostalgia for earlier American counterculture romantic crime dramas.

Set in the scenic Texan countryside, the film tells the story of a young couple of outlaws, Bob and Ruth, whose lives are separated once caught by the authorities. While Bob is sent to jail, Ruth is left alone to raise their daughter. A third party, a policeman shot during the cross fire that eventually put the

Some films are capable of standing on their own solely based on atmosphere and Lowery´s latest venture is unquestionably one of those rare occasions. This is achieved partly thanks to great photography work and an equally moody soundtrack.

Together with the film´s long and quiet dialogues the audience is left to share the bitter taste of longing and quiet desperation the characters are immersed in due to their forced separation.

Equally important is the nature of the performances by Cassey Afflec, Rooney Mara and, perhaps most impressive of all, Ben Foster, who all fill the screen with discretion, never overdoing, turning otherwise tiresome characters into engaging and fascinating sights.

Yes, it is true, Lowery builds up a lot throughout the film but fails to deliver the goods at the end, with a timid climax, but this is a film that thrives as an exercise of mood setting and tribute to southern American outlaw culture. Once you accept that limitation you will struggle to resist its magnetism.

by Fernando Vaszque (Portugal)

interview

I am only thirty-three, but I think I am an old soul; all my friends are old. The idea of age has always fascinated me. When I was growing up I would go into the shower and there was as specific smell, spread by my father. Then two years ago I went into my own bathroom and I noticed the same sent. Then I realized how much alike my dad and I are. That is why more than anything else The Lunchbox is about, time: the characters are reconnecting to their surroundings through nostalgia. In India things have changed so fast in the last two decades and we have not had the time to process that. These two people do not fit into the present time; they are left behind.

The lunchbox-system is very specific to Bombay. Why are your creative collaborators and financial sources so remarkably international?

Working with an international crew came natural to me. After growing up in Bombay I went to film school in NYU, where I quit after getting into the Sundance Lab. The shorts I made afterwards travelled all over the world. For this film the economics were tied to the creative contribution.

Ritesh Batra

After its adventure in Cannes Critics’ Week, Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox lands in the Horizons selection in Karlovy Vary with its different point of view of Indiancinema.

The Lunchbox two people from different class and backgrounds find in each other a confidant by an error in Bombay’s lunchbox system. Has a lunchbox ever has been wrongly delivered?

I was working on a documentary about Bombay’s 125-year-old lunchbox delivery system and the statistics show that only one in a million lunchboxes is ever delivered to the wrong address.

The procurers told me little stories about the houses where they picked them up and their occupants: one woman cooks something new every day, other´s smell

the same every day.

I got struck by the idea of an error in the system and realized: this would never happen, but what if it did. Simultaneously the question arose whether the delivery to the wrong address would be a mistake or a miracle.

The characters live in an environment with no computers and are text-messaging on paper, using these lunchboxes – in fact the film is quite nostalgic. Why is that an interesting topic for a young director like yourself?

To be honest to the story, the lives of these characters needed to unfold slowly. Aesthetically that fits more naturally into the tradition of Europe or America. India is marked by an explosion of sounds and colours and the professionals are used to an exaggerated style. So if I would team up with them, I would be working against the aesthetics they are used to. I did not want such a collaboration. In India we need to trust our audiences more: there are one billion people in India, and they will not all come to see this film, but we do have to start realizing that it is okay to make movies with a different tone and style. At the same time I think that, more than Bollywood, this is a story that might speak to six billion people: the locality and specificity makes it universal.

Interview by Laura van Zuylen (The Netherlands)