When some movies fail, it's boring. When some movies fail, it's hilarious. When some movies fail, it's grimly satisfying. Tuvalu is a movie that only just fails, and it's almost agonizing how close it comes to wonderousness.
Like the British film Hotel Splendide, Tuvalu is an atmospheric fantasy, the central character of which is a building populated by a supporting cast of whimsical caricatures, mostly Adorable but occasionally Evil. Both films are melancholy and eccentric, and both draw widely on an aesthetic of detritus, on the cobbled-together and the half-broken, on jumping, jerking, smoking, gurgling machines insecurely constructed of loose bolts and clanking valves. And both employ the same central motifs water and the state of being marooned. In Hotel Splendide, hydrophobia maroons the young and Adorable Stanley Smith (Hugh O'Conor) on the damp and dreary island where the run-down health spa Hotel Splendide has settled its grey, ungainly (once-majestic, once-romantic) bulk. Will the pert and rather noisy Kath (Toni Collette), who arrives to fill the position of cook, be able to save him? In Tuvalu, the boyish and (sort of) Adorable Anton (Denis Lavant) is marooned in the immense, run-down (once-majestic, once-romantic) building where the murky community swimming pool is housed, restrained from leaving perhaps by a fear of the outside world or possibly by a fear of lace-up shoes. Will the pert and (way too) Adorable Eva (Chulpan Khamatova), who comes with her father to swim at the pool, and who becomes Anton's enemy but also his beloved, be able to save him?
Tuvalu has much, much, much to recommend it. The stylized and pointed avoidance of dialogue is a bit precious, but director Veit Helmer carries it off only just. The complicated and baroque malfunctions of the architecture and its plumbing are ingenious, and the machinations of Anton and various pool patrons and other characters to save the building from demolition by masking its various deficiencies with complicated tricks and childish cosmetic alterations are winning, but the gleeful scene in which the complex conspiracy to deceive the building inspector takes place is somewhat over-choreographed, too delightful somehow, too ready to morph into a Broadway musical, with the scurrying up and down stairs, the popping in and out of heads from behind shower stall doors, the rapid cross-signaling and mis-signaling via the tapping of pipes. The scenes of the decrepit patrons paddling in the pool are languorous, luscious, balletic, but the quirks of the patrons themselves are too easy, too cartooned, and too familiar an old woman paddling herself in an inner tube with crutches, grungy, kindly sailors in tattered suits. Karl (Philippe Clay), the proprietor, the father of Anton and Anton's villainous brother Gregor (Terrence Gillespie), who is not only literally blind but blind as well to the disrepair and disuse into which the pool has fallen, is a marvelous figure dictatorial, terrifying but beloved, and artificially inflated but his eventual death is artificially inflated too, into a cumbersome and top-heavy symbol of brotherly rivalry and paternal betrayal.
Helmer has been successful in creating an entire, intact world, and any film with this to its credit deserves to be seen. The particular offerings by which patrons can gain admission to the pool, the particular method Eva and Anton use to spy on each other's dreams, the incredibly thorough and cohesive design of both the aesthetics of the building and the functioning of its many complex parts: elements like these imply an entire civilization, an alternate world with its own social structure, physical laws, and geography, of which the village we see in the film is only a small part. The implication of this other reality, which is like ours but is not quite ours, is gracefully and cunningly accomplished. This is a work of real imagination. And to criticize Helmer for his caricaturing of his characters is not quite fair, as this is precisely his objective. But the technique of caricature, of reducing and simplifying human beings, is only productive if, by eliminating or distorting finer shades of meaning, other meanings are revealed. In Tuvalu, the stylization is so affected, rather than effective. Gillespie turns in a terrifically energetic and clownish performance as the grasping and psychotic Gregor, but if he waxes hysterical and strains at the limits of tolerability only in order to emphasize the evils of avarice and the soullessness of progress tired themes, indeed then have his efforts really been worthwhile? Khamatova squeaks and goggles and pouts and puckers for all she's worth, but her role in the film is entirely limited to a plot device. Certainly her actions are absolutely intrinsic to the events that unfold, but the personality of her character is utterly self-serving. She could have played the role like a wooden mannequin, or like a sad-eyed siren, or like a histrionic heroine, and the film would have continued apace. She is a machine for moving plot, her robotic heart disguised beneath a sickly-sweet frosting of giggles and winks, and in this and other aspects of Tuvalu, Helmer does not merely play with superficiality, but is superficial.
Superficiality, yes, but a hell of a set designer. And this would be a wonderful movie for children whose parents don't object to a bit of nudity, a blow-up sex doll, and a couple of murders. Making a double feature out of this film and Hotel Splendide would assuredly cast each film in a more interesting light than viewing either independently. Still, even on its own merits alone, Tuvalu is one of the world's best failures.
Like the British film Hotel Splendide, Tuvalu is an atmospheric fantasy, the central character of which is a building populated by a supporting cast of whimsical caricatures, mostly Adorable but occasionally Evil. Both films are melancholy and eccentric, and both draw widely on an aesthetic of detritus, on the cobbled-together and the half-broken, on jumping, jerking, smoking, gurgling machines insecurely constructed of loose bolts and clanking valves. And both employ the same central motifs water and the state of being marooned. In Hotel Splendide, hydrophobia maroons the young and Adorable Stanley Smith (Hugh O'Conor) on the damp and dreary island where the run-down health spa Hotel Splendide has settled its grey, ungainly (once-majestic, once-romantic) bulk. Will the pert and rather noisy Kath (Toni Collette), who arrives to fill the position of cook, be able to save him? In Tuvalu, the boyish and (sort of) Adorable Anton (Denis Lavant) is marooned in the immense, run-down (once-majestic, once-romantic) building where the murky community swimming pool is housed, restrained from leaving perhaps by a fear of the outside world or possibly by a fear of lace-up shoes. Will the pert and (way too) Adorable Eva (Chulpan Khamatova), who comes with her father to swim at the pool, and who becomes Anton's enemy but also his beloved, be able to save him?
Tuvalu has much, much, much to recommend it. The stylized and pointed avoidance of dialogue is a bit precious, but director Veit Helmer carries it off only just. The complicated and baroque malfunctions of the architecture and its plumbing are ingenious, and the machinations of Anton and various pool patrons and other characters to save the building from demolition by masking its various deficiencies with complicated tricks and childish cosmetic alterations are winning, but the gleeful scene in which the complex conspiracy to deceive the building inspector takes place is somewhat over-choreographed, too delightful somehow, too ready to morph into a Broadway musical, with the scurrying up and down stairs, the popping in and out of heads from behind shower stall doors, the rapid cross-signaling and mis-signaling via the tapping of pipes. The scenes of the decrepit patrons paddling in the pool are languorous, luscious, balletic, but the quirks of the patrons themselves are too easy, too cartooned, and too familiar an old woman paddling herself in an inner tube with crutches, grungy, kindly sailors in tattered suits. Karl (Philippe Clay), the proprietor, the father of Anton and Anton's villainous brother Gregor (Terrence Gillespie), who is not only literally blind but blind as well to the disrepair and disuse into which the pool has fallen, is a marvelous figure dictatorial, terrifying but beloved, and artificially inflated but his eventual death is artificially inflated too, into a cumbersome and top-heavy symbol of brotherly rivalry and paternal betrayal.
Helmer has been successful in creating an entire, intact world, and any film with this to its credit deserves to be seen. The particular offerings by which patrons can gain admission to the pool, the particular method Eva and Anton use to spy on each other's dreams, the incredibly thorough and cohesive design of both the aesthetics of the building and the functioning of its many complex parts: elements like these imply an entire civilization, an alternate world with its own social structure, physical laws, and geography, of which the village we see in the film is only a small part. The implication of this other reality, which is like ours but is not quite ours, is gracefully and cunningly accomplished. This is a work of real imagination. And to criticize Helmer for his caricaturing of his characters is not quite fair, as this is precisely his objective. But the technique of caricature, of reducing and simplifying human beings, is only productive if, by eliminating or distorting finer shades of meaning, other meanings are revealed. In Tuvalu, the stylization is so affected, rather than effective. Gillespie turns in a terrifically energetic and clownish performance as the grasping and psychotic Gregor, but if he waxes hysterical and strains at the limits of tolerability only in order to emphasize the evils of avarice and the soullessness of progress tired themes, indeed then have his efforts really been worthwhile? Khamatova squeaks and goggles and pouts and puckers for all she's worth, but her role in the film is entirely limited to a plot device. Certainly her actions are absolutely intrinsic to the events that unfold, but the personality of her character is utterly self-serving. She could have played the role like a wooden mannequin, or like a sad-eyed siren, or like a histrionic heroine, and the film would have continued apace. She is a machine for moving plot, her robotic heart disguised beneath a sickly-sweet frosting of giggles and winks, and in this and other aspects of Tuvalu, Helmer does not merely play with superficiality, but is superficial.
Superficiality, yes, but a hell of a set designer. And this would be a wonderful movie for children whose parents don't object to a bit of nudity, a blow-up sex doll, and a couple of murders. Making a double feature out of this film and Hotel Splendide would assuredly cast each film in a more interesting light than viewing either independently. Still, even on its own merits alone, Tuvalu is one of the world's best failures.