btodorov Reviews

The Legend of Hercules (2014)

a perversion

[2/10 · 4 April 2014]

Mythological Hercules performed 12 prodigious feats against monsters, titans and conundrums, yet the makers of this joke of a movie decided that there is nothing better than copy the story line of "Spartacus" (the "Blood and Sand" one, but without the spicy stuff) and turn the greatest hero in Greek mythology into a laughable imitation of a Roman gladiator. There is absolutely nothing worth seeing in the movie, even if the sequence of battle scenes is definitely not the worst in the genre. Poor script, poor vision, banal and predictable. Avoid, unless you are much into watching the same story many times over. And because I have to fill a full new line with comments on that movie that there is little to comment about, here is my last and absolutely useless conclusion: do not watch it.

Mood Indigo (2013)

only for Boris Vian lovers

[10/10 · 1 September 2013]

American know-it-all's who have never read Boris Vian should not even think of commenting the movie. Yes, Vian is an extravagant author, his books do not make too much sense and some people deservedly consider him a snob. But, snob or not, he was a phenomenon of his own and he has his huge following of admirers who see in him a major star in the post-war French, and European, culture. This movie is made with love and respect for Vian's style, panache and craziness: he would have loved it. If you are not a Vian admirer, do not waste your time watching this movie: you would not even come close to it.

Hats off to the designer, Stephane Rozenbaum: one of the most amazing visual concepts ever!

Beginners (2010)

a tribute to dullness

[4/10 · 13 October 2012]

Something is missing in this movie and it is the very gist. Oliver (McGregor) is sad, he is always sad, there is a dog (the best acting part in the movie) that follows him everywhere, and Anna (Melanie Laurent) winks in a charmingly mischievous way throughout the movie, yet she is very sad too. One does not, however, understand whence all that sadness: the guy's father died... at the age of 75+... and he had been gay all his life. Now, one understands a certain feeling of unease and possibly even guilt about one's parents having had to lead a life of pretense, but where is the drama that has to explain so much melancholy? Both were melancholic from the beginning and fact is so much sadness ends up in utter dullness.

Perfect Sense (2011)

a generously subsidized high school project

[2/10 · 26 August 2012]

A disturbingly boring movie on a subject of such uncompromising grandeur one wonders whether the idea came from a fourteen-, or from a fifteen-year old kid. Because first, it is usually at the age of 14/15 that authors try to reveal the ultimate light of truth to humankind (as this project does), and it is again at that age that the longing to feel each other's bodies (the "perfect sense" as we realize at the end of the show after complete sensory darkness obliterates everything else) is most pungent and dismissive of anything else human experience might have brought. Dull musical score, slow motion, redundant scenes, predictable script, banal conclusion: all too well for an art school project, yet making us watching it for the sake of Green and McGregor makes me feel cheated.

The Bang Bang Club (2010)

graphic and yet insipid re-creation of the book

[6/10 · 5 August 2012]

The really successful thing about the movie is that the director apparently (I wasn't there to know how truthfully) managed to reproduce in a convincing, graphic manner the real atmosphere of combat photograph shooting. What Marinovich (and Silva) wrote down as separate accounts of the events, tensions and dangers of taking the most striking and memorable photographs, Silver just develops in well-organized scenes. Greg's crazy visit to the hostel - the step that brought him into the "club" and turned him into a world-renowned photographer - was particularly dramatic and colorful. Otherwise, the movie has not created any story of its own - it just has just patched up the highlights in Marinovich and Silva's book and bound them together within the loose frames of a dull and uninspiring story of the four "bang bang club" photographers meeting, working together and coping with the existential and ethical issues of their vocation. Perhaps Silver did not want to manipulate Marinovich's text; the outcome, however, is rather insipid and people who have just watched the movie and never read the book may very well miss the point.

Brüno (2009)

irritating

[1/10 · 7 March 2010]

I guess that I am missing the point but WHAT was exactly funny in this movie? While Borat had an offensive sense of humor, yet there was a lot of humor in the first place. It did offer politically incorrect clichés about various cultural groups but still, it managed to create diverse spontaneously entertaining situations. And I emphasize SPONTANEOUS. There is very little of it in Brueno where everything is clearly staged and manipulated. The two successful "sketches" were the Paula Abdul interview and the baby-casting; I presume all parents should be arrested by now unless everything has been deliberately mixed up in the cutting and they were actually answering different questions (I would not be surprised). All the rest is just a collection of irritating moments. I am not really sure what precise human weakness(es) was/were made fun of??? Perhaps the love for reality shows and the tendency among modern people - from politicians to hunters, to swinger-party aficionados - to appear all-too-willingly on the camera without inquiring beforehand who the host/anchor/reporter/negotiator is. That is actually not funny, it is just an irritating way of making reality shows even more abominable. Who really needs that except for Baron Sascha Cohen himself???

Eastern Plays (2009)

movie made in the streets of the city

[9/10 · 7 March 2010]

What I particularly liked (and I know friends of mine who did as well) in this movie is that it is not a movie about a person, or a story, but mostly an aesthetic vision of a city... which happens to be my city. The storyline is almost missing: apart from the sad coincidence that one brother took part in the beating of another, there is not much of a narrative thread and the entire movie is just a sequence of impressions of present-day Sofia, including the people living in it. Hristo Hristov became the focus of the film because he represented a particular type of Sofianites (actually he was born in Burgas but that does not make him less of a Sofianite since this is the city where he painted): artists who have received serious formation, have developed their own style, have reached the level of creators of unquestionably valuable works, and yet have found no chance to live on their art and be successful. Hristo was not the first, and will not be the last of generations of creative persons who had to find various exits from the difficult situation the last twenty years placed us all in. He chose drugs and in the real life passed away even before the movie was finished. But his sad story is one of hope, too, since the real-life Hristo, even posthumously, proved that recognition can come (and we are now expecting the long-postponed exhibition of his art), while the movie-character Hristo showed to his younger brother that there is alternative to violence and hatred, and that there is enough beauty around us to save us from despair.

I'm Not There (2007)

Bob Dylan as Elvis Presley

[9/10 · 25 August 2008]

I will avoid any comments on the cinematography, acting and so on. Let's say I understand nothing of these. I will just share with whoever cares to read what I got from the movie. I got the following: First/ Bob Dylan wanted to be Elvis Presley. He wanted to sing songs in front of many people. He knew very well he could not be exactly Elvis, since his abilities were of completely different kind, yet his ambition was just that: to become famous, sell records and stage shows. And because he was smart, he targeted a particular audience, actually two audiences at the same time: the working-class people who felt abused and needed an outlet of their anger, and the lovers of poetry, of all social stands, who were looking for what Elvis (or the Beatles) could not offer: lyrics rich in content, difficult to be interpreted and offering a lot to the imagination. Second/ Bob Dylan's "treason" of the mid-60s was a normal thing to do for an artist looking for new grounds to explore and new listeners to win. Especially when, in addition to being smart and ambitious, he was concerned - much more than the other pop stars of the day - with his ability to re-create himself and run away from the clutches of critics obsessed with plain and clear-cut categories. "Mr. Jones" who transcends the accusing BBC journalist and is retransfigured in the lovely, imaginary, artistic and politically minded French wife is the real focus of the movie - a matrix that gave shape to the six Dylans. Dylan spent long time running away from the Mr Joneses and because of them he tried to never "be there". Which explains why he was practically absent from a movie dedicated to him - a great choice and one that Dylan himself understandably approved. But Dylan is not there for a more general reason as well. The same conflict between the Elvis who wants fame and success and the true artist who wants freedom of expression is one valid for practically every creator - writer, musician, painter, etc. Thus, this is a movie about any really substantial artist of the last five hundred years with just the records of one Bob Dylan in the background. So if this is what the movie was all about, then I like it a lot.

Goya's Ghosts (2006)

a NO-biography of Goya

[7/10 · 15 June 2008]

Forman and Carriere have chosen an original approach how to make a movie about a great artist and avoid the dullness of biographical sketches. Goya, played by Skarsgard, appears throughout the film, but is actually not part of the narrative line at all. Instead of his life, we see unfold a dramatic story of betrayals and turns of fate. A hideous sequence of personal and political abuse, cruelty, cynicism and shameless egoism builds the non-romantic love affair of an ambitious hypocrite and a young girl who becomes insane as the outcome of her sufferings. Goya supposedly is connected to both of them and becomes the witness of the various stages of the drama. Having in mind the title, it is clear that the two characters are just ghosts created by Goya's imagination to reflect the shattering social and cultural changes the artist lived through, changes that gave flesh to much of his work. For the sake of honesty, Goya's Ghosts cannot compete with Amadeus, even if both pursue a similar goal: to attract the viewer to the world of a great artist through a powerful storyline. In this case, the storyline was not that powerful and even if historical events determine what is happening to the central characters, the image of 18th-19th century Spain lacks dimension.

The Ogre (1996)

the story of Michael Jackson?

[7/10 · 27 June 2006]

Tournier is among the great French writers of the latter 20th century, maybe the only one living competitive enough for the Nobel prize. The movie is, however, rather unsatisfactory, even if Malcovich does a good job. The reason for the lameness of the production is that the director never dared to explore more fully the darker side of Tiffauges, to make it clear why people were afraid of him, why he could not build friendships and so on. Apparently the producers were afraid that if they made the main character more graphic, this would really turn him into a pedophile and alienate the viewer. Here is the big hitch in putting great books on screen. In cinema characters most often end up gaining the sympathy of viewers. So in view of making the character likable and keeping hope alive that one day he would be able to survive his obsessive manias, the screenwriter and the director deliberately twisted the end. In the movie, Abel turned into a real Christopher carrying the child-Jesus (a Jewish refugee from a concentration camp) as a sign of his Christian redemption, but... in the book Tiffauges does not survive the crossing of the Mazurian swamps: on the contrary, he deliberately drowns, together with the young boy, in a tragic culmination of his unending obsession with young children. This is why the original title of the book is "Le roi des aulnes", the elven-king from Goethe's dark poem. Even if I greatly admired the book, I long suspected Tournier to have been carried too far away in his creative search, up to the point of inventing a kind of mania which does not belong to the list of pathological states. Such non-sexual pedophiles, obsessed with children, but harmless and protective, do they exist? Are there really people who want to protect children from growing up?

V for Vendetta (2005)

an apology for September 11

[2/10 · 11 April 2006]

Well, if you were ever reticent to admit that September 11 was a good thing, finally comes the movie which allays your fears; now you can say aloud that September 11 was the greatest deed in history, its purpose was to destroy the symbols of an unjust Christian state which persecutes Muslims and anti-Globalists. I am honestly amazed that American audiences bought so cheaply such a clear reversal of values, just for the sake of entertainment, and even go so far as claiming that this utterly stupid creation carried a powerful message. Apparently, just because the action was set in London and in the future, people here feel comfortable that this does not really concern them. Well, next time we hear of a successful destruction of a symbol (in the US, Europe or Baghdad - where this happens every day), let us go and applaud freedom!

The Cold Summer of 1953 (1988)

a historical document

[8/10 · 1 April 2006]

The best about this movie is that it ended up to be not what it was expected. In terms of plot, it is a "Die Hard" kind of stuff in which a former intelligence officer subdues six dangerous men who are leaving a trail of blood in Siberia. In 2006, this movie seems to be nothing more than a decent adventure story with a reasonably tragic ending (the good girl and one of the good guys die) - after all, this is a Russian movie and cannot have a happy-ending. But the film was produced in 1987! What was originally meant to be a B-rated adventure story turned into the first ever widely screened Soviet movie which spoke of political prisoners and internal exiles. The "Cold Summer" is a remarkable example of the surreptitious ways dissident culture found for expressing political opinion - it is neither in the storyline, nor in the characters that we read the intended message, but in the discreet glimpses over the historical context. As of now, the movie may seem banal and even dull, but it is actually a living historical document.

River's Edge (1986)

how unbalanced movies affect American self-identity

[5/10 · 16 February 2006]

The movie is not anything close to a psychological portrait of apathetic or disillusioned youth. It is a collection of clichés confirming elder viewers in their paranoia that contact between generations is impossible. The Layne character is ludicrous - maybe the guy made a big career, but his on-screen idiocy offends common sense. The problem with the movie is that it tries to visualize, and make three-dimensional, the shallow and predictable pathos of lame journalists. A teenager strangled his girlfriend and his schoolmates did not report him right away to the police - what an outrage! how can that be! what are these monsters! Instead of really trying to explain the motivation of high school students to resist the temptation of acting as "normal adults", instead of working upon the psychology behind existing patterns of behavior among adolescents, the movie prefers poster-like types of weed-smoking, arrogant, unrestrained and utterly irresponsible degenerates who have to symbolize the "young generation" as a whole. The problem with such movies is not that they are lame - lame movies are inevitable. It is that they themselves conduce the viewers into accepting journalistic clichés and helping build an atmosphere of mistrust, suspiciousness and intolerance which instead of making situations like the one in the movie impossible further encourages them.

Russian Ark (2002)

the cultural ambiguity of Russian modernity

[7/10 · 11 February 2006]

It is actually when I sat to write a overall negative comment on the movie, that I possibly saw "behind the frames" and perceived what Sokurov's real purpose was. But maybe I am seeing too much for a production which was originally meant to keep to clichés and stereotypes, in order to make the viewer's life easier. What is really St Petersburg? The title suggests that the Hermitage is an "ark" of Russian culture. But what do we see in it? El Greco and Rubens, Rembrandt and Van Dyck, a somewhat rich, but chaotically arranged exposition, French porcelain, Italian-style musicians, European uniforms, and in between the furtive image of one Pushkin, few bars of one Glinka, a couple of wax figures of emperors and empresses. What exactly are we supposed to admire in the Hermitage? That it was built in Classicizing style, that the courtiers were behaving like real nobles, that the Russian emperors had manners and that Persian ambassadors were received in spacious, gilded and marble-covered halls? Are we expected to be "amazed" by the richness of modern Russia's autocrat, or are we expected to sympathize with the hollowness of their modernized culture which remained an imitation of Western creativity which imitation the invented, and somewhat annoying "French aristocrat" in the movie estimates low and even derides? The dialogs that the Westerner has with particular visitors to the gallery possibly points to Sokurov's answer -that El Greco and Titian and Raphael do not belong only to the cultures which formed them and inspired their work, but to the cultures where their works have been reevaluated and admired in new ways for new purposes. The Russian Ark thus may be understood as the way for the imperial Russian capital to preserve, and give new sense to the great achievements of the 18th and 19th centuries in France, Italy, the Low Lands or Germany... Instead of pursuing in this direction, Sokurov decided to mind-boggle us with embassies' receptions, imperial lunches, and walks through the snow... Rather disappointing.

Ned Kelly (1970)

the less worse version of the story

[6/10 · 9 February 2006]

One big problem with the movie is Mick Jagger. Jagger was half-convincing, his biggest problem being that he is not exactly masculine, while Ned Kelly probably was. Otherwise, he fitted the role much better than the stunningly banal H. Ledge in the 2003 remake - that devilish glimpse in his eyes makes him a much better choice for an outlaw who goes as far as challenging the British Empire and proclaiming a fancy republic of his own. Another problem was the poor cutting - some scenes were so drastically cropped that the storyline was getting lost. Still, a far better version of the Ned Kelly legend than the 2003 edition.

Carandiru (2003)

great hymn of life and humanity

[9/10 · 2 February 2006]

Carandiru is a true hymn of humanity in all of us. What let the Brazilian riot squad shoot down over a hundred inmates was that following both prejudice and the professional drilling they had been subjected to, they regarded the rioters of 1992 as nothing but worthless scum. Bebenco does not defend his characters. Based on the eyewitness account of the prison physician, he presents us with assassins, murderers, robbers and drug-dealers who do not even claim they do not deserve their sentences (although many were kept in prison without convictions). What made them human was their continuous contact with the world outside. The visitation day scene is a memorable tribute to life in a truly Christian sense - everyone deserves to live and to hope not because of his own qualities or deeds, but because of the love others share for him. The character of the serial killer Dagger was essential to this purpose. His solitude in the midst of the modest pleasures of everybody else visited by his close ones was the first sign of the overcoming guilt which eventually took him to the preacher. Let this review not be understood as if the movie pursues to proselytize the viewers; I hope not to be too cynical to say that its prime purpose is to rejoice - to rejoice with the great diversity of human characters to whom Dr Varella and H. Bebenco paid their tribute.

Zandalee (1991)

beautifully shot, poorly cut

[6/10 · 2 February 2006]

The movie is not as bad as the overall rating shows. I presume too many people saw it on account of Nicholas Cage and got disappointed. The problem is that the drama does not develop in one direction. It ended as a banal story about adultery culminating in a theatrical suicide and an unconvincing tragedy. Cage (Johnny), the outsider, turned up to be the guiltiest of all. Yet, until the middle the movie had developed around Anderson (Zandalee) and at some point it looked as if the victim of the drama would be exactly Cage who fell desperately in love with beautiful Anderson while she was using him to overcome her frustrations with husband Thierry. That seemed to be the purpose of the two supporting characters: Tatta and the gay shop-attendant who were pushing her into adultery, so as to save her marriage. At some point, either when shooting or when cutting, the concept changed and the triangle lost everything even remotely intriguing.

Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)

Herzog versus Kinski and Saura

[8/10 · 3 December 2005]

I saw Saura's El Dorado, which deals with the same story, a long time ago - little after its release. Herzog's version I saw in full only recently. It is partly by comparing the two that I come to realize why the shootings led to such vicious enmity between Herzog and Kinski. Kinski used to be (maybe still is) the star of all stars in German cinematography. But even if he is there, in front of the camera, most of the time, his Aguirre remains somewhat tangential to the movie - Kinski does not develop his character, Aguirre is the same obsessive maniac in the beginning as in the end, and the actor might reasonably question why Herzog made him play a role which does not really require great skill or presence. But even so, Aguirre remains the strongest character in the movie - the others, including his daughter, are like phantoms without flesh and weight. Saura's reading was rather different - his story recreated a much more complex Aguirre who moved to the top of the expedition as a result of a series of assassinations which were not started by him. And his end was much more dramatic (even when based on the same original account, the sequence of events in Herzog's and Saura's scripts is significantly different). That is because Saura was interested in the people, in the evolution of characters, and of ideas - his Aguirre proclaimed independence from Spain out of desperation, not out of greed. While Herzog was interested in the destructive power of nature over humans - a theme which he continues to work upon (see his Grizzly Man!). The real focus of his version is the landscape, not the insignificant monkey-like creatures on board of this ludicrous raft (the monkeys which took over the raft in the end were a good allegory for the failed conquistadors). The river, the mountain, the jungle, this is what Herzog wanted to shoot - and he did it great. Whether it would be Kinski or another monkey on board the raft, there would be no difference. Then you understand why Kinski hated Herzog.

Onegin (1999)

Pushkin might provoke Fiennes to a duel over this

[6/10 · 23 November 2005]

Russians consider Pushkin's "Evgenii Onegin" one of the peaks of their literature, but to British drama actors/directors/composers Fiennes the work remained just a curiosity which could be easily brought to screen for a nice, and unambitious family project. Where Russian readers and western students of Russian culture see a vision of the decadence of Russian aristocracy, and a condemnation of the Ancien Regime, both in social, and cultural terms, the Fiennes saw a nice romantic interlude. The limited scope of the filmmakers'interest explains why the movie is successful in just one aspect - the two love scenes between Onegin and Larina are great, actually much better than what Russian actors would perform in the place of Fiennes and Tyler. But that's that. Everything else, including the duel, or the scandal between Lensky and Onegin, is dull, insipid and rather un-Russian. Fiennes obviously misunderstood the meaning of being "tired of life". Pushkin's Onegin was not a self-centered, self-sufficient and utterly satisfied English gentleman who speaks patronizingly to everyone in the country because "he knows things". He was a model for generations of Russian "malcontents": in a rigidly conservative society playing the "tired of life" was a social stand, not a psychological state. Onegin was a passionate man and his aloofness was a deliberate pretense (not that much different from Hamlet's delusive craziness). In short, the Fienneses had better screen a romantic drama without referring to Pushkin's masterpiece. Their movie is nice, watchable and enjoyable (well, Liv Tyler stars in it!), but their rendition of Pushkin's characters is so dissatisfying, the great poet might easily take offense.

Schindler's List (1993)

a high praise of the spirit of capitalism

[10/10 · 23 October 2005]

I had avoided to see the movie for a decade. The Holocaust is so absolute an act of cruelty that it does not give good food for originality. I underestimated Herr Schindler, just as I naively underestimated Herr Spielberg. No other movie has so boldly approached a fundamental ethical controversy of this size. Was Herr Schindler a prudent man or a remorseless exploiter? Did he help or use his workers? Didn't he decide to save them only when realizing he would be hunted down by the Soviets? Schindler is depicted as the most human of humans - his conversation with Amon Goeth over the real meaning of power and control can easily be included in college syllabi. And yet being so human, he is neither good nor bad: there are forces beyond him - his greed and his love of life, that allow him neither to refrain from war-time profiteering nor to subscribe to the absurd legal degradation of the Jews into lesser beings (are they less kiss-able just because they carry the Yellow Star, would ask Schindler?).

But still, Schindler plays only the supporting role in his own story. The central figure is Itzhak Stern - the bookkeeper who turned himself into a voluntary slave to the arrogant Schindler in order to be able to protect his kin. The scene in which Stern was brought out of the train taking him to the concentration camp, and apologized to his boss for his absent-mindedness - he got arrested because he had left his work permit - is of true biblical proportions. What is the message contained in Stern? That salvation does not come by itself. Schindler's Jews did not beg for mercy, they negotiated with him on their own terms, they made themselves useful to him, they invested in their own physical preservation. So the movie is not about Schindler being a hero or not, it is here to prove that good has a price and we cannot expect salvation for free - a moral philosophy inherent to Capitalism and incomprehensible for both the feudal or the social welfare states in which benefaction from above, be it from the feudal lord or from the all-powerful bureaucratic state is conceived as the necessary condition for man's survival.

The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004)

the story of a big loser

[4/10 · 8 June 2005]

The plot is a much less successful version of Scorcese's Taxi Driver. A guy who is nuts wants to kill the President. The differences are, however, all at the expense of Assassination. Travis in Taxi Driver was a strong man even if he lived in his own world. Bicke is nothing but a complete loser who cannot fit the world around him and goes on the nerves of the spectators with his empty soliloquies about the injustices in this world. It is a pity Sean Penn agreed to play this mind-numbing role of an unpleasant psychopath. What is the real reason for to spend our money to be tortured with the stories of irredeemable losers? Is it a manual how to be vigilant and identify the potential president-killers around us?

Monsieur Ibrahim (2003)

religion of love and patience - explaining the plot to the evil-minded

[6/10 · 5 April 2005]

This is a reply to a couple of rather rash and inconsiderate comments above, done by people who apparently not only live in a world of hatred and mistrust but cannot even assess the obvious messages in an easy-going, unambiguous and outspoken story.

This movie has nothing to do with RELIGIOUS PROPAGANDA! Mr Ibrahim does NOT at any point try to proselytize Moise. Moise does NOT change his name, does NOT change religion and does NOT deny his roots. He was adopted for personal, and not confessional reasons.

The author of the novel upon which the movie is based is a French Jew by the same name as the main character. This quite easily explains why the boy had to be Jewish and not, let's say, Christian, for that matter. To see propaganda here is a proof of bad taste.

Momo was poor and an obviously bad student - he had no bright future which to sacrifice, that is why he settled himself with the grocery store, not because he was proselytized to adopt Arab ways.

Mr Ibrahim made it quite clear that his wisdom does not come from the Koran, but from life, he was a half-literate man, he led a secluded life, he attended no prayers, he did not speak of the Prophet or whoever. He quoted the Koran only on matters of love because this is what interested him. What Mr Ibrahim knew "was in his Koran", which apparently escaped the attention of the paranoic Muslim-haters above, were the two flowers (hey, they are part of the title of the movie!), a remembrance of his long-dead wife and love of his life.

This was a movie about how religious messages may be perceived in a spirit of love and harmony with the world and not in terms of self-seclusion, mutual suspicion and hatred. Yes, the visits to the churches and mosques were a little too naively funny to be convincing, but the message was easy to grasp - there is A LEVEL OF PERSONAL RECEPTION of religious messages, the "inner religion" about which young Moise was wondering what it meant, which is equally easy to approach by all adepts to all confessions.

I actually did not like the movie that much - the plot was partly lame and too fairy-tale-like for such a "show-life-as-it-is" kind of movie. But I felt obliged to write this comment in order to defend it against undeserved xenophobic slanders.

The Pact of Silence (2003)

two murders too much and one forgotten detail

[5/10 · 18 March 2005]

The entangled story gets completely confused in the end when the director purposefully mingles things and leaves us undecided who killed whom (and why). The two twins simultaneously kill the reporter and the mother of the convent. But actually why? The two murders are not essential for the development of the plot and cannot be explained with the previous deeds of the girls, since it shows out that the convicted one was in fact innocent. The twins were not addicted murderers, they suddenly decide to become ones at their reunion - what for? And then, why the scar? When examining the sick nun Joachim saw a stitch-scar on her belly - the only purpose this scar may have fulfilled is to help the spectator identify which of the two twins survived in the end. But then, confused in his own complications of the plot, the director forgot about the scar and left us to wonder which of the two girls the defrocked priest married.

The Cuckoo (2002)

The bliss of not understanding each other - down with Sartre

[9/10 · 20 January 2005]

Since the movie was initially meant to be a staged drama, it is no wonder it rings some bells. In the 1950's Sartre wrote his famous play "Huis clos" whose essential point was how intolerable human presence can be when the commonness of language allows us to understand all the thoughts of the people we share the same space with. "The Hell, this is the Other", concluded Sartre.

In Kukushka, nobody of the three characters understands a word from what the other two have to say, yet they DO speak all the time. All the three, the Finn, the Saami, and the Russian, are well aware of the presence of the other two, but do not have to submit themselves to any common pattern of judgment. The other two are like objects which fit the world of the third in the way s/he would like them to. Thus, the lack of verbal communication, even if it caused some, almost fatal, misunderstandings, in the long term offered the three characters with a kind of bliss not one of them had ever expected. In short, this is a story about the beauty of life which is essentially impossible to share with others because it is purely contemplative.

Who Knows? (2001)

Sophie Marceau wouldn't like it

[7/10 · 9 December 2004]

Some years ago Sophie Marceau explained her move to Hollywood in more or less the following terms: I am tired of doing the same French movies where all in all there is a love triangle and in the end the three of them have dinner together. Well, Va savoir is exactly that kind of movie. It is more complicated because there are actually four love triangles, but yes, they all have a cake to share in the end; all the six people who were involved in the triangles. So nothing new here. The good thing, however, are the characters. Except for the brother-and-sister duo who are kind of stereotypical and possibly present the spectator with the cliché of male and female libertine Parisians, the other two couples arouse our curiosity with their insufficiencies: Camille is a little too absent-minded to be completely sane, Pierre is a typical academic dork who falls into furies of sophisticated frustration, Ugo visibly carries the burden of his unattractive appearance and compensates for it with his thick Italian accent, while Sonia obstinately tries to keep to the level of those intellectual pricks and prove how much more she knows about real life. This is a good melodrama if you like the genre. I do, and I liked it. Marceau probably wouldn't.