Tag Archives: this week at the new york film festival

NYFF52 MAIN SLATE: LA SAPIENZA

LA SAPIENZA feature glorious sights and sounds as a couple tries to rekindle their spark

LA SAPIENZA (THE SAPIENCE) (Eugène Green, 2014)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Saturday, September 27, Alice Tully Hall, 3:00, and Sunday, September 28, Francesca Beale Theater, 12:15
Festival runs September 19-25
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.com

New York City-born French filmmaker Eugène Green equates humanity and architecture in the lush, rich film La Sapienza. Named for the concept of gaining wisdom as well as Italian architect Francesco Borromini’s seventeenth-century Roman Catholic Baroque church Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza, the film follows an older couple who rediscover their personal and professional passion after meeting a young pair of siblings. Architect Alexandre Schmidt (Fabrizio Rongione) and his wife, sociologist Aliénor (Christelle Prot Landman), are walking through a park in Switzerland when they see a teenage girl (Arianna Nastro) nearly collapse into the arms of a slightly older boy (Ludovico Succio). It turns out that Lavinia is suffering from incapacitating dizzy spells and is cared for by her brother, Goffredo, who is interested in studying architecture. Aliénor becomes involved in Lavinia’s situation while Alexandre, an intense, cynical man, returns to the book he is writing on Borromini (who famously worked in the shadow of Bernini) and travels to Italy with Goffredo as the boy’s reluctant mentor. Green’s (Toutes les nuits, Le monde vivant) first digital feature opens with the glorious sounds of Claudio Monteverdi accompanying cinematographer Raphaël O’Byrne’s magisterial shots of statuary and architecture in Rome. The acting at the start, particularly Rongione’s, is purposefully stiff and mannered, cold and stonelike, but it warms up as the characters learn (or relearn) about the myriad possibilities life offers. Green uses the metaphor of Baroque architecture’s role in the Counter-Reformation as a symbol for Alexandre and Aliénor’s relationship, as they finally face long-held emotions and reconsider their future, all while Green lingers on magnificent structures. La Sapienza will have its U.S. premiere at the New York Film Festival on September 27 at 3:00 and September 28 at 12:15; both screenings will be followed by a Q&A with Green, who also appears in the film as the grizzled Chaldean.

NYFF52 MAIN SLATE: GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE

Jean-Luc Godard’s GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE speaks for itself

GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE (ADIEU AU LANGAGE) (Jean-Luc Godard, 2014)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Saturday, September 27, 9:00, and Wednesday, October 1, 9:00
Festival runs September 26 – October 12
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.com

After the New York Film Festival advance press screening of Jean-Luc Godard’s 3D Goodbye to Language, a colleague turned to me and said, “If this was Godard’s first film, he would never have had a career.” While I don’t know whether that might be true, I do know that Goodbye to Language is the 3D flick Godard was born to make, a 3D movie that couldn’t have come from anyone else. What’s it about? I have no idea. Well, that’s not exactly right. It’s about everything, and it’s about nothing. It’s about the art of filmmaking. It’s about the authority of the state and freedom. It’s about extramarital affairs. It’s about seventy minutes long. It’s about communication in the digital age. (Surprise! Godard does not appear to be a fan of the cell phone and Yahoo!) And it’s about a cute dog (which happens to be his own mutt, Miéville, named after his longtime partner, Anne-Marie Miéville). In the purposefully abstruse press notes, Godard, now eighty-three, describes it thusly: “the idea is simple / a married woman and a single man meet / they love, they argue, fists fly / a dog strays between town and country / the seasons pass / the man and woman meet again / the dog finds itself between them / the other is in one / the one is in the other / and they are three / the former husband shatters everything / a second film begins / the same as the first / and yet not / from the human race we pass to metaphor / this ends in barking / and a baby’s cries.” Yes, it’s all as simple as that. Or maybe not.

Jean-Luc Godard has fun with 3D in GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE

Godard divides the film into sections labeled “La Nature” and “La Métaphore,” cutting between several ongoing narratives, from people reading Dostoyevsky, Pound, and Solzhenitsyn at an outdoor café to an often naked man and woman in a kitchen to clips of such old movies as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Snows of Kilimanjaro to Lord Byron and the Shelleys on Lake Geneva. Did I say “narrative”? It’s not really a narrative but instead storytelling as only Godard can do it, and this time in 3D, with the help of cinematographer Fabrice Aragno. Godard has a blast with the medium, which he previously used in a pair of recent shorts. He has fun — and so do we — as he toys with the name of the film and the idea of saying farewell (he plays with the French title, Adieu au langage, forming such puns as “Ah, dieu” and “Ah, dieux,” making the most of 3D layering); creates superimpositions and fast-moving shots that blur the image, making the glasses worthless; changes from sharp color to black-and-white to wild pastel-like bursts of red, blue, and green; evokes various genres, with mystery men in suits and gunshots that might or might not involve kidnapping and murder; and even gets a kick out of where he places the subtitles. These games are very funny, as is the voiceover narration, which includes philosophy from such diverse sources as Jacques Ellul (his essay “The Victory of Hitler”) and Claude Monet (“Paint not what we see, for we see nothing, but paint that we don’t see”). And for those who, like my colleague, believe the film to be crap, Godard even shows the man sitting on the bowl, his girlfriend in the bathroom with him, directly referencing Rodin’s The Thinker and talking about “poop” as he noisily evacuates his bowels. So, in the end, what is Godard saying farewell to? Might this be his last film? Is he saying goodbye to the old ways we communicated? Is he bidding adieu to humanity, leaving the future for the dogs, the trees, and the ocean? Does it matter? A hit at Cannes, Goodbye to Language is screening at the New York Film Festival on September 27 at 9:00, followed by a Q&A with star Héloïse Godet, and October 1 at 9:00. You can check out the NSFW French trailer here.

MAKING WAVES — NEW ROMANIAN CINEMA 2013: POLICE, ADJECTIVE

Cristi (Dragos Bucur) is on one helluva boring stakeout in Romanian black comedy

POLICE, ADJECTIVE (Corneliu Porumboiu, 2009)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, Francesca Beale Theater
144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Monday, December 2, 3:00
Series runs November 29 – December 4
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com

The first half of Corneliu Porumboiu’s Police, Adjective is as dreadfully boring as Detective Cristi’s (Dragos Bucur) assignment, tailing a student, Victor (Radu Costin), who enjoys a joint with two of his friends every day after school. While Cristi wants to nail the kid’s supplier, the cop’s boss has him on a tight deadline, insisting he arrest Victor if the investigation continues to go nowhere, but Cristi strongly disagrees with putting the teenager away for up to seven years for a crime he believes will soon be abolished by the government. However, the film picks up considerably as Cristi seeks help from various contacts, getting caught up in red tape and public servants who would really rather not be bothered. And when he get called in by the chief (Vlad Ivanov from 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days) and gets a long lecture in linguistics, well, you won’t be able to control yourself from laughing out loud. Porumboiu keeps the pace very slow and very steady, but hang in there, because the end is a riot. Police, Adjective, which won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, screened at the New York Film Festival and at MoMA as part of the “Contenders, 2009,” series, and was Romania’s official entry for the Foreign Language Film Academy Award, is being shown December 2 at 3:00 at the Francesca Beale Theater as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema 2013,” which runs November 29 to December 3 and consists of works dating from 1962 to 2013 by such directors as Calin Peter Netzer, Nae Caranfil, Tom Wilson, Adrian Sitaru, Laura Capatana-Juller, Dan Pita, and Mircea Veroiul. Also on the schedule are the rest of Porumboiu’s films, including 12:08 East of Bucharest, the shorts trio Liviu’s Dream, A Trip to the City, and Gone with the Wine, and his latest, the closing-night selection When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism, which is being presented December 3 at 6:00 and will be followed by a Q&A with the director.

NYFF51 20th ANNIVERSARY SCREENING: DAZED AND CONFUSED

NYFF51 will celebrate the twentieth anniversary of DAZED AND CONFUSED on Thursday

DAZED AND CONFUSED (Richard Linklater, 1993)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Alice Tully Hall
1941 Broadway at 65th St.
Thursday, October 10, $25, 9:00
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.com

“You guys know anything about a party?” It should be one crazy party on October 10, when the fifty-first New York Film Festival celebrates the twentieth anniversary of one of the greatest high school movies of them all, Richard Linklater’s 1993 indie classic, Dazed and Confused. Alice Tully Hall will turn into 1976 Austin, Texas, as Linklater and various cast members will be on hand for the screening and a Q&A. Like Cynthia (Marissa Ribisi) says, “If we are all gonna die anyway, shouldn’t we be enjoying ourselves now? You know, I’d like to quit thinking of the present, like, right now, as some minor insignificant preamble to something else.” Of course, Randall “Pink” Floyd (Jason London) intones, “All I’m saying is that if I ever start referring to these as the best years of my life, remind me to kill myself.” There’ll be no need to do that as you watch Linklater’s splendid look at high school, which deals with hazing, burgeoning sexuality, sports, drug use, friendship, cliques, and a kick-ass party to end one chapter and begin another, for everyone except the older Wooderson (a career-making performance by Matthew McConaughey), who famously proclaims, “That’s what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age.” The cast also includes Adam Goldberg, Milla Jovovich, Cole Hauser, Joey Lauren Adams, Rory Cochrane, Parker Posey, Ben Affleck, and Austin native Wiley Wiggins as Mitch, with an epic soundtrack featuring all the right songs by Foghat, Alice Cooper, Nazareth, Rick Derringer, Sweet, War, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Kiss, and Peter Frampton. So for a “good ol’ worthwhile visceral experience,” head on out to Lincoln Center and relive all those glorious moments of your misspent youth.

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL: NOBODY’S DAUGHTER HAEWON

A couple tries to rekindle their romance in NOBODY’S DAUGHTER HAEWON

A couple considers rekindling their romance in NOBODY’S DAUGHTER HAEWON

NOBODY’S DAUGHTER HAEWON (NUGU-UI TTAL-DO ANIN HAEWON) (Hong Sang-soo, 2013)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Alice Tully Hall, 1941 Broadway at 65th St.
Sunday, September 29, 9:00 pm
Francesca Beale Theater, 144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Monday, September 30, 3:30
Festival runs September 27 – October 13
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com

In South Korean director Hong Sang-soo’s latest bittersweet tale, Nobody’s Daughter Haewon, nearly everyone who meets college student Haewon (Jeong Eun-chae) tells her that she’s “pretty,” from her mother (Kim Ja-ok), who has decided to pack up and move to Canada, to legendary star Jane Birkin (playing herself), whom she bumps into on the street, to a hot bookstore owner, to fellow students and teachers. Rather stuck up and direct on the outside but much more tender and lost on the inside, Haewon reaches out to a former lover, film professor Seongjun (Lee Sun-kyun), who is married with a baby. As they contemplate rekindling their affair, they wind up getting drunk on sake with a group of Seongjun’s students, who suspect the teacher-student romance and clearly do not like Haewon. Meanwhile, Haewon, who is reading Norbert Elias’s The Loneliness of the Dying, is intrigued by the flirtations of another film professor, Jungwon (Kim Eui-sung), who teaches in San Diego. From Seoul’s West Village to the historic Fort Namhan, Haewon tries to find her place in the world as writer-director Hong employs a chronological narrative that combines her dreams with reality over the course of a few weeks in springtime.

A drunken night at a sake restaurant reveals some hard truths in Hong Sang-soo’s latest New York Film Festival entry

Hong has explored similar terrain in such previous films as Like You Know It All, Oki’s Movie, Woman on the Beach, and Tale of Cinema, but there’s just enough of an edge to Nobody’s Daughter Haewon to prevent it from feeling repetitive and more of the same. As always, Hong favors long establishing shots and a stationary camera that suddenly and awkwardly zooms in, instantly reminding viewers that they are watching a film. However, the scene in the restaurant goes on for several minutes with no cuts or camera movements, letting the acting and the dialogue tell the story without cinematic interference. Nobody’s Daughter Haewon also clocks in at a mere hour and a half, much shorter than most of his earlier work, which tends to go on way too long, but this one feels a little lighter in substance as well. Nobody’s Daughter Haewon is screening at the New York Film Festival on September 29 at Alice Tully Hall and on September 30 at the Francesca Beale Theater; Hong was initially scheduled to appear at one of the shows for a Q&A but is now unable to do so.

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL: LE WEEK-END

Nick (Jim Broadbent) and Meg (Lindsay Duncan) reevaluate their relationship while celebrating their thirtieth anniversary in Roger Michell’s LE WEEK-END

LE WEEK-END (Roger Michell, 2013)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Alice Tully Hall, 1941 Broadway at 65th St.
Sunday, September 29, 6:00 pm
Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Monday, October 7, 6:00
Festival runs September 27 – October 13
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
www.musicboxfilms.com

Mike Nichols’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? meets Richard Linklater’s “Before” series in Roger Michell’s bittersweet romantic black comedy, Le Week-end. Professor Nick Burrows (Jim Broadbent) and teacher Meg Burrows (Lindsay Duncan) are celebrating their thirtieth wedding anniversary by returning to Paris, where they spent their honeymoon. But whereas their first visit was filled with love, hope, and dreams of a bright future, they have come to the realization that their life together didn’t quite turn out as planned. While Nick still seems to be in love with his wife, Meg is reevaluating their relationship, continually lashing into him and spending what little money they have with reckless abandon. When they unexpectedly bump into an old colleague of Nick’s, the self-absorbed chatterbox Morgan (Jeff Goldblum), they are invited and go to a party where they imagine what could have been, forcing them to face some brutal truths.

Jeff Goldblum is a hoot as a self-absorbed writer in New York Film Festival selection LE WEEK-END

Broadbent (Iris, Topsy-Turvy) and Duncan (Mansfield Park, Traffik) are marvelous together, inhabiting their roles with a beautiful grace, evoking what Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy) might be like in the third or fourth sequel to Before Sunrise. Meanwhile, it’s hard to imagine anyone but Goldblum (The Fly, The Big Chill) playing the jittery Morgan so wonderfully. Director Michell and writer Hanif Kureishi, who previously collaborated on The Buddha of Suburbia, The Mother, and Venus, have created a very funny, honest, mature, and heart-wrenching portrait of a couple in sudden crisis after three decades of marriage, not necessarily knowing what, if anything, went wrong when. Le Week-end, which pays tribute to Jean-Luc Godard both in its title and in a late scene, is screening September 29 and October 7 at the fifty-first New York Film Festival, with Michell, Broadbent, Duncan, and producer Kevin Loader participating in a Q&A following the September 29 show at Alice Tully Hall.

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL: THE LAST OF THE UNJUST

Claude Lanzmann and Benjamin Murmelstein discuss the Holocaust in revealing documentary

THE LAST OF THE UNJUST (LE DERNIER DES INJUSTES) (Claude Lanzmann, 2013)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Alice Tully Hall, 1941 Broadway at 65th St.
Sunday, September 29, 1:00 pm
Festival runs September 27 – October 13
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com

For forty years, French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann has been documenting the Holocaust and the birth of the state of Israel in such provocative and powerful films as Israel, Why; Sobibor, October 14, 1943, 4 P.M.; and his nine-and-a-half-hour masterpiece, Shoah. In 1997, he made A Visitor from the Living, built around a 1979 interview with International Red Cross worker Maurice Rossel, who led a delegation inspecting the Nazis’ so-called “model ghetto” of Theresienstadt, which turned out to be a glorified concentration camp. Lanzmann returns to the Czech camp in The Last of the Unjust, an utterly fascinating 218-minute documentary consisting of a series of interviews he conducted in Rome in 1975 with Rabbi Benjamin Murmelstein, the only Jewish Elder to survive the Holocaust. For years, Murmelstein, who was appointed directly by and reported to Obersturmbannführer Adolph Eichmann, has been declared a Nazi collaborator, by writer Hannah Arendt and many others, even being arrested, imprisoned, and tried by Czech authorities. But in The Last of the Unjust, he paints a vivid portrait of everyday life in Theresienstadt, claiming he was not a collaborator but instead was doing whatever he could to improve conditions for the Jews there.

Claude Lanzmann visits Theresienstadt in film about the model ghetto’s last Jewish Elder

He poignantly describes not knowing about gas chambers and trains to Auschwitz and proudly defends his actions, referring to himself as the “last of the unjust.” Murmelstein has a spectacular memory, vividly recalling specific moments, answering all of Lanzmann’s questions with a bold honesty and correcting long-held misbeliefs concerning Theresienstadt. A cool, cigarette-smoking Lanzmann is seen in the old interviews and he also appears in new footage shot as he visits the camp and other relevant locations, geographically linking the past and the present. Between Murmelstein’s amazing storytelling ability and Lanzmann’s sharing of his personal perspective, the film never gets boring or repetitive over the course of its three-and-a-half-hour length. In the written introduction, Lanzmann states, “It took me a long time to come to the realization that I didn’t have the right to keep this to myself.” He has indeed done a great service by not keeping this to himself, making yet another poignant document of the Holocaust as seen through the eyes of a unique and thoroughly intriguing witness. An official selection of the New York Film Festival, The Last of the Unjust is screening September 29 at 1:00 at Alice Tully Hall, followed by a Q&A with the eighty-seven-year-old Lanzmann.