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Berlinale 2004: The Talent Press
Sunday, February 8

Övgü Gökce on "The Wild Angels" (Roger Corman)
On "Beautiful Country" (Hans P. Moland):
   Andrei Gorzo / Pamela Biénzobas
Saul Symonds on "Anatomy of Hell" (Catherine Breillat)
Gabe Klinger on "Oncle Yanco"and "David Holzman's Diary"
Violeta Kovacsics on Cachorro (Miguel Albaladejo)

Övgü Gökce
"The Wild Angels" (Retrospective)

USA, 1966, 93', Director: Roger Corman, Screenplay: Peter Bogdanovich, Charles B.Griffith, Cinematography: Richard Moore, Peter Bogdanovich, Editor: Monte Hellman, Cast: Peter Fonda, Nancy Sinatra, Bruce Dern, Diane Ladd.

Roger Corman's 1966 cult classic "The Wild Angels" pictures a reckless youth culture, its iconography along with its narrative allowing an interpretation in terms of the Western, yet diverging from the genre in interesting ways.

The iconic character Blues leads a group of motorbikers to Mecca, to recover the bike of his fellow gang member, Loser. After a fight with some Mexican-Americans, Loser steals the bike of a cop and gets shot. His buddies carry him off from the hospital with an audacious plan, which, of course, leads to Loser's death, in a scene that is exemplary of how Corman makes the film's moral stance as far-fetched as possible: Loser dies with a joint in his mouth.

"The Wild Angels" alters the iconography of the Western: roaring motorbikes replace horses - there's even a scene in which a horse is set free but doesn't seem toknow what to do with its freedom. This point can be interrelated with Blues' speech at Loser's funeral, where he identifies being free with having fun, doing what "they" want to do and nothing more. Here, Blues undercuts his own performance of virility, breaking with the tradition of the westerner hero, with his own code which is to be legitimized. The myth of the frontier as the destination of the Western outlaw is transposed into the terms of a moral challenge in the sequence of the "wild" party in the church.

The film's last scene, confronting the audience with Blues digging the grave of his own buddy, reveals the crack Corman opens in the picture of America established by the classical Western. By opening this crack, Corman closes the frontier. This is why Blues' last words mark the ending of the film: "There's nowhere to go."

Övgü Gökce

"Beautiful Country" (competition)

Director: Hans Petter Moland. Screenplay: Sabina Murray, Larry Gross. Camera: Stuart Dryburgh. Cast: Damien Nguyen, Bai Ling, Nick Nolte, Tim Roth.

1. Andrei Gorzo

In Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland's solid, unhurried father-finding epic, a young Vietnamese man (Damien Nguyen) travels from his village to Ho Chi Minh City, then to a refugee camp in Malaysia, then on a refugee ship to New York, and finally to the wild reaches of Texas and the blue, blind gaze of an even wilder Vietnam vet (Nick Nolte), who was once married to a Vietnamese woman. This could have been top-heavy with symbolic overtones and big political statements, but Moland keeps it personal; it's simple in its storytelling and rich in its texture. The film was produced by Terrence Malick, and the images of the hero leading his oxen into a Vietnamese river, or riding his bike on the streets of a New York, are almost Malick-like in their mysterious serenity. Yet Moland can also tighten the screws, as he does for the gruesome boat voyage, when the hero loses his little brother: it's a ruthless, completely unsentimental death scene. Stuart Dryburgh's sensuous, flowing camerawork – at ease with cities and storms and wide open spaces – lends grace to the film's melodrama.

As the dissolute captain of the refugee ship, Tim Roth (carrying on like a particularly seedy character in Conrad) tells the hero that he will always be "out of place and poor", that he belongs nowhere; yet the film, an international collaboration, seems to believe otherwise: the world is big enough and there are enough undiscovered homes in it, waiting for the rootless.

Andrei Gorzo

2. Pamela Biénzobas

The outcast's quest for belonging, the search for the missing father, the longing for the motherland and for a long-lost innocent bliss… Hans Petter Moland's "Beautiful Country", based on a story by Terrence Malick, deals with some of the most universal and timeless subjects through a young Vietnamese's journey to the United States to try to find his veteran GI father. But somewhere along the way it slips both at a symbolic and concrete level.

Though we spend over two hours with Bihn (the protagonist), both our knowledge of and interest in him remain skin-deep. Perhaps it is because the mise-en-scène and the camera are unable to find the right tone for the story, with a greater concern for plasticity than for narrative. And the editing fails to add to the rhythm, dealing with action in a contemplative manner and staying too little with and too far from the characters to allow true involvement.

What's most regrettable is that it misses out on potentially great moments on account of the inexact distance and pacing. If only we were able to feel what Bihn is experiencing and not just see it through his unsurprising actions, or if we could take a step deeper into his relationship with Ling, the Chinese refugee who despite wanting to believe that she has given up on life, still preserves some hope. The final chapter, with Nick Nolte's refreshing appearance, is probably the best achieved in terms of developing the characters and the relationship between them. But it just does not seem enough and certainly comes way too late. Even if Bihn finds what he was looking for (has he really?), we do not.

Pamela Biénzobas

Saul Symonds
"Anatomy of Hell"

Director: Catherine Breillat. Screenplay: Breillat. Camera: Yorgos Arvanitis and Guillaume Schiffman. Editor: Pascale Chavance. Cast: Amira Casar and Rocco Siffredi. 77 min.

To examine the close-ups used by a director is one way to cut to the heart of what he or she wants to express. In Catherine Breillat's "Anatomy of Hell" the close-ups are reserved for the anus and vagina of the central female character. In Breillat's vision it is through these orifices that the truest form of inter-human communication is realized. The narrative has an anonymous woman (representing all women) offering an anonymous man (representing all men) money to come to her house every night and watch her undress, masturbate, etc. Like in Pasolini's "Salo", and Bertolucci's "Last Tango in Paris", a deep connection with another human being is equated with sexual debasement. The man doesn't only watch, he touches too, sticking fingers and rods and large rocks up her anus and vagina, staring at and smelling and tasting the blood that she secretes, as if it held the secrets of her soul.

"Anatomy of Hell" can be best described as a French existentialist version of "Empire of the Senses", Oshima's study of a claustrophobically possessive relationship which unfolds purely through sexual exploration. The characters in "Anatomy of Hell" utter lines such as "what’s the point?", and "why bother?", and when they experience something meaningful they go and stare at the ocean. It is an attempt to make the characters' experiences seem more meaningful, yet it only serves to put a smokescreen over Breillat's expression. Every time there is something in the film worth pondering, she hides it under the characters' doom-ridden statements, with a murder-fantasy, or with a general air of philosophical confusion.

Saul Symonds

Gabe Klinger
"Oncle Yanco" (Retrospective)
Directed by Agnes Varda
"David Holzman's Diary" (Retrospective)
Directed by Jim McBride

Kudos should be given to the programmers of the Retrospective section for teaming "Oncle Yanco" and "David Holzman's Diary", two diary films from a forlorn era, both journeys into self-discovery, one almost entirely fabricated and the other a spontaneous composition of facts and personal musings. Varda's film – at 22 minutes the most thrilling essay on "found" objects this reviewer's had the pleasure of seeing since the director's own "The Gleaners and I" (2000) – takes as its subject Yanco Varda, the director's uncle and a painter and thinker who has joined the counterculture community of the San Francisco bay. Like the elusive and endlessly fascinating Elmyr de Hory of Welles' "F For Fake", Yanco has found a utopian existence where one can play, create, think, and take siestas as one likes. Varda is always stubbornly aware of the camera's intrusive nature in the documentary form, and it is with astounding ease that she manages to address Yanco – who Varda inadvertently discovered at the time of her making "Lion’s Love" in the U.S. – and the very boundaries of the genre by breaking down the clinical separation of director from subject, filmmaker from family member. In "David Holzman's Diary", the director's 16mm Éclair camera allows the character to simultaneously record and destroy his life; Holzman might be an alter-ego to McBride, taking giddy pleasure in the meta possibilities of defeating the role of the director as the owner of the image.

Gabe Klinger

Violeta Kovacsics
Cachorro (Panorama)

Spain, 2004. Director: Miguel Albaladejo. Screeplay: Miguel Albaladejo. Cast: Jose Luis Garcia Perez, David Castillo, Diana Cerezo, Elvira Lindo.

After a smart flirt with tragedy in his last film, "Rencor" (2002), Miguel Albaladejo returns to comedy, the field that gave him success. For this he choses as his setting a well-known homosexual neighborhood of Madrid, where Pedro, the main character lives. The film moves from there into an ongoing liberal discussion that goes from drugs to relationships, trying in a naïve way to express the freedom of choosing your way of life. "Cachorro" is full of already seen tricks: the hippy mother, the strict grandmother, the gay man who avoids all kinds of engagement, the kid who suddenly arrives to change someone's life… The film tries to touch so many fields that finishes in no man's land.

Albaladejo proves again that he is more a screenwriter than a director, as in "El Cielo Abierto" (2001) whose best asset was its fresh dialogues. A flat direction coexists with a good management of everyday language, fast dialogues and some good gags. Unfortunately he makes the mistake of most contemporary Spanish directors, such as Iciar Bollain or Fernando Leon, who throw themselves into comedy even in tragic moments. The the sequence of the granmother's funeral is a good example: even there has to be a gag. The two main tendencies of recent Spanish cinema – comedy and social problems - cancel each other out, so that the humor is unfunny and the reflection on the problems remains superficial.

Violeta Kovacsics

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