Rating: NNNNN
LE CAFE DE LA PLAGEDISC D: Benoît Graffin w/ Ouassini Embarek, Jacques Nolot. France. 85 mins. Thursday, September 13, 6:30 pm CUMBERLAND 1 Friday, September 14, 10:30 am CUMBERLAND 3. Rating: NNNEnigmatic and casually kef-drenched, this spare story set on and near a sparsely populated sandy beach outside Tangiers has a languid, hallucinatory quality that nicely reflects the Mohammed Mrabet/Paul Bowles story it’s based on. A young man eking out a living with only his wits and an old car befriends the middle-aged proprietor of a modest beach cafe. The older man takes the younger man’s advice and accepts his gifts, but tries to seduce his girlfriend and badmouths him behind his back. Undeterred, the younger man inexplicably carries on, all the while displaying amazing ingenuity, street smarts and seductive powers. Believable and confined to its essentials, Beach Cafe makes it easy to hang and soak up the soft African Mediterranean light.PEUNDER THE SKIN OF THE CITYCWC D: Rakhshan Bani Etemad w/ Golab Adineh, Mohammad Reza Forutan, Baran Kosari. Iran. 92 mins. Thursday, September 13, 7 pm VARSITY 8 Friday, September 14, 10 am VARSITY 4 Friday, September 14, 10 am VARSITY 5. Rating: NNN Against the backdrop of Iran’s latest parliamentary election and its shaky promise of political change, Under The Skin Of The City examines the hopes and anxieties of a modest, hard-working family whose little comfort and security are jeopardized by the risky undertakings of the eldest son, Abbas, who dreams of escaping to a freer, more prosperous life in the West.
The films does not break new ground, but it does offer an alternative take on contemporary Iran. Gone are the wide-eyed children, contemplative landscapes and never-ending car rides. This is a realist, urban and punchy portrait of a society in transition. JCLA FEMME QUI BOIT
PC D: Bernard Emond w/ Elise Guilbault, Luc Picard, Michel Forget. 91 mins. Thursday, September 13, 7:15 pm VARSITY 4 Thursday, September 13, 7:15 pm VARSITY 5 Friday, September 14, 2:30 pm CUMBERLAND 2. Rating: NN
The title pretty much sums up the seemingly endless 90 minutes of this minimalist and claustrophobic stream-of-consciousness film about a woman looking back on the tragedy of her life and her steady descent into an alcoholic hell. Guilbault delivers a fine performance in this perhaps praiseworthy but resolutely dreary and painful-to-swallow piece. JC
THE SON’S ROOM
MAST D: Nanni Moretti w/ Moretti, Laura Morante, Jasmine Trinca. Italy. 99 mins. Thursday, September 13, 9:30 pm VISA SCREENING ROOM (ELGIN) Saturday, September 15, 2:45 pm UPTOWN 2. Rating: NNNN
Moretti’s Palme d’Or win with The Son’s Room, the story of a family going through a heavy-duty trauma, offers an intriguing commentary on this year’s Cannes Film Festival. In the shadow of a new century, the Cannes programmers loaded the Competition with the aging lions of world art cinema – Godard, Imamura, Rivette, de Oliveira – and Asia’s new wave (Hou Hsiao-hsien, Shinji Aoyama, Tsai Ming-liang). When the dust had cleared, the jury honoured a small, emotionally direct film by a director no one had expected to win.
People who dislike The Son’s Room are inclined to dismiss it as a movie-of-the-week, and even those of us who like it can grasp that argument. An English review of The Son’s Room remarked that if Moretti is Italy’s Woody Allen, then The Son’s Room is his Interiors. That said, there’s no denying the film’s naked emotional authenticity, or its ability to move a sophisticated audience in ways that audience might not even suspect it could be moved.JH
Against the backdrop of Iran’s latest parliamentary election and its shaky promise of political change, Under The Skin Of The City examines the hopes and anxieties of a modest, hard-working family whose little comfort and security are jeopardized by the risky undertakings of the eldest son, Abbas, who dreams of escaping to a freer, more prosperous life in the West.
The films does not break new ground, but it does offer an alternative take on contemporary Iran. Gone are the wide-eyed children, contemplative landscapes and never-ending car rides. This is a realist, urban and punchy portrait of a society in transition. JC
