By Boyd van Hoeij Jan 1, 2007, 8:53 GMT
It is that time of year again! People love lists and films, so each critic is almost obliged to make a Best Films of the Year list in December, and of course european-films.net critic and editor Boyd van Hoeij could not remain behind.
A scene from the first part of 'Taxidermia'. Photo by Lukács Dávid, Pohárnok Gergely, Siményi Gergely. All rights reserved.
Here he reveals his Top Ten (which, strangely enough, contains 12 titles) as well as some general thoughts on the European films of 2006. 'Volver'-apologists, Del Toro-defenders and lovers of 'Children of Men' better abstain from reading on:
Picking the best titles of the year is hard enough, especially given the fact that for european-films.net, all European commercially released 2006 titles are eligible, but it is simply impossible to see them all (just French titles number over 200 or 4 per week).
It is interesting that, as I wrote in my festival review of Venice, 2006 seems to have been a year in which it became clear how many able craftsmen work in European cinema and how few geniuses (at least this year).
It was also the year in which a very select group of films got a lot of attention (‘Volver,’ ‘Das Leben der Anderen’ ‘The Lives of Others,’ ‘The Wind That Shakes the Barley,’ ‘The Queen’) and all other European films were barely mentioned, if at all.
As often happens, those select few were almost exclusively made up of auteurs much beloved by critics and public alike and contained a disproportionate number of English-language productions.
France strangely failed to produce even one title that was much talked about outside of its country of origin this year, and though German cinema seemed to be on a roll, this was more on an artistic and critical level than anywhere else (titles such as ‘Das Leben der Anderen’ and ‘Requiem’ were handsomely made but never made much money outside of Germany, with the latter not even doing decent business in the Germany itself despite critical acclaim and a Silver Bear in Berlin).
The absence of these titles from my year-end list is not so much a protest against how fast a canon of “new great films” seems to be established and critics seem to rally around a few titles while leaving others aside, but genuinely reflects my opinions on these films (all of the above titles have contained things that do not work, see my reviews for details).
This year I was perhaps more out of synch with general praise than other years: two films that were critically acclaimed at Venice did not only leave me cold but actually annoyed me: ‘Nuovomondo’ ‘Golden Door and Children of Men.’
The winners at Berlin (Grbavica) and Cannes (‘The Wind That Shakes the Barley’) are well-made but so low-key that their punches (emotional and otherwise) are akin to those of a young girl, such as Ofelia from El laberinto del fauno (‘Pan’s Labyrinth’), another well-made film that keeps its protagonist at an arm’s length.
The following top ten list is of course guided by several principles, but it remains first and foremost a personal list and especially the ranking is almost arbitrary and could change depending on which day or hour I would be asked. It is also constructed on memories of first impressions, because I have not been able to see all films again in order to reassess them before assigning them a possible spot. The descriptions of the films might contain minor spoilers.
10. La science des rêves (‘The Science of Sleep’) 10. Indián a sestricka (‘Indian and the Nurse’)10. Börn (‘Children’)
Three films ended up at the bottom of the Ten Best Films of the Year list simply because it would be hard to imagine this list without them.
Michel Gondry’s flight of fancy La science des rêves (‘The Science of Sleep’) stars Mexican actor Gael García Bernal as Stéphane, a man of Mexican-French heritage who is really still a boy inside and who stars in his own cardboard cut-out dreams.
Some critics have dismissed the film saying it is too juvenile, but perhaps those critics have forgotten what a pleasure it is to look at the world through the innocent eyes of a child. Gondry’s film is exactly about the difficulty to retain something of our child-like sense of wonder in the harsh world of adulthood where sex and cynicism reign supreme. La science des rêves is a valentine for those who still believe in the magic of the imagination (something which El laberinto del fauno ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ also attempted, but where feelings seem to exist only on an abstract, existential plane, not as the sentiments of a particular person).
Not coincidentally, La science des rêves also stars unusual beauty Charlotte Gainsbourgh as Stéphane’s love interest, and Alain Chabat as his sex-obsessed co-worker; they also starred together as would-be lovers in the French comedy hit Prête-moi ta main ‘I Do,’ (which is worth a visit just for its Abba -The Cure opening scenes.) Dan Wlodarczyk’s Indián a sestricka (‘Indian and the Nurse’) is a star-crossed lover’s story told with an exquisite sense of time and place and an extraordinary attention to detail (much of which much be credited to Wlodarczyk’s direction and Jan Stehlík’s excellent screenplay).
Taking the exact opposite route of Baz Luhrmann’s orgiastic ‘Romeo and Juliet’ adaptation, Indián a sestricka is a low-key, small-scale story that is no less Shakespearean in its tragedy, but at the same time startlingly grounded in reality.
A Roma nurse and a Czech boy interested in American Indian lore fall for each other despite their differences, and what follows is an utterly familiar tale of trying to make the impossible work. Exactly because of this familiarity, the director makes it possible to enjoy each scene not for its narrative qualities, but for its tone, its acting and its mise-en-scene.
The Icelandic Foreign Language Oscar submission is the stark black and white drama Börn (‘Children’), from director Ragnar Bragason. Parent-offspring relations are not a new theme in Icelandic cinema (or even art in general), but Börn offers a fresh approach to the subject, with some wonderfully drawn and well-acted characters, and the black and white cinematography lending Iceland a look it has not sported before (despite the setting and obvious black-white contrasts, there is no snow in sight).
One of the most resonant scenes in any film this year is the scene in which tough kid Gardar (2007 Shooting Star Gísli Örn Gardarsson) visits the mother of his son, who is bullied at school. Just watch what they are saying (and not saying), and the way they move around each other like wounded animals. 9. La stella che non c’è (‘The Missing Star’)
Italian maestro Gianni Amelio’s return to form is called La stella che non c’è (‘The Missing Star’) and is a re-imagining of some characters from the Ermanno Rea novel La dismissione.
After the disappointing Le chiavi di casa (‘The Keys to the House’) that had some nice performances but no narrative force, here is a film whose narrative is shaped by a quest, but whose story is not about that quest but about the characters on it. Italian actor Sergio Castellito shows once again why he is considered one of the top actors of his generation in this first collaboration with Amelio, in which he stars as a steel factory technician who travels to China after an industrial machine is dismantled at an Italian plant and sold to the Chinese.
He alone seems aware that there is a small part missing, and he is willing to go through extraordinary length to insure that the machine will be complete. Tai Ling makes her debut as his translator and guide in a phenomenal performance, and cinematography by Luca Bigazzi is breathtaking.
08. Valkoinen kaupunki (‘Frozen City’)07. Maimuni prez zimata (‘Monkeys in Winter’)06. Dans Paris (‘Inside Paris’)
Börn (‘Children’) indicated one of the most prominent themes in European films this year in both its title and its contents. Besides Börn, parenthood and family relations were also the theme of the three films taking up the positions leading towards the top five: the stark Finnish drama Valkoinen kaupunki (‘Frozen City’), a cross between Scorcese’s ‘Taxi Driver’ and Dostoyevski’s ‘Crime and Punishment’; the Bulgarian Foreign Language Oscar submission Maimuni prez zimata (‘Monkeys in Winter’), an ‘The Hours’-like female triptych from Milena Andonova about motherhood; and Dans Paris (‘Inside Paris’), a homage to the French New Wave and a look at a dysfunctional family in Paris that is the third and by far best feature from writer-director Christophe Honoré, with the perfectly calibrated duo Romain Duris and Louis Garrel cast against type as brothers who are depressed (Duris) and whimsical (Garrel). In the Finnish film, which won the Europa Cinemas Label and the FIPRESCI Critics Prize at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, a father gets the short end of the stick in an ugly divorce and is only able to keep going because he loves his little ones unconditionally.
Tragedy will of course strike, and does so in an earth-shattering manner.
Director Aku Louhimies extrapolated the taxi-driving protagonist from a popular Finnish TV series, but its origins do in no way dilute Valkoinen Kaupunki’s force as a powerful cinematic experience.
Bulgaria will join the European Union on January 1, 2007 with Romania, and both countries have shown a surge of quality cinema off late that indicates that the cinematic heartland of the continent is shifting ever further eastwards. Maimuni prez zimata is three films for the price of one, with the segments only thematically connected, though this connection is a very strong one: motherhood. Writer-director Milena Andonova shows her capacity to fathom and make visible this cornerstone of our society in ways both old and new, and especially her work on the issues that unite the three separate stories is subtle yet unmistakable.
05. ‘Perfume: The Story of a Murderer’ 04. OSS 117 – Le Caire, nid d’espions (‘OSS117 -Cairo, A Spy’s Nest’)
Directors Tom Tykwer and Michel Hazanavicius proved in 2006 that it is possible to make intelligent big-budget entertainment in Europe. Both films are adaptations: Tykwer’s ‘Perfume: The Story of a Murderer’ is based on Patrick Süskind’s bestseller and Hazanavicius’ “OSS 117” is based on a series of spy novels and earlier films from the 1950s and 60s a la James Bond.
Both also benefit greatly from brilliant casting: Jean Dujardin (Brice de Nice) is perfect as the suave yet clueless OSS 117 (just think about that balance – it is beyond tricky) and Ben Whishaw’s role is an even more difficult one: not only is his Grenouille ugly and mostly mute, he is also completely amoral (and thus not naturally on the side of the audience), which Whishaw translates into a haunting pair of eyes that are ablaze with an unnatural intensity that is perfectly suited to the one obsessive quest that Grenouille feels he has to fulfill. Both films also neatly show off their big budgets but are thankfully aware that old-fashioned mechanical work is sometimes a better – if more demanding – solution than a simple stroke on the keyboard of a CGI animator.)
03. Quale amore (‘The Kreutzer Sonata – What’s Love?’)
Valkoinen kaupunki (‘Frozen City’), the number eight on this list, was inspired by Dostoyevski, and the previous film of Kaupunki’s director Aku Louhimies was Paha Maa, a modern-day update of a Tolstoy tale. The Russian literary influence – and particularly Tolstoy’s – is also at the basis of Quale amore (‘The Kreutzer Sonata – What’s Love?’), a shamelessly overlooked rough gem based on the novella The Kreutzer Sonata, which in turn was inspired by Beethoven’s Sonata of the same name.
The third feature film as a director of Maurizio Sciarra has at its heart another male standout performance with a difficult morality: Giorgio Pasotti stars as the narrator of his own tale of uxoricide, which updates Tolstoy’s original to modern times and is set in the Italian-speaking Swiss town of Lugano.
Unlike other films that are dominated by one great performance (Frears’ The Queen comes to mind), Sciarra and his crew provide equally brilliant work, including film editor Marco Spoletini, whose brilliantly condensed structure allows the story to develop speedily but never hastily and whose work is vital in drawing together Tolstoy’s and Sciarra’s themes.
Too many films this year indulged in over-long running times, weakening, sometimes fatally, potentially excellent material; Spoletini tells his story in under 100 minutes yet it feels as detailed as a novel.
Cinematographer Alessio Gelsini Torresi, TV host and model-turned-actress Vanessa Incontrada and Spanish thespian Andoni Gracia also make important contributions to what should be a quintessential arthouse hit but has been mostly overlooked.
02. ‘Reprise’
Like Dans Paris (‘Inside Paris’), the number six on this list, Norway’s Foreign Language Oscar submission Reprise is heavily influenced by the French New Wave but is not intimidated by it, nor displays a certain melancholy for those days (something which plagued Philippe Garrel’s Les amants réguliers ‘Regular Lovers’ to an unhealthy extent).
This might have something to do with the age of its directors: Christophe Honoré, who directed ‘Dans Paris,’ and Joachim Trier, the director of ‘Reprise,’ where both born in the 1970s and can approach the nouvelle vague not as something of memory but a type of art of the recent past that, if it turns out to be your favorite genre, has likely got more to do with its intrinsic qualities than with your memory of the events surrounding it.
‘Reprise’ is indeed a reprise of themes of the nouvelle vague (it’s plot, about two would-be literary artists and a girl is reminiscent of ‘Jules et Jim’) and also of some of its methods (black and white photography, hand-held camerawork, playful montage), but what makes it fresh is not only its setting but its conscious realization that it takes place in the here and now (much the same could be said for ‘Dans Paris’).
Featuring a series of completely unaffected performances from a cast of young Norwegian talents and standout photography and editing from Jakob Ihre and Olivier Bugge Coutté respectively, ‘Reprise’ is – almost – the best film of the year.
01. ‘Taxidermia’
The best film of the year is again a triptych and again about family ties (amongst a million other things), both like the Bulgarian Maimuni prez zimata (‘Monkeys in Winter’), the number seven on the list. ‘Taxidermia’s country of origin, Hungary, even sounds similar to Maimuni’s, but that is where all similarities end, especially since, unlike the Bulgarian film, ‘Taxidermia's focus is on men instead of women.
The second film of director György Pálfi confirms what was but a suspicion (though a strong one) with his first film ‘Hukkle’: he is a visionary director who is not afraid to tell his stories in unconventional ways, rummaging around in their themes and characters like an old man in his overstuffed tool shed, looking for something only to realize that the process of looking and searching (and letting the audience participate in it) is a lot more interesting than finding whatever it is what was being looked for in the first place. (Dans Paris starts out in this fashion for its first half-hour, reflecting the depressed state of mind of Duris’s character in the story structure before settling for a more conventional narrative style.) ‘Taxidermia’ does not have head or tail (though it has a lot of heads and one very significant tail – on a baby boy) but it’s power is not diminished by it but actually amplified: its interconnected tales of three generations of men is about everything and nothing, though what I seemed to distil from its 90 minutes (again a short running time! yippee!) where three themes – also interconnected -- close to every man’s (or most men’s anyway) heart: sex, food and bodily health and prowess. It is possible, however, to discover completely different themes in this film, perhaps even polar opposites. In some films this may be grating, but in ‘Taxidermia’ it is but one of its wonders. It is the best film of 2006.
The “should be on the 2006 Best Film list but can’t be”:-Nue propriété (‘Private Property’) (technically a 2007 release)-Un jour d’été (‘A Summer Day’) (a terrific TV film that played at various festivals) 2006 honorable mentions: Das Leben der Anderen (‘The Lives of Others’), Volver, ‘The Wind That Shakes the Barley,’ Falkenberg Färval (‘Farewell Falkenberg’), La noche de los girasoles (‘Night of the Sunflowers’), Lucy, Anche libero va bene (‘Along the Ridge’), Langer Licht (‘Northern Light’), Le passager (The Passenger), E se domani... (‘And If Tomorrow...’), Sehnsucht (‘Longing’), Requiem, Unser täglich Brot (‘Our Daily Bread’), Drømmen (We Shall Overcome), La fille du juge (‘My Dad Is into Terrorism’), Ne le dis à personne (‘Tell No One’), El laberinto del fauno (‘Pan’s Labyrinth’) 2006 biggest disappointments: Indigènes (‘Days of Glory’), Nuovomondo (‘Golden Door’), Children of Men, L’amico di famiglia (‘The Family Friend’), Winterreise (‘Winter Journey’), Il caimano (‘The Caiman’)
Worthwhile 2005 films that I only saw in 2006: Romanzo criminale (‘Crime Novel’), Die grosse stille (‘Into Great Silence’), Polumgla, Garpastum, Grounding - Die letzten Tage der Swissair (‘Grounding - The Last Days of Swissair’)
Reprint courtesy of Norwegian Film Institute and European films.net
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