Oliver Assaya‘s “Something In The Air” blew me away.

The film centers around a few late teen/young adults in post 1968 (starting in 1971) France. I say post-1968 because the political stage set by that period of unrest serves as the backdrop for the film. The main characters are introduced as radical dissidents in high school, operating and executing various acts of civil disobedience. As the film continues, they are forced to leave France, and their lives progress, sometimes intersecting, sometimes not.

The scope of the film’s themes is remarkable. A primary theme I encountered was the relationship between radical politics and art. The main character, Gilles, grows from a staunch to a reluctant member of the radical society and, in a parallel, grows from an amateur painter to one driven by it. The portrayals of the artists in the film versus those more dedicated to their politics capture the basic identity question of the film – when does one know that this is what one needs to do? When is one being true to oneself, versus to society? The question of the comparison between individualism and socialism (when one does something solely for oneself, or for the good of society) and the artist’s relation thereof is still a worthwhile topic in today’s society. Read More…

Youth

The first feature film of Justine Malle, Louis Malle‘s daughter, is a good effort. In this very short feature, we follow a girl through her sexual awakening which sparks at the same time as her father acquires a disease which slowly destroys his brain.

It’s a promising film, but it has its flaws. The acting of the main male character wasn’t very believable, and at times the film drifts into over-sentimentality. The main character was quite good, however, and the film has some moments of extreme honesty about sexuality and dealing with death which juxtapose against the sentimentality of the score. Read More…

The fifty-sixth incarnation of the San Francisco Film Festival is hot on the tracks for (at the time of this writing) another week and a half, and Filmbalaya is here to tell you what you should see and what you shouldn’t necessarily spend your time on! Our healthy and entirely objective star system filters out the fat from the meat like a tennis racket panning gold… A very, very finely woven tennis racket that is. You can’t always afford a perfect panning system.

Anyway, you get the idea. This will be a living document, much like (hypothetically) the Constitution and Keith Richards. Read More…

What a better way to spend a beautiful, sunny San Francisco day than to watch some films at a film festival? With one exception it was well worth it! Here are a couple that I saw today, as well as Key of Life thrown in there for good measure.

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Day two, or, for me, Day 1, involved a frenzy of cinema-viewing. Sadly I have no murderous pain to report.

In all seriousness, the films I saw today were generally fantastic and overall incredible, and a testament to the SFIFF as a festival. Read More…

In The Fog

In The Fog is a difficult film to review. Aesthetically, it is an incredibly remarkable film. The cinematography is beautiful, with monochromatic shades dancing around intricate, long shots. The acting is quite good, and the Mise-en-scène is perfect. However, unfortunately the plot sneaks into the mix.

The film is about three people during World War II in Belarus, two of whom are trying to kill a third for his alleged role in the betrayal of a group of saboteurs. This is fine. However, the film progresses in the main storyline, which takes place basically over a day, and then through a series of flashbacks which barely do anything to elucidate the psychological background or the plot, and end up feeling meaningless and misplaced. Not to mention the main character’s constant, repetitive, and essentially unchanging claims of being innocent (“I wish they had killed me,” he explains four or five times in the exact same way), as well as moments which tread on nationalism badly damage this film. Great direction, great cinematography… perhaps the writing is in the end to blame.

Of note: the Romanian actor Vlad Ivanov plays a pretty interesting role as a Belorussian Nazi.

Showtimes for In The Fog: Fri, Apr. 26th – 6:30pm (PFA – Berkeley)

Sun, Apr. 28th – 6:30pm (New People)

Tue, Apr. 30th – 9:30pm (New People) Read More…

Robert Redford‘s new film surprised me. Whilst being very Hollywood in construction and character development, topically it is extremely contemporary and thought-provoking.

The film centers primarily around a young journalist (played by Shia Lebouf) and an aged ex-member of the Weather Underground in hiding, Jim Grant, played by Robert Redford. The young journalist wants nothing more than to make big headlines and get his name on the journalistic map, in the process uncovering Grant’s identity. Meanwhile Grant wanders around the north-eastern US, meeting people from his past. I won’t go into too much detail as to his motivations as it is one of the main plot aspects of the film.

As I said, stylistically it’s insignificant. Essentially every scene is an establishing shot, medium shots, close ups, and establishing shot, centering around conversation after conversation, if not running around and suspense. The acting is all rather good – I was particularly impressed by Shia Lebouf playing an actually complicated and serious character in a serious film. Read More…

Following my brief theoretical statement on the Romanian New Wave, I have assembled this collected basic guide to the Romanian New Wave. This is with the intent of encouraging people to see the films of this most note-worthy movement which has produced some films which I consider among the highest of filmmaking of the last decade, with forays as well into this decade.

The list is very likely far from complete, as this country’s output has only begun to find itself noticed by the rest of the world, and due to this, many of the good resources on the movement are only to be found in Romanian. Please feel free to comment if you find anything missing, or if you have any thoughts. Read More…