2007 Fall Season
At Reuther High School
Water * Sept. 6-9
Plagued by rioting and death threats during production, Mehta’s Water
is an extravagantly beautiful period drama that daringly addresses one
of the more divisive issues in Indian culture: the religiously proscribed
oppression of Hindu widows. Mehta pulls no punches in depicting the
shockingly unjust treatment of Hindu widows, many of them prepubescent
girls, that continues to this day. But the film is no shrill, anti-
Hindu polemic with a feminist ax to grind. With the same thought-provoking
mixture of passion, insight, and cultural sensitivity she brought
to the previous films in her Elemental Trilogy, Fire (1996) and Earth
(1999), Mehta now illuminates the plight of Hindu widows in this richly
compelling and heartbreaking film. The film focuses on the story of
eight-year-old Chuyia, the widow of a much older husband she barely
met. Chuyia must leave her family and go into exile with other widows
in a run-down ashram. Here she’ll live out the rest of her life – bald,
destitute, and shunned – as custom dictates in India, circa 1938. Water
serves a cathartic purpose throughout the film, which mostly takes
place in and along the river, where the characters seek spiritual renewal.
Thanks to Mehta’s gracefully assured writing and directing, none of this
metaphorical imagery ever feels forced or unduly obvious. Indeed, she
never lets the film’s sociopolitical content overwhelm her dramatically
potent narrative and vividly drawn characters, brought to immensely
sympathetic life by
a top-notch cast.
2006 Vancouver
Film Critics Circle:
Best Director, Best
Actress. (India/Canada,
2005) Director:
Deepa Mehta.
Hindi language. 117
min.
La Moustache *
Sept. 21-23
Important: Due to scheduling conflicts, we are not able
to offer a Thursday showing for La Moustache. As lways,
patrons are allowed to attend one of the other four
showings. The Reuther HS auditorium is large and will
easily accommodate Thursday patrons at other showings.
At the beginning of this elegant
suspense yarn, a Parisian architect
teases his wife with the idea
of shaving off the mustache he’s
had most of his adult life. She
claims she wouldn’t recognize
him without it, but when he does
indeed take the razor to his upper
lip, her reaction turns out to be quite different and far more disturbing.
Adapting his 1986 book, well-known French novelist and screenwriter
Emmanuel Carrère has fashioned an absorbing and provocative thriller
in La Moustache, his first narrative feature as director. Marc gamely
waits, in vain, for Agnès to notice his newly hairless lip. She betrays not
the slightest reaction, and when pressed on the matter insists he never
had a mustache. Friends and colleagues are similarly oblivious to the
change in Marc’s appearance, and he suspects Agnès has masterminded
an elaborate practical joke. But his suspicions take on a darker tinge as
days go by. Intuiting that he’s experiencing something beyond logic, he
doubts his own eyes. Overhearing her plans to hospitalize him, he flees
the country. The concise film enters unexpected territory, physically
and psychologically in its final, Hong Kong-set section. Marc immerses
himself in calming views of the harbor, the crowds’ orderly bustle and,
especially, the lulling back-and-forth of the ferry. With one last surprise
before closing credits, Carrère poses questions about the untranslatable
places in our emotional lives and how the existential fact of separateness
can threaten agreed-upon roles — especially in marriage. La Moustache
uses sly wit and foreboding to deconstruct notions of self in its portrait
of a close shave with insanity. 2005 Cannes film Festival: Label Europa
Cinemas. (France, 2005) Director: Emmanuel Carrère. French language.
86 min.
Army Of Shadows *
Oct. 25-28
Army of Shadows, Melville’s exciting 1969 film of the French Resistance
during World War II, has been newly restored and has been released
in the U.S. for the first time. It is based on the novel by Joseph Kessel
(Belle de Jour) and on the experiences of director/writer Melville, who,
like Kessel, was a member of the Resistance. This is not a war film. It
is about a state of mind. Rarely has a film shown so truly that place in
the heart where hope lives with fatalism. It is not a film about daring
raids and exploding trains, but about cold, hungry, desperate men and
women who move invisibly through the Nazi occupation of France.
Their army is indeed made of shadows: They use false names, they
have no addresses, they can be betrayed in an instant by a traitor or an
accident. They know they will probably die. Playing average citizens
in continual jeopardy, the cast is excellent. Melville maintains a taut
suspense throughout. Muted colors reflect the loss of freedom under the
Nazis. Melville’s depiction of the intricate details of the shadowy world
of the resistance network makes Army of Shadows a riveting historical
film noir. 2006 New York Film Critics Circle Awards: Best Foreign
Film. (France, 1969) Director: Jean-Pierre Melville. English, German,
French languages. 145 min.
The Italian *
Nov. 8-11
After a number
of short films and
documentaries,
Kravchuk’s The
Italian is a confidently
assured debut
feature about
a young boy in an
isolated, grimly
depressing Russian
orphanage. The
picture captures
with a piercing
sympathy the ambiguous state of post-Glasnost Russia. Vanya is a sensitive
but guileful lad who gets chosen for adoption by an Italian couple,
hence acquiring the nickname “the Italian” by the envious kids around
him. Although the thought of living in the warm climate of Italy with
loving foster parents is more appealing than the cold, dark confines
of the orphanage, Vanya gets caught up in the idea of finding his own
birth mother. After receiving some assistance escaping, he sets out on a
trek (with the institution administrators in hot pursuit) that takes him
on a Dickensian quest to find his true home. The Italian is a beautifully
modulated film. After spending the first quarter establishing the
inner hierarchy of the institution, where the children make extra money
through thieving, pimping and prostitution, Kravchuk then deftly illustrates
how Vanya learns from this lifestyle ways to improve his own lot.
Rather than corrupting him, it teaches him how to demand something
better. Vanya moves undaunted through this world of treachery in order
to find some compassion. It’s remarkably touching without ever becoming
maudlin. 2005 Berlin International Film Festival: Best Feature
Film. (Russia, 2005) Andrei Kravchuk. Russian language. 90 min.
Vodka Lemon * Dec. 6-9
In the mountains of a
post-Soviet Armenia, a
small village attempts to
eke out a living despite its
blistering poverty. At the
center of Saleem’s story is
Hamo, an ex-soldier who
makes daily trips to the
cemetery to visit the grave
of his wife and report the
latest news of their sons’
embarrassments. It’s here that he repeatedly runs into Nina, a woman
who works at a vodka lemon stand and similarly makes the daily trip to
the burial site to visit her deceased husband. Their lengthy meeting is
intercut with lovely and eccentric scenes of underdevelopment: Hamo
haggles over his furniture, a woman turns to prostitution, and others
wonder if their lives were better under communism. Though these
people are clearly depressed by their poverty, Vodka Lemon itself is far
from dreary. In a sequence reminiscent of Roman Polanski’s existential
short Two Men and a Wardrobe, Hamo sells a dresser to a couple, whose
inability to carry the piece of furniture triggers a series of comic events.
Equally wonderful is the closing sequence: When a man inadvertently
confounds Hamo and Nina with a simple question and successfully
lifts them out of their rut. A confident Saleem mirrors and reveals the
beauty and perseverance of life in the mundane and absurd. Anyone
who can powerfully evoke the ecstasy of lovemaking with a shot of gently
falling snow is a talent to watch. 2004 Mons International Festival
of Love Films: Grand prize. (Armenia, 2003) Director: Hiner Saleem.
Armenian, Kurdish, Russian, French languages. 90 min.
