Fat Girl (aka A Mo Soeur)

French/86 Minutes/2001/Not Rated

First let me say that I hate the American title of this film “Fat Girl.” It engenders every sentiment that this film is opposed to, at lest in my interpretation. The literal title is “For My Sister” which makes much more sense and is a more appropriate title for this touching, realistic depiction of adolescent sexuality, the definitions of womanhood, and the relationship of siblings.

The story is an old and simple one. Anais (Anais Reboux) and Elena (Roxane Mesquida) are two high-school age sisters on a summer vacation. Anais is overweight and plain while Elena is sleek and sexual. Elena is always smiling and bubbling, unconcerned. Anais is withdrawn and somber, living in an interior world. She sings to herself tragic songs of love lost and birds picking at her corpse. In once scene she moves between a wooden diving board and a metal ladder in a swimming pool treating each like a lover, saying things like “of course you're the only one” and asking the diving board if he is jealous. It is a beautiful and heartbreaking scene that is captured with tenderness and that is what makes “Fat Girl” one of my favorite films.

While on vacation Elena meets a handsome college boy, Fernando (Libero De Rienzo), who is also on vacation (from Italy) and they fall quickly into that awkward young love that is so poorly portrayed in cinema. Anais is both suspicious of and jealous of her sister's relationship. She shares a room with her sister and is privy to all her sister's secrets. When Elena has Fernando over Anais can't sleep for the noise. At times she watches curiously and at other times she is crying. Each of the characters are emotionally complex and treated with respect by director Catherine Breillat.

When Fernando is lying in bed with Elena trying to convincer her to make love, he says the things that all men are guilty of saying, “of course I'll respect you” and “you can show your love for me.” As corny or malicious as it may sound on paper, Fernando is not imbued with any ill intentions by the actor or director. He is infatuated with Elena and (like most men) would say anything to have her. His scenes with Elena are filled with mixed emotions and trepidation. She cries, she is unsure and is so totally human. She is young and a virgin and like all people (who are honest with themselves) she is afraid of sex and life after it. Part of the film's strength comes from exploring emotions of a child turned lover and the complexities that it entails.

Anais on the other hand manages to be both more cynical and more sensitive than her older sister. Her scenes alone are heartbreaking as she sits in familiar isolation living out her dreams while realizing how pitiful she is. She does not like her body (as many kids her age do not) but Breillat does not show her as disgusting or treat her as somehow less worthy of love and attraction than her sister. That is partly why I'm confounded by the English title. It is so utterly American where the film is most certainly not. In fact the film goes to emotional depths that are rare in cinema, especially between the sisters.

Anais and Elena fight like sisters but they also love like sisters. There relationship is complex. They yell at each other and call names. They slap one another and wound deeply with words as only a sibling can. But for every scene of violence and anger there are scenes of solidarity and love. There are tender scenes where they talk to each other like sisters, but more importantly like little girls. They recall their childhood and in one scene they talk about looking into one anothers' eyes and feeling complete. It is in these times that we realize that Anais isn't truly jealous or hateful, she loves her sister so much and her sister loves her that they have the explosive element only found among siblings. Perhaps what is saddest is Anais' fear that Fernando will replace her, that her sister will no longer need her around. Elena, after all, is her window to the world.

Anais in fact says she does not want to know her first lover well, that way they won't have to fall out of love and feel foolish, or the boy brag about his conquest. She seems already burned by love having never had it, carrying around the dark weight of someone twice her age. It may be “better to have loved and lost” but for Anais the thought of the loss overwhelms the desire for love, so she daydreams of loneliness and love forsaken. The resolution of her story is both terrifying and understandable and we realize that she has lost the only thing of importance to her as well as the thing she hates most.

The film turns tragic in the last half, with real adult consequences coming for the youths. Breillat deftly captures the shame that outsiders can bring to a sexual relationship, somehow implying that such simple love, such foolish innocence, are things for which we should feel embarrassed. In one confrontation with her mother Elena asks “I suppose you never had a first (lover)?” to which mother replies “this is not about me,” at once denying her own shame and the right to sexuality of her daughter. Breillat sets this up dispassionately as we look through the eyes of Anais. When she hears that her father wants to have Elena examined (to see if she is still a virgin) Anais says “I don't see why others think it is their business.”

The final scenes are quite a shock and I'm not sure that I like the “deus ex machina” approach to the resolution. It feels like Breillat may have said everything she wanted to say and needed a way to resolve one final thread. It is a case where something in real life would feel like grand and random misfortune but in the context of a film seems merely convenient. Whether this is a deficiency in storytelling or just a limitation of the medium I cannot yet decide. The film makes a strong statement I'm just not sure what exactly it is.

The power and uniqueness of Breillat's film is that it treats the girls honestly, never making them young adults (like Ellen Page in “Hard Candy”) or innocent children preyed upon by older men. They are autonomous, capable of love and being loved and expressing their sexuality. Granted, in many cases they do not realize the possible consequences of their actions but how many lovers begin just so. Part of growing up is experiencing and learning from those tentative steps into sexual independence and the worst thing that can happen is for someone else to come in and say “this is wrong, you should be ashamed.”

Perhaps I see in this film a lot of myself and that may sway my perspective. However, I do not think this is completely the case. The sensitive subject is handled in a reverent and respectful manner. It does not skimp on showing sexuality but never feels prurient or for titillation (an excellent contrast would be to the work of Larry Clark). Breillat may be better known for her “pornographic” depictions but that is yet another exertion of an outside morality that does not seek to understand but to judge. While the film is graphic it focuses on the emotions surrounding these decisions and their consequences rather than beautiful people necking for our pleasure. This film is highly recommended.

Not Rated: Mature Audiences, contains Graphic Nudity, Sexuality, and Brief Strong Violence Including a Rape, all involving teens

Cache (aka Hidden)

French/118 Minutes/2005/Rated R

“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” - Sigmund Freud

The literal English translation of the title “Cache” is “Hidden,” a better title and a more apt description. For just as the characters have hidden things from each other, so has Haneke hidden the real drama from the viewer.

The story is supposedly about a well-to-do French couple, Georges and Anne (Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche) who are terrorized by someone sending them tapes of the outside of their house. The tapes are accompanied by child-like drawings of violence. These pictures draw to mind an unresolved guilt of Georges' and when the tapes lead him to a childhood friend things start to unravel.

In “Cache” Haneke has intentionally made a film that is difficult and ambiguous. He shoots in excruciatingly long takes (as long as 3 minutes of a static shot) that force us to focus on what is occurring within the frame. Characters come and go within the frame and many times in wide shot where their encounters have no sound leaving us to make what we will of them. The viewer is made to feel as much the voyeur as the spy sending the tapes. Perhaps that is Haneke's intent.

Indeed many times we are unsure if we are watching the film itself, one of the tapes sent to Georges and Anne, or the filming of one of the tapes. In fact the first scene is a static shot of their house from the outside that lasts for three minutes before the characters start talking off screen and begin fast forwarding through the video. The film is very ambiguous and plays with the fourth wall in a similar way to Haneke's movie Funny Games.

“Cache” is not a movie to be watched but rather to be absorbed and thought about. When the film first ended and I sat down to write this review I was very unimpressed, however, the longer I thought about it (and admittedly trawled the message boards) the more the film seemed to bloom, peeling away layers that revealed the film that I did not think was there.

On the down side we are drawn almost too far outside the drama, the characters too isolated. In many ways Haneke's film is less a dramatic film than an observance. And the presence of some dramatic forward motion, some conflict that grows and is then resolved, is what differentiates a film from an assembled home movie. Unfortunately “Cache” falls closer to home movie than good movie and that is ultimately its undoing.

While “Cache” may grow upon reflection there is still much that could be done to make it less abstract and more engaging. The film forgets that film is a “show me” medium and would rather keep things so open to interpretation that the film ultimately says nothing significant. There is an interesting movie in here somewhere, but it feels too unfocused to make its mark. Not recommended (unless you're a film student).

Rated R for Brief Strong Violence (also contains brief nudity and language)

Mongol

Mongolian/120 Minutes/2007/Rated R

Mongol is a fascinating melting pot. Written and Directed by a Russian (Sergei Bodrov) with a Japanese main actor and all the dialog in Mongolian this 2007 Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Film was a triumph of multicultural filmmaking. Unfortunately the film doesn't quite live up to its promise.

Mongol follows the rise of lowly Temudgin who grows from a son of a tribal leader into a slave and finally ruler of all the Mongolian hordes. We know him today as Genghis Kahn. As interesting as this story may be, in the movie it isn't told all that effectively. The story feels episodic and tends to spend long stretches of film focusing on parts of Temudgin's life that are rather bland (he spends twenty minutes in the film sitting in a cage) and skips over ones that would be fascinating (instead of showing him building his army he just shows up in a sequence with his horde ready to go).

The acting is great. Temudgin is played by one of my favorite Asian actors, Tadanobu Asano (Ichi the Killer), and is instantly believable. His long suffering crafty wife, Borte (Khulan Chuluun), and blood brother Jamukha (Honglei Sun) all turn in great performances.

The cinematography and direction are some of the best I've seen in a while. The open fields, cracked deserts and rocky wastelands bring to mind John Ford and his use of Monument Valley. The environment is truly a spectacle and is alone worth the price of admission. There are some really unique camera angles too such as a POV shot from a sword and well assembled large scale battles.

The downside to all of this is that the writing is somewhat lacking. The script feels episodic and a majority of the movie features Temudgin being captured, running away and being captured again. The film frequently infers that he is watched over and favored by the gods with some inexplicable happenings (he falls into an icy pool and doesn't freeze, his chains mysteriously come off) but this feels like excessive mythologizing and smells of bad writing.

Once Temudgin decides to become the great leader of the Mongol people his army just appears with no explanation of how he convinced a band of men to join him. What are the roots of his dread-inspiring hooded troops with dual swords? The final scroll talks about a battle where a whole kingdom is laid to waste but we are never shown what happens. Add to all of this an anti-climactic final battle and you have a film that never comes together as more than the sum of its parts.

In the film's defense it was made on a relatively low budget ($20 Million) and Bodrov squeezes every dime out of the money and puts it on screen. As this is the first of a supposed trilogy perhaps the sequels will be a little more meaty, but as a standalone feature Mongol fails to live up to its potential. Grudgingly recommended for some great cinematography and acting.

Rated R for Sequences of Bloody Warfare

The Counterfeiters (aka Die Falscher)

German/99 Minutes/Rated R/2007

The Counterfeiters joins a respected list of both Holocaust survivor stories and prison camp anti-heroes. This film took home the 2007 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film as well as several international awards. That aside we've been told this story before, and much better.

The film, based on the book “The Devil's Workshop” puts us inside the largest counterfeiting scam ever documented. During WWII the Nazis wanted to ruin the economies of Britain and the US by flushing them with forged bills. To this end a group of artisans, printers and forgers were brought together in a concentration camp and forced to produce these bills. In return they were given privileges such as soft beds, better food, and (in one strange case) entertainment.

Our lead character is one Salomon “Sally” Sorowitsch the greatest counterfeiter perhaps ever. He lives high and well and is only caught when he falls into lazy dalliance with a client's wife. After he is captured he is sent to a concentration camp where he ingratiates himself with his captors by drawing portraits of them and their families. Eventually he is moved to Sachsenhausen where he is brought in to perfect the counterfeiting of Pounds and Dollars.

Sally is an adapter and prizes himself for his ability to survive. More than once we are treated to sequences that show that Sally is smart and perhaps low on scruples. He doesn't care that his work may lengthen the war and aid the Nazis, he just wants to eat well.

Sally finds his moral counterpoint, nemesis, conscience in Burger an expert printer who is determined to undermine Sally at every turn in the name of some higher cause. He's perfectly happy to sacrifice himself and the others in the project to deny the Nazis their collusion and aid. The battle of wits between Sally and Burger and Sally's machinations attempting to play the Nazis are the central stories here.

Unfortunately, while the film is well made and acted (with a great performance by Karl Markovics as Sally), it feels hollow. We never get the sense of guilt the counterfeiters are supposed to feel at their better position in the camps. In fact, very little of the outside is shown, perhaps a stab at realism, but the drama is the lesser for it. The film is brisk but never builds any real tension. Burger comes across as selfish and self-righteous. The end of Sally's arc feels forced the writer bestowing on him emotions that he has not shown throughout.

The film holds itself out as a story of survival which asks the question “is just surviving enough?” This has been addressed in many better films. One example that kept coming to mind was Lina Wertmuller's “Seven Beauties (1975)” where Giancarlo Giannini plays a pimp who must struggle to survive in a concentration camp and how his decisions reshape him. Also there's the great POW drama "Stalag 17" directed by Billy Wilder, starring William Holden as a Sally type of character. Both are much better than this one.

Ultimately “The Counterfeiters” fails to engage and never really gives us the tension, revelation or pay off it seems to think it gives. Back to film school for these guys. Not Recommended.

Rated R for Some Strong Violence, Brief Sexuality/Nudity and Language