Spotlight: 30th Fantasporto
Fantasporto 2010’s closing film, The Crazies
Fantasporto Closes with The Crazies
06/03/2010
The 30th edition of Fantasporto closed with the Portuguese premiere of Breck Eisner’s entertaining remake of George A. Romero’s The Crazies. Prior to the screening, the winners of the jury awards were announced.
Philip Ridley’s Heartless was the big winner in the main competition, picking up Best Film, Best Director and the Best Actor award for Jim Sturgess. The Best Screenplay award went to La Horde.
In the Director’s Week, the jury awarded Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank the Best Film and Best Screenplay Awards. Pater Sparrow picked up the Best Director prize for his interpretation of a Stanislav Lem story, 1. In the Orient Express section, Park Chan Wook’s Thirst, which shared the Grand Prix at last year’s Cannes Film Festival with Fish Tank, picked up the Best Film award.
IFG Inspiration Award Winner First SquadThis was the first year the festival featured the International Film Guide Inspiration Award, which went to First Squad, directed by Yoshiharu Ashino.
Screening over 400 features and shorts, Fantasporto once again asserted its position as Europe’s premiere festival for fantasy and horror. Most screenings played to a full audience, leaving the festival with healthy attendance figures across its entire eight-day run.
FANTASPORTO 2010 AWARDS
Main Section
Best Film
Heartless, by Philip Ridley
Best Director
Philip Ridley, for Heartless
Best Screenplay
Arnaud Bordas, Yannick Dahan, Stéphane Moassakis, Nicolas Peutafallit and Benjamin Rocher, for La Horde
Best Actor
Jim Stugess, Heartless
Best Actress
Linzey Cocker, Salvage
Special Effects Award
La Horde
Jury Special Award
Deliver Us From Evil, by Ole Bornedal
Directors’ Week
Best Film
Fish Tank, by Andrea Arnold
Best Director
Pater Sparrow, for 1
Best Screenplay
Andrea Arnold, for Fish Tank
Best Actor
Zóltan Mucsi, 1
Best Actress
Elena Anaya, Hierro
Jury Special Award
Ward no 6, by Karen Shakhnazarov and Aleksandr Gornovsky
Orient Express
Best Film
Thirst, by Park Chan-wook
Megan Fox in Karyn Kusama’s Jennifer’s Body
Fright Night
05/03/2010
With only Jennifer’s Body and The Book of Eli – where the apocalypse goes biblical – representing mainstream US cinema, Fantasporto opened itself to a wealth of European films from the last year. Very much to the fore was horror. Veteran director Juraj Herz unveiled his latest film T.M.A. A variation on the creepy old house story, it sees a young artist returning to the house he grew up in, prior to his parent’s death in a car crash and his sister’s entry to a psychiatric institute. The house has a chequered past and soon ghosts, both real and imagined, haunt the artist.
The director of the unnerving 1960s surrealist classic, The Cremator, Herz is a skilled director and conjures up a sense of unease with little effort. Unfortunately, the script, which is creakier than the old house’s floorboards, would have benefited from more originality. Nevertheless, what scares there are remain effective and the performances are uniformly good.
Juraj Herz’s T.M.AJose Luis Alemán may have put more effort into his sizably budgeted (estimated at €30 million) chiller, The Valdemar Inheritance, but once again, little of it was spent on script development. The film has been shot in two parts, but this first instalment feels like little more than an overblown – and overlong – monologue. Another old house has landed on the market (while the rest of the world suffers under the economic downturn, supernatural real estate is obviously experiencing a boon time) and two antiquities experts have disappeared shortly after arriving at the property in order to value it. A third is despatched, but en route meets the head of the trust responsible for the estate, who embarks on a history of the property, which takes up the rest of the first part’s running time and climaxes in a séance in the presence of Aleister Crowley and Bram Stoker. Although the film’s production values are impressive and the performances, aside of a momentary descent into overacting, capture the essence of the times, the films pacing is constipated. Part two may offer more thrills, but the nagging suspicion remains that one film may have sufficed.
Jose Luis Alemán’s La Herencia ValdemarBetter is Sauna, a ghost story which takes place in 1595, at the end of the Finnish-Russian war, as a group of soldiers traverse the boundary that separates the two countries, marking out the exact division of territory. Following the brutal murder of an innocent man and the desertion of his young daughter in an underground chamber, two war-mongering brothers chance upon a village at the centre of a swamp. A sauna lies on the outskirts, which appears to be able to wash away all sins, but at a terrible price.
Antti-Jussi Annila’s impressive sophomore feature is rich in atmosphere, conjuring up an oppressive sense of dread from its opening few minutes. At no point is the tension allowed to ease, resulting in a film whose air of claustrophobia is suffocating, building towards a terrifying final act. The horror is suggested rather than explicitly displayed, with many of the characters despatched off screen. It is a world where even the most innocent carry the burden of the guilty and suffer as a result.
Ole Bornedal’s Deliver Us From EvilNightwatch director Ole Bornedal also delivers a taut, nerve-wracking thriller with Deliver Us From Evil. When the socially maladjusted, alcohol and drug abusing brother of a small Danish town’s latest inhabitants kills an elderly inhabitant in a road accident, the local community decide to punish the culprit. Takking refuge with his brother, the family soon find themselves pitted against the entire town, with years of petty squabbles and grievances causing further mayhem.
With more than a nod to Peckinpah’s more elemental Straw Dogs, Bornedal’s film is a stylish exploration of the primal nature of humanity, which lurks beneath the thin veneer of civilisation. Played solely for thrills, there is a sense that this territory has been covered with more intellectual rigour by Michael Haneke in recent years. But the austere Austrian filmmaker would balk at making something quite so entertaining.
Jim Sturgess in Philip Ridley’s HeartlessWith The Reflecting Skin and The Passion of Darkly Noon, painter, playwright and director (not to mention screenwriter of expressioninstic gangster bio-pic, The Krays) Philip Ridley has carved an interesting career as a filmmaker. His latest film, Heartless is no less original. Jim Stugess is excellent as the scarred photography who believes that a recent spate of vicious gang violence is the work of some underworld forces. When his mother a burned to death in front of him, he signs a pact with the devil in order to improve his life, but at a terrible cost.
Ridlely excels at discomfort, employing a blackly humorous tone in depicting modern London life. Violence is less a cancer blighting the city than a part of its make-up, a virulent and incurable force coursing through the arteries of the more economically deprived areas. Overflowing with ideas, the film ultimately overstretches itself, but there is no denying Ridley’s ambition and the success with which he hits most of his targets.
Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et La Bêtte
Shelter from the Storm
04/03/2010
The general quality of new films notwithstanding, a retrospective programme in a festival is always a guarantee that audiences are going to see something good. Littered among the new releases at Fantasporto this year, the selected French cinema retrospective was welcome for maintaining some link with the Fantasporto’s main themes.
Titles ranged from Jean Renoir’s Boudou is Saved from Drowning, Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour, Jean-Jacques Benieux’s Diva and, taking a more lateral approach to national cinema, Luis Buñuel’s That Obscure Object of Desire (an odd choice perhaps, but its presence was appropriate as one of the main festival restaurants, Guarany, resembled the location that Fernando Rey socialised with his friends in Buñuel’s earlier Tristana).
Fantasy and science fiction was well represented by four films. Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et La Bêtte and Orphée screened in pristine prints. The former is one of cinema’s most magical films, intended to bring a little innocence back into the French populace’s lives, following the bloodshed and horror of World War II. The beast’s lair, from the famous corridor where wall torches are held by human arms that come to life whenever anyone passes, to the fireplace friezes and statues that express emotion, is a magical place. With the simplest of tricks – slow motion, playing film backwards – Cocteau effortlessly creates a sensuous dreamworld.
Jean Luc Godard’s AlphavilleA similar effect is achieved in Orphée, the director’s re-imagining of the Greek myth. Jean Marais, Cocteau’s partner and a central presence in his film work, is statuesque in the title role, more an Adonis than an actor. A more complex and demanding film than La Belle et La Bêtte, Cocteau’s sly updating, with its mockery of art movements and the role of the artist in society, remains a visual treat, as characters pass between reality and the underworld.
Eddie Constantine was arguably never cooler than in Godard’s Alphaville. As the private dick caught up in a conspiracy in an Orwellian future, he radiates menace and charm in equal measure. Whether Anna Karina gives her finest performance here is open to what one thinks of her other roles Godard’s (Bande à part remains my favourite). The director is at his most playful here, although he still succeeds in presenting one of the genre’s most philosophical and cerebral entries. His representation of a future Paris is also a remarkable achievement for a film produced on such a limited budget.
René Laloux’s La Planèt SauvageHaving not seen Pierre Lalou’s La Planet Sauvage for over 20 years, its return to the big screen was a welcome surprise. With its relaxed attitude to sexuality (the film is, after all, French), beautifully realised worlds and narrative complexity, it still feels fresh. Even the music, which falls shy of the period’s more psychedelic excesses, would still be at home as additional tracks on Pink Floyd’s ‘The Piper at the Gates of Dawn’.
Jin-mo Ju and In-seong Jo in Ha Yu’s A Frozen Flower
Orient Express
03/03/2010
This year’s selection of Asian features for the Orient Express strand of Fantasporto could hardly be more diverse, from martial arts and swordplay, through to horror and gross-out comedy. Ha Yu’s A Frozen Flower falls somewhere between the recent glut of high-end swordplay films, from Hero to Red Cliff, and the more austere Korean period costume dramas, whose high point remains E-J Yong’s Untold Scandal.
The King of Goryeo, an outpost of the Mongolian Yuan dynasty, finds his position under threat because of his fruitless marriage. Feeling no attraction to his wife, he has never consummated their marriage, preferring to fulfill his physical desires with his head bodyguard, Hong-rim. When faced with a possible revolt from court officials, he orders Hong-rim to sleep with his wife, so continuing the royal lineage. However, Hong-rim and the Queen soon fall in love, incurring the jealousy and wrath of the king, who takes brutal revenge against them.
Ha Yu’s opulent production cannot hide a po-faced approach to the story. What begins as a slightly camp tale of the love affair between the King and his protector soon transforms into a series of steamy sex scenes between Hong-rim and the Queen, before the director builds towards an action-packed, if ultimately over-the-top, finale. A little humour, accepting the occasional absurdity of the narrative, might have made the film less unintentionally comical.
Iko Uwais in Gareth Evans’ MerantauA strange combination – a Welsh director highlighting Indonesia’s indigenous martial art form – makes for a thoroughly entertaining genre action film in Merantau. Gareth Evan’s sophomore feature may tell a familiar story, but the energy of his direction and the engaging central performance of Iko Uwais make for a thrilling ride.
Merantau is the Indonesian word for the journey every grown boy must make in order to become a man. For Yuda (Iwais), this rites of passage sees him leave his rural home for the city. Upon his arrival saves a woman from a group of hoodlums, becoming embroiled in a criminal gang’s plans to kidnap young women and sell them as sex slaves in Europe. With his impressive skill at Silat Harimau, a local form of combat, he takes on the gang and any one else who should dare to cross him.
A more efficient film than Ong Bak, to which it bears some similarities, Merantau is a fast-paced and skilfully made feature, which should see some cross-over success internationally. Like most martial arts films, the narrative is less important than the individual fight scenes, but Evans’ injects enough humour and warmth into all the characters, ensuring a degree of emotional engagement.
Naoyuki Tomomatsuta & Yoshihiro Nishimura’s Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein GirlThough not to everyone’s taste, Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl is the festival’s most entertaining film so far. It is certainly its grossest. Taking its cue from early Sam Raimi, the film opens with the despatching of three zombie schoolgirls by the film’s heroine, Vampire Girl. While one girl’s face is peeled off like a orange, the second is shredded by a voracious skull. The third is then amputated and finally decapitated by two chainsaw-like hands made of solid blood. And that’s just the first five minutes…
Naoyuki Tomomatsuta & Yoshihiro Nishimura’s film works, like the Itchy and Scratchy cartoons in The Simpsons, because it is so extreme. This is violence as pantomime, with a narrative that only adds to the humour, particularly in the stereotyping of Japanese youth culture. There is little here to offend (in contrast to Tom Six’s The Human Centipede, with its story of an ex-Nazi surgeon who conjoins two woman and a man, forming one long digestive tract). Even the the representation of ganguro gangs - a Japanese sub-culture that plays up to an afro-American stereotype - is extreme to the point of ridiculous.
Not suprisingly, the story makes little sense. Vampire Girl eventually faces her foe, who was transformed from the head of an annoying girl gang, by her demented chemistry teacher father, into some hybrid of Shelley’s monster and Tetsuo (whose second sequel is also playing at Fantasporto). Not that narrative coherence matters. At the screening I attended, there were cheers and laughter accompanying the bloodletting; the sheer stupidity and excessiveness of it all being the reason for watching it.
