Alexandr Sokurov has again created the most astonishing images in the festival. He manipulates focus, lenses and image distortion, and perspective to draw a series of paintings that indirectly say something precise. In "Mother and Son," the camera is too close to its subject or capped with fish-eye lenses so that one cannot make out what one sees or so that what one sees curves into entropy. The path the eye takes to decipher the story between son and dying mother is ambiguous and unreliable; one's position or role vis a vis the image or environment changes. There is no stable frame. One must reinterpret according to one's internal sense of balance, as do the characters, as in life.
If you have been longing for Agnes Varda ("Vagabond") under
the influence of Cassavetes ("A Woman under the...") crossed with
Richard Linklater ("Slackers," "subUrbia"), and "Thelma
& Louise," see "Little Shots of Happiness." Well, someone
might've been longing for it. I didn't know I was till I saw the film.
Since I complained in my last column about men offering trips to Bratislava
or to love me without my body, things have been looking up. Walking with
me through the mists of a late night street, a man looked at me warmly and
offered to be my parking garage. (?!) This means, I suppose, that I am squarish,
thick in the middle, and that my high heels look like tires.
Best tip for surviving film festivals (from "Ueberwaching"):
when you're about to nod off in the theater, loop a shoelace around an overhead
fixture and tie the free end to a tuft of hair. It worked for the guy who
got the girl at the end.
Best tip for surviving WWII (from Claude Berri's "Lucie Aubrac"):
all Nazis have fabulous cheekbones and all French - even those in the Resistance
- have great hats.
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