Hunting and Gathering, by Claude Berri (2007)

This movie didn't quite go where I thought it would, and that's a good thing. There seems to be a type of movie where a girl gets caught between a bad boy and a nice guy, and she becomes the prize (normally for the bad boy, much to the nice guy's disgust). Philibert Marquet de la Tubelière (Laurent Stocker) is definitely the nice guy: he rescues a damsel in distress (Audrey Tatou as Camille, who is freezing to death in her garret) and puts her up in his rather opulent apartment, to nurse her back to health. He dresses foppishly - bow ties and an exquisite red velvet (or maybe corduroy) jacket - stutters and has some sort of aristocratic background. He has his flaws - an unwillingness to make much of himself, no "take charge" attitude. Franck (Guillaume Canet) has all the trappings of the bad boy - motorcycle, leather jacket, loud music, random women and a job as a chef. Yes, he visits his dear old grandmother every week, but begrudges every minute and comes back in a foul mood - a contrast with Philly taking in a random stranger.

But things don't go the way I thought they would. For a start, Camille is not this perfect women they fight over - she's almost anti-social (at least, that's her claim about herself, but it doesn't really come through). She too is an under-acheiver: there are many suggestions (without evidence) that she is smart, but works as a cleaner. Sure, Franck cleans up his act and turns in to a genuinely decent guy (which had me wondering - if all Camille wanted was to turn him into a decent guy to have as a mate, why not pick the fellow who is decent to start with). Turns out he (Philly) is not interested: he's got all googly eyed over another girl, Sandrine, and isn't even in the contest. During the course of the movie, he goes from being this nerdy stutterer to stand-up comedian (Stocker is a comedian in real life).

But the thing I liked was that instead of Franck winning his prize, she turns out to be a bit more independent in her attitudes: it is Franck who has to plead for something more than sex.

Update: World Cinema Showcase

Film watching has gone a little awry, as me week got away on me a little. I have managed to see three movies, but none can be the subject of a post in their own right. One is because I simply did not like it: Terence Davies' 1988 movie Distant Voices, Still Lives had an amazing write up as "one of the greatest of British movies", but I found it too depressing. It is set in Liverpool, and tells the story of a family through a generation, starting around WWII. Instead of a conventional narrative, the movie is more like edited high-lights (or low-lights, to be more accurate) - a friend with more technical command of film speak than me says it is "elliptic" in style. The old generation was subjected to what seems to be unyielding violence and rage from the patriarch. The new generation seems a little better - but there are some guys shaping up to be just as bad. And the singing! The characters seemed to be singing the whole way - sometimes the song chosen would be an ironic under-cutting or setting for a scene but my basic problem was that there was far too much of it.

The other two movies leave me with a different problem: they are very visual and I'm not sure I can say much about them. Southland Tales is the new movie from Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko). People seemed to hate it - critics and the movie going public, but I kind of liked its madness. I was talking to someone last night about the big-scale madness of the Russian movie Nightwatch - it shares something with Southland Tales, which builds up to the end of the world, from a variety of sources - neo-Marxist terrorists, war veterans and a breach of the space-time continuum were the most obvious. Meanwhile, people still like to have a good time, so there's lots of pop stars and pornstars - it is a carnivalesque apocolypse.

Then there is Holy Mountain, directed and written by and starring Alejandro Jodorowsky, maker of cult movies. His first major movie, the psycho-religious western El Topo was on earlier in the week but I had to miss it. As the title suggests, religion plays a part in The Holy Mountain - the latter part is clearly some sort of quest towards immortality. There is a group of nine - all but two live on one of the planets - the other two are the leader/alchemist and the fellow who looks like Jesus. One phase is the loss of self - which they achieved by having plaster mannequins of themselves and destroying them. When they have to count the number of members, they have become sufficiently selfless to fail to count themselves, so "one is missing" - then they see themselves reflected in some water and decide "that missing person has drowned". And this is the most sensible part of the movie! The Onion says this is "all in service of a typically Jodorowskian call to action, urging us to abandon fantasy and embrace reality".

There is lots of blood, of mutiliation, of focus on sexual organs and function (but no actual sex), of disabled people, of things that couldn't possibly happen (e.g. a string of birds flying out of someone's body) and the general wierd. Three scenes show how weird things can get: one has a bunch of toads dressed up in armour as part of a circus (which gets blown up); another sees the Christ like figure wake up surrounded by a multititude of his likenesses cast out of some edible substance (he eats the face out of one) and the third sees the Alchemist turn this fellow's excrement into gold ("You are excrement. You can change yourself into gold."). I think that this first half was the mad bad world at its worst, the one that provokes the climb up holy mountain.

But the end shows such a pilgrimage has no point: the holy mountain is just a myth, not real.

On The Edge of Heaven, by Faith Akin (2007)

This was a much more sombre movie, quite a shift from seeing Outsourced just half an hour earlier. Gone was the exuberant sound track (this movie has hardly any sound at all) and fast pace. Instead, death predominates - the two central sections were announced off by reference to deaths and then showed how those deaths happened. I'm sure there was more going on than I was aware of, because I'm not really up with the current situation of Turks in Germany (the central concern of this movie).

In the first main section, "The death of Yeter", Ali Aksu (Tuncil Kurtiz) has moved from Turkey to Bremen, in Germany. He's a widower and pensioner and, it seems, lonely. He does a deal with Yeter (Nursel Köse) by which she will stop being a hooker and live with him if he pays her the same as she'd earn on the street. He's an unpleasant drunk, but luckily this particular segment of the movie was not long. I'm not sure why, but after Yeter dies, Ali's son Nejat (Baki Davrak) tries to find Yeter's estranged daughter, Ayten (Nurgül Yesilçay). This search provides the only slightly humurous element to the movie, as she ends up in his house, possibly without him ever knowing it - the movie ends with Nejat out on the Black Sea coast wanting to re-connect with his dad.

To say how Ayten was in Nejat's house would be to give too much away. She is in some sort of political movement struggling against the Turkish Government: it has decided she's a terrorist. She flees to Bremen to find her mother - I think there is even one point where their paths cross - but instead finds Lotte (Patrycia Ziolkowska), who takes her in to her home and to her heart. The happiness is not to last: sheer bad luck sees Ayten deported back to Turkey, where she's imprisoned. Lotte devotes her life to seeking Ayten's freedom, much to her mum's displeasure. But bad luck intervenes yet again, and there's another death. Or maybe it wasn't luck, maybe it was a death ordained by events Ayten had triggered.

Outsourced, by John Jeffcoat (2006)

I'd never heard of this director - not surprising when you see his one previous effort, Milk is listed on IMDB with no reviews, no discussion, nothing. But the premise sounded entertaining so I went along, making this my first movie of the World Cinema Showcase.

I'm so glad I went - the title and poster give much of the plot away, but give no indication of how much of a light-hearted comedy would be provided. Todd is the "Fulfilment Manager" of a Seattle-based firm which sells "kitsch to rednecks" i.e. patriotic memorabilia to America, such as big foam blocks of cheese to wear on their heads or cowboy hats emblazoned with the stars and stripes or a hot dog toaster. As is the modern trend with many phone-based work, Todd finds out that his work has been outsourced to India: his job is to go out to a town near Mumbai and make the new team work.

It is obvious he's never been to this part of the world: I love the way he hits Mumbai airport, is completely bemused by the hordes of drivers with signs waiting for their passengers. Instead of going to the taxi chit desk, he wanders out to the taxis and is mobbed by all those drivers who don't yet have fares. There is at least a football field sized lot filled with taxis.

His task: to make the team of Indian telephone operators sound like those they're selling the product and get their time on each call down to unfeasibly low levels.The moral is as old as the hills: when in Mumbai, do as the Mumbai-ites do. Until he does, he's unhappy with things like this happening and is no good at getting his new workers on board (although watching his culture shock was amusing). Only when he immerses himself in holi (the festival of colours) by retaliating on those who bomb him with coloured powder do things start to come right. He responds to his new team as regular people, becomes friendly with the fellow he's training to replace him and calms his fiercest critic, Asha (Ayesha Dharker)Ultimately, the movie is a sort of romantic comedy, so we can't expect too much by way of a searing commentary on globalisation, but I doubt many would watch the amazing job Todd's team of workers did to meet their impossible target and not at least wince when the inevitable happens: if this team has only been chosen because they equate to "eight heads for the price of one", then when "twenty heads for the price of one" can be found, they'll be out of a job. I say a sort of rom-com because there is an overlay of the Indian way that dictates the outcome of their relationship. In the meantime, they enjoy their "holiday in Goa", as did I watching it (and listening - the movie has a vibrant soundtrack).