SLIFF 2014: Zero Motivation

Title: Zero Motivation

Country: Israel

Rating: 8.5

                Comedy is pretty hard to judge. I hardly ever see comedies in theaters because what the big US studios consider funny these days just doesn’t get a laugh out of me. I don’t think of myself as a grumpy person, though, just a picky one. That said, Zero Motivation cracked me up!

                A group of young women serving their mandatory military service in the IDF, kill time in admin positions at an obscure and strategically minor dessert outpost during peacetime. They compete for ‘world records’ in MS minesweeper, intermittently shred miscellaneous documents and jealously guard their most valuable possession: twin staple guns. The film is divided into several acts following Daffi, who is so desperate to transfer to Tel Aviv that she may even endure officer’s training, Zohar, a natural rebel and unhappy virgin who manages to destroy everything in her wake without ever feeling at fault, and their commanding officer Rama, a highly-driven authoritative workaholic with plenty of conviction and almost no charisma.

                This is smart, character-driven comedy with excellent timing, a brisk cycle of realism and absurdity and the boredom-born wisdom to recognize that drudgery and whimsicality are very near neighbors. It’s also a movie that genuinely cares for its characters, even the ones who it uses as the butt of jokes, while never giving them a free pass or excusing their bad behavior and poor judgment. Anyone who has every worked in an office environment, especially one cutoff from common sense by layers of calcified bureaucracy, will find moments of recognition and laughter.

SLIFF 2014: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

Title: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

Country: Iran

Rating: 8.5

                Have you ever been to the Iranian netherworld of Bad City? No? Well it’s awesome! Black and white, ultra-hip, throbbing with 80’s music and vintage cars. Of course, it is ravaged by plague, haunted by vampires and burdened by drugs, crime and male violence. But nowhere is perfect.

                I could talk to you about plot. There’s a young guy who appropriates a cat. And this cat gives a great performance! And the dude’s trying to pay off his dad’s debts, the legacy of an opium addiction. He meets a rich girl and something starts to spark, but he steals her earrings instead of her heart. The girl he falls for next is a bit more bohemian, and a vampire. They meet after he leaves a party high, dressed as Dracula, and asks her for directions. Every second of the scene is witty. Oh, and they have a prostitute friend in common. But not like that sounds.

                So yeah, the plot isn’t really the point. Director Ana Lily Amirpour is more interested in making individual shots and scenes work then in worrying about the big picture. That’s mostly fine with me. Especially since the shots, immaculately lit, crisply composed and tightly staged, are so incredibly good. That said, A Girl Walks Home isn’t exactly style-over-substance: the subtext here is frightfully loaded with delightfully weird feminist vibes and bristles with little daggers pointed at parental, patriarchal, political and religious authority. And even if I’m not really sure what anyone is thinking or why they do what they do, I like the mystery.

                This is a horror film for people who enjoy their chills moody, modish and a bit hard to pin down. It is destined for culthood.

SLIFF 2014: Elegy to Connie

Title: Elegy to Connie

Country: US

Score: 6.5

                In February of 2008 Charles Lee Thorton walked into Kirkwood City Hall and killed six people, including council member Connie Karr. Elegy to Connie is a grassroots, experimental animated documentary about the neighborhood, the shooter and most importantly, Connie, a hardworking down-to-earth public servant who brought people together and improved the city she loved.

                Elegy to Connie is up front about being an elegy, or even more accurately a tribute, which is both good and bad. It is filled with a genuine sense of love and loss for Connie (who ironically had many of Thorton’s issues at heart), a local crusader of the type that rarely gets the recognition they deserve. It also means that this is not an intimate character study or nuanced profile, but a reverential treatment of a private and public figure whose untimely death was a tragedy to friends, family and community.

                I couldn’t help wanting this film to be more though. It is so formally artistically bold (more on that in a second), and yet structurally and politically shy. The information on Kirkwood’s history is a good start, but feels light. The sections on Thorton and the shooting spree didn’t tell me any more than my memories of the news coverage. At a time when St. Louis is dealing with the Michael Brown shooting and having some hard-hitting debates on race, poverty, crime, zoning, city planning and corruption, it might be time for the kid gloves to come off. And yet, this film is likely in keeping with Connie Karr’s own style: a light touch backed by sincerity and conviction; an understanding instead of inflammatory approach.

                And now to the animation! This is where the film blew my mind. Director Sarah Paulsen, working with a very small team of assistants, has managed to present a sort of crash course of animation styles that writhes with creative energy and visual originality. Paper cutouts, photos, puzzle pieces, mosaics, stop-motion, traditional hand-drawn, wet paint on glass, etc., etc. This film literally brimming over with techniques, and fresh ways of seeing and yet they are blended together and united in tone such that the film never feels incoherent or disjointed. This is animation that is honestly more interesting than 90% of the multimillion dollar productions that come of big name studios and I hope Paulsen goes on to create much more of it!

Film Atlas (Venezuela): Araya

Country: Venezuela

Title: Araya (1959)

For 400 years Araya has been the site of one of the world’s largest salt mines. A small Venezuelan town sits on tip of the Araya peninsula overlooking a vast stretch of sand, salt flats and lagoons where no trees or crops can grow. The community survives on fish and the meager income from their endless toil harvesting, transporting and washing salt. 

Araya the documentary begins in the small hours of the morning and follows a handful of families through their harsh, thankless daily routines. One family sifts, dries, carts, carries and bags the salt leaving it in 40 foot high pyramids that line the coast and await boats to ship it around the world. They walk barefoot and develop ulcers on their feet. The sun beats down on them and by midday they must take the long trek home for the only sleep they’ll get. In the night, they will begin again. Throughout the day the camera leaves them to follow a father and son harvesting chunks of salt from a lagoon, a group of fishers drawing in nets full of sea creatures and the women’s labor selling fish, collecting kindling and cooking.

Margot Benacerraf’s film is a major work, transcending the confines of the ethnographic documentary through its poetic sensibility. The lives of the people of Araya are intrinsically fascinating in themselves, and the task of mining salt, too, is interesting stuff, thoroughly explored by the film. Benacerraf ‘single-day’ structure not only clearly lays out all the steps in the process but gives us an insight into the mind-numbing repetition and taxing difficulty of labor. But the film itself is never mind-numbing or taxing, because Benacerraf’s graceful cinematography captures the alien beauty of the region while her editing gives us a holistic view of the community’s bare subsistence. 

She allows her camera to wander; to take breaks from its implicit ‘job’ to follow tiny but unforgettable details like a child collecting seashells for a graveside bouquet. The narration attempts neither scientific detachment nor angry condemnation (but make no mistake, these salt mines are exploitation at its most soul-crushing), and instead adopts a compassionate, lyrical approach towards understanding a voiceless corner of the world.

My Favorites:

Araya

The Smoking Fish / El Pez que Fuma

Oriana

Major Directors:

Roman Chalbaud

Film Atlas (Mongolia): The Story of the Weeping Camel

Country: Mongolia

Title: The Story of the Weeping Camel / Ingen Nulims (2003)

The lives of shepherds in the Gobi desert follow a steady rhythm, with the skills necessary for survival (sheering camel hair and braiding it into rope, milking goats and boiling it into a cream, recognizing sandstorm weather and battening down tents) executed with such precision and calm that even such a hard life can be peaceful and content. The story focuses on the birth and first weeks of the season’s last camel foal, a rare albino colt rejected by its mother after a long and difficult delivery. Since the mother will not let it suckle, the extended family of herders try a variety of measures to re-establish a parental bond before the baby starves, including binding the mother’s legs, milking the mother and transferring the liquid to the baby using a horn and having a group of lamas pray over the pair. Nothing works. Eventually the two oldest sons, though still children, are sent to the nearest town to secure the services of a violinist so that a spiritual ritual can be performed to musically awaken the camel’s maternal instincts.

As strange as it is touching, The Story of the Weeping Camel is definitely not an obvious dramatic vehicle, and yet the mending of a mother-child relationship between these hairy humpbacked beasts is, at its best, both mesmerizing and emotional. There is a great deal of subtle craft and subdued controversy in director Byambasuren Davaa’s approach, which looks and feels like a documentary, but is actually a carefully arranged synthesis of live footage, re-enactments and scripted sequences. Her results are so natural and unforced that the film’s essential honesty and compassion come through, although the viewer often lacks a translator to help explain what is going on and why; a decision that I both liked and disliked. The upside is that one is rarely, if ever, distracted by the telltales of film production, allowing us to become deeply invested in such a distant and remote problem, the nursing of a baby camel somewhere in Mongolia’s vast wasteland, to an extent unlikely in either traditional documentary or fictional treatments. The downside is that Weeping Camel puts a great deal of emphasis on the slowness and simplicity of life on the steppe, qualities that are necessary to capture the pace of nomadic life, but which will likely stretch the attention span of even sympathetic viewers.   

Major Directors:

Byambasuren Davaa

Film Atlas (Lebanon): Where Do We Go Now?

Country: Lebanon

Title: Where Do We Go Now? / W Halla’ La Wayn (2011)

Where Do We Go Now is an unexpected warm-hearted musical modernization of Lysistrata set in the Middle East, in which the women of an unidentified landmine-ringed village, a mixed Christian and Muslim community, go to extraordinary lengths to prevent their menfolk from realizing their country has descended into violent sectarian conflict. Christian café-owner Amal (director Nadine Labaki), who is in love with Muslim painter Amal, is one of the first to learn about the bloodshed outside, and begins a campaign of sabotaging the few sources of outside news like the town’s radio and TV. But despite her best efforts tempers rise and misunderstandings mount following incidents at the town church (the cross is accidentally broken by a boy repairing a loudspeaker) and mosque (untended goats wander into the holy threshold). 

Soon the once-peacefully cohabiting congregations are at each other’s throats, and women devise a harebrained scheme to strand a busload of sexy East European dancers, temporarily redirecting the attention of the trigger-happy males. But it’s only a matter of time before the violence spills over and yields real casualties, leading to the film’s final scene where a funeral procession hesitates between the Christian and Muslim cemetery’s leaving a pallbearer to ask the title question, “Where do we go now?”

Though met with critical reserve, Where Do We Go Now proved a popular success, offering up a tongue-in-cheek, feel-good take on the Middle East’s interminable cycle of sectarian strife. The film dabbles liberally in musical, romantic and comedic modes while tackling disconcertingly hot-button issues and gaily espousing a willfully naïve pro-peace agenda, resulting in a bipolar mood that will either inspire with its humanist bravado or irritate with its political oversimplifications. I have to admit to bouncing between both reactions, but maybe that’s a good thing; great comedy is often based on walking an uneasy line and juggling ‘untouchable’ topics. Director Nadine Labaki knows what she’s doing, and populates her film with talented, likable actors and actresses who can sustain both the film’s gentle levity and grave themes. Her husband, Khaled Mouzanar, composed the musical numbers and, far from interrupting the narrative flow, I wish there were more of them.

I’ve been unable to track down films from Lebanese cinema’s regionally fruitful golden age in the 1940s and 50s, but I can highly recommend Lebanon’s first international breakthrough, 1998’s “West Beirut.” It was my original choice for the Film Atlas, but I’m almost as sick of writing about coming-of-age dramas set during war as Labaki is of religious zealots hypocritically killing each other over doctrinal minutiae.

My Favorites:

West Beirut
The Insult
Capernaum
Under the Bombs

Where Do We Go Now?

Major Directors:

Philippe Aractingi, Maroun Bagdadi, Nadine Labaki

Film Atlas (Belgium): All Night Long

Country: Belgium

Film: All Night Long / Toute Une Nuit (1982)

All Night Long (also known as A Whole Night) is a very unusual film. It is a collection of events and non-events taking place during a single summer's night in Brussels; isolated fragments that sometimes tell us everything we need to know about a character (who will likely be on screen only once and only for a few minutes), but more often gives us only a sliver of their life, chosen perhaps at random. Lovers meet. Others part. Some miss their rendezvous completely. Couples embrace, dance, argue, pack suitcases, sit in silence. Lonely, anxious figures pace back and forth in bedrooms, warm stools in sleepy barrooms or strut down cobblestone streets and into darkness. Phones ring. TVs drone. Radios play. Depending on your mood there is either no story or dozens.

I first saw this film alone and late at night while suffering from insomnia. I can't think of better circumstances for it to work its magic. Few films so perfectly capture the essence of night; its sleepy rhythms and lonely mysteries. Experimental director Chantal Akerman isn't afraid of risking our boredom, but it's just as easy to be mesmerized. In All Night Long the darkness may be heavy and oppressive, but its citizens are restless. The camera is omnivorous: some scenes are dramatic climaxes of relationships piled high with untold baggage while others are just incidental moments, unimportant and quickly forgotten. They are all given equal weight.

I find my attention wandering during most Akerman films, and this is no exception, but here it feels as though that instinct is planned, welcomed, and even thematically integrated. The structure lets your curiosity wax and wane, allowing you to jump back in at any moment, free of confusion or guilt. Akerman's work is often labeled Minimalist or Structuralist (note the scary capital letters), and that aesthetic self-consciousness can be off-putting, but here it works as an advantage. We don’t get too close, too involved. We are simply nightwatchers, disinterested voyeurs. The absence of judgement, names or causality is peaceful. The sound design, perhaps the film’s strongest asset, gracefully assists, conjuring the nighttime's bare-boned staccato from clacking footsteps, humming fans, rolling thunder, purring engines, a door slamming shut a few blocks down. All Night Long is not for everyone, but if you can't sleep anyway, give it a chance.

My Favorites:

Mr. Nobody

Broken Circle Breakdown

All Night Long / Toute une nuit

The Son (2002)

Innocence (2004)

Amer
Loft (2008)

The Child (2005)

A Town Called Panic

Major Directors:

Chantal Akerman, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Jaco Van Dormael

Film Atlas (The Bahamas): Rain

Country: Bahamas

Title: Rain (2008)

Rain is a sheltered teenager who lives with her caring grandmother on Ragged Island, a fishing island with a population under 100. When her guardian dies, she takes a boat to Nassau to live with her mother, a prostitute with a drug addiction, gambling problem and HIV infection. They live in a rundown slum called The Graveyard, named for its reputation as an inescapable hellhole. Rain is, unsurprisingly, scared and lonely, trying to connect with her mother, adjust to formal schooling and make friends. Things start to improve when she finds a school teacher who takes a shine to her and develops her natural talent for cross-country running, offering her a shot at a scholarship and a better life. Meanwhile, her mother’s bitter self-destructiveness and emotional defenses thaw, giving her a reason to clean up her life or at least make the attempt.

Although Rain premise takes the form of a conventional underdog melodrama (of a type I tend to avoid), it overcomes its dependency on clichés by staying honest and keeping the crux of the story on the rocky mother-daughter relationship. The mother’s performance is wonderfully real and nuanced. It’s a stubborn last stand against acknowledging that she’s spiraling towards rock bottom; full of pride for her small sphere of independence, undigested anger for herself, her mother and her situation, and a natural but half-atrophied capacity for trust, joy and maternity. The coach-pupil plot fares less well, since the coach, for the sake of the narrative, behaves as though she has no other students and no personal life, tirelessly dedicating herself to Rain without ever dropping her gentle smile. There’s no real insight into the sport, but it doesn’t really matter since it’s just a placeholder. Most will find that the emotional core and the performances are what matter most and those hold up. I particularly liked a few of the minor characters, like the best friend, who is vain and brazen but a good pal, and a crazy homeless preacher whose creepiness comes from the contrast between his obviously sick intentions and the righteous babble he spouts.

Film Atlas (Argentina): The Swamp

Country: Argentina

Film: The Swamp / La Cienaga (2001)

Dead leaves drift across a dirty pool. Ice rattles around a glass, one of dozens, none of them matching. The cries of bored children, the tide of insect song or a cloud crossing the sun intermittently wake the clan of sleeping middle-aged relatives who form an isthmus of mottled, sweaty flesh separating the overcrowded manor from the overgrown grounds. Either side might be the 'swamp' that the title refers to, but it also recalls the torpid denizens themselves, fermenting in their own unhealthy atmospheres of apathy, anxiety and alcohol. Mecha, the matriarch of sorts, has to be taken to the hospital after taking a tumble while in a drunken stupor. This triggers a makeshift family reunion, where the children, teens, adults and servants, all in their own worlds, linger about as though waiting for a revelation, a disaster or a vision. Or perhaps just a shopping trip to Bolivia.

Director Lucrecia Martel's first film (each one since has continued to win her deserved praise) is a beguiling masterpiece of family life in the form of a Latin American gothic. It's slow, but full to the brim, ridden with moments pregnant with internal and external meanings, some obvious, some half-buried, some relevant only in a brief flash. There is a sense of class consciousness, but nothing heavy handed. There is a unbearable foreboding unease that percolates out of the sound design. And yet the surface is calm. The parents drink and try to stay afloat, while we see hints of what they used to be and, far more vividly, the morass into which they're sliding. Martel is wise enough not to tip her hand; the mood is not quite condemnation, despair or revulsion. The camera observes, and at times it aches for them, feels their pain, especially for the souls just beginning to stir in the youngest children. There Martel has her greatest success, for few films capture the collective interactions of children with such honesty, revealing their chaos, confusion, spontaneity and inscrutability without giving them too little credit or too much.

My Favorites:

The Swamp

The Official Story

Nine Queens

The Secret in the Their Eyes

The Custodian

The Holy Girl

The Aura

The Headless Woman

The Truce (1974)

A Place in the World

Major Directors: Lisandro Alonso, Fabián Bielinsky, Leonardo Favio, Lucrecia Martel

Film Atlas (Angola): Sambizanga

Country: Angola

Title: Sambizanga (1972)

After the arrest of Domingos Xavier, a loving family man, hard-working construction worker and secret insurgency leader, Sambizanga splits up and follows two paths. Along one dusty, arduous route treks Maria, Xavier’s wife, as she tries to find the prison where her man is kept, hoping to plead with the Portuguese authorities for his freedom. Along the other route, a haphazard deer track of loosely-linked resistance members, word is spread that an unknown man has been taken into custody. After Xavier refuses to give the names of his collaborators he is beaten to death sparking, as the last line tells us before the credits abruptly scroll over a spinning shot of crashing waves, the coming revolution.

Sarah Maldoror, after assisting on The Battle of Algiers (yesterday's film!), which shares similar anti-colonialists sentiments, became a director in her own right, and one of the first women to do so in Africa. Sambizanga was shot with almost no budget in the early 1970’s while the Angolan War of Independence was still raging and depicts the events, semi-extrapolated, leading up to its 1961 genesis in Luanda’s titular municipality. Though the film is relatively simple and propaganda-motivated, its focus on the plight of individuals spans a cross-section interesting enough to remain relevant and thought-provoking: Maria with her apolitical but courageous single-mindedness, a passive collaborator in the police force, a child who serves as go-between, a militant but soft-spoken organizer, a self-important bureaucrat, a power-mad pair of good-cop-bad-cop interrogators, etc. Perhaps with more resources Sambizanga could have shouldered a larger scope and further fleshed out the context of the days before the war for the benefit of international audiences, but despite its limitations it is an important revolutionary work deserving of a DVD release.

Major Directors:

Sarah Maldoror

Ramble on Female Directors

Since “Jeanne Dielman,” “Kahensatake” and “Celia” makes three in a row, I might as well just declare May to be my “salute to female directors” month. In a perfectly gender-equal world this streak would have a relatively common rate of occurrence; 12.5% if math serve me correctly. So considering the number of reviews I’ve written to date, the fact that a 3-film female-directed streak hasn’t previously occurred would have odds around 0.0000000036%. Clearly there is a great deal of bias at work, but even as the numbers paint me as patently sexist (admittedly, some level of subconscious bias on my part likely exists), it seems clear that the film industry itself needs some scrutiny.

Anyone who’s studied the film industry and auteur history, or just kept track of major filmmakers, can testify that women are sadly underrepresented in the director’s chair. Women directors have certainly created a hefty share of masterpieces (see below), but they tend to be infrequent staples within the Hollwood mainstream and, to an extent, even in the European cinema spheres. Careers as long and varied as, say, Alfred Hitchcock or John Huston are even rarer still.

I’m not entirely sure why this is, other than that the heavily male-dominated industry is reluctant to cede many opportunities even when female talent is available. But is it entirely a production issue, manifested by sexism amongst producers and investors? Are there, for whatever reason, fewer women interested in directing? Are audiences somehow less interested in films made by women? Is popular cinema’s reliance on male gaze too fundamental to marketing and sales to be excised, or even counterbalanced? I’m curious rather someone better qualified than I can take a stab at these issues.

In more ways than one, the minority of female directors has led to a self-perpetuating cycle that’s carried over from long before the feminist movement. It likely discourages some would-be and up-and-coming women directors who knew they have to fight against the tide. It may also fool producers into believing that female talent is riskier than it really is.

Even in film criticism, the battlefield is rarely level, with films made by women often interrogated excessively for feminist readings. Once found, this layer of the film is inevitably given disproportionate attention, often overlooking both personal themes and broader achievements. All too often mainstream film reviewers (not to mention those with particular interest in feminism or its backlash) fail to ask whether gender themes even apply. Consider, for example, films like the Shakespeare adaptation “Titus,” the submarine thriller “K-19: The Widowmaker” or the slacker comedy "Wayne's World." If half of all films were made by women, would we really be hunting out gender issue undertones in these films?

But at the same time, from the perspective of a female filmmaker, I can see how the underrepresentation of the feminine voice, perspective and means of production would only increase the interest in tackling these issues head on, or at least addressing them. Members of a minority are obviously more sensitive to the danger of blindly accepting the status quo (like male action leads or throwaway romantic interests), but consciously rejecting the male-oriented system draws attention and risks focusing consideration away from other themes you’re dealing with. Do it enough times and suddenly you’re no longer making a “mainstream” film, but a “feminist” one. Even if you’d done nothing more than made a female-centric version of a traditionally male-centric scenario, investors, the media and the public will doubtlessly see it, first and foremost, as a feminist work. (I don’t mean to suggest here that making an intentionally “feminist work” is in any way a bad thing, merely that it can become a very limiting label.)

It’s a bit of a catch 22 with certainly no easy solution. For anyone actually versed in gender studies, I’m doubtlessly making a very naïve and amateurish retread of the topic, but I’m endeavoring to think through the issue plainly and for myself, without a complicated theoretical framework to get snarled up in. I find this useful not just in my desire to be more understanding of multiple perspectives, but because males (yes, even lowly ticket-buying and movie-blogging males who are not directly part of the power nexus of the industry) have a responsibility to be part of the solution and not just the problem.

I’m acutely aware that even if I came up with any insightful conclusions, it would be hypocritical of me to try and set guidelines or even advice for female directors. It would just be another male voice (however enlightened I might imagine it to be) telling female talent what to do. Other than to say that I think female directors should just make whatever films they feel driven to make (towards whatever commercial, artistic or social goals they choose) and wear down the male-dominant industry until gender representation is more level, I really don’t have any profound plan for how a change might be affected.

I can, however, offer some advice to men making films, by reflecting on how I’d go about it. Let’s say I’m making a film that isn’t specifically dealing with gender. I’d first write the script entirely in line with my vision, just focusing on what comes naturally even if I know that I’m inflecting it with gender bias and whatnot. Then afterwards I’d flip a coin (or write a computer randomizer) to assign/reassign the genders of all the characters. Then I’d rework the script as needed (hopefully as little as possible) to make sure the story still made sense.

There might be some compromises (like for historical settings or plot points involving pregnancy and birth), but I’d even consider changing important elements of the story if need be. The same thing could be done to assign race, sexual orientation, age and so on. Since these things are usually and often necessarily important to a character’s heritage, personality and circumstances, I’d have to be flexible with reworking the screenplay, but it would be a challenge that could ultimately improve it and weed out lazy clichés and assumptions in the original writing. This system has its own share of problems, but I think it has promise. I understand that it’s similar to how “Alien” (1979) was made.

All that being said, I’ve yet to actually make a film or even write a script. Hopefully, that will one day change, but in the meantime, I need something else to do my own small bit. The most obvious is the vote-with-your-wallet method, to seek out more films created by women directors (or with female writers, cinematographers, etc.) and avoid exceedingly chauvinistic male-directed films. I have to admit the former is easier for me than the latter, since I don’t like to rule out watching any film that might have some redeeming value and, if I’m completely honest, my hormones occasionally chime up. Plus, you'd more or less have to pull gialli from my cold, dead DVD player.

I also try to give a fair amount of coverage to female-directed works on my blog, though in retrospect there are fairly long dry patches on it.

Anyway, after all my complaining about the film-and-gender situation, I’d like to end on something more positive. The fact that a great number of brilliant films by women from around the world are already out there offering a huge variety of perspectives needs to be acknowledged. So I’d like to finish with a list of some favorite films directed by women. The fact that so many are quite recent seems to bode well for future growth.

Across the Universe (2007) by Julie Taymor
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) by Lotte Reiniger
After the Wedding (2006) by Susanne Bier

Antonia's Line (1995) by Marleen Gorris
Ascent (1977) by Larisa Shepitko
American Psycho (2000) by Mary Harron
Big (1988) by Penny Marshall
The Bigamist (1953) by Ida Lupino
Broken English (2007) by Zoe Cassavetes

Brothers (2004) by Susanne Bier
Celia (1989) by Ann Turner
Children of a Lesser God (1986) by Randa Haines
Cleo from 5 to 7 (1961) by Agnes Varda
Clueless (1995) by Amy Heckerling
Craig’s Wife (1936) by Dorothy Arzner
Daisies (1966) by Vera Chytilova

An Education (2009) by Lone Scherfig
Fat Girl (2001) by Catherine Breillat

Frida (2002) by Julie Taymor

Friday Night (2002) by Claire Denis
Germany Pale Mother (1980) by Helma Sanders-Brahms
The Gleaners and I (2000) by Agnes Varda
Good Work / Beau Travail (1999) by Claire Denis
Grace of My Heart (1996) by Allison Anders
Harlan County USA (1976) by Barbara Kopple
The Hitch-Hiker (1953) by Ida Lupino

The Holy Girl (2004) by Lucrecia Martel

The Hurt Locker (2008) by Kathryn Bigelow
I Am (2005) by Dorota Kedzierzawska
Innocence (2004) by Lucile Hadzihalilovic

The Intruder (2004) by Claire Denis
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) by Chantal Akerman
Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993) by Alanis Obomsawin

The Kids Are All Right (2010) by Lisa Cholodenko
Lost in Translation (2003) by Sofia Coppola
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (1975) by Margarethe von Trotta (and Volker Schlondorff)
Lovely and Amazing (2002) by Nicole Holofcener

Madchen in Uniform (1931) by Leontine Sagan
Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) and At Land (1944) by Maya Deren
Microcosmos (1996) by Marie Pérennou (and Claude Nuridsany)
Monster (2003) by Patty Jenkins
My Twentieth Century (1989) by Ildiko Enyedi

A New Leaf (1971) by Elaine May

The Night Porter (1974) by Liliana Cavani
North Country (2005) by Niki Caro
Olivier, Olivier (1992) by Agnieszka Holland
Orlando (1992) by Sally Potter (written by the great Virginia Woolf)
Persepolis (2007) by Marjane Satrapi (and Vincent Paronnaud)
The Piano (1993) by Jane Campion

Please Give (2010) by Nicole Holofcener
Ratcatcher (1999) by Lynne Ramsay
Salaam Bombay! (1988) by Mira Nair
Sita Sings the Blues (2008) by Nina Paley
The Smiling Madame Beudet (1923) by Germaine Dulac

The Swamp (2001) by Lucrecia Martel
Take Care of My Cat (2001) by Jae-eun Jeong
Titus (1999) by Julie Taymor

Trouble Every Day (2001) by Claire Denis
Vagabond (1985) by Agnes Varda
Waitress (2007) by Adrienne Shelley
Walking and Talking (1996) by Nicole Holofcener
Wanda (1971) by Barbara Loden

A Whole Night (1982) by Chantal Akerman

Winter's Bone (2010) by Debra Granik
Working Girls (1986) by Lizzie Borden

Yes (2004) by Sally Potter

My top favorites so far: Claire Denis, Agnes Varda, Lucrecia Martel, Sally Potter, Julie Taymor and Nicole Holofcener.

Other famous female directors who don’t make my personal list (but might after I get to know more of their work): Gillian Armstrong, Gurinder Chadha, Marguerite Duras, Nora Ephron, Lesli Linka Glatter, Catherine Hardwicke, Emily Hubley, Daniele Huillet, Vicky Jenson, Agnes Kocsis, Caroline Link, Samira Makhmalbaf, Nancy Meyers, Leni Riefenstahl, Susan Seidelman, Penelope Spheeris, Betty Thomas and Lina Wertmuller.

I still hope to do reviews on some of the films listed and I’ll try to keep it updated as I remember more and see new ones. I’d also love to see your own lists, hear your thoughts on the subject and get some recommendations.

Review of Celia

Coming-of-age stories set in 1950’s suburbia are a pretty tough sell for me, conjuring images of stuff like “Leave it to Beaver,” “Dennis the Menace” and “A Christmas Story” (Please don’t comment saying I’m off by a decade; I know.) that are colored by stale moralizing and contrived high jinks. Worst still are the creepy retrogressive utopias envisioned in such works as “The Family Circus” that yearn for a fictional past plastered with frozen smiles, bland conformity and frightening simplicity.

1950’s retrophelia aside, coming-of-age tales (or bildungsromans if you will) are just too often susceptible to white-washing nostalgia; a desire to see the childhood as a time of unproblematic innocence and maturing as a clear-cut linear progression. When depicting conflict, it is thus almost always externalized as a force opposing the fun-loving purity of the youth, like a bully, over-strict father or elderly crank (often a neighbor or teacher). “Celia” (1988) includes all three of these elements, but manages to energize the clichés by focusing more on the protagonist’s complicated internalized reactions, which are often times at odds with adult morality.

“Celia” (1988) takes place during Celia Carmichael’s ninth year, primarily during a summer in 1950’s Australia. Celia is an only child, whose natural assertiveness makes her the leader of group of neighborhood kids that develop an elaborate set of games and rituals. Her rampant imagination and initiative runs beyond the containment of her parents, deeply-flawed and sometimes brutish Ray and quiet, tentative Pat. They love her and try to raise her the best they know how, but their own failings and the vagaries of the era lead Celia through an emotional chaos that increasingly causes her to lose touch with reality.

There are two historical circumstances in particular that play a major role in the story. The first is the growing red scare in Australia, a particular preoccupation of Ray, who associates the threat with a wartime trauma (only hinted at) he experienced at a young age. Celia’s grandmother, whose death opens the film, was an ardent academic communist and has predisposed Celia to whimsical idealism, if not the actual theory and practice of Marxism. She’s much more interested in lying amidst her grandmother’s keepsakes and artifacts then actually reading the sizable book collection that Ray later burns.

[Image: Celia’s private rituals often echo her observations of the world around her. Ray’s bonfire of her grandmother’s Marxist books, for instance, has a warped reflection in one of Celia’s noturnal rites where she burns a makeshift effigy of her father.]

Ray has periods of calm between his misguided furies, but never really understands the emotional-spiritual connections that his daughter forms to things that seem of little consequence to him. The misunderstanding works both ways, prompting Celia to sometimes reject her parent’s instructions because she sees them as quite nonsensical.

Things are complicated by the arrival of the Tanners (Alice, Steve and their three children), friendly neighbors who are eventually revealed to be communist activists. The film being largely apolitical, this issue is of importance only to the extent that it affects Celia, who only vaguely comprehends the fuss that her parents make over it. Unlike the older Tanner boys, for instance, Celia doesn’t link Ray’s overkill reaction with his attraction to Alice. When Ray fulfills Celia’s long-held dream of owning a pet rabbit, in exchange for her promise to cease playing with the Tanner children, he inadvertently sets in motion a much greater tragedy than whatever he was trying to avoid.

[Images: Ray and Alice.]

Here enters the second unfortunate historical circumstance of note. In 1859, Thomas Austin imported some 24 rabbits into Australia saying, "The introduction of a few rabbits could do little harm and might provide a touch of home, in addition to a spot of hunting." By the 1950’s, rabbits had become a catastrophic plague, threatening to wipe out the country’s agriculture and provoking extreme responses from the government. One response was a law banning citizens from owning domestic rabbits. Celia is forced to take Murgatroyd to a crowded zoo pen where it can be kept while a grassroots campaign protests the absurdity of the law.

In the aftermath, Celia commits a shocking act of violence towards the man she holds responsible for her misery.

This last event triggered a great deal of mishandling over the course of the film’s minimal release history. The poster art and video releases attempted to market the film as an exploitation horror film along the lines of “The Bad Seed.” But the film shares more in common with films like “Valerie and Her Weeks of Wonders” (1970), “Paperhouse” (1988) and “Heavenly Creatures” (1994), where the theme of a young girl’s internal world spun dangerously out of control is treated sympathetically. Indeed, the ending of “Celia” may imply that our hero has even managed to productively overcome her crisis, though disturbing overtones and the continuation of the eerie soundtrack (incidentally, another highlight of the film) leave doubts.

Director Ann Turner does an admirable job rejecting the shortcut of villainy. What antagonists there are exist largely off screen (the Australian governor for instance) or are known to be acting in reasonably good faith. That’s something of a rarity in coming-of-age films since they are often expected to target children and so “must” be kept as black and white as possible. In “Celia,” the struggle over what’s best for her is more a conflict between Celia’s own intuitive, imaginative understanding of the world and the adults’ learned, systematic perspective.

Beyond Ann Turner’s excellent direction, it’s Rebecca Smart’s performance as the central character that make the film succeed. She handles the difficult balance of confidence and confusion that make Celia’s character interesting. She also manages to express Celia’s powerful surges of emotion and subtle habits (like her timid inability to lie when asked a question point blank or her heartbreakingly vulnerable attachment to her rabbit, spelled out most effectively merely in the way she carries it) with equal delicacy, while never overexposing what is an essentially enigmatic character. The 12 year old Smart ultimately gives a performance far better than many adult actresses ever achieve, and that’s coming from somewhere who frequently announces his hatred for child-actors to complete strangers.

“Celia’s” only distracting fault is in its somewhat dry presentation. Turner’s original script called for several sequences that were apparently cut or changed for budgetary reasons, but the story is largely unharmed by the modest variety of everyday settings. Turner shows a great deal of judgment in terms of knowing when to go in for a close-up and knowing when to back off, using her camera placement to impose a tinge of claustrophobia without making it too strong a metaphor for her character’s suffocation. However, her warm sun-clad sets want for a little more visual panache. The film’s moments of darkness, where Celia’s nightmares come alive, prove she’s clearly capable of more fantastical leanings, but I suppose her restraint is wise. By putting the emphasis on reality, the viewer is in the same position as her parents: we care about Celia, but our desire to pull her out of her private world may not be doing her a favor.

[Image: An abandoned quarry, one of Turner’s best a set pieces, manages to be both monumental and banal. The type of place where a child’s imagination runs wild.]

Walrus Rating: 8.5

The always-reliable Second Run UK released Celia on R2 DVD about two months ago. “Celia” has held a decent reputation in Europe, but very little following in the US due to unavailability, so I’ve been a bit lonely in my anticipation of this release. I’d flirted with the VHS and a very tattered bootleg for while, but this is a much cleaner print and comes highly recommended. With the clever cover art, essay insert and interview with the director on the Second Run release, I think the film is finally getting the treatment, and wider audience, it deserves.

Review of Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance

On our plane ride into Heathrow, Katie sat next to a small, unassuming lady in her late seventies. As they did a little talking, it turned out that she was Alanis Obomsawin, a well-regarded aboriginal American filmmaker from Canada (neither of us had heard of her, but I probably should have) on her way to London to introduce one of her documentaries at the British Museum. On our final day in London, we made an effort to visit the museum and check out the film. It surpassed my every expectation.

“Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance” covers the Oka Crisis, a confrontation between Mohawk Indians living on a reserve near Oka (not far from Montreal) and the Canadian military. A local land development interest gained government approval to expand a 9-hole members-only golf course onto a burial ground and sacred pine grove belonging to the Mohawk nation, reigniting a 270 year battle to officially regain their territory.

The Mohawks blocked incoming construction equipment and Quebec Security was called in. After shots were exchanged, a police emergency response team bungled the situation, firing tear gas that the wind swept back into their own position, forcing a retreat. In the chaos, the Mohawks seized an abandoned bulldozer and used it to crush police cars and push them into a barricade. Other Canadian first nations pledged support and the nearby Kahnawake reserve captured a major highway bridge. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and eventually the Canadian military took over, leading to a 78-day high-tension standoff.

Alanis Obomsawin arrived early in the debacle and was one of the few filmmakers or journalists to evade the military-enforced media blackout, chronicling the incident from within the heavily-patrolled, razor-wire perimeter. While Obomsawin covers the history and context behind the incident, the power of her documentary comes from her extensive firsthand footage.

Obomsawin rarely appears in front of the camera and her interview style is minimalist and encouraging, allowing her subjects to open up and express themselves. Although the scarcity of leading questions might have threatened to make the film lose focus, the editing keeps things tight and smartly relevant. Her unobtrusive use of irony and humor points out the absurdity and hypocrisy of the Canadian government’s reaction (like running razor-wire underwater) without trivializing the complexity of the situation and the emotions involves.

One of the most thought-provoking aspects of the film is the way it captures the clash between colorful individuals standing up for their modest rights and large institutions, especially the Canadian military. The individual soldiers hide behind the usual unthinking platitudes like “I’m just obeying orders” and “I have a mission to accomplish” instead of relying on their own moral compasses. The result is that their behaviors are akin to mental illness symptoms, including denying verifiable facts, showing indifference towards the suffering in front of them and adopting self-induced stone-faced autism as a way of avoiding questions, confrontations and emotional involvement.

The military is seen using fear and intimidation tactics, suppressing press coverage and frequently breaking promises. And yet hardly any soldier openly expresses dissatisfaction with their vocation or the institute they serve, and certainly none try to redress the wrongs. While this isn’t surprisingly to anyone familiar with military psychology or history, it’s disturbing to see it occur in modern society and within the armed forces of well-regarded democratic country. One has to wonder whether the military can be too effective, especially when it removes the ability for self-analysis and self-correction through the use of individual consciences and becomes merely a tool in the hands of political and commercial powers.

But I’m getting into the dangerous territory of mixing my own interpretation with the film’s less-pointed, less-systematic approach. In truth, while the directing and editing take a very sympathetic viewpoint, the film is not overly wrapped up in a private agenda and truly seems committed to honesty. Obomsawin covers the death of a police officer by the Mohawks and shows occasionally unflattering footage of individual Mohawks who, at times, lack maturity, temperance or eloquence. She depicts their internal struggle with balancing self-respect with survival, the fractured opinions on how to handle the situation and the difficultly in controlling feelings of anger and vengeance.

Obomsawin is of Indian heritage herself (albeit a different tribe), but her own vested interest is really much wider than purely first nation issues and concerns the larger scope of human rights for voiceless minorities everywhere. I hadn’t even heard of the Oka Crisis prior to seeing the film, but she draws us into the fate of Kanehsatake Mohawks in a way that is quick and natural despite the fact that many viewers will have little in common with the tribe. My own circumstances are much closer to the non-Mohawk suburban community of Oka, who are seen in the documentary reacting with outrage, apathy, paranoia, racism and even violence primarily over the mere inconvenience of traffic jams caused by the barricade. It’s a bit sobering to reflect on how I might have reacted had I been in their shoes.

On a less serious level, the movie is action-packed and well-crafted, making for a riveting two hours that doesn’t suffer from the “talking head” and “clipart” syndromes that drag down many otherwise noble documentaries. The film isn’t susceptible to the self-indulgence and cult-of-personality accusations that plague Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock and its sincerity is refreshing without being cloying. It’s informed, impassioned, judiciously paced and just about everything else a documentary should be.

In retrospect, I wished I’d spent my plane ride interviewing Alanis Obomsawin about her work, goals and future plans rather than watching “Twilight” (2008) as an in-flight movie. Damn my social awkwardness and vulnerability for vampire drivel.

Walrus Rating: 9.0

You can watch the entire film here.

Review of Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

For those of you in or around St. Louis, you might check out the Chantal Ackerman exhibit, “Moving Through Time and Space” at the St. Louis Contemporary Art Museum. It opens tonight and runs until August 2, 2009. It’s a rare (and free!) opportunity to see the work of one of the great sleeper-hit avant-garde filmmakers. I'll try to be there, but if I’m not I won’t be able to see it for at least a couple of weeks, because I’ll be merrily tromping about in London and Belfast. (So don’t expect any posts for a while!) I’ll try to put up some sort of update after I have a chance to check it out.

The works in this exhibit include “From the East: Bordering on Fiction” (1995), “South” (1999), “From the Other Side” (2002), “Down There” (2006) and “Women of Antwerp in November” (2007). Several of these combine multiple screens at once, like the screening of Andy Warhol’s “Chelsea Girls” (1966) that the contemporary did a while back. Ackerman, by contrast, is much more socially conscious.

The exhibit brochure linked above begins its bio with, “Chantal Akerman is widely regarded as one of the most important directors in film history.” That’s a fairly bold statement that smells to me of museum propaganda, but it’s a shame that there are few chances for cinephiles to decide for themselves. Her work has rarely seen region 1 release (Update, 2010: Thanks to Criterion this is now no longer true. See comments section.) and is most often experienced through museum and university presentations. That said, my single experience with Ackerman’s work, a not-altogether pristine bootleg of “Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” (1975), impressed me a great deal.

Review

“Jeanne Dielman” is Ackerman’s most famous work and is rightly cited as a landmark of both feminist and experimental cinema. It’s self-assured, challenging, controversial, intimidating and so arty it explodes if brought into contact with summer blockbusters.

The plot, what little there is of it, consists of a day-to-day, often minute-by-minute, visual transcript of a single mother’s life, presumably the Jeanne Dielman of the title (played by the wonderful Delphine Seyrig). The film’s structure is as rigid as its protagonist’s routine, relying on long static takes only occasionally broken by rectilinear editing. We watch Jeanne Dielman cook, clean, shop and prostitute in uninflected, somber semi-silence.

For about three and a half hours…

If you have dabbled in experimental art appreciation at all then you are doubtlessly already familiar with works about nothingness, next-to-nothingness, abstraction, minimalism, meditation, sensory-deprivation, self-conscious boredom and so on. These works of art, while terribly profound in the mind of their creators, tend to strike me and the rest of the ignorant public as dull, lazy, uninspired and, in the age of postmodernism, played out. Nor are our enthusiasms particularly reinvigorated when told that “such is the whole point of the piece.”

So I hope you can appreciate the level of cynicism with which I approached “Jeanne Dielman” and the surprise when I found myself actually drawn into its rhythm. This is a very difficult work and I admit that I found my attention drifting and my opinion wavering throughout; even to the point where at times I started pre-composing the pithy smackdowns I planned to issue should I write a review. Ultimately I came to see its point and, more importantly, to feel that the point was not trivial (as it is in, for instance, Andy Warhol’s 8-hour shot of the Empire States Building).

Yes, “Jeanne Dielman” purposely bores us, intentionally repeats things and stubbornly refuses to give us emotional catharsis or intellectual access with regard to its lone protagonist. But there is something powerful in the way it accomplishes both detachment and intimacy. A certain camaraderie builds up as we share Jeanne’s stifling monotony and one traverses a range of reactions through recognition, resentment and resignation that allows us to empathize with her existence in a way that is not possible in packaged entertainment or even traditional tragedy.

Our ability to distinguish details is, at times, heightened by the length we spend staring at flat mundane slices of her lower-middleclass apartment and at the same time diminished as our vigilance (trained by traditional cinema to expect cues telling us what is important) gradually wanes. Ackerman plays on this softly, by gently introducing glitches into the well-established pattern. These deviations during our third day within Jeanne’s world, at first as minor as dropping a spoon, build towards a brutal climax. It is an ending both unexpected and yet foreshadowed by hours of uncomfortable, almost subconscious, tension.

Far from being lazy, Ackerman’s film is painstakingly crafted to deliver a mixed reaction that is actually insightful, nuanced and just as compassionate as it is cruel. I’m not sure I fully appreciated the film or that I was paying enough attention by the final third to understand the ending or that I’d ever want to see it again. I know that doesn’t sound like a rave review, but if you have the right mix of patience, open-mindedness, curiosity and masochism, then this is a film that may yield unexpected rewards.

Walrus Rating: 3.0 and 8.0 (the two rating existing simultaneously within me)


Note: In case I did not make it clear, “Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” is not one of the films showing at the Contemporary. In case the review only scared people off, I’m told the works at the exhibit are shorter, more accessible and more documentary in approach.

Update, later the same day:

So I made it out to the exhibit with my two sisters and a friend. The multi-video displays were definitely the most engaging. "Women of Antwerp in November" features black and white and color screens (1 large and 4 smaller on the opposite wall) depicting scenes of women smoking. It has wonderful atmosphere and texture (like very fashionable vintage noir) with a intuitive feel for mystery and sensuality, but not a great deal of meaning or substance as far as I could tell. It certainly succeeds as a collage of themed images, but I doubt many stay through the full 20 minute loop.

The next two rooms contained "The Other Side" a series of snippet on over a dozen flat-screens that contain a narrated documentary on illegal immigration. The directness of the approach and the experience of walking through film as an actual journey through space was an excellent metaphor and Ackerman makes strong symbolic and literal use of the wall running along the US-Mexico border. The audio, which emanates independently from each TV interferes with itself too much to add much, especially amidst the noise of the opening night crowd. I may have to return to experience "The Other Side" fully, but it definitely worked on a viceral level.

My favorite piece was a similar 24-screen room called "From the East: Bordering on Fiction" which was described as an exploration of Ackerman's East European Jewish identity. It is largely expressed through graceful tracking shots showing crowds of people standing and waiting around on streets, in train stations, etc. The juxtaposition of people, camera movements and old world settings made for arresting combinations, perhaps coincidental, but no less striking for being so, that held me for longer than the other displays. From reading the expressions in the grim crowds to observing the way lighting lends different emotional weights to similar scenes, there was plenty to ponder in the long, spacious gallery.

"South" is a feature length documentary on James Byrd, the victim of a racially motivated hate killing in Jasper, Texas. "Down There" is also feature length and plays on the same screen at different times. These films were a little less appropriate to the museum setting where few attendees will be able to sit and watch through the whole work. The exhibit closed about ten minutes after I arrived at the room. Perhaps another time...

Anyway, it's well worth the visit if you are in the area. Chances to see Ackerman's work are not likely to come this way again anytime soon.

Review of Fruit of Paradise

Adam and Eve, bathed in glowing textures of leaves, pebbles, flowers and bark, descend a grassy slope and slip into a pond. Their movements are tentative and yet stiff and choreographed. They wear nothing, but are wrapped snuggly in double-exposures of nature-imagery tinted in bright autumn colors. Passages from Genesis are chanted as part of the angelic score.

This prologue to Vera Chytilova “Fruit of Paradise” (1970) might easily serve as a standalone short, but it also works as a fitting introduction to this odd adaptation of the Biblical fall. It confirms Chytilova’s commitment to powerful visual impressions, multilayered freeform symbolism and winking witty anarchy. “Fruit of Paradise” is an experimental film that speaks in a similar visual vocabulary as “Daisies” (1966), the audacious era-defining Czech film that established Chytilova’s reputation, but without really feeling like it repeats itself.

The film follows Eva’s relationship with two men after she bites into forbidden fruit under a tree at a gorgeous garden retreat. Her stern husband finds little joy in the overgrown paradise and frequently flirts with other vacationers. The handsome if rather menacing Josef is an increasingly preoccupation for Eva despite his own incessant flirting and her growing certainty that he is a deranged serial killer. As she spends her days lolling on the beach, frolicking through the underbrush and exploring shady nooks, she feels the growing pressures of love, freedom, danger and temptation.

Following “Fruit of Paradise” as a conventional story, say a love triangle or a murder mystery, is almost entirely impossible. The narrative progress is much like an extended camping trip, with plenty of room to play around and little need for drama or dialogue. The tone is usually lighthearted, to the point where scenes that would typically involve tension or fear are subverted. Joseph, in particular, bounces back and forth from jolly skirt-chaser to intimidating villain quite erratically.

That’s not to say that the film is in any way boring. The surreal carefree atmosphere is quite welcoming, and draws the viewer into Eva’s miniature ambling adventures. Her curiosity and mischievousness are infectious.

Meanwhile, Zdenek Liska’s rapturous nearly wall-to-wall score envelops us in an unfettered, often exuberant, soundscape where harmonized voices or lilting instruments sound off at the slightest provocation. Taken along with his work for Vlacil’s “Valley of the Bees” and “Marketa Lazarova,” Liska is becoming a fast favorite for me.

After the first few loosely-connected episodes the feeling of confused anarchy gradually gives way to an understanding of the underlying organization. Scenes are constructed around visual motifs, based around bold points of contrast nestled within the sand and stone or the grass and leaves. Sometimes these contrasts might be built around the shock of seeing elegant Victorian furniture in places more suitable to park benches.

Occasionally the contrasts are based around movement, like a biker or frolicker, passing through the leisurely stillness of nature. Usually Chytilova has figures move in fluid graceful arc, fitting with gentle winds and unrushed pace, but sometimes she drops frames or manipulates the speed to make the characters seem like jerky marionettes.

Most often, the contrast is a spot of bright orange or red set against the greenery.

These sharp highlights not only guide the eye, they are also central to shaping our mood, emotions and even our interpretations. Chytilova is confident enough in her style to accept the ambiguity this creates, since reactions to such compositions necessarily vary from viewer to viewer. There are many occasions where objects are clearly meant to have very specific meanings, but it’s the visual presentation of the objects that tells us how to interpret them.

As an example, one might take a scene where Eva violently plays the drums in a dusty attic. One could certainly ask “What do the drums mean?” especially since they don’t’ seem to fit with the other props we’ve seen in the film. Still, I think a better avenue towards understanding is to ask “How does it feel to play the drums?” and to examine the visual and aural sensations that Chytilova is trying to convey.

Unraveling the allegory at hand might at first seem to be quite exhausting, but Chytilova doesn’t ask us to switch into academic mode to enjoy or even understand the film. I think there’s quite a few forbidden fruits planted for the audience to savor, particularly a gleeful hedonism for texture, detail and music. The religious references are not to be thrown away, but they are there more to shape our interpretation rather than to define it; to set our minds in motion rather than to nail it in place.

I like to think of Chytilova’s style as a combination of “universal” symbols and personal inflections where cinematography literally colors our interpretation or potentially undermines it. This helps explain the way a single symbol-object can have two or more potentially inconsistent meanings for the director. One example is the way “forbidden fruit” is used as a mark of rebellion and transgression in “Daisies” and as a symbol of awakening, temptation and disillusionment in “Fruit of Paradise.” Sometimes the connotation of a symbol can change many times within a single film.

This is part of why I feel the director’s films resist straightforward feminist readings. As a female director who prefers female protagonists and adopts many of the stereotyped mainstays of feminist art (nature themes, sensation-driven narratives, anti- institutionalism, rejection of psychoanalytic theory, etc.), Chytilova is too often pigeon-holed as purely preoccupied with gender issues. Like most surrealists, I think she has eclectic interests and multiple goals, many of them quite nuanced and personal. In appreciating her films, one must be careful not to warp her intentions in the places where a classical feminist mold doesn’t fit.

If you’re a fan of “Daisies,” or the brand of visually accomplished surrealism I’m often advocating (“Valerie and Her Week of Wonders,” “The Hourglass Sanatorium,” “Eden and After,” “El Topo,” “A Zed and Two Noughts,” etc.) then this is another film worth checking out. This formerly very rare film is now readily available through Netflix thanks to a not-to-shabby release by Facets.

Walrus Rating: 7.5