REVIEWS The House REVIEWED BY MARKADAMS


A bleakly engaging tale of family conflict and maddening miscommunication is at the heart of the solidly made Slovak-Czech co-production The House (Dom), the feature debut for talented young film-maker Zuzana Liova. It is an engagingly nat- uralistic film, distinctive due to the charming lead performance by Judit Bardos as a teenager looking to escape her dominating father. There are no real surprises in terms of the script


or structure, with moments of humour brief and subtle, and while the performances are gloomily spot-on and the direction appropriately unflashy, The House succeeds in portraying a fascinating slice of life in rural Eastern Europe. Unsmiling father Imrich (Krobot) is building a


house, brick-by-brick, in the garden of his property for his college-student daughter Eva (Bardos). She, naturally enough, hates the idea and is secretly skipping school to try and earn money to pay her way to the UK to work as an au pair. Imrich, a foreman at a water-bottling plant, had


started building a house for older daughter Jana, but abandoned the project when she married a man of whom Imrich did not approve. She now has three children Imrich refuses to acknowledge. Over the course of the film, Eva petulantly rails


against her father. She also starts a faltering affair with a married man who turns out to be her school’s new supply English teacher, and also tries to bring peace between her sister and father. Newcomer Judit Bardos is a sad-faced but charming presence, portraying Eva as an intelli-


Ashamed REVIEWED BY FIONNUALA HALLIGAN


A meandering misfire from So Cute’s Kim Soo- hyun, Ashamed (Chang-Pi-Hae) feels like endless improv, a 129-minute indulgence without any structure. Somewhere near the close, the film’s main characters — two women who spend a good deal of the movie handcuffed to each other — roll around in the mud, screeching at each other. “This is pointless and stupid!” yells one. Indeed.


FORUM


Slovak Rep-Czech Rep. 2011. 100mins Director/screenplay Zuzana Liova Production companies Fog’n’Desire Films, Samastinor, Ceska Televize, STV Sales contact Fog’n’Desire Films, www.fogndesirefilms.com Producers Viktor Taus, Michal Kollar Cinematography Jan Baset Stritezsky, Juraj Chlpik Production designer Pavol Andrasko Editor Anna Johnson Ryndova Main cast Miroslav Krobot, Judit Bardos, Marian Mitas,Tatjana Medvecka


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gent and compassionate young woman deter- mined to find her own way in life, but who still seems to put faith in the power of the family. At times this aspect fails to ring true — though Imrich makes an eventual stab at peace with Jana and her husband, it is all very little and very late, and we are asked to buy into the fact the bonds of family are strong enough to put aside his boorish unpleasant- ness and inability to communicate. Eva’s dreams of love and a world away from her


own are universal and understandable, and for this passionate girl the prospect of helping her father


Billed as a lesbian drama, the sex here is tenta-


tive, as is much of the plot. Ashamed features the intriguing young actress from Breathless, Kim Kkobbi, in a leading role, but that still won’t carry it to viewers outside the most dedicated gay and lesbian festival circuit. Framed in elliptical flashback, Ashamed relates


the central story of dreamy Yoon (Kim Hyo-jin) and cheeky pickpocket Kang (Kim Kkobbi). It takes a while to get to their relationship, however, as Kim Soo-hyun starts the action out in an art class, with professor Jung (Kim Sang-hyon) pre- paring an exhibition with one of her students,


build her ‘home’ — often in the pouring rain — is a terrible one. But gradually this disconnected family (the only stable figure is her mother, played by Tat- jana Medvecka, who tries to make peace) grudg- ingly finds a way of living together, and there is even an upbeat ending of sorts. There are striking visual moments — varying


from the site of the half-built houses through to the snow-capped mountains surrounding this remote town — and Liova displays an easy hand in marshal- ling her experienced cast, and crafting a tenderly dour film which could appeal to other festivals.


PANORAMA


SKor. 2010. 129mins Director/screenplay Kim Soo-hyun Production company NR Lee’s Entertainment International sales M-Line Distribution, www.mline-distribution. com Producer Lee Kyung-hee Cinematography Kim Jin-eu Editor Lee Yeon-jin Production designer Lee Sin-hye Main cast Kim Hyo-jin, Kim Kkobbi, Kim Sang- hyon, Seo Hyun-jin, Choi Min-yong


Hee-jin (Seo). Hee-jin and Yoon are friends, and soon the professor hires Yoon as a model for a beach-side art project and they all listen to heart- broken Yoon’s reminiscences of her doomed affair with Kang. If only it were that simple, however. Lengthy


underwater shots of Yoon ensue, for some oblique reason to do with the art show. The trio run around on the beach, they buy some booze. Hee- jin relates how she met Yoon, leading to yet another extended side-bar flashback. Then Yoon and Kang’s meeting, a drawn-out affair involving a pretend suicide and a mannequin, transpires. The screenplay then leads us to a policeman,


the handcuffs, a chef, a pointlessly prolonged interlude in a Chinese restaurant, and a trip to the mountains to meet a monk. At this stage, almost 80 minutes into the film, the central affair has not even begun. Surprisingly, when it does finally happen, the director suddenly discovers his edit- ing scissors and makes it a brief, almost chaste, interlude. This does not betray any new attitude to pacing,


however, as Yoon and Kang are given all the time in the world to break up, torture each other, and even indulge in some primal screaming. Perhaps if Kim Soo-hyun had depicted the


central relationship as more than a whimsical meeting of opposites, he might have carried the audience further, but Yoon and Kang are together for the scantest amount of screen time before they break up. The actors also have meagre on-screen chemistry, although the airy-fairy dialogue they are given does not help to ground their relationship.


n 8 Screen International in Berlin February 17, 2011


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