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COMPETITION


Fr. 2011. 105mins Director Alain Cavalier Production company Camera One, Arte France Cinéma International sales Pathé International, www. patheinternational.com Producer Michel Seydoux Main cast Vincent Lindon, Alain Cavalier, Bernard Bureau, Jonathan Duong


Pater REVIEWED BY JONATHAN ROMNEY


Pater is arguably the ultimate two-people-in-a room fi lm — and so is only partly a departure for veteran experimentalist Alain Cavalier, who has proved himself France’s master of the one- man-in-a-room fi lm. In recent work, including 2009’s superb memoir Irene, Cavalier has used video and restricted resources to create intimate, highly crafted, seemingly off-the-cuff personal essays which are the very defi nition of the 100% authored cin- ema dreamed of by the precursors of the Nouvelle Vague. Cavalier varies his approach in Pater, in which he joins with


COMPETITION


Jap. 2011. 91mins Director/screenplay/ producer/ cinematography Naomi Kawase Production company Kumie International sales Memento Films International, www. memento-films.com Production designer Kenji Inoue Editors Naomi Kawase, Kaneko Yusuke, Tina Baz Music Hasiken Main cast Tohta Komizu, Hako Oshima, Tetsuya Akikawa


Hanezu REVIEWED BY LEE MARSHALL


One of Japanese director Naomi Kawase’s more inscrutable offerings, Hanezu (Hanezu No Tsuki) is a mysterious, slow- paced cinematic poem which weaves together many of the director’s favourite themes: the pressure of the past on the present; Japanese myth and legend, especially as it relates to the spirit of a place; man’s connection with nature, and nature’s produce; and love’s intimate connection with suffering and loss. But here, though the grace and quietude of Kawase’s style


often charms and seduces, the story seems too slight to support the cultural symbolism the director loads it with. In Shara, the effect of a young twin boy’s disappearance on the rest of his family touched deep emotional chords; so too, in The Mourning Forest, did the almost wordless understanding that developed between a young carer and the elderly man in her charge. The love triangle which forms the basis of Hanezu (based on


an original story by Masako Bando), on the other hand, is too hastily sketched in, and too obliquely portrayed, for us to feel more than a passing interest in the characters, though Kawase’s delicate mise-en-scene never fails to fascinate. With micro budgets and small-scale distribution, Kawase’s


fi lms always tend towards the festival and cine-club niche, and Hanezu will be no exception. But Kawase has her following — as much abroad as inside Japan — so the fi lm will somehow nuzzle its way towards its faithful micro-audience. Set in Kawase’s home base of Nara prefecture, whose history


and legends inform most of her work, the film begins with images of mud and stones on a conveyor belt. It is only gradually we realise these come from an archaeological dig. A dreamy voi- ceover recites lines from the 8th-century Japanese poem which underpins the story, which tells of the rivalry between Mount Kagu and Mount Miminashi for the love of Mount Unebi. Slowly we put a name and a few scraps of story to the three


main characters. Long-haired Takumi (Komizu) makes wooden sculptures infl uenced by Japanese myth and religion. He is hav- ing an affair with Kayoko (Oshima), who lives with Tetsuya (Akikawa). She makes coloured scarves using natural dyes; Tet- suya is a literary editor but he seems happier tending the gar- den, and talks of opening a café dedicated to Nara cuisine — one of several references to locally sourced organic food. Nature, for Kawase, seems more expressive than people:


streams and forests, mountains and the weight and presence of the past infuse and in the end overshadow the three lives shown here. Shot on handheld digital, with a wistfully melancholic string soundtrack, this is one of those fi lms that washes quite pleasantly over one’s head. But in the end, it feels like an in-between project for the prolifi c Kawase.


SCREEN SCORE ★★ May 19, 2011 Screen International at the Cannes Film Festival 9 ■


popular actor Vincent Lindon in a sometimes comic double act which could be described variously as improvised acting exer- cise, political satire, quasi-documentary experiment and folie a deux. Occasionally droll and engaging, this often opaque venture ultimately disappears up its own meta-cinematic derriere, and is unlikely to appeal outside a hardcore coterie of Francophile lov- ers of experiment. Commercial prospects are negligible. The fi lm is shot on DV cameras, sometimes actually wielded


on camera by either Lindon or Cavalier, or both simultaneously, at locations including the homes of both men. Pater begins with a lunch of canapés prepared in close-up, and Cavalier and Lin- don discussing the video project they are embarking on. The fi rst in a series of role-playing exercises reveals the basic


scenario: Cavalier will play the President of the Republic and Lindon his newly appointed Prime Minister. They discuss their plans for several radical new laws, proposing for example that any elected offi cial who steals as much as one euro from any citizen will incur maximum penalties. The fi lm follows the two politicians’ relationship, from the


rise of Lindon and the suggestion he might one day be President himself, through to his eventual sacking. In between, the two politicians, and/or the men who play them, swap improvised banter with a group of other actors and act out scenes from an imaginary political life: Lindon visits a bakery and listens to a barfl y dispensing misogynistic repartee, and Cavalier gazes at himself in the mirror after having (genuinely, it appears) under- gone cosmetic surgery to reduce his sagging dewlaps. Both principal participants are lively, often witty presences:


Cavalier is self-mockingly, impishly punctilious, while Lindon shows his energy can command our attention even when he is visibly fl ailing for something to say. But ultimately, the fi lm is too hit and miss — and often too slow and vague — to yield many trenchant insights. And, partly because it is never clear exactly what kind of project Lindon and Cavalier think they are pursuing, we can never quite gauge whether it is successful. Little is revealed either about power politics or about the mir-


ror game of acting and fi lming. This self-referential terrain has been pretty thoroughly covered in recent years by the likes of Godard, Kiarostami, Catherine Breillat (Sex Is Comedy) and Lars von Trier (in his The Five Obstructions), to name a few. Cavalier and Lindon add little of note in this dressing-up game for adults.


SCREEN SCORE ★


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