REVIEWS Tatsumi REVIEWED BY FIONNUALA HALLIGAN


Roughly speaking, Gekiga (dramatic pictures) is to Manga (whimsical drawings) what the graphic novel is to the comic book; Yoshihiro Tatsumi started the movement in 1957. That’s really all the knowledge the viewer needs to appreciate Eric Khoo’s Tatsumi, an animated tribute to the 75-year-old artist of the same name. That, and a little bit of patience as the film haltingly finds its way into its subject. The stories will do the rest. Khoo (Be With Me), a former comic artist who


has revered Tatsumi his whole career, presents a tender-hearted take on the artist’s life, bracketed by five of his stories. These are blistering, dark tales of post-war occupied Japan which must have been radical for their time and still pack a tremen- dous punch. The combination of the two strands grows


increasingly effective as Khoo’s restrained 96-minute piece plays out, and while wide play is a challenge due to the niche subject matter, Tatsumi should perform well in specialised arthouse and on festival circuits, prospering as a library title. Tatsumi is wholly animated, with each story —


‘Hell’, ‘Beloved Monkey’, ‘Just A Man’, ‘Occupied’ and ‘Good-Bye’ — broken up by scenes from Tat- sumi’s autobiography (A Drifting Life) which are voiced by the artist himself. The styles shift subtly in creative animation director Phil Mitchell’s real- isation of a cinematic manga, which is layered and delicately colour shaded, with backgrounds sometimes fading to shadow play. Tatsumi’s bio- graphical segments are in full colour, while the individual stories play on tones ranging from blue


UN CERTAIN REGARD


Sing. 2011. 96mins Director/screenplay Eric Khoo Production companies Zhao Wei Films, Infinite Frameworks International sales The Match Factory, www.matchfactory.de Producers Cheng Tan- fong, Phil Mitchell, Freddie Yeo, Eric Khoo Creative animation director Phil Mitchell Music Christopher Khoo, Christine Sham Featured voices Tetsuya Bessho, Yoshihiro Tatsumi


to orange and, most powerfully, the stained sepia of ‘Good-Bye’. What really comes across from Tatsumi’s sto-


ries is a sense of abasement and alienation in a destroyed, often post-apocalyptic landscape (‘Hell’ is about Hiroshima, and is reminiscent of — or the forefather of — Ari Folman’s work in Waltz With Bashir). These are complete and nuanced pieces, each a novella of images, mostly involving an everyman figure who looks similar to Tatsumi himself. And they are cinematic, despite being so rooted


in the manga aesthetic: according to the film’s accompanying notes, Tatsumi gave the creative team detailed panels and framings for his work.


In between, the artist’s own life story could also


be interpreted as an everyman voyage of that era in Japan until his works of fiction give the lie to that assumption — an interesting contrast. Despite a jealous brother, this is no Crumb, how- ever; Tatsumi’s stories shout the loudest. Tatsumi is episodic; a film of contrasts which


takes a while to find its rhythm. In this respect, it is not smoothed by the artist’s devotion to manga legend Osamu Tezuka (Astro Boy), who encour- aged the young artist and eventually became his rival. Initial focus on the anniversary of Tezuka’s death is confusing and could perhaps have come later, when Tatsumi’s own chronology is more securely established.


DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT On The Plank REVIEWED BYMARK ADAMS


Moroccan film-maker Leila Kilani makes a strik- ing and intriguing fiction feature debut with On The Plank (Sur La Planche), the moody and impressively off-kilter story of two young Casa- blancan women delving into a life of petty crime in Tangier’s old town. Balancing plenty of dark close-ups — following


the women when they are out at night — against starkly bright scenes of them at work in a soulless shrimp factory, the film offers a pacy and decid- edly unnerving glimpse into life in Tangier. It eschews any predictable filmic scenes of the his-


toric town by focusing on the underbelly of the contemporary city. Jittery, obsessive and edgy Badia (Issami) and


her more mellow friend Imane (Bahmad) work by day peeling shrimps in the factory, but at night turn tricks and make a little cash on the side by stealing items — ranging from clothes to elec- tronic goods — from their clients. At one ‘party’ they meet two other young


women, Asma and Nawal (Akel and Betioui), who as well as turning tricks happen to work in the Free Zone of Tangier — the area of the city that is defined as European, and only accessible to those with an appropriate work permit. Badia dreams of working in the zone, seeing it as a possible springboard (perhaps the link to the film’s title) to a more material world.


n 10 Screen International at the Cannes Film Festival May 19, 2011


Morocco-Fr-Ger. 2011. 110mins Director/screenplay Leila Kilani Production companies Aurora Films, Socco Chico Films, DKB Productions, INA, Vandertastic Producer Charlotte Vincent International sales Fortissimo Films, www. fortissimofilms.com Cinematography Eric Devin Editor Tina Baz Music Wilkimix (Wilfried Blanchard) Main cast Soufia Issami, Mouna Bahmad, Nouzha Akel, Sara Betioui


The foursome see the chance to access men in


upscale ocean-front houses and bars, but it also brings them closer to danger from other opportunists and gangsters. Badia plans to steal boxes of iPhones as a money-making scheme which could help her finally make it to the Free Zone. Soufia Issami is the complex core of the film,


never sleeping but rushing between work and her nighttime encounters and obsessively scrubbing herself in a bid to wash off both her work at the factory and her sexual encounters. The camera often tracks her in extreme close-up, her unsmil- ing face and tense demeanour offers fascinating clues to her steely determination and sense of self-containment. In fact, the women performers are universally


excellent — offering a glimpse into the life of con- temporary young working women desperate to find a way out of the drudgery of their lives. Kilani (who made documentaries in Tangier)


directs with a distinct sense of place. She cleverly shoots the nighttime sequences with a sense of pace and slight seediness in close-up, which contrasts elegantly with the wide-angle shots (reminiscent of Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s food- production documentary Our Daily Bread) of scores of women in a brightly lit room all dressed in white coats, hats and masks, shelling bucket- loads of shrimp. It is a cleverly made film, with a beautifully


shot dramatic climax which fits perfectly with the moodiness and edginess of the bleak but fascinating story.


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