REVIEWS CITY TO CITY


Arg. 2011. 89mins Director/screenplay Carlos Sorin Production company Guacamole Films International sales Bavaria Film International, www.bavaria-film- international.de Producers Patricia Bustamante, Juan Pablo Galli, Juan Vera, Alejandro Cacetta Cinematography Julian Apezteguia Editor Mohamed Rajid Music Nicolas Sorin Main cast Beatriz Spelzini, Luis Luque, Maria Abadi, Norma Argentina, Hugo Sigman


The Cat Vanishes REVIEWED BY HOWARD FEINSTEIN


This nicely packaged film by veteran Carlos Sorin successfully balances humour and suspense in what might come across as a mere chamber play in lesser hands. The Cat Vanishes (El Gato Desaparece) focuses on a well-respected academic who has just been released from an institution after suffering a nervous breakdown, and his translator wife whose own mental state deteriorates after he returns home and attempts to get his life back. It holds the viewer’s attention with subtle comic touches that co-exist with chilling scenes of her hallucinations and more ambiguous shots of his blank face post-treatment. Sorin proves he is as adept at capturing an upper-middle-


class milieu in Buenos Aires as he is the more working-class Patagonian settings of Intimate Stories and Bombon: El Perro. The marketing challenge with a two-hander filmed in this


manner is that it renders the enterprise slighter than if it were opened up further. It is not a thriller per se, neither is it a com- edy, but more of an exercise in fusing form and content. What could be a tool to generate interest is the phenomenal


level of the acting. Both Luis Luque, playing Luis the professor, and Beatriz Spelzini (who looks like a cross between Melissa Leo and Isabelle Huppert), as his wife Beatriz, give striking perform- ances: he as a now “relaxed” man (who is on lots of psychotropic medication) and she as a passive, dutiful wife and mother until she becomes whipped into a schizoid frenzy. The camera fre- quently lingers in tight close-up on their expressive faces. Luis had been committed to the mental institution as a result


of his violent reaction when he suspected a colleague, Fourcade (Sigman), of stealing the research he had conducted over 15 years for a book on the philosophy of history. Though she expects his condition to recur once he is released,


Luis turns out to be the more stable of the duo and Beatriz becomes more and more obsessive and anxious. The cat of the title is their house pet, whose disappearance triggers her emo- tional disarray after she suspects her husband has killed it. Their home recalls those in the Hollywood melodramas of


the 1950s, as does part of the score (by Sorin’s son, Nicolas), when it is not connoting generic disequilibrium. By the end of the film, the music has mellowed, and so has the irrationality afflicting Luis and Beatriz. Somehow, it works.


CONTEMPORARY WORLD CINEMA


Fr. 2011. 99mins Director Ismael Ferroukhi Production companies Pyramide Productions, France 3 Cinema, Solaire Productions, VMP International sales Pyramide International, www.pyramidefilms.com Producer Fabienne Vonier Screenplay Ismael Ferroukhi, Alain-Michel Blanc Cinematography Jerome Almeras Production designer Thierry Francois Editor Annette Dutertre Music Armand Amar Main cast Tahar Rahim, Michael Lonsdale, Mahmoud Shalaby, Lubna Azabal, Christopher Buchholz


Free Men REVIEWED BY ALLAN HUNTER


Less familiar tales of the Muslim community’s involvement in the French resistance movement are woven into an absorbing, understated wartime drama in Free Men. Writer/director Ismael Ferroukhi’s sincere, eye-opener of a film would make an excel- lent companion piece to Rachid Bouchareb’s 2006 film Days Of Glory (Indigenes) as it follows a young Algerian immigrant in Nazi-occupied Paris who eventually commits himself body and soul to the cause of French freedom. Free Men lacks the dramatic fireworks of Days Of Glory or the


emotional assault of last year’s The Round Up (La Rafle) and is therefore a less robust commercial prospect. A fresh perspective on an eternally fascinating subject allied to the rising-star pres- ence of A Prophet’s Tahar Rahim should ensure respectable box- office returns on its French release in late September, with modest theatrical possibilities to follow in other territories. Rahim is the heart of the film as his bashful, soft-hearted


black marketeer Younes is awakened to the struggles that sur- round him. Rahim invests the character with wide-eyed wonder and a wary manner that makes him an engaging central figure. In the summer of 1942 (the time of the events in The Round


Up), Younes is arrested by the Nazis and given the chance to save his own skin if he will work as a paid informer among the Muslim community. He starts to attend the Paris mosque run by Si Kaddour Ben Ghabrit (Lonsdale) and also befriends singer Salim (Shalaby). Younes’ sense of what is at stake grows as he realises Salim is


at risk because of his Jewish heritage and that the wily Ghabrit is playing a dangerous game with a cordial affability towards the Nazis that conceals the sanctuary and assistance he is pro- viding to the persecuted Jews. There is nothing too surprising in Free Men but it is a solid


piece of storytelling that engages both the heart and the mind. Ferroukhi studiously works to avoid melodrama but the result feels a little bloodless and some of the secondary characters are underdeveloped. The streets of Paris are used resourcefully while the maze-like


interiors of the mosque and the smoky world of night-time clubs are effectively deployed to create atmosphere without add- ing any kind of chic glamour.


n 18 Screen International at the Toronto Film Festival September 11, 2011


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