Incendies

The film opens at present day in Montreal with twins in their twenties, Jeanne and Simon Marwan, hearing the will of their mother Nawal Marwan, who has just passed away, from a notary Jean Lebel she’d worked for many years. Her last wish is for them to find their father and brother, to their bewilderment, because they thought their father dead and they never heard about having a brother.

At first, only Jeanne is willing to undertake the journey to an unnamed country in the Middle East (however, this clearly refers to Lebanon, where the author of the play himself was born at and escaped from) while Simon, questioning their mother’s sanity, refuses to embark on such a crazy quest.

Simultaneously, their mother’s story entwines with their research. An incredible story of a woman who is caught between the conflict of religious conflict between Muslims and Christians, especially the war in the country in the 1970s’ and 80s’.

What gives the story an extraordinary strength is exactly this comparison between the perceptions Jeanne and Simon who grew up in a free country versus the life, habits and ways of a nation in the middle of a raging conflict in a country so distant from their lives, especially – and this is apparent during the entire film – because Nawal has shared nothing of her past with their children.

This is portrayed during the twins encounter with the local tradition, especially at one moment, when Jeanne meets the villagers who could have known her father and is told by an elderly woman that “she is looking for her father, but is her mother she knows nothing about”. This exactly depicts the relation of the audience in the western world, who, unless they’ve lived in similar conditions, cannot relate to some of Nawal’s later radical actions and the endurance with which she accepts the imprisonment that follows.

This endurance of Nawal through the atrocities she is faced with during her life before the final escape to Canada is mind-blowing. Death, abuse, inhumane conditions and life-lasting rage are emotions Villeneuve has captured with a divine skill.

All pieces to the puzzle are gradually served to the audience (depends of how quickly you pick up on the clues) and the moment you realize what actually happened just stops your heartbeat for a second.

Like many of the critics, I would have thought this film would win the Oscar for the best foreign film. It has everything a film should have to be more than welcomed to the Hall of Fame and a message that clearly, is immortal.

Attenberg

Directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari

I saw this film at a KVIFF screening today and just have to sit down and write this bit about it. I think I’ve seen quite a bit, but this was a real “cinema extraordinaire”…

Like Dogtooth, which Tsangari coproduced, Attenberg is a clear criticism of contemporary Greece and the decay of values on a sample so precious to the Greek culture – a family.

Inspired by the BBC series studying the behavior of animals by David Attenborough, the film tries to do something similar, only the with people. Mispronunciation of the biologist’s name provides the title to the film.

The plot is quite simple and easy to get. Marina, a 23 year old is only just starting to experiment with her sexuality at the background of a deserted factory, a remnant of industrial Greece of the last century. Her father, who’s dying of cancer, only speaks of the procedure of having his body cremated elsewhere, as this is apparently a taboo in Greece. Marina’s experimenting her first sexual experience with her best friend Bella, who has apparently had her share already. Enter “Engineer”, a nameless character, who serves Marina almost like a human figurine for her first sexual experience.

Let the story begin. Hold on, but there’s no story here. Tsangari is not interested in her characters and their journey of how they got being what they are or where they’re going. Rather, she studies their character and she does so mercilessly.

She doesn’t stop before anything including stripping her characters (and their protagonists) naked, literary. Its not just their bodies we see naked, but also all their secret thoughts and feelings, lets them express everything on the screen for the voyeur-predator sitting in the audience, serving them blood-dripping raw.

To even deepen the animal-like impression the audience gets when seeing the four lead characters, Tsangari lets them act like real animals, and uses these sequences as intermission, sort of, in her film, giving it an even more bizarre impression.

The colors are very simple as well, the general greyness interrupted only by images of the monstrous factory nearby. Camera bets everything on stills having the pattern interrupted only by a moment when Marina and Bella play tennis and tensions between them escalate.

Overall, a very interesting film more likely to shock and make your head spin rather than bore you.