Le Tout Nouveau Testament (2015) Review

Lucas Versantvoort / 5 Nov 2015

According to director Jaco van Dormael, God is not some incorporeal being floating in the clouds, but a sadistic man living in an apartment in Brussels with his weak-willed wife and 10-year-old daughter Ea. Even worse, it's The Old Testament God full of fire and brimstone who spends his days creating new universal laws intended to annoy people. Ea is fed up, releases everyone's dates of death and flees to the real world to find new apostles and write her own brand new testament. Yet the film contains more than just a few laughs and ends up being quite profound in a delightfully non-patronizing way.

The film is basically split into several segments, each one devoted to one of the six new apostles Ea finds. Finding them seems to be the story's main drive, but in the end it becomes about each of their stories. They all represent certain recognizable facets of human behavior: there's the businessman who, after discovering when he'll die, realizes he's been living a lie. 

The film's filled to the brim with visual flair: when Man is created and wandering the Earth, his groin is censored. The man notices this and tries to get rid of this black bar covering his manhood, but to no avail. There's also a beautiful scene involving a severed hand dancing on a table as one of the apostles, a woman with a prosthetic arm watches (trust me, it works). 

There's great comedy strewn about this film, but some of the funniest bits involve God having trouble getting used to life on Earth. After spending so long creating sadistic rules, it's hilarious to see him get a taste of his own medicine. Funnier still is when he protests, stating that he's God which everyone dismisses as the ranting of a raving lunatic. When he's being manhandled, he hilariously says threatens that he'll give his attackers psoriasis, warts or inflict them with a permanent case of premature ejaculation.

Not every skit holds up: the ones involving a guy tempting fate by falling off of great heights to see if he'll survive or a romance involving a gorilla wear out their welcome, but hey, when you've got a beautiful shot of someone literally embracing his own reflection, I can easily forgive. In the end, it's the film's ability to subtly convey its poetic undertones that separate it from the pack.

The Paradise Suite (2015) Review

Lucas Versantvoort / 4 Nov 2015

The Paradise Suite is Dutch director/writer Joost van der Ginkel's attempt at mosaic-type storytelling. We've seen this many times before, for example in Iñárritu's Death Trilogy. Yet their continued relevance testifies to their poetic potential. Van der Ginkel succeeds in crafting an excruciating, relentlessly intense tale and yet it's that same relentlessness that makes the film go from 'poetic tale of human suffering' to 'my God, how long will this continue' in the blink of an eye.

We're first introduced to all the characters: the Bulgarian Senya lives in Sofia, but hopes to become a model. She and three others are selected to go to another photoshoot in Amsterdam, but they end up in the Red Light district. One of the kingpins is Ivica, a Serbian who is just discovering the pleasures of being a father. Then there's Yaya, an African man, who tries to prevent a mother and two children from being evicted by promising to pay their rent, grieving mother Seka who's obsessed with revenge and a Swedish boy pianist Lukas suffering under his father who mixes up the roles of being a father and a music teacher. Whether by force or a mere glance, some of these people's paths will cross. 

These mosaic-films depend on emotional force and thematic unity. There's plenty of the former to go around, of the blunt force trauma kind. Nary a scene goes by without something unsettling happening, whether it's Lukas being bullied at school, his being unable to control his bladder, the mother in Yaya's apartment complex telling how she has been 'paying' the rent, Jenya working in the Red Light district; the list goes on. Believe me, it does. Then again, I did like that certain characters embodied variations on a certain theme. For example, the notion of parenthood is shared by several characters. 

The film's true strength is acting. It's very much a multicultural cast, yet there's not one weak link, one weakly acted moment. The same cannot be said for the music, however, which tends to drone on and on. It's the kind of droning that's supposed to get you into the characters' heads, but ends up making you aware of the aches in your own.

But in the end, it's the constant misfortune experienced by these characters that prevents The Paradise Suite from reaching the upper echelons of mosaic films. There's happy endings for some of them, but the film's overall negativity makes you leave the theatre not lost in poetic thoughts on universal suffering and how we're all one, but like you've just endured a brutal beatdown. In other words, the drama is definitely presented--and acted out--in a realistic fashion, but it never rises to a higher plane of existence, so to speak. It's universal suffering without the 'universal'. 

ps: what is it with kids bullying someone by pissing on them? When some kids ambush Lukas in the bathroom and piss on him, the one doing the pissing would have to drink precisely enough at some point during the day to be able to piss at that precise moment. His entire day would have to revolve around it! I imagine his parents must be pleased he drinks his juice so diligently every morning: 'Gee honey, you sure have been drinking a lot lately.' 'Yeah well, gotta stay hydrated.'

Audition (1999) Review

Lucas Versantvoort / 2 Nov 2015

So one day I woke up and decided to watch this Korean drama called Audition. Little did I know I was about to subject myself to some literally cutting-edge stuff. This tender love story will cut through you like a knife through butter. 

Shigeharu Aoyama recently lost his wife and is left to care for their son. Their relationship endures, but seven years later his son asks him if he'll consider the possibility of remarrying. Shigeharu finds this still to be a daunting prospect. Luckily, his film producer friend is sympathetic to his plight. He arranges a fake audition for a fake movie. Maybe Shigeharu will find true love once again. Dozens of actresses send in portfolios, but there's one in particular that catches Shigeharu's eye: Asami Yamazaki, a young woman who used to be in ballet, but had to quit for some reason. She equates this experience with dying. Shigeharu is moved by her tale and takes a strikes up a conversation with her once she shows up at the audition. Later, they meet again and together they embark on a voyage of self-discovery through which Shigeharu discovers that for Asami, it's the insides that count. He'll soon discover that when the time comes, he won't have a leg to stand on.

Audition is a film that cuts straight to the heart of the matter. It trims all the fat and everything is brought to life with razor-sharp precision. The film has carved a little niche for itself particularly due to the way it builds up to its stunning climax. If you're tired of all those pesky generic drama's, then you'll find great solace in this quiet little character piece...

Semour: An Introduction (2014) Review

Lucas Versantvoort / 31 Oct 2015

Having been a fan of classical music for about ten years now, I must confess I'd never heard of Seymour Bernstein. What's worse is that this was a man being touted as someone who 'needed no introduction'. Good thing then Ethan Hawke created the very appropriately titled Seymour: An Introduction which goes beyond music and gives a glimpse of an entire ethos and lifestyle. 

We see Bernstein sitting at the piano in his cozy little apartment, practicing (what I think is) a Scarlatti piece and trying to get a certain phrase just right. From here on out, the documentary alternates between several types of scenes: masterclasses, interviews, casual conversations, etc. We see how his masterclasses help his students with phrasing and so on. The documentary takes on a hypnotic quality--aided by the immense amount of Schubert--as Bernstein explains his views on music, life and everything in between.

My first experience with classical music was Milos Forman's Amadeus which blew me away, because it wasn't just about music, but the people behind the music, their passions and obsessions. Seymour: An Introduction works in similar ways. Like Salieri, Seymour sees music as something more than just sound waves entering our ears. Music can be transcendent. It can be a force that unites people (as seen when Seymour reminisces about his wartime concerts). Ethan Hawke himself only appears about three times, making sure to not make the documentary about him, and you can feel he took great pains to paint Seymour in a light that adequately reflects the man's way of life.

I did feel, however, that the documentary could have bothered to spend more time on a few select topics. Take the notion of interpretation, for example. Seymour says that Glenn Gould, while a genius, let his eccentricity seep into his interpretations too much. When Gould plays Bach, Seymour only hears Gould. However, in an earlier masterclass, Seymour himself suggested that a slight alteration in interpretation be made, because we 'feel' that it must be played in a certain way and so on. I'm not saying Seymour is a hypocrite. Far from it. What I am saying is that the documentary implicitly raises questions of interpretation: what makes a good interpretation and when does an interpretation deviate 'just too much' from the source material? When does a unique interpretation go from 'inspired' to 'eccentric'? Another example is when Seymour explains he quit performing due to stress. A close friend then raises the question of whether or not a performer has a certain responsibility to his talent, art and audience despite any amount of stress. Yet, the documentary never shows Seymour giving a direct answer to this question (though we can guess he feels he's accepted this responsibility in the way he passes on his craft to his pupils). I get that the focus is ultimately on Seymour, but it still bothered me that these kinds of interesting topics were being addressed yet sometimes not really dealt with.

All in all though, the portrait it manages to paint of a man and his entire lifestyle in under ninety minutes leaves a lasting impression. Any niggling complaints about the documentary's reluctance to discuss certain musical topics in-depth are superseded by the romantic, gentle way Hawke portrays Bernstein.