Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Film Eurotreasure
Posted by J.R. Jones on Wed, Feb 13, 2008 at 10:41 AM
The Gene Siskel Film Center has released the schedule for the 11th European Union Film Festival, which runs March 7 through April 13. Though many Chicago film festivals have been contracting, the EU Fest just keeps getting bigger: this year's edition offers a whopping 61 features, almost all of them screening in the Chicago area for the first time. Among the highlights:
• From Austria, Ulrich Seidl's Import Export (3/8, 3/11).
• From Denmark, Peter Schonau Fog's The Art of Crying (3/9, 3/13) and Pernille Rose Gronkjaer's The Monastery: Mr. Vig and the Nun (3/7, 3/11).
• From Finland, Aku Louhimies's Frozen Land (3/23, 3/24).
• From France, Olivier Assayas's Boarding Gate (pictured, 3/8, 3/12), Claude Chabrol's A Girl Cut in Two (3/23, 3/25), Claude Lelouch's Roman de Gare (3/16), and Guillaume Canet's Tell No One (3/15, 3/18).
• From Germany, Fatih Akin's The Edge of Heaven (3/21, 3/22) and Stefan Krohmer's Summer '04 (3/16, 3/17).
• From Hungary, Robert Koltai's Train Keeps a Rollin' (3/29, 3/31).
• From Ireland, Tom Collins's Kings (4/3) and John Boorman's The Tiger's Tail (3/22, 3/26).
• From Italy, Gianni Amelio's The Missing Star (3/29, 3/31) and Giuseppe Tornatore's The Unknown (3/30, 4/1).
• From the Netherlands, Albert ter Heerdt's Kicks.
• From Portugal, Paul Auster's The Inner Life of Martin Frost (3/15, 3/18).
• From Romania, Nae Caranfil's The Rest Is Silence (3/15, 3/20) and Catalin Mitulescu's The Way I Spent the End of the World (3/8, 3/13).
• From Spain, Jose Luis Guerin's In the City of Sylvia (3/28, 3/29), Mercedes Alvarez's The Sky Turns (3/16, 3/18), and Nacho Vigalondo's Timecrimes (3/22, 3/26).
• From Sweden, Johan Kling's Darling (3/14, 3/19) and Klaus Haro's The New Man (3/30, 4/1).
• From the United Kingdom, Nick Broomfield's Battle for Haditha (3/8, 3/10) and Ken Loach's It's a Free World . . . (3/15, 3/20).
Showing 1-5 of 5
Sorry for this aside: Kudos to Mr. Jones for writing the perfect capsule for Juno. I've read thousands of film reviews in my life, and I've never come across one that echoed unequivocally my own feelings. It was a little eerie, but of course awesomely validating at the same time.
Thank you--that's gratifying to hear, because the capsule was murder to write. My reservations toward the film would have been more properly unpacked in a long review, but there was another one slotted for that week, so I was stuck with 125-150 words. Amelie Gilette of the Onion A/V Club wrote a pretty good piece about JUNO, pinpointing one element of the movie that I too found irritating: the incredibly twee indie-pop score. On balance, though, I thought JUNO was a pretty good movie.
Yes. A great capsule. Just the way I feel about it. But I still can't believe they let Romania in the EU. When Borat was fictionalising Kazakhstan, the original country was too good (with all the skyscrapers and golden hotels) so he went to Romania where people live literally in mud (that is also the name of the village), and the rest is history.
Thanks for the heads up, JRJ. Now is there any chance we can get Pat Graham to stop blogging here forever. Holy crap is that guy annoying. Look in the comments, nobody can stand his incredibly pretentious and overwrought writing style.
Just a note that GuerÃn's film should be seen as a diptych: part A, SOME PHOTOS IN THE CITY OF SYLVIA, and part B, IN THE CITY OF SYLVIA. To the Film Center's credit, both these complimentary pieces are being shown at the EU Fest. IN THE CITY OF SYLVIA is getting most of the press, though I think SOME PHOTOS IN THE CITY OF SYLVIA, which was made before, is superior seen as a self-contained film.
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