Movies

European Union Film Festival

March 20, 2008

The 11th European Union Film Festival continues Friday, March 21, through Thursday, April 3, at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, 312-846-2800. Tickets are $9, $7 for students, and $5 for Film Center members. Following are films screening through Thursday, March 27; for a full festival schedule see siskelfilmcenter.com.

The Edge of Heaven Born in Hamburg to Turkish parents, director Fatih Akin brought an unusual cultural perspective to Head-On (2004), about a marriage of convenience between a beautiful Turk and a suicidal German. In The Edge of Heaven, his first dramatic feature since then, the characters navigate the same cultural divide, but here Akin is more preoccupied with the sense of responsibility that links parents to their children (or vice versa). The narrative is defined by two scenes of caskets at the Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul: the first arrives carrying a middle-aged Turkish woman who became a prostitute to put her daughter through school; the second departs with the remains of a young German woman who unwisely followed the daughter—her lesbian lover—back to Turkey. In English and subtitled German and Turkish. 112 min. (JJ)  Fri 3/21, 6 PM, and Sat 3/22, 8:45 PM.

Frozen Land Who’d have thought Helsinki was such a hotbed of crime? Aku Louhimies paints an unrelievedly grim landscape of the Finnish capital; only his skilled cast and his precise control of the material (an adaptation of Tolstoy’s story “The False Coupon”) make this 2005 drama watchable. When a middle-aged teacher loses his job, his teenage son turns to counterfeiting, and the kid’s fake banknote triggers a chain reaction of drunken rage, theft, prostitution, drug abuse, and murder. The director is particularly adroit at handling temporal shifts, as the shock waves of violence ensnare unrelated strangers and flashbacks reveal bad decisions and their tragic consequences. In Finnish with subtitles. 125 min. (AG)  Sun 3/23, 5 PM, and Mon 3/24, 7:45 PM.

A Girl Cut in Two Claude Chabrol’s capacity to make shopworn material seem almost new is especially evident in this 2007 drama, which he cowrote with his stepdaughter, Cecile Maistre. Their sincere and competent script transplants the 1906 murder of New York architect Stanford White to contemporary France, with an added emphasis on various forms of class and sexist abuse. A TV weather announcer (Ludivine Sagnier) becomes involved with a famous writer (Francois Berleand) who’s married and nearly twice her age, much to the chagrin of a spoiled heir (Benoit Magimel) who’s closer to her in age and accustomed to getting his way. In French with subtitles. 114 min. (JR)  Sun 3/23, 3 PM, and Tue 3/25, 6 PM.

The Tiger’s Tail John Boorman takes a crack at The Prince and the Pauper with this fanciful Irish tale. Brendan Gleeson stars as a hard-nosed Dublin real estate developer who thinks he’s seen his double but later learns that he was adopted and his identical twin is now a vagrant. The expected mistaken and stolen identities ensue, with facile irony giving way to unpersuasive drama. The talented Gleeson, who had a breakthrough role in Boorman’s The General, returns the favor here, carrying the whole movie on his broad shoulders. With Kim Cattrall, Ciaran Hinds, and Sinead Cusack. 107 min. (JJ)  Sat 3/22, 5 PM, and Wed 3/26, 6 PM.

Timecrimes Through an unlikely chain of events, a middle-aged home owner is lured into a time machine that sends him several hours into the past; once he emerges from it, he discovers he must engineer the same chain of events and lure his earlier self along the same path or he’ll cease to exist. The idea of time travel creating multiple selves dates as far back as David Gerrold’s 1973 novel The Man Who Folded Himself, if not further, but in practical terms it’s so confusing one can imagine why moviemakers have shied away from it. Spanish writer-director Nacho Vigalondo explores it just enough to keep this 2007 thriller moving, and Karra Elejalde is entirely convincing as the unwilling time traveler, who finds himself threatened by not only his past self but his future one as well. In Spanish with subtitles. 88 min. (JJ)  Sat 3/22, 7 PM, and Wed 3/26, 8:15 PM.

ALSO SCREENING

The Class  Sat 3/22, 3 PM, and Thu 3/27, 8:15 PM.

The End of the Neubacher Project  Sun 3/23, 3:15 PM, and Mon 3/24, 6:15 PM.

Happy Family  Sat 3/22, 5:15 PM, and Thu 3/27, 8:15 PM.

A Hero in Rome  Fri 3/21, 8:15 PM, and Mon 3/24, 8 PM.

Monkeys in Winter  Fri 3/21, 6 PM, and Sun 3/23, 5:15 PM.

My Best Enemy  Sat 3/22, 3 PM, and Thu 3/27, 6 PM.

Other Worlds  Tue 3/25, 8 PM.

Prague  Sat 3/22, 7 PM, and Tue 3/25, 8:15 PM.

Short Circuits  Fri 3/21, 8:15 PM, and Tue 3/25, 6 PM.

Time to Die  Sat 3/22, 9 PM, and Mon 3/24, 6 PM.

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