July 7, 1999
The City Of Marvels (1999) **
Directed by Mario Camus. An entertaining, but confusing adaptation of Eduardo Mendoza's novel set in 19th-century Spain.
Chang Jiang - The Great River Of China (1999) **
Breadtaking scenery of the Three Gorges of the Yangze River. An IMAX film.
God's Wedding (1999) **
Directed by Joao Cesar Monteiro. Portugese comedy about a 60-year-old Casanova sleeping with girls almost a quarter his age.
Face To Face (1999) **
Romanian film about a marital crisis caused by revelations that the husband was a Securitate informer spying on his wife.
Jam (1999) **
An inevitable consequence of the world-wide success of "Pulp Fiction" - a yet another tense gangster film with a fragmented storyline.
Rainbow Trout (1999) **
Directed by Park Chong-Won. A South Korean version of "Deliverance", pitting sophisticated city folks against simple country bumpkins.
Beresina Or The Last Days Of Switzerland (1999) **
Directed by Daniel Schmid. A very curious film about a Russian prostitute who deftly turns the tables on the male patriarchy, becoming a successful dominatrix and then being crowned as the first Queen of Switzerland.
Gamera 3 (1999) **
Directed by Shusuke Kaneko. Quite an impressive Japanses monster film, with Gamera battling giant Iris.
Three Seasons (1999) *
Directed by Tony Bui. Interweaving stories of several characters in modern-day Vietnam.
Autour de la maison rose (1999) **
Directed by Joana Hadjitomas and Khalil Joreigne. After the war, several families are expelled from a Beyrouth appartment building to make way for a shopping center. A typical example of feel-good, Third-World humanist cinema, celebrating civic virtues and other lofty themes. Quite watchable, but hardly compelling.
Pokémon: The First Movie (1999) *
Considering how bad this animé feature is, its title is a horrible threat.
La Femme de chambre de Titanic (1999) *
Directed by Bigras Luna. With Olivier Martinez, Romane Bohringer and Aitana Sanchez-Gijon. Weird drama about a young man (Martinez) who falls in love with a chambermaid from the "Titanic", and insists on telling everyone about his infatuation. Not surprisingly, his wife (Bohringer) isn't amused. Iberic helmer Luna, best known for his erotic celebrations of Latin machismo, comes up with a singularly boring and unarrousing piece of crap.
Elles (1999) *
Directed by Luis Galvao Teles. With Carmen Maura, Miou-Miou et Marisa Berenson. Pseudo-feminist drivel about five middle-aged women facing various melodramatic calamities. One falls in love with a younger man, another has a junkie daughter, yet another looses her man to a younger woman, a yet another goes blind... This Portuguese pic should be send back to Lisbon for some fine tuning.
The Dybbuk Of The Holy Apple Field (1999) *
Directed by Yossi Somer. With Ayelet Z'urer, Yehezkel Lazarov and Orna Porat. A disappointing adaptation of a classic Yiddish play, already filmed in Poland in 1937. The story revolves around a broken promise made by two fathers to marry their newborn children. The original was a perfect synthesis of the Jewish Orthodox mysticism and the specifically Yiddish folk traditions. Transplanted to modern-day Israel, the film looses its entire ethnographic context, and becomes a soapy melodrama, a Romeo And Juliet Meets The Exorcist-type of nonsense.
Not Of This World (1999) *
Directed by Guiseppe Piccioni. With Margherita Buy, Silvio Orlando and Carlina Freschi. An Italian drama about a Catholic novice who finds an abandoned newborn baby while strolling through a park in Milan. She leaves the boy at a local hospital, but quickly gets very attached to him and returns frequently to visit him in the nursery. Too quiet, too reflexive, too coy and too lethargic for its own good. It’s European cinema at its most ponderous.
Les Casablancais (1999) *
Directed by Abdelkader Lagtaa. With Abdelaziz Saadallah, Karina Atouf and Salah Eddine. The rise of Muslim fundamentalism in Morocco is forcefully denounced in this uneven drama about a middle-class family from Casablanca. A young boy, influenced by his fanatical teacher, becomes convinced that his parents will go to hell - his pop for drinking alcohol and his mom for not wearing a veil. The film has its moments, but the ending is hopelessly ridiculous.
That's The Way I Like It (1999) *
Directed by Glen Goei. A Singaporean rip-off of "Saturday Night Fever".
The Perfect Education (1999) **
Directed by Wada Ben. A nice little drama about a polite middle-aged man who kidnaps a young schoolgirl, and keeps her tied in his appartement for months, while patiently teaching her how to become a good and obedient wife. Not surprisingly, (considering this is a Japanese flick), his educational efforts turn out to be amazingly successful.
Breaking Out (1999) *
Directed by Daniel Lind Lagerlof. Swedish drama about an unemployed actor staging a play inside a prison.
Voyages (1999) *
Directed by Emmanuel Finkiel. With Shulamit Adar, Esther Gorintin and Nathan Cogan. After not fewer than three comedies about the Holocaust, it was about time for a properly depressing movie on that subject. Set in Poland, France and Israel, it’s a bitter psychological drama dealing with deep wounds left by the Shoah on the heart and soul of the Jewish people.
Après trois comédies sur Holocauste - La Vie est belle, Train de vie et Jacob The Liar - il était grand temps pour un film tragique, grave, et oui, plutôt déprimant, sur ce sujet. Voyages, la première réalisation d’Emmanuel Finkiel (l’ancien assistant de Krzysztof Kieslowski) présente les quêtes de trois femmes juives hantées par des souvenirs terribles. On y parle de l’exil, de l’incertitude face à la persecution, de l’impossibilité d’oublier le passé... et surtout de le comprendre. Sombre et très douloureux, le film a été tourné en Pologne, en France et en Israel.
When The Dead Start Singing (1999) *
Directed by Krsto Papic. Croatian black comedy about corpses and funerals. The film moves from a morgue to a hearse to a family grave, with German Mafia goons, Yugoslav secret police hitmen, Ustashi partisans and Czetnik warriors in hot pursuit.
The Lord's Lantern In Budapest (1999) *
Directed by Miklos Jancso. Self-indulgent mise-en-scene and pretentious ideas ruin this otherwise ambitious film. The old Hungarian master of long-takes has suddenly discovered the joys of editing and the results are not pretty. The film seems... well, choppy, unfocused and very derivative. There is nothing sadder than a cinematic legend abandoning his signature style and desperately trying to imitate a much younger collegue, in this case Emir Kusturica.
In The Rye (1999) *
Directed by Roman Vavra. Czech film consisting of three segments, all set in the fields.
Indivisible Partners (1999) *
Directed by Wang Heng-Li. A Chinese rip-off of "Shall We Dance" and "Strictly Ballroom".
Hypnosis (1999) *
Directed by Masayuki Ochiai. A mysterious hypnotic spell induces people to kill themselves. A horror movie from Japan.
Un Soir apres la guerre (1999) **
Directed by Rithy Panh. With Chea Lyda Chan, Narith Roeun and Ratha Keo. The plot is hardly original - a former soldier (now a boxer/gangster/butcher) falls in love with a beautiful prostitute - but the film is quite good, with beautiful scenery and a slow, but mesmerizing tempo. Unfortunately, an action-movie ending almost ruins what until then has been a tender romantic melodrama.
Windhorse (1999) **
Directed by Paul Wagner. With Jampa Kelsang, "Name Withheld" and "Name Withheld". A political drama set in Lhasa, where a young Buddhist nun is arrested and brutally tortured for protesting against the Chinese occupation of her country. Some of the footage (especially the exteriors) have actually been shot clandestinely in Tibet, with cast and crew posing as tourists. For all its narrative shortcomings, Windhorse still emerges as a fascinating piece of guerrilla filmmaking, made by truly brave men and women determined to expose the cruel reality of the Communist oppression.
Requiem For A Romantic Woman (1999) **
Directed by Dagmar Knopfel. Sexy German film about love and hate.
Propaganda (1999) **
Directed by Sinan Cetin. With Kemal Sunal, Metin Akpinar and Meltem Cumbul. As result of a minor frontier readjustment, some inhabitants of a small Turkish town find themselves living on the wrong side of the border. And without passports, an idiotic guard refuses to let them into their own country. A heavy-handed, but often hilarious political satire about bureaucracy, oppression and stupidity.
Mon ennemi intime (1999) **
Directed by Werner Herzog. With Werner Herzog, Klaus Kinski and Claudia Cardinale. Thanks to documentaries like Burden Of Dreams, we already know that German filmmaker Werner Herzog is certifiably mad. Now, in his newest film, Herzog reveals that his madness has never been a solitary affliction, but a disease he has always shared with his longtime friend, ennemi, collaborator and star, Klaus Kinski. This raw, unpleasant film shows these two larger-than-life geniuses - a performer and a showman - marching hand-in-hand towards an abyss of obsession and megalomania.
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