Eternal Homecoming
Premiere of a Ukrainian film became the most notable event of the 35th Moscow International Film Festival
The main competition of the festival included 16 films. The geographical scope is quite representative: from the Netherlands and Turkey to Japan and South Korea. The host country presented three films: black-and-white film The Role made by known since the 1980s film director (many still remember his Letters of a Dead Man) Konstantin Lopushansky, criminal drama Slide from former advertiser Anton Rosenberg, and costume film Juda by Andrey Bogatyriov based on novel by Leonid Andreev. Here, of course, anyone can envy Russia film makers: it is hard to imagine that any Ukrainian festival could feature three Ukrainian feature films.
There have been very few discoveries during the competition program presentation so far. The film Juda is weak both in directing and in acting: with such approach Andreev’s texts turn into pompous sermons. Lopushansky (by the way, he was born in Ukraine in Dnipropetrovsk) presented a rather interesting stylization of early cinema – the action takes place in 1920s in Finland and Russia. Unfortunately, with all the visual sophistication the weak spot is the plot, which seems very artificial and contrived.
The topic of exile and aggressive moral majority prevails in Dutch drama Matterhorn (filmed by Diederik Ebbinge). A man called Fred lives in a patriarchal quiet village. His wife died and the relationship with his son just didn’t work. Fred does pretty much nothing: his days consist of trips to church and talking with neighbors. One day half-mad tramp Theo appears at his doorstep, and the relationship of the two single men begins to cause at first bewilderment, and then open hostility from the local burghers. The director fell for the temptation, inherent to nearly all debutants, to divide the characters into good and bad ones, however, the powerful moral message of the film leaves no one indifferent – in the world of festival films, where too many actors are fascinated with games in pure art, such quality does not occur very often.
South Korean film Lebanon Emotion (Jung Young-heun), on the contrary, is rather unpredictable. A girl came out of prison and immediately began to get in one trouble after another, bringing misery to everyone, who comes in her way. There is a lot of cruelty and violence, many sharp turns. The film has every chance to win one of the prizes of the festival. It’s only a pity that Lebanon Emotion is a rather commercial film than festival one.
The initial situation in the film Back in Crime (Germinal Alvarez) also resembles genre films: investigator inexplicably moves in the past and, thus, gets a chance to neutralize a dangerous criminal – but another detective, who is, in fact, the young and ambitious main character, begins to interfere with his actions. Action-driven story becomes a reason to tell a story of meeting yourself, about time and memory.
However, this topic looks much more convincing in the film of American documentarian Alan Berliner First Cousin Once Removed, which was presented in the out of competition program Free Thought. Berliner shoots a film about his uncle – the world-renowned poet and translator. This movie really cannot be clearly identified as a dramatic or non-dramatic film. It is visual poetry in its purest form – high, piercing, and perfect. Berliner creates not only a decent screen display of the craft of his famous relative, but also a stunning by its strength statement of the paradoxes of time and human consciousness.
Creative discoveries are now taking place in out of competition program. Premiere of the film A Touch of Sin – new film (that received an award in Cannes Festival for best screenplay) by famous Chinese director Jia Zhangke, who won his fame thanks to the films made in slow, silent, but always precise aesthetics, became an absolute highlight.
As it is often the case with Jia Zhangke, the film consists of several parallel story lines, each of which tracks fate of one hero. An enraged miner, a self-taught lawyer, rebels against corruption in the village. A wandering marginal earns his living by armed robbery. A cute girl, who works as an administrator in sauna, suffers from an attack of a rich customer and administers her justice. A young worker takes one job after another, trying to rebuild his life in vain. These characters are four people from four different provinces. Zhangke boldly shows what is hidden behind the facade of modern prosperity in China, moreover, experimenting with different styles, he creates a unique cinematic world in which artistic and social elements are in perfect balance.
The pleasant fact is that this year a Ukrainian film was presented at the festival even though it was included in the out of competition program. Moscow audience finally saw a new film by Ukrainian classic Kira Muratova – Eternal Homecoming. The film is directed in an extremely interesting manner. There are two characters – a man and a woman, former groupmates. They haven’t seen each other for many years. One day he comes to her to ask for advice in a complicated personal situation. Muratova takes a seemingly obvious situation and gives it to different pairs of actors, including amateurs, to play it out. Every time it turns out differently and as a result we see a grand human comedy. The film was a huge success. Tickets were sold out immediately, two halls were packed for the premiere, and dozens of people couldn’t get to the screening. One can fairly say that this premiere became the highlight of the first days of the festival.
Moscow International Film Festival ends on June 29.
