MOVIES.YAHOO.COMThe Triplets of Belleville
Directed by: Sylvain Chomet
In Sylvain Chomet’s cute, nostalgic animation “The Triplets of Belleville,” nobody seems to enjoy normal physical proportions. The main character Champion, an aspiring Tour de France winner, has calves wider than his head, and arms like strands of spaghetti. His miniscule grandmother has one leg shorter than the other and uses a platform shoe to even things out. The French mafia don who abducts Champion could fit in the waistcoat pockets of his two identical bodyguards, whose gargantuan frames seem entirely composed of 90§ angles.
With its five pages (at most) of dialogue, “The Triplets of Belleville” relies on these physical quirks to tell its simple story. Little ticks convey character, like with Champion’s grandmother, whose habit of flicking her glasses up her nose conveys her silent determination. Much of the film’s humor also comes from parodying the French mania over the Tour de France. The bug-eyed, heaving cyclists and slovenly throngs of spectators are familiar images in the lore of France’s most beloved sporting event. In this and other respects, “The Triplets” is mainly a nostalgia piece recreating the golden, innocent aura of 1950s France, including appearances by many of the era’s heroes-keep an eye out for animated cameos from Fred Astaire, Charles Trenet, Jacques Tati, Josephine Baker, Django Reinhardt and others. -Dan Carlin
Secret Things (Choses secretes)
Directed By Jean-Claude Brisseau
Twisted and enticing, the French film “Secret Things” is definitely making its presence felt at the St. Louis International Film Festival. Two women, Sandrine (Seyvecou) and Nathalie (Revel) are out of work and suffering the dregs of a life where money is hard to come by. After meeting, however, they begin to form a sexual relationship and “business” partnership in which they seek to climb the social ladder by manipulating the men in charge. Through their promiscuity, things go well for them at their new office jobs until they both meet their match in the powerful and derisive Christophe (Deville), who is the son of the CEO. His cruel and seductive nature is well known around the office, where it is rumored that two of his former conquests set themselves on fire after being casually tossed aside by him.
Nothing short of pornography, the movie envelops the audience in scenes of flamboyant sexual exploitation and dark eroticism. The actors are terrific, especially Deville, who plays a man void of any real human emotion and only revels in the darkest facets of human desire. Overall the movie is certainly ambitious, but as it comes to a close it seems to prefer visual imagery and sexual overdrive rather than the substance of its original impetus. -Mike Fabos
Sayew
Directed by: Kiat Songsanant Kongdej Jaturanrasamee
On Sunday night the Hi-Pointe theater featured “Sayew,” a sexually charged Thai film. Political turmoil rages in Bangkok, and people change the channel from the news to the soaps and escape in pornographic magazines instead of reading the paper. Enter the androgynous Tao, a sexually ambiguous and inexperienced twenty-year-old woman who writes sex fantasy stories for her uncle’s porno magazine. Slipping in and out of her own imagination, Tao’s fantasies merge with real life as the cinematography often prevents the audience from distinguishing fantasy from reality. With magazine sales falling short of expectations, Tao’s uncle tells her to spice up her stories with “details down to the pubes” and to save her “girly stuff for the romance novels.” Tao tries everything: she visits a porn movie theater, spies on a couple, and seeks out an S&M writer, Young Stallion, for experience. Through these failed encounters, Tao discovers herself as well as the “beauty in the mundane” after Young Stallion tells her to pave her own path instead of following his. Tao decides to develop her own independent style, and her writing flourishes along with her sense of identity. “Sayew”‘s occasional sentimentality and disjointedness did not hinder the film’s overall amusing and provocative effect. -Flora Lerenman
Bonhoeffer
Directed by Martin Doblmeier
“Bonhoeffer” is a documentary detailing the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian who was hanged for opposing the Nazi regime during World War II. A man whose principles couldn’t help but be contradictory, he both visited Gandhi to learn about passive resistance and helped with a plot to assassinate Hitler.
The film was shot on location in Germany and the United States, and is a PBS-style look into the man who challenged the German churches to stand up for the Jews during the Holocaust and ended up dying for his cause mere weeks before the end of the war. There are a number of interviews throughout the film, but the most interesting is probably the last, given by Eberhard Bethge, Bonhoeffer’s closest friend and biographer. The documentary is simply shot-there is nothing flashy about it-but the subject matter makes for a compelling look into a figure that is probably not as well known in World War II history as he should be. -Travis Petersen
The Wild Dogs
Directed by: Thom Fitzgerald
Not an easy film to stomach by any means, “The Wild Dogs” explores the deplorable conditions in Bucharest, Romania, and those privileged few who have the compassion to help the needy. Things don’t exactly start out saintly, though; Geordie is sent to Eastern Europe to scout out underage “Lolitas” for his Canadian porn company. What he finds, however, is a city overrun with orphans, gypsies, and hundreds of thousands of dogs. He immediately longs to help them, but he must also tend to his sordid duties with the help of a dwarfish pimp named Radu. He meets Victor, the British ambassador to Romania, whose wife makes a similar sympathetic connection with a legless beggar boy. Throughout all this, a desparate dog catcher decides to save the dogs he is supposed to impound.
A disturbing, morally confused film, “The Wild Dogs” has plenty of gripping images and ideas, but the acting and script are spotty at times. Director Fitzgerald certainly captures the bi-polar image of the city well, with the squalid conditions of the poor paired against the decadent parties of the rich. Intense and moving. -Matt Simonton
Hukkle
Directed by Gyorgi Palfi
Apparently “Hukkle” is the Hungarian equivalent of “hiccup,” which explains the constantly hiccuping old man that lies at the center of this cute/quaint/weird/twisted film.
The most striking features of “Hukkle” are its cinematography and almost complete lack of dialogue. The camera takes us beneath the soil to a mole’s nest, under the water to a conspicuous floating corpse, and right up next to a pig’s testicles. The director never shies away from the grittier aspects of nature, either, showing us the plucking and gutting of a chicken and the filthy lovemaking of the aforementioned pig. All this is done in almost complete silence, leaving it up to the viewer to uncover the story of a strange old woman and her mysterious stash of little glass bottles without any verbal clues. Cute but creepy, “Hukkle” was an interesting way to kick off the SLIFF experience.-Matt Simonton