SUNDANCE 2013: THE FUTURE

Maciste (Rutger Hauer) in The Future.

Looking ahead

By Don Simpson

The Future (Il Futuro) had me at the opening homage to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, with a yellow Fiat taking the place of the iconic Volkswagen Beetle. As it turns out, that Fiat is the very vessel in which Bianca (Manuela Martelli) and Tomas' (Luigi Ciardo) parents die, leaving Bianca and Tomas to manage their
home in Rome.

Bianca is old enough to become Tomas' guardian and they are able to get money from their father's trust while their mother's funds are inexplicably tied up. Bianca is still forced to find a job to supplement the trust funds and Tomas willingly volunteers at the gym in exchange for being able to work out there. It is at the gym that Tomas meets two strange friends (Nicolas Vaporidis, Alessandro Giallocosta). Soon Bianca and Tomas are entwined in a risky scheme that involves a former Mr. Universe-cum-actor who goes by the name of his most famous character, Maciste (Rutger Hauer).

As Chilean director Alicia Scherson's title soon suggests, Bianca and Tomas' present is quite grim; it is only their future that holds promise. The Future exists in a surreal fugue state in which strange events are explained by the siblings' damaged psychological state after their parents' catastrophic accident. Time has become blurred and they see things much differently -- bright lights blast through their windows all night long and their parents' crushed yellow Fiat is now grey.

FILM REVIEW: BRIDE FLIGHT

Frank (Waldemar Torenstra) and Esther (Anna Drjver) in Bride Flight.

Thresh beholdened

By Ed Rampell

Ben Sombogaart’s Bride Flight is a highly recommended adult movie. By this, I don’t mean that it’s porn – although it does have some eroticism and a glorious nude scene. Rather, I simply mean that this foreign film has mature subject matter and is for grownups who think. Bride Flight also has a fairly complex form that requires a sustained attention span, so it’s definitely not for mall rats intent on mindless action and escapism on multiplex screens. 

As its name implies, Bride Flight is indeed about wives-to-be who fly on the so-called “Last Great Air Race” from Europe to New Zealand back in 1953, when these globe straddling jaunts were very big adventures. The passengers aboard the KLM carrier that participated in and won this real life aerial contest included 40 Dutch immigrants, mostly women seeking to escape post-WWII Holland’s hardships by starting new lives at Christchurch, where their Dutch fiancés awaited them. A pretty offbeat premise, as far as plots are concerned.

The film focuses on three women and a man on this flight that, back in the 1950s, took days to make. Frank touches the lives of the trio, and although the émigrés’ existences become intertwined in their adapted country, they go on to lead very separate lives, yet remain intimately bound. In terms of Bride Flight’s complexity, it effortlessly shifts cinematically from past to present, so the romantic saga goes back and forth from the young to the aged immigrants. The technique requires viewers to focus on the unfolding saga, the way that Alain Resnais’ circa 1960 classics Last Year at Marienbad and Hiroshima, Mon Amour likewise bent time and continuity. 

Bride Flight therefore has two actors playing each major character -- 20-somethings for the new arrivals, seniors for the present day Dutch transplants. American audiences will be most familiar with the rugged Dutch action hero Rutger Hauer (1982’s Blade Runner, 2005’s Batman Begins, this year’s Hobo With a Shotgun) who portrays Frank. Waldemar Torenstra plays young Frank. Ada has married a religious zealot and is portrayed by nubile Karina Smulders, whose smoldering sex scene with Frank lights up the screen. Pleuni Touw depicts the older Ada.

As young Marjorie, Elise Schaap’s character makes the best marriage of the trio, although life tosses her a curveball, causing her to become obsessive and possessive. Petra Laseur plays petulant Marjorie as an older and perhaps wiser lady. Probably the most interesting character is Esther (Anna Drjver), a Jew who, unlike her family members, survived the Holocaust, although its lingering, PTSD-like effects continue, understandably, to haunt Esther. 

Esther retains a strong individualistic streak and along with the jealous Marjorie, shares a “deep dark secret.” Esther is a fashion designer. (Interestingly, Drjver is actually a runway model, so talk about tailor-made casting.) While movies and TV shows heavily favor certain professions -- crime fighters, doctors, journalists, attorneys and the like -- Frank’s career path is fairly unusual for motion picture protagonists, and another sign as to what an outstandingly unusual film Bride Flight is. 

Bride Flight's location shooting in New Zealand enhances the overall production, which is handsome to behold and drink in. Like most movies set and/or shot in the South Seas, the indigenous Islanders and their Islands serve mainly as backdrop for the really important doings of the Caucasoid stars. However, in Bride Flight it’s not even New Zealand’s dominant majority culture of white people or “Pakehas” of English origin who are featured; it’s a Dutch minority.

Nevertheless, this 130-minute, partially subtitled film is an excellent, well-crafted feature for auds who prefer their movies mature. Bride Flight is a realistic slice of life, albeit in an unusual milieu. Director Sombogaart’s Twin Sisters was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2004, and gazing into my crystal ball, I predict the same for Bride Flight, which has also earned some richly deserved prizes on the film festival circuit. Bride Flight, like fine wines, shows that films taste better when aged.

 

  

 

FILM REVIEW: HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN

Hobo (Rutger Hauer) in Hobo with a Shotgun.

Not taking the ride

By Don Simpson

I typically do not read reviews of films before I write my own, but in this instance I read everything about Hobo with a Shotgun that has been published to date on IMDB.com and Rotten Tomatoes and, I have to admit, I really do not understand why so many people are raving about it. And that, my friends, is why I hopped on this god forsaken “I hate Hobo with a Shotgun” bandwagon in the first place.

Hopping off a train — because that is where all hobos seem to come from -- the nameless Hobo (Rutger Hauer) finds himself in the ironically named Hope Town (the adopted moniker of ”Scum Town” seems more appropriate). Within minutes, the Hobo witnesses the über-violent antics of the cartoonish mob boss, The Drake (Brian Downey), who yanks off people’s heads, leaving their decapitated body dangling inside a manhole of a public street, all at the frightful bemusement of a public audience. Or maybe they are merely waiting for some scantily clad women to bathe in the blood? (They do not have to wait very long for that to happen.)

The Hobo also befriends a street smart, young prostitute, Abby (Molly Dunsworth), who he likes to believe is a chaste schoolteacher. The Hobo mutters some nonsensical diatribes about bears and eventually announces his intentions of doling out justice for the sake of the local townspeople. Hurray! The Hobo arms himself with his titular weapon — a shotgun purchased at a local pawn shop — and sets his sights on The Drake and The Drake’s two evil sons, Ivan (Nick Bateman) and Slick (Gregory Smith), plus The Plague. By this point, what little plot there was in the first act has dissolved into some sort of nonsensical violent lunacy.

In the film’s one moment of metaphoric thoughtfulness, a lawnmower is revealed as a symbol of suburban domestic tranquility for the Hobo, but once push comes to shove that fairytale is promptly exchanged for the shotgun. Otherwise, Hobo with a Shotgun gratuitously avoids any mental stimulation.

I do not have many favorable things to say about Hobo with a Shotgun, yet I still give writer-director Jason Eisener’s for one thing: Hauer. The casting of Hauer in this role was truly an inspired yet fleeting moment of genius. As for the supporting characters, Eisner should have just set up a bunch of cardboard cutouts of overused cinematic stereotypes and the effect would have been exactly the same. To be honest, I do not discredit the actors — my problem with the supporting characters rests in the shoddily contrived dialogue and utter lack of character development.