Cine-File Blog

FACE is a 3.9 million home movie. Tsai Ming-Liang intended to call the film SALOME; maybe somewhere along the way he realized he couldn’t make the film he set out for, so what he edited together instead are sketches, scenes seemingly in rehearsal, odd ideas, musical numbers and bits of slapstick. You end up thinking of the final subtitle (of many) Godard gives his KING LEAR — “A STUDY.” It begins with fully formed ideas — the first image of the film is one of Tsai’s greatest inventions, and the last shot is a great bit of slow comedy — as concrete as the front and back covers of a sketchbook. In between, as in a sketchbook, are jotted notes, pencil and ink drawings, and, of course, blank pages. The only difference is that, when paging through a sketchbook, we skip the blanks, while Tsai holds each in front of us for the same duration as the most detailed drawings.

Police work, taken as a whole, is boredom. Every now and then you make an arrest, but mostly there’s a lot of planning, bureaucracy, paperwork, procrastination. So maybe what Corneliu Porumboiu intends with POLICE, ADJECTIVE is to put all other films that’d dare to call themselves “procedurals” to shame; this is “police work” in the same sense that Pialat’s VAN GOGH is “art.” You remove the insecurity that drives a filmmaker to want to be “exciting,” and what you’re left with is a bunch of dour policemen shooting the shit and standing on street corners for hours at a time.

But there is, however, a peculiar excitement to Porumboiu’s film. What has been cut out, besides the usual business of crime or arrests, is the division between the subjects and the audience. There is an odd sensation to the film, as if we’re looking at the same things the characters are looking at and are experiencing the world the same way. Nearly every scene is constructed around this principle: before Dragos Bucur’s Cristi launches into his now-infamous dissection of the lyrics to Mirabela Dauer’s “Nu Te Parasesc Iubire,” the song is heard all the way through twice; when he reports that nothing happened during his stake-out, it’s only after we spend a good fifteen minutes watching that nothing happen; the ridiculousness of his boss asking his secretary to fetch a dictionary in the climax becomes even more obvious when we have to wait for several minutes for her to come back so that the conversation can be resumed.

A theater manager awaits the end of the Q&A for EYE OF THE STORM on Sunday night.

Bob Downey, the Chicago International Film Festival’s official photographer, snaps into action.  Downey takes about 500 pictures a day during the festival.

The best film I’ve seen at the festival so far is THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN, and you can read my review at The Auteurs.

Portuguese master Manoel de Oliveira is certainly not slowing down with age. His new film, made at 100 years old, is flat-out great. ECCENTRICITIES OF A BLOND HAIR GIRL (2009, 63 min) might call to mind the novels of Henry James or, more appropriately, the short stories of Guy de Maupassant. It is set present-day, but has a decidedly late 19th/early 20th century sensibility. It’s not surprising, then, to find that it’s based on a short story by Oliveira’s fellow countryman Eça de Queirós—Portugal’s famed writer who was indeed a 19th century author.

Oliveira has kept his film in tune with its short story origins—it clocks in at just over an hour and is a model of efficiency and minimalism both in its storytelling and its style. The narrative is about an accountant, Macário, working for his uncle who falls under the spell of a beautiful young woman, Luísa, living across from his office. There is an introduction; a courtship; proposal; falling out with his uncle; financial ruin; financial success; financial ruin again; and, finally, signs of a happy outcome.

Oliveira collapses time—creating ellipses in the story—through abrupt edits and transitional devices (such as a shot of the nighttime city followed by the same shot of the city at dawn, but more than a day has transpired). The brevity of the film and Oliveira’s briskness give the film an energy, breathlessness, and, seemingly, inevitability. But he has tricks in store. As with many of his films, Oliveira revels in his storytelling and in the construction of narrative (the framing device here is our protagonist reciting his tale to a stranger on a train). Oliveira continues to demonstrate that he is one of our most literary of filmmakers.

But don’t confuse “literary” with page-bound or non-visual—he’s far from that. ECCENTRICITIES is also a stunningly beautiful film even as Oliveira’s style is quite minimal. It is this minimalism that gives the film much of its power—Oliveira relies on subtlety in his imagery, allowing small details to come to the fore. An early shot has Luísa at the window of her home as Macário watches her. She pulls down a translucent shade, partially obscuring her from view, and then pulls across a drape, leaving only a thin shadow of herself. As she disappears from Macário’s view, one feels that this shot has some importance. It is not till the end of the film that we realize that there may be some deliberate foreshadowing on Oliveira’s part.

ECCENTRICITIES’ sense of romantic longing and its tale of a quest for a mysterious woman calls to mind Oliveira’s much younger Iberian compatriot, the Spanish filmmaker José Luis Guerin—specifically his great film IN THE CITY OF SYLVIA. As Oliveira’s career winds down (though, by the looks of things he may continue on in perpetuity—he’s got another film in pre-production!), it’s good to know that there are perhaps a handful of worthy followers on the scene. (Patrick Friel)

ECCENTRICITIES OF A BLOND HAIR GIRL screens twice more in the festival: Tuesday, October 13 at 3:15pm and Wednesday, October 14 at 6;30pm

CINE-FILE’s coverage of the 45th Chicago International Film Festival will start Friday, October 9th and run the duration of the festival. We’ll be posting it here at the CINE-FILE / Blog, updated daily.

You can follow our updates via Twitter through @cinefile.

A number of our regular writers will are also covering the festival for other sites, including Rob Christopher (for The Chicagoist) and myself (for The Auteurs Notebook, though I’ll also be posting here daily).