The 55th Chicago International Film Festival runs from October 16th to October 27th. All screenings are at the AMC River East theaters at 322 E. Illinois St. in downtown Chicago.
Carolina Sanin in “Litigante.” credit: en.unifrance.org
A superbly told slice-of-life short-story and an incisive character study, Litigante (Colombia, 2019) is the second feature film of the talented Franco Lolli.
Silvia (a riveting Carolina Sanín, a well-known Colombian writer and feminist making her acting debut) is a deputy legal director for Bogota’s civil public works programs, which are mired in a potentially corrupt bidding controversy. A single mother by choice, raising a six-year-old boy, she and her sister Maria José (Alejandra Sarria) are also taking care of their mother, Leticia (Leticia Gómez), a fiercely independent former lawyer herself who has just been given a returning-cancer diagnosis. Grilled in a radio interview by a local political journalist about the bidding scandal, Silvia runs into him again at a party days later – initially defensive, she unexpectedly warms to Abel (Vladimir Durán), and they start a tentative relationship amidst her other ongoing struggles.
The film’s title, in addition to describing her occupation, indicates Sylvia’s penchant for standing her ground and managing the tricky pragmatic and emotional complexities that surround her, her career and her family(s) – sometimes through stipulation, other times adversarial. Franco Lolli works
well with cinematographer Luis Armando Arteaga to create a mood of intimate urgency without obtrusiveness, and collaborates rewardingly with French filmmakers Marie Amachoukeli and Virginie Legeay on the smart and detailed screenplay. It can be a bit humorless, and the film could use some broader dynamics emotionally, but everything here rings undeniably true. It’s a very good, very involving work from an already good filmmaker who’s clearly getting better as he goes.
Litigante will be shown on Thursday, October 17th at 6:15 pm, Friday the 18th at 5:45 pm and Monday the 21st at 3:00 pm. (A $10.00 matinee.)
Navid Mohammadzadeh in “Just 6.5.” credit: ©Tehran Times / msn.com
Iranian writer/director Saeed Roustayi’s second feature, Just 6.5 (Metri Shesh Va Nim) (متری شش و نیم) (Iran, 2019) is a propulsive crime thriller that’s refreshingly light on weaponry and excellent on the raw sociology and war of wills between police and criminals. Nasser Khakzad (Navid Mohammadzadeh) is the high-end drug distributor the police have been after for three years – indeed, one detective has lost a son to one of Khakzad’s associates. The relentless detective Shamad (capable veteran actor Payman Maadi) chips away through the hierarchy, low-life-by-low-life, lieutenant by lieutenant, seller-by-seller, until his squad finally makes an arrest on Khakzad himself. But getting him in jail is only a small part of the job of keeping him there; Khakzad holds sway over practically the entire jail’s criminal population, can throw money at his adversaries without a thought, call in help from outside and even turn the police against each other.
Just 6.5 may remind you of The Raid: Redemption (2011), or the flashy policiers of John Woo or Johnnie To. But Roustayi is far more interested in the finer moral intricacies of honor and hatred among thieves and authority, and who these people really are, where they really came from. Once our characters start playing directly off of each other, and moving through the “system,” the film becomes surprisingly eventful in spite of the lack of action-packed set pieces. Also credit young-but-busy cinematographer Hooman Behmanesh and veteran film editor Bahram Dehghan for their crisp visual work on Roustayi’s behalf. Just 6.5 pushes all the right mainstream buttons with genuine originality and flair, and I highly recommend it.
Just 6.5 screens on Thursday, October 17th at 8:30 pm, Saturday the 19th at 11:45 am, and Tuesday the 22nd at 2:00 pm. (A $10.00 matinee.)
Catrinel Marlon and Vlad Ivanov in “The Whistlers.” credit: romania-insider.com
An entirely different rhythm and approach is demonstrated by the cagey Romanian filmmaker Corneliu Porumboiu in his newest feature The Whistlers (La Gomera) (Romania, 2019). Another conflicted police officer, the mob-corrupted Cristi (Vlad Ivanov), must do his departmental penance; he’s been tasked to create a fake jailbreak to free Szolt (Sabin Tambrea), a capable and charming criminal middle-man, by ingratiating himself with Szolt’s girlfriend Gilda (Catrinel Marlon), the Spaniard mob-boss Paco (Agustí Villaronga), and their two or three less eloquent henchmen. From the first scene of the film, we understand that everyone is under surveillance of one kind or another, everywhere, which definitely cramps the style of our nefarious protagonists. The solution? A primitive whistling language, El Silbo, used on the Canary Island of La Gomera, completely undetectable as communication by police and/or others. The crew teach each other the language on the island, far away from where the deed will be done. Cristi is a fast learner, but pushes his luck from time to time, and stumbles across another Szolt / Gilda plot involving enormous amounts of hidden money. But first things first…
Porumboiu has stretched out from his bleakly deadpan long-take early work, but he retains a deliberate, one-thing-at-a-time clarity that serves him well when his narrative progressions employ more rhythm and variety of tone. I’m stealing someone else’s phrase with “sunlit film noir,” but no other phrase fits as well here. Layers upon layers of criminal ingenuity and twists and plots and betrayals interweave here, and a few narrative holes are inevitable in this kind of thing. But it’s as involving as any good caper film could be, and I enjoyed this movie immensely.
The Whistlers will be shown on Thursday, October 17th at 5:30 pm and Friday the 18th at 5:45 pm.
Juliette Binoche, Catherine Deneuve and Ethan Hawke in “The Truth.” credit: it.notizie.yahoo.com
How many professional French actresses, throughout their collective careers, have portrayed “an Actress” on film? Now there’s a mathematically daunting proposition. When Wong Kar-Wei made his first English-language film, he chose to make an archetypical road movie, My Blueberry Nights (2007) – not particularly successful as a whole, but undeniably effective in particular episodes, and a good template with which to explore the territory. Likewise, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s first non-Japanese film, The Truth (La Verité) (France / Japan, 2019) is a very French exploration of a fictional grande-dame of French cinema, Fabienne Dangeville (played by the equally legendary Catherine Deneuve), and her chequered relationship with her daughter, Lumir (portrayed by the luminous Juliette Binoche). Lumir – with husband Hank (Ethan Hawke) and daughter Charlotte (Clémentine Grenier) in tow from New York – arrives to celebrate the release of Mom’s new memoir. But her eventual reading of it brings up some serious issues – between exaggeration, omission and self-aggrandizement, Fabienne’s story is wildly divergent from Lumir’s lived reality.
Kore-eda’s screenplay (with some input from his stars, no doubt) introduces his typical nuanced complexity – he excels at examining families under surprisingly different circumstances from film to film, and his usual generosity of spirit permeates without shying away from the conflicts and frictions that arise within the narrative. Deneuve and Binoche are superb, but pay attention to Hawke’s canny variations on parent/daughter machination as well, and Deneuve’s generous inside joke of passing on torch to another young ingenue, Manon Lenoir (Manon Clavel). The look of the film is a bit softer than usual, but it’s clearly what Kore-eda has arrived at with veteran French cinematographer Éric Gautier. All of the participants have done more noteworthy work, but this is a solid piece of entertaining filmed craftsmanship. I love to watch pros work.
The Truth will be screened once on Thursday, October 17th at 8:00 pm.
Periscope In The Bathtub 