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The festival "Faces of Love" is over. It is more understandable why it was the "faces" of "love". The content of the competitive program again showed the speculation of the concept of the festival itself: films dedicated exclusively in love, in the general list of almost 20 names can be counted on the fingers of one hand - and then not everyone will be involved. In all other cases, love is present insofar as it is present in human life.

With equal success, one could hold the Festival "Faces of Professions": undoubtedly, the choice of the main lesson and further work have a great impact on the life of any person. But is this a decisive property for uniting many heterogeneous paintings into a single array? Although in a thematic selection, probably, “Big Family” (director Joseph Haifets) and “Spring on Zarechnaya Street” (directors Marlene Khutsiev and Felix Mironner) would have looked very much very much for only two years), who dwell on the problems of the heroes of the selected profession in detail.

On the other hand, the main plus of the event is still the same as on the previous "faces": they brought many different new and not very foreign films, most of which will not fall into official rental, so there will be no other opportunity to see them. And for the current opportunity, the organizers of the festival are very traditional thank you.

As for love, in most competitive films it, as it should be in world art, acted as a litmus piece of paper for the manifestation of other feelings and properties of the characters. True, sometimes other feelings and properties of the characters were not interested in anyone except the author of the film.

This is most evident in the example of the Dutch director Frake Fockem. She took off a terribly viscous story about a wicked girl who first invented a bunch of problems (although some of them sprouted from quite real events), and then a love for the famous writer Thomas Bernhardt. In this regard, the girl could not maintain normal relations with ordinary men, but she read her beloved author for days, trying to learn how to live. In the final, the viewer had to believe that the girl solved her problems, talking a couple of times with the dying Bernhardt, and is now ready to go into the big and bright world. But for some reason the bad viewer does not believe. The only thing that the bad viewer believes is that the main character did not have normal relations with men, and there will be no: a lady who is stabbling men with a pitchfork for lends itself to her own sexual provocations, rarely enjoys frantic popularity.

But when the festival program moves a little north, the situation is strikingly changing for the better. The Finnish director Olya Saarel presented the gloomy but dynamic film "troubles because of love" (Yormila Tommila, who played the main role, was awarded the "silver arrow" for the best male role), and the Danes brought the second film of the rising star of Jonas Elmer "Mir Mona". The first film of Elmer - “Let's Lost” - with the same actress Sidsa Babett -Knudsen already received his portion in his homeland - from the Prize of Danish critics to the prize for the best phenomenon of the year.

After watching the "world" it becomes clear why Danish critics, without going into excessive details, call the film "New Comedy Elmer with Babbet-Knudsen." This difficulty surname should be remembered, since the actress demonstrates fantastic comedic abilities, playing out in turn in all registers the story of a normal European girl with a normal set of European neurosis. Elmer captivates with healthy laconicism - after countless films about the complex life of a modern woman, he does not describe in detail the causes of Mona complexes, but simply calls them. Rightly believing that the minimumly enough viewer is able to independently complete the missing one. Love in this layout serves partly the driving plot, partly - the developer of these very complexes, occupying a rather modest amount of screen time.

If you try to somehow classify the films presented in the competition, then the “world of Mona” and “bypass” will fall into the overall category of “European cinema” - more or less soundly made, absolutely understandable and not much new. And the main innovation of the authors of Mona remained behind the scenes: they were almost the first to attract Internet users to create a script, adding jokes and situations invented by ordinary users to the plot. For which in the credits they expressed gratitude to these users.

The second category includes films in which the European viewer is more difficult to navigate. This includes the Japanese "young girl", the Indian "Ashoka" and the Korean "Legend of Chong Chiang." By the way, the “Legend of Chong Chiang” is a classic work of medieval Korean literature, which has already been filmed several times by filmmakers of both northern and southern Korea; In the Russian translation, both the classic literature monument and the corresponding films are all the time called differently: the “Tale of Chong Chong”, then “History of Chong Chiang” ... But, in general, by name you can navigate.

The film, in principle, is also understandable to an unprepared European viewer - but still in order to figure it out better, it would be nice to first read the source - the existing, for example, in the corresponding volume of the Library of World Literature.

"Young Girl" is one of those very films exclusively about love that the festival should theoretically be overwhelmed. This love happens between a fifteen-year-old girl and a forty-year-old policeman who, in addition, once slept with her mother. In the finale, the heroes decrease in a blue distance on a battered truck, causing persistent associations with "new times" Chaplin. The main achievement of the film is the young Maya Ozava, who played the role of the Japanese Lolita, which causes the desire for all male characters of the picture. The fantastic combination of stunning sexuality and complete innocence was adequately appreciated by the jury with a “silver arrow” for the best female role.

But which wind entered the Ashoku contest is completely incomprehensible. Ashoka is a historically real, but mythological character, the Indian king of the III century BC, in which Buddhism became the state religion of the country. The film is super -postal, with huge extras, but at the same time representing from an aesthetic point of view an Indian response to the “stealing tiger ...”, clearly relies on a mythological basis. And in myth, love can exist either in the form of a descriptive sentence "they met and loved each other", or in a poetic form of exalted metaphors. Both that and the other in Ashok is represented, but this is very weakly connected with the main story about how the prince was at first a little man, then became completely terrible, then survived Catharsis, turned to Buddhism and became completely an angel.

In the middle between the "European" and "Asian" films, Namgagal and Samsara are located - Indo -European co -products, attempts by the Swiss and Italian sponsors of filming to understand the mysterious Indian soul, the riddle of which is reduced to popular information about Buddhism and Hinduism. The result was two not very intelligible films about not very successful attempts to join love with religious laws. Namgal from the endless "Samsara" favorably differs in a rational length of an hour and a half. And it is completely incomprehensible what is motivated by the presentation of the "Samsara" of the special "golden arrow" for the "perfection of the cinema" - with all the advantages of the visual series, she owes an indescribably beautiful nature, conscientiously captured on the film, but not the skill of the authors of the film.

The remaining films are divided almost equally not by geographical, but by a thematic principle: about teenage love and about family problems.

There was somehow a lot of youthful throwing this year. English - in the "pit", German - in "My Star", Czech - in "rebels" and Swedish -English - in "Dream". The most radical option was presented in the Irish tape with the lively name "discosvini", which tells about the boy nicknamed the Pig and the girl nicknamed the dwarf born on the same day in one hospital and since then inseparable. By the age of 17, they finally akin to and turned into a couple of aggressive characters trying to protect their relationships from any external influence. The matter ends that after a night of love on the sea coast, the girl’s girl kills (with the full consent of the killed) and looks at the sunrise enlightenment. Ellen Cassidy and Gillian Murphy, playing a boy and a girl, are marvelously good, but their talents do not clarify the meaning of history.

This year, family dramas also did not set, and most of them were devoted to the problems of alcoholism of the heads of families - there is no time for love. The heavy Dutch "too long night" and the Slovenian "bread and milk" noted in Venice lead to terrible thoughts about the problems of modern European families. In Finnish "troubles because of love" alcoholism does not seem to suffer, but the husband and father, who has spent the murder, also seems to be a dubious pleasure for relatives and friends.

Two more films can not be at all classification - the Brazilian "posthumous notes" and the Uzbek "Bo Ba Ba". "Posthumous notes", the adaptation of the classic Brazilian novel of the 19th century Mashada Di Asis, in general, have nothing to do with love, although such a feeling seems to be present in the plot. The main idea of ​​the film - the communication of the deceased hero with so far as healthy friends and lovers - claims one thought: complete frankness - the main advantage of the corpse, since they cannot afford such luxury people.

As for the Ba Ba Ba, which became the best film of the contest both in our opinion, and according to the jury (the festival Grand Prix), then the category of love is generally not applicable. In the mythological space created on the screen Ali Khamraev, heroes exist in the coordinates of desires and traditions. A woman who came to two Uzbek shepherds as a result of a crash causes both a primitive carnal desire and an equally primitive desire to fix the female in her property. And nothing more.

The visual series of the film demonstrates the God -Staid world - and if there is no God, then there is no soul. And without a soul - what love? The main drama of the heroes is the drama of the impossibility. They live in a world where there is nothing but sand, dry grass and sheep and where there can be nothing except what has been opened from the age. They do not know love and cannot survive the moment of recognition.

Very good movie. About the fact that there is no love. The best film of the festival.

Boles and chips of "Faces of Love" :

1. Pornstar-prisoner in the "world of Mona"

2. One hundred fighting elephants on a wide screen in Ashok

3. A radically rethought quote from Rembrandtovsky's “Return of the Prodigal Son” to “Ba Ba”

4. The main character of "posthumous notes" who died before the film began

5. Pig monologue in "discosvini"

6. Unearthly beauty pair tattoos of the main characters in the "young girl"

7. A visual demonstration of complex positions from Kamacutra to Samsara

8. And the film "Iris" that did not reach Moscow

9. All musical numbers in "rebels"

New Cinema Rubric: Kinovar Max Fry