Strange choice

Results of the “Prospects” competition

If the main jury, chaired by Liv Ullman, showed miracles of adequacy and professionalism, awarding those few films in the competition program that really deserved awards, then the results of the Perspectives competition were not only disappointing, they were frankly embarrassing. First of all, it’s inconvenient for those people whose efforts brought several real low-budget masterpieces into this strange alternative competition. And overall, this year’s Perspectives program turned out to be extremely successful and varied.

Let's leave behind the scenes the question of how some films get into the main competition, while others are classified as “promising”. Perhaps the only work that did not fall into either the experimental format or the “quality cinema” category was the film that was ultimately awarded the main prize. And it’s not even that the director of the film “Cumbia Tied Us,” Rene Villarreal, is over fifty years old and his film has no prospects: the author himself admitted at a press conference that not a single distributor has yet become interested in his work. It’s another shame: against the backdrop of the very, very decent level of the second most important competition at the Moscow International Film Festival, this film looked like a spectacular, but absolutely empty trinket. The plot of the picture is unclear and is an explosive mixture of Saur’s “Carmen” and the fairy tale about Cinderella. The heroes run after each other through the streets of the city, breathing heavily and constantly dancing to Colombian music. Occasionally this bustle is interrupted by scenes of an erotic nature. The main character is a dancer who loses her pink sneaker in the middle of the street. An admirer who discovers this sneaker shoots an amateur video and tries to shove his camera under the dancer’s skirt. Meanwhile, the heroine discovers a permanent partner - in dancing and in life, who is not too happy with this turn of the plot. The film does not even reach the title of youth melodrama, because it is openly “musical”: the melodies of incendiary Latin American dance drown out everything around - people’s steps, city noises, rare dialogues. The picture of the film, not supported by anything, dangles in an airless space - you get the feeling that you are watching one long background for the credits, only the credits have ended long ago, the music is already boring, and the plot has not been born.

It is unclear where the triumvirate of the jury in the person of director Anna Melikyan, producer Stefan Kitanowai and chairman Janos Szasz were looking, but clearly not in the direction of those many outstanding works of the competition that were truly worthy of the main prize. Two films simply fit the format of “Perspectives” perfectly - debut, low-budget, experimental: this is a one-shot film by the Danish Linda Wendel with the appropriate title “One Shot” and a wonderful work by the Thai director Nu Chen-zer “What Did I Do Wrong” in which the seemingly common plot of “a movie within a movie” is played out very subtly and ironically.

It is interesting that the Thai film, which seems to touch upon a specifically cinematic theme (the director is looking for money for the film, the money is not found, the film crew is fooling around, the wife leaves for another, the mafia sponsor unexpectedly dies, the producer deceives, and the accountant cheats; meanwhile the author decides make a film about all this disgrace), and so this low-budget aesthetic comedy film, shot on a digital camera, attracted full houses of laughing spectators for several days. The film has already been purchased by Japanese and Korean distribution companies and, I am sure, Western distributors will also be happy to purchase it. Because this is the very case when you don’t notice any defects in the digital image, or a small budget, or individual rough edges - because you are simply captivated by the ingenuity and courage of the director. But even if the jury did not like the challenging and daring films shot with a moving digital camera, they still had plenty of choice. As part of the “Perspectives” competition, they also showed a very nice Spanish film “Under the Snow” - about love and friendship in difficult production conditions. The festival hit “Rerberg and Tarkovsky. The reverse side of “Stalker” is about an unclear conflict between two geniuses of Russian cinema. British Joanna Hogg's film Alien, which explores women's midlife crisis, attracted audiences full of sympathy throughout the festival. The Asian nominees of Perspectives also pleased the audience. "Park Shanghai" by Chinese director Kai Kevin Huang touched on a topic familiar to all users of the site "Odnoklassniki.ru" - former classmates meet after many years, and it seems to them that they still love each other. Japanese painting “What will happen to us” touched upon the always relevant topic of unconventional love in a traditional society. And the superbly executed psychological drama “The House of Dark Butterflies” corresponded in all respects to the level of the main competition. Any of the works listed above could well qualify for a festival award. Another thing is that Perspectives has only one nomination - best film.

Natalia BABINTSEVA