Cleaner times will come

The festival “Pacific Meridians” took place in Vladivostok

The fifth international film festival of the countries of the Asia-Pacific region “Pacific Meridians” is not the most popular event. There is a strong doubt that even the most advanced film fans suspect its existence, and if they do suspect it, then out of inertia they honor it as part of a local get-together that has nothing to do with the real film process. It was all the more gratifying to see that the Vladivostok festival is perhaps the most significant and important event on the map of Russian film everyday life. In terms of organization, structure, and most importantly - the quality of film programs, this forum will give many points ahead to much more famous and popular festivals. The local public deserves special mention; capital press conferences, and going home, actively and reasonably discussed what she had just seen. And even the lines during the films (that moment that invariably makes any sane cinephile flinch and get nervous) were as if chosen appropriate and to the point. So the festival has certainly found its audience, even within Vladivostok.

But those who came almost to the other side of the earth as guests were not disappointed. The competition program (compiled on an infrequent basis from both full-length and short films at the same time) was capable of causing healthy envy among selectors of any rank. There was plenty to choose from.

The jury (composed in exactly the same way as at the last Venice Film Festival, mainly consisting of directors) could give a head start to many domestic film screenings. It was headed by the Frenchman Bruno Dumont, the author of films crowned with many prizes: “The Life of Jesus”, “Humanity”, “Flanders”. Together with him, the competition program was judged by Kohei Oguri (“Deadly Sting”, “For Kayako”, “The Secret Forest” - the latter film was also included in the festival program); Lee Hyun-sung (“Sadness in You,” “Sunset in Neon Light,” “Il Mare”, founder of the Association of Korean Film Directors, which includes Park Chan-wook, Kim Kiduk and Sangsu Han); Kirill Serebrennikov (winner of the main prize at the Rome International Film Festival in 2006 for the film “Playing the Victim”); Bruce Miles (a cult figure of Australian theater and cinema, actor and director, whose latest acting work to date in Paul Cox's film "Salvation" was also presented in Vladivostok). Their verdict, although it raised certain questions, was in any case justified and significant.

The Grand Prix of "Pacific Meridians" went to the film by Hong Kong director Zhang Yang ("Spicy Love Soup", "Sunflower") "Come Back Home" - a simple in form, but very deep in content, a story about two drinking friends who, in some way, Then they drank to the point that one of the friends died. And his companion, violating the commandment of Henri Michaud, stated in the epigraph of the famous film by Jim Jarmusch (“Never travel with a dead man”), sets off on his joyless odyssey with the corpse of a friend in his arms. Momoi Kaori from Japan, who directed the film “Faces of a Fig Tree” and played the main role in it (an eccentric drama about the consequences of the death of a father in a patriarchal Japanese family, in whose courtyard the notorious fig tree grows but never blooms), was awarded two prizes at once - for the performance of the leading female role and for the best director. As the best actor, the phenomenal one-man orchestra, the Russian George Clooney, and simply an extremely good guy Sergei Puskepalis, who played the main role in the competition film by Alexei Popogrebsky “Simple Things,” were awarded. This film has already won awards more than once, but this is exactly the case when an extra regalia won’t hurt - Puskepalis deserves even more. It is a pity that the winners did not include the absolutely phenomenal film by the Croatian Goran Dukic “Suicides: A Love Story”, filmed in the USA - a fantasy about the afterlife, reminiscent in structure of Neil Gaiman’s “Stardust”, in which a young man cuts his wrists ( Patrick Fugit) goes on a journey through the “other world” in order to find his beloved, who followed his example, but as a result falls in love with an unexpected companion (the unrealistically beautiful Shannyn Sossamon). It is noteworthy that the iconic wheezing swan Tom Waits appears on the screen, not as a fleeting guest star, but as the performer of a very significant role, a kind of Duty for Heaven, an angel-director of posthumous destinies. I really want some of the domestic distributors to pay attention to this excellent film.

The Audience Award went to the out-of-competition domestic melodrama “Listening to Silence” by Alexander Kasatkin - about how the sacred love for music was completely trampled by simple love; The film is good in all respects, but lacks the slightest bit of personality. The prize of the governor of the Vladivostok region “9288 kilometers” (a number indicating the distance from Vladivostok to Moscow) took with him “Mongol” by Sergei Bodrov, who opened the festival - a large-scale historical drama about the rise of Genghis Khan, to which, by definition, there can be no claims, so everything in it is Hollywood-style and interesting.

Finally, the best short film of the competition was named “People of Stone” by Leonid Rybakov, which was recently awarded in Venice - a sarcastic phantasmagoria about soldiers of the invisible front, bravely spraying cement over Moscow from airplanes on the eve of national holidays. To the heroic melody from Kubrick’s “Doctor Strangelove,” tons of the product praised by Fyodor Gladkov fly down, and after that, residents of villages near Moscow are forced to consume petrified zucchini and experience difficulties with basic physiological urges. A short, but very convincing work - as if Evgeny Yufit suddenly decided to make a heroic comedy in the spirit of the early Maxim Pezhemsky.

But this is only what concerns the competition. And behind the scenes (but not outside the audience's attention) there are still films from the out-of-competition program - and here the eyes run wild for the most biased connoisseur of moving images. It’s time to adopt the style of the hero Alexander Abdulov from “The Black Rose” and, like a peddler, shake out unique rarities and beauties from the bins: “The last Kim Kiduk! The last one is Shinya Tsukamoto (author of the cult “Tetsuo” and “Bullet Ballet”, presented in Vladivostok with the mystical thriller “Nightmare Detective” - another variation on the theme of damned cell phones)! Pa-a-last Yoji Yamada (“Love and Honor” - as always, a high-quality, but rather boring samurai saga from the author of “The Twilight Samurai”)!” And plus the directorial debut of the scriptwriter of the famous “Election” Johnny To, Yau Nai-Hoi (“Eye in the Sky” is a police thriller in the best traditions of the genre). “Godless” by the American Thomas Dun is a creepy film that follows the traditions of “Henry, Portrait of a Homicidal Maniac” by John McNaughton and the Belgian anti-hit “It Happened Next to You” by Remy Belleveau. The Korean "Silk" by Cho Pin-Soo is a creepy ghost film that leaves other Japanese standards far behind. And much, much more. In general, as Dovlatov’s heroine said, “both are so tasty”...

There was a message in the local Vladivostok press that in ten years the festival could be awarded the long-suffering, but so coveted category “A” and it would be on a par with Cannes, Berlin and Venice. It is difficult to say whether this film screening should be celebrated in this way. But the fact that this festival turned out to be the most interesting in recent times is so obvious that no letter categories simply work here.

Stanislav F. ROSTOTSKY, Vladivostok - Moscow