Solid four

The Karlovy Vary Film Festival has ended

The organizers of the 44th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival did not hide their ambitious goal - to enter the four largest European film festivals along with Cannes, Berlin and Venice. Oddly enough, they almost succeeded. And it’s not just the decent level of the competition program, where this year there were several truly relevant names (Hungarian Gyorgy Pálfi with the experimental improvisation “I’m not friends with you”, German Andreas Dresen with “cinema about cinema” under the promising title “Whisky” with vodka"). And not only in the presence of stars (Isabelle Huppert and John Malkovich were awarded Crystal Globes for their contribution to cinema, and Antonio Banderas received the prize from festival president Jiri Bartoška). And not even in the festival videos, in which Danny DeVito, Andy Garcia and Milos Forman starred as close friends.

Yes, of course, Locarno remains a bastion of highbrow auteur cinema with an emphasis on metaphysics and visual minimalism. Yes, Rotterdam is still open to Asian extreme music of all stripes, current video art and genre experiments. But Karlovy Vary confidently claims the position of duty officer for the eastern and central sector of the united Europe. Here, a market for Eastern European film products is quite successfully forming, a co-production mechanism is developing, and all this is actively supported by fairly rich structures of the European Union. So everyone who is interested in the Eastern European film market comes here. The number of foreign guests (filmmakers, producers, distributors, journalists) is the indicator by which the Karlovy Vary Festival surpasses many of its competitors. And these guests are not idle.

A few words about the prizes awarded last Saturday. The Belgian-Canadian drama “Angel by the Sea” was named best film (director Frederic Dumont will share a cash prize of 30 thousand euros with the producer). Olivier Gourmet (a favorite of the Dardennes), who played in it and gave a clinically accurate picture of a psychopath who drives his young son to the brink, shared the prize for best actor with Paul Giamatti (a favorite of American “independents”). Giamatti played an actor named Paul Giamatti, who is experiencing a professional crisis and decides to get rid of his soul surgically. The film is called “Frozen Souls” and was shot in the USA by Frenchwoman Sophie Barthes, who has learned well the lessons of the Sundance Film Institute and the famous screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (“Being John Malkovich”). The prize for best actress went to the famous Danish actress Paprika Steen, who played for Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg. This time she played an alcoholic actress who, after a stay in a rehabilitation clinic, is trying to restore her relationship with her sons (“Applause” by Martin Peter Zandvliet).

The best director was Andreas Dresen, one of the most interesting contemporary authors, who this time turned out to be a little more predictable than one might expect (“Whiskey and Vodka”). A special jury prize went to Abdolreza Kahani for the social drama from the life of modern Iran “Twenty”, which, to be honest, looks a little pale next to the videos about street unrest in Tehran that regularly appear on YouTube. And finally, the main prize of the parallel competition “To the East of the West” was awarded to Andrei Khrzhanovsky for “A Room and a Half,” a documentary-fiction fantasy on the life and work of Joseph Brodsky, filmed from a script by Yuri Arabov.

It cannot be said that the level of the main competition program in Karlovy Vary is prohibitively high. Of course not. This year, even in Berlin, half of the competition could easily be thrown into the trash. There are so few real, genuine auteur films being made now that all festivals except Cannes often have to be content with more or less talented imitations. And yet the 44th competition seemed much more respectable and rich in pleasant surprises. Of course, the selectors of Karlovy Vary are forced to focus on the good European mainstream of the second row. It included “Pigs” by Robert Glinsky, and “Villa Amalia” by Benoit Jacquot with the participation of Isabelle Huppert, and the Danish “Applause”, and the winning film itself. But at the same time, the festival has already formed its own circle of notable directors who have something to say: the Pole Krzysztof Krause, the Czech Petr Zelenka, the Croatian Vinko Bresan, the Turk Fernand Ocpetek and others.

Interestingly, the cultural conservatism of Carlsbad seems to be becoming a conscious position. This is understandable: a festival seeking to expand the “Big Three” (Cannes, Berlin, Venice) into the “Big Four” needs to emphasize its belonging to the establishment. So there is a logic in the fact that the most radical and, in my opinion, the best film of the festival, Pavel Sigarev’s “Volchok” (winner of the Sochi Kinotavr), was left without prizes.

“The Top” is, of course, a movie of a slightly different class than what they are used to in Karlovy Vary, and the selectors had to fight for it. Until the last moment, the producers, not without reason, hoped for an invitation to Venice or Berlin, and only at the last moment did they agree to the Karlovy Vary competition. It’s hard to say whether this will help the film’s foreign distribution, but we must admit that it would be difficult to think of a less suitable place than Karlovy Vary for “Volchok.” People here love humanistic, high-quality cinema, with defined social types, connections and structures. “Top,” from this point of view, is a living paradox, a movie with acute social signs, but with an absolutely biological, reduced view of the nature of human relations. It is very difficult to come to terms with the idea that the heroine of the film is ruining her own life and the life of her daughter, not because there is no money for anything except vodka, and in general the environment is full, but because she wants it out of her good, mean and stubborn will. And if you don’t understand this, then the whole film will seem like a misanthropic admiration of images of degradation and decay. For Sigarev, a different festival and a different jury were probably needed. And so a special mention to the Federation of Film Clubs - that’s all that “Volchok” got.

Alexey MEDVEDEV, Karlovy Vary