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Karlovy Vary International Film Festival

July 5 - 14 (Czech Republic)

The sleepy Czech spa town of Karlovy Vary wakes up once a year to the noisy
bustling of one of Europe's largest film festivals. Being at the crossroads
of East and West Europe, one of the themes of the festival was East Meets West
with a number of interesting recent Russian, Polish and Hungarian films dominating.
This was accompanied by a stimulating two-day conference on films about émigrés
from East Europe to the 'promised' lands of the West, and of the struggles of
East European directors to get their films made and distributed in their own
countries, resulting in pressure on them to make films in English.



Perhaps it is understandable, given this theme, that the film chosen for the
opening gala was the world premiere of An American Rhapsody, directed
and written by the Hungarian-born Eva Gardos. Despite being autobiographical
- about a young woman returning to seek her roots in Budapest after many years
in the US - it was rather unconvincingly made, full of Hollywood clichés, with
an unrewarding role for Nastassia Kinski, who was present. Not as shallow, though,
as the closing film, Bridget
Jones's Diary, set in an England that only exists in artificial British
comedies like this.



Done with far more wit and style was Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain
(Amélie
from Montmartre) slightly over-directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, which takes
place in a mythical Paris - the Paris of René Clair films. Predictably, this
bright crowd-pleaser, which lacks the dark side essential to a fairy tale, won
the Grand Prize, although nobody connected with the film was there to pick it
up. It was, therefore, left to the French Ambassador to collect it and make
a speech in Czech, which was cheered mainly because of his efforts in the language
rather than the content.



Among the rest of the films in competition, several were shot on digital. The
worst was Stefan Jager's Birthday from Germany, a self-regarding 91-minute
home movie about four vacuous friends. The Czech entry, Andel Exit (Angel
Exit), directed by Vladimir Michàlek, was a little better in that the technique
was allied to the hackneyed subject of drug taking. However, Robert Glinski
with his Czesc Tereska (Hi,
Tereska), a black-and-white Polish film, transferred to 35 mm, showed the
way. The film, which won the Fipresci and Special Jury Prize, is a poignant
and powerful study of a young girl full of promise, who is let down badly by
her society. Coincidentally, the delicate Mexican film, Perfume de Violetas
(Violet Perfume), directed by Maryse Sistach, had a very similar theme, though
the girl in question is less passive than Tereska, but the society more patriarchal.




Less coincidental, perhaps, was the presence of a Croatian film balanced by
a Serbian one. Actually Chico, directed by the Hungarian Inolya Fekete,
a Hungarian, German, Chilean, Croatian co-production, purported to be a search
for the personal and political identity of the hero, who ends up finding himself
fighting for the Croats. Unfortunately, though documentary and fiction knit
seamlessly, it is too schematic and simplistic an approach to a complex situation.




This was reinforced by Darko Bajic's intelligent and satiric Rat Uzivo
(War Live), set in Belgrade during the Nato air raid. It brilliantly explores
the concept that 'the first victim of war is truth' by dealing with the making
of a film about the war, playing with the thin line between fact and fiction.
Both the Serb and Croat factions at the festival made clear their disapproval
of the other's film.



Another political film, though more indirectly so, was Qateh-Ye Natamam
(Unfinished Song), an impressive first feature by 30-year-old Maziar Miri, which
had trouble with the Iranian authorities. The first caption says it all.. 'After
the Islamic revolution in Iran, women were forbidden to sing in public.' The
film takes the form of a quest by a young musicologist to find a legendary female
singer, who seems to have disappeared. Arguably, the most poetic moment of all
the films in competition was when the woman, discovered in prison, strums an
imaginary instrument before breaking down in tears.



Touching in a different way was Bille August's En Sang for Martin (A
Song For Martin), a study of a musician's descent into Alzheimer's disease.
The rather conventional linear film benefited greatly from two wonderful performances
from Sven Wollter and Viveka Seldahl, as the victim and his wife, both of whom
deserved their Best Actor and Best Actress awards.



Of all the faces that dominated the Festival was that of a minor British actor
called Eddie Marsan. His rather clownish features were seen before every feature
in the Festival intro film. The director Ivan Zacharais, who had spotted Marsan
in Gangster
No. I, had the ingenious idea of making eight short films, ranging from
thirty seconds to one and a half minutes, telling a short anecdote concerning
an incompetent projectionist. At first the projectionists complained about this
portrayal, but soon realized it put them in the limelight for once.

Ronald Bergan

Stars
are Kings at Karlovy Vary

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