The No-Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the Truly Putrid

by John Villeneuve

Every year some painfully half-baked, ill-conceived or inept films get submitted by countries from around the world for consideration in the Best Foreign Film category. However, this year seems to have more than usual. Which begs the question, if you don’t have a respectable film to present, and if it is clear that it will never get nominated, then why submit? Generally, the answer is that somewhere, somehow, while on the festival circuit, these films were recognized in someway (hell, even being allowed in a festival these days is preposterously considered a nod towards quality). But with so many festivals, and more popping up everyday, pretty soon you, the reader, will be able to offer home movies of your cat pondering a ball of yarn, as long as you throw in an hour of Grandma snoozing on the sofa, while speaking in tongues, to achieve feature film status. A brief look at IMDB validates this notion, where it seems that there are more honored films than not. Unfortunately this festival over-kill evokes the mind-boggling illusion that almost everything has award winning status. And the following films fit comfortably into that over crowded jell-o mold.

From China we have Forever Enthralled, a thoroughly dull film from a once great director, Kaige Chen (Farewell My Concubine). It is a biographical rendering of the turn of the century opera star, Mei Langfang. Besides being ponderous and void of any dramatic tension, the marketing of this film has been shamefully deceptive. Slyly, it is being sold as a star vehicle for Ziyi Zhang (Memoirs of a Geisha), when in reality the songstress in this bore is a man who played on stage the part of women (common during this time period). However, the lead character being a man is in no way the problem (though Leon Lai has similar presence to that of a perfunctory mime). What is galling is that Ziyi barely has a supporting role, appearing in the second hour, and disappearing as swiftly as she materialized. For me, this omission is a tell-tale sign of non confidence. The hope, here, was to sell this lumbering trifle on the back of a famous Asian actress, with the double whammy of a past commodity, director Kaige Chen. When in reality, what we have here in this virtual remake, is a woeful, cheap echo of Leslie Cheung, whose performance in Farewell My Concubine was akin to catching lightening in a bottle. This time out, Kaige Chen has given us more of a match-induced blue angel. The final insult is that China passed over a lesser known director, Chuan Lu, and his sorrowful epic, City of Life and Death.

Next up is Mexico’s submission, Backyard, from director Carlos Carrera, who was inexplicably nominated in 2002 for the anti-Catholicism soap opera, The Crimes of Father Amaro (even the presence of Gael Garcia Bernal could not elevate this romper room past 1st grade). Backyard is yet another potboiler, though this time it’s target is the many unsolved murders of Ju√°rez women working in factories along the Mexican-American border. Where the film fails, miserably, is in putting the detective of the case, Blanca (Ana de la Reguera) at the forefront, while the shocking tally of victims are regulated to a sea of faceless corpses in sand mounds and garbage heaps. As they were tossed away in real life, so they are here, in favor of a pseudo detective yarn where the lovely Reguera is detecting, and running and pontificating, and, ultimately, solving this unsolved real-life massacre (which has never been unriddled). Further mudding this swamp is the casting of Jimmy Smits, a bankable and famous star, who is thrown into this congregation of heartless bumpkin (I guess the countless murders were not enough of a selling point). The end result is the equivalent of an episode of CSI. Soulless detachment of this sort degrades these victims who deserve something more honorable and dignified. Using them for the fodder of a cheap thriller is like killing them all over again, and should be considered reprehensible.

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And then there is Japan’s entry, Nobody to Watch Over Me, which deals with a little known practice in that country where family members of heinous killers are sequestered, and watched, so that information can be mined, and their lives can be assured in case of grief induced suicide. In this case, a family is put in hiding after an 18 year old member is accused of senselessly killing two children in a park. What follows is an unintentional guffaw, induced by embarrassingly inane psychobabble, contrived plot points, and some very bad acting. Seemingly trying to dance in the same footsteps of the classic M (Fritz Lang), the handling of mob rule in Nobody to Watch Over Me is more reminiscent of a zombie movie on poppers. The hysteria exhibited by civilians and the media, here, is over the cliff, off the map, and in the history book of buffoonery. All the while, supposed experts are groaning out lines like the card board psychiatrist who, when asked if the 14 year old nymph of the family should be told that her mother has committed suicide just hours after the charges against her son, states: “I don’t know, she might panic”. Gee, you think so? And when the young girl is alerted to her mother’s death, the experts’ answer to her horror is, “breathe, just breathe”. Ugh!

Turkey. Welcome to amateur hour. Güneşi Gördüm (I Saw the Sun) revolves around a family of Kurds who escape sectarian violence along the Kurdistan-Turkish border. Fleeing to Europe this handful of downtrodden, fish-out-of-water walking cliches discover that the grass is not greener on the other side. Emoting more than a lip of an active volcano, these sad sacks wail, weep, state the obvious, and yelp again. But that inclusion of histrionics was not the nadir of this bottomless film. After the sixth or seventh scene of said family members running towards each other in slow motion, faces contorted as though breaking the sound barrier, I was ready for a martini and a Quaalude.

Finally, there is Slovenia’s Landscape No. 2, which harbors one of the most loathsome, unctuous creatures seen on celluloid this year. If you want to see a movie where the explicit slaughter of a couple of pregnant women and a gay man are prominent, well then this is the film for you. What makes the film thoroughly repulsive is that these victims are the side bar to our sex-crazed (who impregnated both women), presumptive hero’s dilemma. In other words, he runs and obfuscates like a snot nosed coward as the bodies pile up. You see, he is a thief of precious stolen art by post war communists and Nazi sympathizers. Apparently one of the two is more villainous than the other (which, of course, depends on what the side of the left-right debate you are on). But, really, that detail is neither here nor there. What we are asked as an audience is to sympathize with this shit-eating grinned dolt as he flutters around like John Holmes on a sex high as pure as an old box of Ivory Snow. Alas, I could not oblige.

Thankfully, I am done with my tirade, and no longer will I have to think of these dung skids masquerading as films any longer. Of course, all that I have said shall be moot should one of these blemishes get nominated. In that event, you can bring on the crow.