Can I Just Say…

5) Tomboy

This charming French film is about a young girl, Laure, who is trying to work out how to express her gender-identity.  When her family arrive in a new town, she decides to pass herself off as a boy. The world of summer holidays, with Laure and the local kids playing games and generally having fun, was very evocatively created.The film crescendos when Laure's secret gets out and concludes with a satisfying end.  The close relationship between Laure and her younger sister is is very sweet, and I think rings true for anyone who has had a close relationship with a sibling - the secrets from parents, the looking out for each other. The way Laure struggles to establish her own identity is sensitively crafted, and createsa  very touching story, tinged with ambivalence. The ensemble cast of children was excellent, which combined with lovely cinematography, formed a charming story.

4) Le Quattre Volte 

This amazing film, involving almost no dialogue, is a beautiful and rich experience. It traces several stories; an old man, a baby goat, and a tall pine tree - exploring the interconnection between all life. The cinematography in the mountains of Calabria, Italy, is gorgeous and the frequent shots of the country-side and its inhabitants, is calming and breathtaking. This unconventional film is highly rewarding and was a real surprise for me.

The 57th Sydney Film Festival kicked off on Wednesday evening with the screening of 'Hanna', a thriller starring our own Cate Blanchett and Eric Bana. For a thriller, it was actually was quite good - especially given that thrillers genrewise are my last choice. This year is a really a mammoth year for us - we're seeing 22 films, including the opening and closing nights - kind of crazy I know! So far, we've seen 10 (and we haven't got fired from our day jobs... yet!) and so thought I'd report on my top 5 picks for this first half of the festival - in reverse order from 5th to 1st. Would love to also hear from anyone out there on films you've seen. 

5) Khodorkovsky - This was a German documentary about the once powerful, now gaoled, Russian businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky. It very clearly explored the life of the businessman, interweaving interviews with key personalities, with some fantastic animations that told important parts of his story. In a nutshell,  Khodorkovsky was put in prison in 2003, under the pretext that he had failed to pay some taxes. However, the film's purpose was to explore what might have been the real reasons behind his being arrested. The most likely explanation is that he pissed off Vladamir Putin, the then President (now Prime-minister - that's the way it seems to roll in Russia) by supporting opposition figures. It appears that democracy is really a relative term, as these kind of political arrests demonstrate. 

The documentary was really very revealing about what life is like in a country in which the President, while popularly elected, is not constrained by other features of a democratic state - ie that individuals are prosecuted only at the behest of the police or prosecutorial authorities rather than the President, and that people are innocent until proven guilty. I unreservedly recommend this fascinating doco. 

4) The Great Bear

Ok, a change of time and place to a forrest in Denmark. And I should mention that this is an animation. This was a charming children's film, but in fact had a lot in it for any adult, which the majority adult audience as the session definitely would attest to. It tells the story of a mythical, great bear that everyone believes to be a frightening beast. The two protagonists, a brother and sister, chance upon his world and the films follows their experiences with him. It's a charming, moving and very sweet film. It was enhanced by the fact that due to technical difficulties, the audio was in Danish, accompanied by English subtitles - making you feel like you really were in a truly enchanting and different place. 

3) Exporting Raymond

This American doco followed the process of translating, 'Everyone Love Rayomond' to Russia - a truly fascinating cross-cultural journey. The host of the documentary  Phil Rosenthal - also the creator of the TV series  - reveals the extreme challenges faced by taking a comedy from one culture, and trying to successfully translate it to a new one. The challenges involved in working with Russian crew and cast, who often didn't find funny what the Americans did (and vice-versa), was a recurring theme - the ways they eventually bridged some of their gaps is very interesting.  

On top of this, Phil Rosenthal is a highly amusing, neurotic guy, whose witty reflections on the translation process are hilarious, fun and endlessly captivating - this film is a real hoot!

2) Septien

So, I wasn't expecting that much from this film as it was on my list of films I thought I might decide to see if any of the other films I really wanted to see were sold out. As it turned out though, it was just absolutely outstanding. It's the story of 3 brothers who live together in rural Tennesse in the US, newly reunited after the after 18 year absence of one of them . They are three very different characters, and there is great comedy in how they interact with each other. It mixes many genres, including thriller, drama, quirkiness (I'm not sure that's really a genre... oh well) and black comedy. It's really touching at times, hilarious and engaging from the first shot to the last. 

I highly recommend seeing this film if you're keen to see something different, original and that really speaks to you from the heart.  

1) Even the Rain

This film was the first of the 22that I was really excited about. It is a very clever, moving story about  a Spanish film crew who go to Bolivia to make a movie about the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas and how the indigenous people were treated (generally appallingly) after that. At the same time as this film is being made, there is a real life drama going on with the locals protesting against the privatisation of the water supply in the area - which is causing for them serious problems with accessing water. 

The parallel stories are brilliantly interwoven and the plight of the indigenous peoples of the Americas over the last 500 years of colonisation is very strongly portrayed, leaving you in no doubt that there are still major human rights issues to resolve. The film itself is beautifully crafted, with wonderful cinematography and great drama. It stars the ever-handsome Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal who is strong as always, along with other strong leads. I very highly recommend this film  as I think it will move you, intrigue you, and make you reflect; it is a truly beautiful film.  

Well, that all seems a long time ago. The latest carbon price policy from the Government, the Carbon Tax, is opposed point-blank by the opposition, while industry, who has had years to factor in a carbon price, is doing its best to scuttle anything that may harm their profits. We hear from wealthy mining baroness, Gina Rinehart, that not only is she opposed to the Carbon Tax, she wants to know where the voices of other business leaders are in also opposing the tax. Yet when Cate Blanchett, fronts a public ad encouraging Australians to get behind the Carbon Tax, we get the leader of the Opposition, the perpetual-opposer lambasting her for publicly expressing her views; no such reprimand, unsurprisingly, when Gina Rinehart tells Australia what to do. 

The attack on Blanchett occurred because her views didn't accord with the Opposition's and even more so, because in the ad the focus was on the big picture - the threats posed by global warming and the opportunity for the country to do something to prevent it. This doesn't fit with the Abbott's perpetual oppositionism, whose main objective is to stir fear and insecurity about the effect of a Carbon Tax. This tactic, as anyone who thinks twice about his tactics know, is the vehicle he's hoping will deliver him the prime-ministership. He wants to sow such fear that public will vote against any changes proposed by the government. The casualty of this approach, unfortunately, is Australia's environmentally and economically sustainable future. In his oppositionist world, Australia will keep its head firmly buried in the sand, ignoring both the overwhelming scientific consensus in support of human-caused global warming, and the strong economic opportunities that leading economists such as Ross Garnaut and Ross Gittins have highlighted in pricing carbon. 

His criticism of Blanchett, of course, playing the woman, not the issue. Rather than dealing with environmental and economic merits of the ad, he attacked her as a rich person who shouldn't argue for a tax which won't really hit her. But his selective argument ignores the crucial fact that Australians who are on low-incomes will receive compensation under the Government's plan - to the extent that they may in fact be better off as a result of the compensation payments with some dollars left in their pockets. And Blanchett made clear that her support was contingent on this compensation being provided to the needy. 

What we actually have here is Blanchett saying that she supports the Carbon Tax for the greater good of making the Australian economy less carbon-polluting, despite the fact that she won't qualify for compensation and so it will cost her personally - putting her money where he mouths is. Meanwhile, people like Gina Rinehart and Tony Abbott, attack the Carbon Tax and the right of public figures to speak out in support of it, hiding behind claims of concern for the cost of living pressures on low-income Australians - conveniently ignoring the extensive compensation that will provided. Unsurprisingly, you don't hear Abbott arguing for compensation to low-income households for existing energy prices that have already flowed from costs of upgrading their infrastructure in the absence of a clear energy policy, including carbon price - a direct result of Abbott's opposition to the ETS. It seems that Abbot's compassion for low-income Australians is a selective one, based on when it fits with his opportunism and oppositionism, as opposed to when it's for the public good. Let's hope the Australian public don't fall prey to his faux compassion and misleading economic arguments, or we'll all be much the worse for it - rich and poor, Labor and Liberal.