IFFI 2008 Diaries, Day 3: Three Colours of Paradise article

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Only fools repeat their mistakes and I'm not one of them. I had booked the ticket for Aki Kaurismaki's The Match Factory Girl well in advance. After jostling in the serpentine queue at the box office, I discovered an exclusive press counter that was set up only today (or perhaps yesterday, but who cares my tickets till 27^th are already booked --- the programme is yet to be announced for later)My day started rather early today. I rushed for the 9:15 AM show, a Hungarian film Milky Way. I chose it over others because the film had won Golden Leopard at Locarno last year.

Milky Way

Director Benedek Filegauf isn't meant for the masses, not even the better informed ones. His frames are mostly long shots, where you can't see faces. Long takes, static compositions and prolonged actions. All the scenes are composed of a single shot. No background scores, no dialogues and hardly any human voice. It's what enlightened viewers / critics could call pure cinema. Well, all I could make out was that the director seemed to be in tremendous control of what he was doing, though, to my misery, I didn't follow much or probably there wasn't any semblance of story or plot to be followed.

After a good long one hour in the auditorium, I knew, it's not fair on my part to remain sitting and follow nothing. However, the only constraint was that I would have to cause inconvenience to about eight people in the row who seemed to be engrossed in the film. Well, I couldn't resist myself and to my surprise the eight in the row got up to make way for me and while walking down the steps, when I turned back I saw all of them following me. By the time, I reached the exit gate, it was nothing less than half the auditorium making an exit midway through the film.

Please don't take it as a comment on the film but probably it's a remark on my poor viewership. I missed Ernst Lubitsch's Cluny Brown, thanks to the prolonged Annual General Meeting of FIPRESCI. And the next ticket I had booked was for 6:30 PM show, so I used the opportunity to make up for my early morning rise.

The Match Factory Girl

According to many, this is one of the best films of Kaurismaki. Though I haven't seen all of his films but still I tend to agree. Aki's characters always come from the  fringes of the society. As the title suggests, here she's a match factory worker who has to fend for her parasitic parents. Her craving for a social life takes her to the bedroom of an elite man, from where she returns pregnant. She makes a mistake for trusting him since love doesn't matter much to the man. And she plans revenge.

The film isn't as gloomy as the plot suggests, rather it's witty and light, with immaculate details. Probably the thin dotted line that exists between the two classes is what Kaurismaki's films are always about, though, they're a treat to watch. This man has got a plenty of style and definitely an authorial stamp.

Purgatory

I chose Mexican director Roberto Rochin Naya's Purgatory primarily because the other choices were the Tamil film Billa (it's supposedly Hindi Don's remake) and Hum Apke Hain Kaun (Lifetime classic category).

From the beginning, Purgatory took me by surprise. It changed many hues, dealt with many issues. The film is made of three short stories--Bonfilio, who wants to make it to the north leaving his wife and children behind with his father to fight starvation and make money. A love story between a prostitute Lucia and a grave-digger Demetrio and a marriage of convenience between old Don Julio and Cleotilde. The stories have a haunting quality which deals with a dark deeper desire that dies unfulfilled. Roberto is a promising director, whose cinema is visually appealing and his restrain over the craft is masterly.

Well, a day little scattered but well spent. I'm looking forward to tomorrow, when I get to see two highly awaited films. Waltz with Bashir and Francois Ozon's latest film Angel.