Amer (2009)

There's a large mansion; a spooky looking old house, complete with furniture and wall hangings reminiscent of those old gothic horror stories. An old man is lying dead, perhaps embalmed, in one of the rooms. In extreme close-ups, weird camera angles and imaginative POV shots, we see the world through the eyes of a little girl, Ana (Cassandra Foret), who scampers about the house while her domineering mother (Bianca Maria D'Amato, dressed in mourning black) scolds a faceless old caretaker, Graziella, about some dead sparrow. But it isn't entirely clear what she is being sounded off for, for the dialog is mostly sparse. Ana appears to be scared of Graziella and turns away just as her face threatens to turn in her direction! We hear some muffled conversation from across the rooms. 

Ana seems to be curious about something; a locket of some sort that lies in the hands of the dead old man. Strange things happen in the next few minutes, as you are subjected to more close-ups of keyholes and evidently nonhuman eyeballs looking through them, the relentless sound of footsteps, the wheezing, and the doors banging while Ana continues to curiously seek the locket; it all culminates in one scene in which Ana sees her mother having sex with a man (who may or may not be her father). Witnessing this scene triggers a chemical reaction in Ana's brain, as she wanders off into another state and the camera takes the form of the Ana's mind and projects images that shift between vivid colors. The scene echoes in her head repeatedly as it does on the screen in a rather lurid fashion. What she sees indeed has had a huge impact on her wee mind.  

Writer-director duo Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani managed to grab this viewer's attention in the first twenty odd minutes into the film. It is a rather clever cinematic device that justifies the over-indulgent use of close range shots, sometimes grainy, sometimes blurry vision and the continuous shifting of loud colours, for these images are a reflection of Ana's psyche! Ditto for the outstanding sound design that demands attention from your aural senses in a manner that will make you feel like you are very much part of the scene that is playing out for real but perceived in an exaggerated fashion by Ana's mind. The squishing sound, as Ana steps on the dead sparrow makes you cringe. So does the sickening sound of a finger breaking off from the dead body....! 

Cut to a few years later, a teenage Ana (Charlotte Eugène Guibeaud), dressed in a short summer frock, walks closely with her mother, who still appears dominating, or is, perhaps protecting her from the prying eyes of lustful men, while she herself loosens a button of her dress when she sees a car approaching! The setting is quite bright and cheerful compared to the bleak first half hour. A small insect crawls up Ana's body and the camera captures the insect's every move as it traverses Ana's thighs. Voyeuristic? Lewd? Maybe, but the intention is very much such. This is a girl in her adolescence, just discovering her sexuality. And yet again, the camera takes the form of Ana's senses and feelings, as it continues to have its powerful effect on us by making us feel what Ana feels. More bizarre camerawork follows, as the focus zooms in on dripping sweat, Ana's frock slightly being blown up by the wind, and some strands of her own long hair that are held between her full, red lips.....! 

In one clever scene a very important point is conveyed. A group of biker men are eyeing Ana's virginal beauty, an act that evokes feelings like never before in Ana, but her curiosity and that unique feeling of sinful pleasure is thwarted by her mother's sudden slap on her face as she realizes that her daughter is drifting away!  

Moving on, an adult Ana (Marie Bos) returns to her hometown and takes a cab ride to the aforementioned mansion in which she grew up. The taxi ride is a strangely surreal sequence, as Ana asks the cab driver, who she suspects is checking her out from the rear-view mirror, to roll her windows down. She seems to feel an orgasmic pleasure as the wind rubs against her body and her dress starts tearing up at the seams; it is a terrific piece of direction indeed, that puts forth the question, has Ana been living under the shadow of her over-protective mother far too long and not been given the freedom to explore her sexuality in a natural manner? Is Ana terrified of the staring eyes or any kind of look that men give her, thanks to some incidents from the past that we have been given a hint of? Watch out for that subtle but important scene in which, Ana, back in the mansion, cuts out the eyes from the portraits of men that hang around the house! Is there a strange black figure lurking around the house, spying on her? Or is it a figment of her imagination; her immense fear of being watched all the time, taking a terrifying, malevolent form? 

"Amer", a Belgian-French shoe-string budget production, challenges the audience with its mystifying imagery and also manages to enthrall with its stylistic storytelling technique. There is almost no dialog and the film mostly relies on visuals and sound to convey meaning. "Amer" is said to be a homage to the Italian 'giallo' films. But frankly, that influence comes much later in the third act of the film. The eroticism is there, but it is devoid of any explicit sex or nudity. There is sensuality, alright, but it plays out more like a teaser, as it tantalizes the viewer's imagination with the brilliant work of the lens and the sound. Gore and violence, particularly copious amounts of blood spilling and the appearance of a black-gloved hand with a knife, which are essential characteristics of the giallo genre also appear at the very end in a startlingly gruesome final act, until which they are mostly absent. The poster artwork alludes to classic Italian giallo as well , but it is indeed remarkable to find that this film very smoothly blends elements of art-house cinema with the giallo genre, with a premise that revolves around psycho-sexuality! The brilliant background score is akin to what was used in giallo films and some of the soundtrack is apparently directly used from some older films.

They say that "Amer" will appeal to fans of Mario Bava and Dario Argento. But Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani have given us a very intelligent and disturbingly spectacular film, that will find its audiences not only amongst giallo fans, but also amongst lovers of surrealist films, gothic horror and psychological thrillers as well. This, is pure cinema....true art!

Score: 10/10  

 

Mr. Nobody (2009)

OVERVIEW:

A drop of rain falls on a piece of paper and smudges the phone number (belonging to a girl named Anna) written on it. The number gets erased and so does any trace of Anna. The narrator of the story, Nemo Nobody, aged 118 explains to the journalist interviewing him, “Do you wanna know why I lost Anna? Because 2 months earlier, an unemployed Brazilian boiled an egg”!

Confounding? Not half as what this extremely cerebral film has to offer! Jaco Van Dormael, the Belgian filmmaker who didn’t make too many films in his career had earlier astonished us with his excellent “Toto Le Heros” (1991) (http://gokhaleaditya.blogspot.in/2011/11/toto-le-heros.html) about an old man recalling his tragic childhood and surviving with the sole goal of vengeance for his loss and often confusing reality with fantasy. “Mr. Nobody” provides for a heady cocktail of this earlier Dormael film and some other films, particularly “Donnie Darko”, “The Fountain” and “The Butterfly Effect”. Only “The Butterfly Effect” is more like an entertaining popcorn fantasy that doesn’t go deep into the Science of it, unlike “Donnie Darko”. “Mr. Nobody” is akin to “Donnie Darko”, but not plot-wise. Like “Donnie Darko”, it is one of those rare films that is a work of fiction built around existing scientific principles of Physics and Physical Cosmology.

PLOT:

The year is 2092. It is the age of ‘quasi-immortality’. Mortality is a thing of the past. So is sex! The 118 years old Nemo Nobody (Jared Leto, brilliant, but a tad hammy) is the last mortal on earth. He appears to be confused…..keeps telling a shrink with a painted face that he is 34! Later, tells a journalist (Daniel Mays) that he is “Mr. Nobody” and that he “doesn’t exist”! Upon probing by the journalist, Mr. Nobody starts narrating a strange tale of his supposed past right from his childhood (age 9) through his teen years (age 15) to his adulthood (age 34). But the story isn’t straightforward as it should be….there appear to be multiple threads; multiple lives, multiple realities…each with its own love interest for Nemo!

There’s one thread in which Nemo grows up with his mother who marries a man, whose daughter Anna becomes the object of Nemo’s affection. Then there is another in which Nemo grows up with his crippled father and becomes romantically involved with Elise, a girl who also has emotional problems! And then there is the third thread in which Nemo marries Jean, merely out of a whim! These stories branch out into sub-stories, involving one outlandish adventure on the Planet Mars where Nemo travels to scatter his wife’s ashes!! Or that freaky universe which appears to be dominated by argyle patterns and Nemo is guided by signs all around him! The journalist is confused, of course; doesn’t know what to believe! Yet Nemo jokes….”(in those days) Most of the time, nothing happened. Like a French movie”!!

So what really happened with Nemo? Did he live all those pasts? Are any of those stories real, or figments of his imagination? The fact as we know it, is that all time is irreversible. It moves in one direction. But does it really? Does Nemo have the power to alter the course of time…?

ANALYSIS/REVIEW:

A LOT of questions pop up while watching this film which is almost impossible to grasp in the first sitting. While Dormael drops plenty of clues in the form of dialog and explanations of various scientific theories in order to enable us to understand what he is getting at, it is still quite a task to put together this difficult film! We can gather some hints in the first viewing, but a second viewing can shed some more light on certain things we may easily miss in the first viewing! The 34 year old Nemo (in one of his many pasts!) is a scientist and an anchor for a TV show and is seen explaining  to an audience, the principles of Entropy, The arrow of time, The Butterfly Effect, the Innate fear, The Big Bang, The Big Crunch and a lot of other theories that the film’s plot is based upon! We are supposed to infer our own interpretation of the film by tying these theories to whatever happens in Nemo’s life! This device reminds one of “Donnie Darko” (The Director’s Cut) where some intertiles from a text are interspersed in the narrative to hint at what exactly was happening in the film! There are at least a couple of mentions of The Butterfly Effect (the theory, not the film!) in “Chaos Theory” which is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions; where a small change at one place in a nonlinear system can result in large differences to a later state (Source: Wikipedia). To further stress on this effect, there is also an example given in the form of an incident in one of Nemo’s pasts….the aforementioned incident which appears in the first line of this review!

But this film isn’t really about time travel and altering the past seeking a better future. On a broad level, I think it is about choice and NOT making it! When faced with a choice, as long as you “don’t choose”, there are infinite possibilities, infinite universes which have their own ends…the theories of Big Bang and Big Crunch are transported to a personal and emotional level in a unique fictional narrative that is unparalleled, the similarities with “Donnie Darko” and “The Butterfly Effect” notwithstanding! A Chess move is quoted to give an example, the ‘Zugzwang’: “The only viable move…is NOT to move”! The film also follows a tree-structure with ‘branched’ narratives representing the multiple threads, further branching out into sub-branches of multiple choices (or lack thereof…of making any!).

But ultimately amidst all the scientific mumbo-jumbo, this film has a heart….and literally so, as it explores the protagonist’s emotional ups and downs…the trauma of the separation of the parents, having to “choose” who to live with; the teenage romance(s), the heartbreaks, the desire for a good family life, kids, the works; these emotions come into play across narratives too. It is the emotional thread that binds all the branches together, and the manifestation of this is seen in some scenes in which Nemo appears to have memories of another reality in his “current reality”! So what is it exactly? Does Jaco Van Dormael even know what he has filmed? He obviously does. It is not all random as it seems, that is certain. But is there a single thread that connects the dots neatly and gives us a comprehensible structure? Or is Van Dormael only interested in playing tricks? For as you dig deeper, you find out there is not just one thread that connects the dots! There are still more! Just like the branched structure of the narrative itself!

The complex theme is only complemented by Jaco Van Dormael’s penchant for quality filmmaking. His varying use of colour as it reflects the mood in each of the narratives of the “lives” of Nemo is especially commendable. And so is the beautiful music score, the choice and placement of songs in the key scenes in the narrative which give the film its distinct mood. The bizarre, dream-like imagery with the accompanying sound design is a treat for lovers of surrealism and there is a lot for film buffs who are suckers for teenage romance too! There is very little room for character development, thanks to a narrative that keeps shifting between timelines and universes and characters, but that is no reason to complain. The ensemble cast, including Jared Leto, Toby Regbo, Diane Kruger, Juno Temple, Sarah Polley, Daniel Mays, Rhys Ifans and Natasha Little all do their jobs well, especially Leto who has a mighty challenging task of playing several roles (well…almost!). He goes all out, yet slightly hams as the old, decrepit Nemo in some scenes. One really wishes there was more of Sarah Polley and Diane Kruger. Sadly, both get very little screen time, although Polley nails it with her 'Borderline personality disorder' performance. Juno Temple and Toby Regbo as the teenaged Anna and Nemo respectively make their doomed lovers angle of the story more watchable.

CONCLUSION:

“Mr. Nobody” is a film that will not go down well with most people. It is a kind of film that is at a very big risk of being written off as “pretentious” and “self-indulgent”! Others may care less just because it is a little too heavy on the head! But it is also a film that is intellectually stimulating. It makes for some great food for thought and analyzing the story and then re-watching it makes it a more exciting experience. Additionally, it is a mind-expanding film that will make you aware of so many things around you if you are averse to reading about such material otherwise. It will make you rethink the ideas of space, time and reality as you know it!

My advice? Take up the challenge. Watch “Mr. Nobody”!

Score: 9/10.

Toto Le Heros (1991)

Belgian filmmaker Jaco Van Dormael didn’t make too many films in his career which started almost 30 years ago. Mostly credited with making short films, Dormael has only three feature-length films to his credit as director. One of them is his 1991 feature-length debut, “Toto Le Heros”, a charming little film that came to my attention recently.

The story is narrated by an elderly man named Thomas (Michel Bouquet). He talks of his eventful yet ‘ordinary’ childhood, the ghosts of which continue to haunt him. Thomas believes that he was switched at birth during a fire at the hospital in which he was born, with his next door neighbor, Alfred Kant who was born on the same day. Alfred got a much better childhood, thanks to the switch, Thomas narrates. Alfred has become the object of Thomas’ hatred. Thomas feels Alfred is the reason for several problems in his life, right from their toddlerhood and that Alfred has been directly or indirectly responsible for Thomas’ wasted life!  Thomas has long since, harbored  a feeling of revenge, and swears to kill Alfred…stressing that he will be the only one to kill Alfred! 

The film then switches back and forth between timelines, randomly placing scenes of Thomas’ childhood, adulthood and old age, as some light is thrown on various important episodes in Thomas’ life and why he regarded Alfred as his worst enemy.  Thomas’ mind, however, seems to go astray, as he paints vivid fantasies, imagining himself to be ‘Toto’, a secret agent who saves his family from the evil Kant family, and also imagines him getting even with the bullies who troubled him in his childhood!

Dormael’s screenplay is absorbing and one of a kind. The scenes are tied together like flashes of memory instead of a real time narrative. That was the intention, as Dormael states in an interview. He wanted to avoid the heavy physical progression of time and rather make a screenplay that echoed or captured the thoughts of the central character Thomas.  And it is very much like that, as the scenes keep jumping timelines and sometimes two timelines come together in a single scene. Not surprisingly, we do not have long, laborious takes; rather, scenes which are constantly on the move, barring a few crucial sequences which have to have a pace to match their oneiric quality.  There are also times when certain events occurring in one timeline ‘echo’ in some form in another timeline. In a screenplay abundant with ambiguities concerning fantasy and reality, it is a product of a genuine and painstaking thought process put into the making of this film as the viewer would recognize. Thomas is an unreliable narrator, owing to his drifting away (at one point imagining shoving all the capsules of medication down the nurse’s throat, as she taunts him for “smoking again” and forcing him to take his medicine!), and therefore it is sometimes  unclear whether a particular episode in Thomas’ life is fact or a figment of his imagination. But whatever is shown is all very interesting and pleasing to the eye.

It is interesting how the cinematography differs from time frame to time frame. Thomas’ childhood era is shown quite colourful and cheerful, with music and an atmosphere that cannot help but evoke a sense of nostalgia; the joyful nature and nostalgia further enhanced with Thomas’ father’s crooning of Charles Trenet’s wonderfully apt song, “Boum!”. The adulthood era is shown in a normal tone with the camera angle clearly changed, while the old age era appears much bleaker than the earlier eras! It is the way these subtle aspects have been handled in the filmmaking process that win this film extra points. On a broad level, “Toto Le Heros” reminded me of Andrei Tarkovsky’s semiautobiographical “Zerkalo (The Mirror)” and also Federico Fellini’s “8 ½”. In both the films, the narrator’s memories of old days are interspersed in the present, in a narrative that keeps shifting between the past and the present randomly. This is where the similarities end, of course. “Toto Le Heros” is a far cry from the art-house films that “Zerkalo” and “8 ½” are…in fact “Toto Le Heros” will appeal to both, the lovers of commercial entertainers, as well those who love thought provoking art cinema. This can be attributed to the crisp editing (by Susana Rosberg), thanks to the brisk pace, as scenes keep shifting between timelines (just like memories) and events keep happening throughout the modest 90 minutes length of the film, an intentional aspect demanded by Jaco Van Dormael, the auteur that he is.

The acting is commendable from most of the cast, particularly all three actors who play Thomas, Thomas Godet (as a child), Jo De Backer(adult) and Michel Bouquet (old man). Special mention should be made of Pascal Duquenne, an actor with Down Syndrome who plays Thomas’ brother Celestin. An endearing performance indeed!

Jaco Van Dormael clearly has talent. Too bad he kept himself limited to only a handful of movies. “Toto Le Heros” is a fascinating drama with a bittersweet and memorable ending. Definitely recommended!

Score: 9/10