Yes, the festival is over and Cannes will be getting back to relative normalcy this week, but we have a couple of reviews left over from our harried time on the Croisette.
“Octubre”: Winner of the Jury prize in the Un Certain Regard section of the Festival, the debut feature by writers and directors Daniel & Diego Vega is as minimalist and deadpan as films gets. Drawing on clear influences from the early work of the Coen brothers and Jim Jarmusch, “Octubre” is a simple story, economically told. Clemente (Bruno Odar), is a money-lender in an unnamed Peruvian city who discovers one day that someone has left a baby basket in his living room. As he tries to track down the mother, he enlists the help of Sofia (Gabriela Vasquez) to care for the child, and is usual in these stories, he discovers his attachment to both the baby and caretaker to be deeper than he is ready to admit.
Sly, sardonic and boasting some big and very dry laughs, “Octubre” is an assured debut by the Vegas. The duo’s eye for detail is remarkable, the spartan sets, and the elaborate running gags that get big payoffs are all handled admirably. They get great work out of the entire cast, but Odar (who does the best stoneface since Buster Keaton) and Vasquez (who brings a big heart to the center of the film) help shape some paper-thin characters. If we had any complaint about the film, it’s that even at eighty-three minutes, it at times feels slow and long. The Vegas are big fans of slowly revealing the plot and situations they set up, though sometimes to the detriment of keeping the film moving forward. One gets the feeling that this would make a crackling one hour short but, as it is, “Octubre” is a distinctive debut by a writing and directing duo to keep an eye on. [B]
“My Joy”: Russian-born and currently living in Germany, Sergei Loznitsa certainly has no love lost for his native land. “My Joy” is a surreal, dark and ultimately grim portrait of a rural village that also proposes to be a microcosm of contemporary Russian life, and boy, does Lozistyn have little hope for his home nation.
There is not really a straight plot for “My Joy” which starts with truck driver Georgi getting stuck in a small Russian village, and then unravels, “Nashville”-style, featuring nearly forty characters, almost all of them dreadful people given to the basest desires, crushed by life, who are generally horrible to each other. Among the rogue’s gallery of lowlifes is a couple of corrupt traffic cops, a teenage prostitute, thieves, a crazy mute and generally a bunch of people who look out for themselves first while lacking in basic human compassion.
But you see it’s all a metaphor. As the film plods on with its excessively long two-hour-plus running time, Lozistyn takes pains to tell us with a couple of key speeches that Russia has yet to civilize itself, is rotted to the core, and as he seems to contend, doesn’t have a way out of its (according to his viewpoint) moral dissolution. It’s not surprising he didn’t get financial backing from any Russian investors, but we frankly are at a loss as to why the film was made. Playing out like an extended grudge against his former home, “My Joy” is the film equivalent of a bitter valentine to an ex-lover. [C-]