True to form, this year's Rotterdam provided a satisfying mix of mainstream, independent and avant-garde films from over 55 countries. Even the most exacting cinemagoer would be hard pressed not to happen across a visual treat here, and one of the best-looking had to be Todd Haynes's Far From Heaven. A fitting homage to '50s director Douglas Sirk, it is as sumptuous as one of his own, and similarly never privileges alluring appearance over multi-layered story or character. Heralding a return to the kind of acting style that has become increasingly unfashionable in recent years, it is replete with meaningful glances, societal repression and bursts of heightened emotion. Haynes is on top form and clearly besotted by his material; crucially all the acting is pitched at just the right note. Julianne Moore and Dennis Haysbert (fresh from playing the presidential candidate in TV series 24) relish the opportunity to wallow in their forbidden love, and Dennis Quaid, all guilt and desperate sexuality, is the most engrossing he's been in years. Interestingly, Punch-drunk Love, another long-awaited film from one of Hollywood's more innovative directors, Paul Thomas Anderson, also has the feel of an old Hollywood classic, this time the romantic comedy. Though visually and narratively inventive, and certainly charming and very funny in parts, it just doesn't linger in the mind the way Magnolia (1999) does. Still, it's unusual and imaginative fare for Hollywood and a canny move for Adam Sandler.
Decay of Fiction, by Pat O'Neill, is another feast for the eyes, but of a more experimental nature. Set in the abandoned Ambassador Hotel in Hollywood, it is a haunting piece of essayistic, memory cinema, which references the medium's classic forms. As transparent characters drift through the hallways, rooms and lifts, ghosts of the hotel's (and our own cinematic) past, we become privy to snatches of their conversation and lives. The director mixes dialogue from classic Hollywood films, such as the noir-mystery Laura (1944), with actors' voices. As viewers we feel as if we have walked these corridors ourselves and recognise the stock protagonists – the femme fatale, the gambler, the hood – yet we are unconventionally at one remove from them, trying in vain to grasp at their ethereality and transience.
Gerry, Gus Van Sant's semi-improvised two-hander starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck, occasionally amuses but on the whole frustrates. Moving away from more traditional and worthy Hollywood output, Van Sant self-consciously borrows from European directors such as Béla Tarr and Chantal Akerman to tell the story of two friends – calling each other 'Gerry' – who lose themselves out in a desert. Barely conversing with one another, they walk in vain to find their car, confused by the shifting terrain and deprived of food and water. The backdrops of Death Valley may be breathtaking, but it tries too hard and feels like an experiment in a certain type of film-making. Fear X, on the other hand, Nicolas Winding Refn's film of a script he co-wrote with Hubert Selby Jr, intrigues with its minimalism, and (apparently) simple storytelling. John Turturro is the gentle, yet persistent, shopping mall security guard who is preoccupied by the unexplained murder of his wife and desperate to find a killer and motive. Endlessly scouring security footage and chasing shadows in photographs, he follows a lead to a small town and checks in to a hotel, all David Lynch and Barton Fink (1991) with blood red walls. As his emotions intensify, events take a more surreal turn and we journey further, though not quite far enough, into Lynch territory. Ken Park, where realism is the order of the day, is at the opposite extreme. With current legal action against Larry Clark allegedly being taken by Hamish McAlpine of Metro-Tartan, its future distribution, in the UK at least, is in some doubt, which needless to say made it a must-see. Co-directed by cinematographer Ed Lachman, full of the requisite threesomes, full-on oral sex between a teenage boy and his girlfriend's mother, teen alienation and commonplace disregard for life, it certainly makes for diverting viewing but disappoints after the acuity and urgency of Bully (2001).
Max, which is based on an interesting piece of history – Hitler's dealings shortly after the First World War, before his political career flourished, with a Jewish art dealer (of the title) – is also a missed opportunity. Even John Cusack (as Max) usually so comfortable on screen, seems ill-at-ease with his clunky dialogue and impassioned speeches on art and originality. Annoyingly, accents are mixed: Hitler, needless to say, has a strong German accent, while other characters who also hail from the country, speak without a trace of one.
Taking a leaf out of Peter Jackson's book, Belgian director Lucas Belvaux filmed a trilogy of films back-to-back, minimising on cost and maximising on efficiency. With characters appearing in all three – in one centrally, in another on the periphery – the narratives take place simultaneously in Grenoble, but are enacted in different genres. The first, Trilogy I: An Amazing Couple, is a romantic comedy, complete with a hypochondriac lead, a jealous wife, interfering cops and mistaken identities. Occasionally straying too far into farce territory, the mood completely shifts in the second film, On the Run, which segues into noir-thriller territory, and the third, After Life, which opts for the melodramatic form, but certainly not without thrills of its own. A trio to look out for, the individual films should be viewed together and in order for maximum effect.
For Claire Denis fans, Vendredi Soir is a world away from her previous offering, the bloody vampire mystery Trouble Every Day (2001). Taking place over one evening during a train strike in Paris, a woman unexpectedly encounters a man as she attempts to travel to a dinner party. The outcome is by turns wistful, meditative, romantic and playful. Creating the mood of a city frustrated by interruption and delay, and the excitement and newness of a spontaneous encounter, it is a film of the moment that perfectly captures the charge of a sudden, intense relationship.
Marion Bridge, a Canadian film debut by Wiebke von Carolsfield, based on a play by Daniel McIvor, was without doubt my most fulfilling fiction film viewing. Aside from starring the wonderful Molly Parker (who features in a thankless role in Max and still manages to add spark), it is a simply filmed, well-told, absorbing story of familial guilt, collusion and forgiveness. With their mother dying, three sisters are brought back together under one roof in Nova Scotia, each to face their past and learn to trust one another. Faultlessly balancing pain and humour, it's moving drama.
On a quirkier note, Happy Here and Now, directed by Michael Almereyda, journeys with Amelia (Lianne Balaban) to New Orleans in search of her sister, Muriel (Shalom Harlow), who has unexpectedly disappeared. Hooking up with a series of oddballs – including Ally Sheedy as her aunt – she finds traces of late-night online chat on Muriel's hard drive and tries to contact the suspect herself. Blurring the boundaries of science-fiction, the film plays with concepts of virtual reality, subjectivity and intimacy. Full of fun detail and unusual characterisation, it will hopefully find decent distribution.
Documentaries featured strongly this year. This So-Called Disaster, another Almereyda project, focuses on the last few weeks of Sam Shepard's rehearsal of his play 'The Late Henry Moss'. Sean Penn, Nick Nolte and Woody Harrelson are amongst the cast and it is certainly entertaining to watch the three 'stars' negotiate their way round stage. But this is Shepard country – all jealous brothers, faltering identities and questioned masculinity – and the most interesting moments are of the writer/director alone, talking openly to camera about his father's alcoholism and death.
Following four passionate tango enthusiasts around Buenos Aires, Nosotros explores issues of immigration and identity through their attitudes to, and performance of, the dance. Fairly conventional in its enactment, it's worth a look but could dig a little deeper to reveal the divergent national psyche. Cinemania paints another portrait of addiction and obsession, one closer to home. A documentary about film addicts in New York, it both mesmerises and repulses. On average, these cinephiles see four or five films a day and become obsessed by the details of print and projection. Roberta is the scariest. A loose canon, banned from one famous cinema in New York for her disruptive behaviour, she even dons a wig in an attempt to creep in unnoticed past the member of staff she has previously tried to strangle.
Onibus 174, more exciting and satisfying than most fiction action/dramas, was my surprise favourite of the festival. A documentary about the hijacking of Bus 174 in Rio in June 2000 by a street kid, it explores the links between poverty and homelessness, and violent crime. The interviews with police, relatives, social workers and captives are exhaustive and insightful and the live footage of the four and half hour siege compelling. Scrutinising a single person, a people and a country, this really is non-fiction film-making at its best, and it would make a fantastic companion piece to City of God.
