Twenty years on, it is well worth revisiting Orlando, Sally Potter’s 1992 adaptation of a Virginia Woolf novel. Subtly convincing the audience that a person’s sex does not define them, the film achieves something which, in 2012, society is still far from accepting.

Orlando never grows old: when the film begins in the 1600s, he is a young man, and is still young when the film ends in the late twentieth century. The only difference is that Orlando is now a woman. Although changing sex certainly affects the way that Orlando is treated by other people, the film is remarkable in that the audience is prepared for this change, and experience it less as those around Orlando experience it, and more as Orlando him/herself.

From the very beginning of the film, the audience develops an affinity with Orlando and a sense of gender as something elusive and therefore of lesser importance than usual. As the film opens, the camera tracks in on Orlando, who is sitting under a tree. A voiceover narrator introduces the character, but when the camera finally reaches a close-up on the character’s face, Orlando turns his head to look directly into the camera and speaks, interrupting the narrator. Orlando is no longer ‘he’ but ‘I’: self (and personal experience) subtly asserts itself as more significant than gender. Less subtle is the fact that this male character is being played by a well-known female actress, Tilda Swinton, reminding the audience of how easy it is for adult women to pass as attractive young men. The narrator states from the beginning that there is ‘no doubt’ that Orlando is male, in spite of the feminine appearance that young men liked to adopt in Elizabethan times.

The gender bending continues apace. In another early scene, a minor character who appears much older and more virile sings in a falsetto a song about the beauty of Eliza, a queen who is now old and ugly. Queen Elizabeth, in turn, is played by Quentin Crisp: the fact that an old woman can be convincingly played by a man reinforces the point that signs of gender fluctuate with age. The Queen chooses Orlando as her ‘favourite’, another reversal of the more common scenario in which powerful men keep much younger women for their amusement. Elizabeth gives Orlando an estate to live on, with the humorous proviso that he not grow old: Orlando unexpectedly conforms to this stipulation, remaining the same age for over 300 years. Ironically, it is not age but a change of sex that forces him to relinquish his estate: as his advisors explain, in terms of property ownership being female is the equivalent to being dead.

Orlando’s sex change takes place overnight, as if by magic, during his ten-year diplomatic stint in an unnamed Middle Eastern country. Although Europeans once associated the Orient with femininity, the film does not reinforce the stereotype: if anything, it reverses it. When Orlando first meets his eloquent and manly Middle-Eastern host, it is Orlando as representative of the British aristocracy who appears feminine, with his powdered wigs and awkward waffling. Notably, Orlando is still a man when the city is attacked and finds himself ill-suited to fighting alongside his host. Orlando finally adopts the local style of dress, exchanging his ornate European dress for simple swathes of cream fabric, and immediately appears more modern and mature.

When Orlando returns to England as a woman, the reaction is predictably one of astonishment. She is still the same person as before: indeed, when she looked at herself in the mirror on morning of her transformation, she downplayed the importance of gender, saying that ‘nothing has changed’. For this reason, the change in the way others relate to her is all the more astonishing. Having seen Tilda Swinton dressed as a man for the entire film, the audience has the strange impression of feeling as though they are watching a man in drag when they see Tilda Swinton in a dress. She continues periodically to address the audience directly, however, emphasising her subjectivity, and that it is the person who matters, and their experiences, not their sex. The clothing of a woman in the 1700s and 1800s seems only slightly more fussy and restrictive than that of a man: instead, it is people’s attitudes to gender that makes her experience of life as a woman so different. She speaks to Alexander Pope, whose experience of uneducated and silly women makes him dismiss an entire sex: he cannot speak to Orlando as an equal, as he cannot see past her gender and consider her as a person. Orlando discovers that the only way for her to maintain her property is to have a son, which she does, by the twentieth century.

The end of the film brings its reflections on gender full-circle. The voiceover narrator is back again, this time noting that in the late twentieth century, women favour an androgynous appearance. Orlando now dresses in a modern unisex style, and rides a motorcycle. Her child is in the sidecar, and appears at first to be a boy. When they arrive at Orlando’s estate, the child is revealed to be a girl.

Orlando‘s treatment of gender manages to be both understated and radical: it is so natural in its treatment of gender fluidity that people who are rigid in their attitudes to gender appear unnatural. It remains a visually sumptuous and intellectually intriguing film.

Kirsten Dunst greets the apocalypse

“Melancholia” is Lars von Trier’s intelligent, melodramatic, achingly beautiful and wickedly funny new film. It tells the story of Justine (a transcendent Kirsten Dunst), a severe depressive, and her doting and practical sister, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Justine’s depression takes the corporeal shape of a planet called Melancholia, which is on a steady collision course with Earth. In the film’s stunning prologue, Mr. von Trier tactfully relieves the audience of any suspense concerning Earth’s fate, allowing the tone to shift from an end-of-the-world thriller to a character and relationship study. “Melancholia” uses the premise of an apocalypse to expose the frays in familial bonds — specifically, the intricate bonds and dynamic between two sisters; a bond that is both affectionate and cruel, supportive and insensitive.

The film is divided into two parts named after each of the sisters. Although part one is named after Justine, the “melancholic” sister, this section of the film proves to be the most humorously absurd. Mr. von Trier is—gasp—having a bit of fun as we follow Justine through the grand charade of her wedding celebration. He has reined in all of his pals from films past to play members of the wedding party, including Charlotte Rampling and John Hurt as Justine’s backbiting parents, and Udo Kier the prim and fretful wedding planner. And despite Justine’s deep sadness during what is supposed to be the happiest day of her life, Ms. Dunst is luminous. Instead of portraying Justine as incessantly bleak, Dunst’s performance during this half the film is almost sphinxlike in its spontaneity. She does not skulk around in her wedding dress (although she does, at one point, gracefully urinate in it beneath the moonlight), but rather ventures in and out of the festivities like an elusive specter. And because von Trier has revealed the fate of these characters in the first ten minutes, the audience can empathize with Justine as she views her wedding with a growing sense of dread and indifference.

Part two is named for Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), Justine’s pragmatic but anxious older sister. Although Claire grows weary and frustrated with Justine’s erratic behavior, she understands her sister’s illness and knows how to take care of her. Claire’s relationship with Justine becomes increasingly complicated in the film’s second half, as Claire grapples with her own growing anxiety over the path of Melancholia while simultaneously caring for Justine, who has become incapacitated by her depression. In contrast to the darkly sumptuous aesthetic of part one, with an alluring Justine wreaking havoc in a wedding dress, part two is more subdued and more painful to watch; Justine has lost her enigmatic glow, and von Trier, who has long suffered from depression himself, depicts Justine’s descent with alarming candor. It has been suggested that Mr. von Trier uses female characters in his films to represent his own struggles with depression. If “Antichrist” was too vicious and misogynistic, his rendering of Justine’s inner turmoil in “Melancholia” is as upsetting as it is compassionate.

But part two is named “Claire” for a reason. As Melancholia becomes more of a threat, (the planet and the illness) Claire becomes fraught with worry that the end is near, and the sisters’ reactions to the planet begin to diverge. Justine begins to emerge from her depression and becomes more lucid, but is callous towards Claire’s distress. Justine feels a kinship with Melancholia; she embraces the planet as an actual representation and justification for her chronic illness. Yet, just as Claire strove to comfort Justine during her lowest points, Justine’s coldness turns into an intense stoicism, and eventually, into her own display of compassion, especially towards Claire’s son, Leo.

In “Melancholia,” the end of the world is not rendered with mass hysteria or with an overblown sequence of natural disasters, but rather with understated beauty. Bugs creep up from the soil, hail the color of pure white flower buds falls from the sky, all as Melancholia—massively exquisite in itself—looms closer and closer overhead. Despite its morbid theme, bone-rattling soundtrack straight from Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, and the fact that it’s a Lars von Trier film, the tone of “Melancholia” is almost soothing. Mr. von Trier proposes that the end of the world, like his film, may just be a thing of beauty.

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Vanessa is the press representative/blogger for The Plaza Cinema & Media Arts Center in Patchogue, NY. You can read her blog at stickyourthumbselsewhere.wordpress.com

At the screening I attended of Jan Švankmajer’s Surviving Life (Theory and Practice) (2010), there were two walk-outs. I was tempted to follow, but my love of the great Czech animator’s previous work won out, making me want to experience, if not enjoy, every minute of his latest film.

Newcomers to Švankmajer would do best to start with his shorts from the 1960s and 80s, live-action Surrealist animations of everyday objects. Some people find them disturbing, but if you embrace their sheer creativity and magic, these films can take you right back to childhood, evoking its fear of the unknown, love of repetition, and sense that anything might happen.

If I hadn’t already seen two of Švankmajer’s feature-length films, having seen Surviving Life I would have said that the director should stick to short films. His tendency towards variations on a theme arguably works best in small doses, so the theme never has a chance to become tiresome. Alice (1988) and Little Otik (2000), despite being 86 and 132 minutes long respectively, work superbly, perhaps because both are based on children’s stories, and find the right balance between live action and stop-motion animation.

Surviving Life, in contrast, incorporates childhood themes, but is a decidedly adult story which, at 109 minutes, is boring in its repetition. It tells the story of a happily married man in late middle-age. One night, he happens to dream of a beautiful young woman, and subsequently becomes obsessed with dreaming in order to keep seeing her. The tune of a waltz associated with his dreams is repeated ad nauseum. The dreams don’t include enough variation to make them interesting, and the secret behind them is not much of a surprise.

The film’s biggest problem is its claustrophobic style, which combines with the repetition to make the audience feel trapped. Instead of using the live-action animation for which he is renowned, Švankmajer animates photographs of his actors, allowing for the easy introduction of Surrealist elements such as giant eggs, priapic teddy bears, and Ernst-inspired women with the heads of birds. This approach lacks the compelling originality that usually characterises Švankmajer’s films: instead, it seems a regurgitation of 1930s Surrealist collage and Monty Python’s Flying Circus animation. The live action elements are much shorter, and confined to close-ups and extreme close-ups of objects and characters’ faces.

Surviving Life begins with a message from Švankmajer himself, as an animated photo standing in the middle of a photo of a street that serves as one of his film sets. He explains that he animated photographs of his actors in order to save on production costs. This sounds like a reasonable explanation, but the director goes on to say that he is giving this introduction in order to draw the film out to an appropriate length. The introduction can be justified as meta-film, and it is a treat to see Švankmajer in his own film. However, even as a joke, the idea of throwing in an introduction to make the film longer seems like an insult to the audience, especially in light of the repetitive narrative that follows. The audience at the screening I attended clearly wanted to go along with the director, and made a few attempts at ironic or appreciative laughter throughout this pseudo-comedy, but it sounded weak and hollow.

Confirmed fans of Švankmajer’s work won’t want to miss this film: the work of a confirmed master is always of interest, even when it’s not his best. Surviving Life still features recognisable elements of the Švankmajer we know and love: giant tongues, huge appetites, and a general enthusiasm for the earthy side of life. Švankmajer also deserves praise for attempting to carry on the project that the French Surrealists abandoned after Un Chien andalou and L’Age d’or: that is, to use communicate Surrealism’s message via film.

Surviving Life demonstrates how dreams and reality overlap and does so in a straightforward manner, not by tying narrative knots so that the audience simply confuses real and imagined worlds (as in Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry, for instance). At the same time, while Švankmajer’s message is more meaningful than Woody Allen’s, the Surrealists would have disapproved of the fact that Surviving Life only demonstrates their point, rather than putting it in action: the audience remains an audience, simply observing how one man’s dreams relate to his waking life. As a result, the film becomes egocentric: the audience may have trouble relating to the character’s obsession with his own inner life. Ultimately, rather than showing that dream life is relevant to waking life, and is on the same plane, Surviving Life shows a man who becomes increasingly detached from his present life through dreams which are more relevant to his past.

The London Iranian Film Festival is only in its second year, but already it boasts an enchanting and highly professional-looking trailer, as well as a varied line-up of films that blast open the old 80s stereotype of Iranian films as being superficially sweet studies of childhood in which social commentary was necessarily covert. It is of course important not to lose sight of the real censorship and official bullying of filmmakers that takes place in Iran, the most infamous example at the moment being Jafar Panahi. The London Iranian Film Festival has certainly not forgotten Panahi: it screened his new documentary, This Is Not a Film (In Film Nist, 2010), which records his struggle against the 6-year prison sentence and 20-year ban on filmmaking imposed by Iranian authorities last December.

The festival demonstrates the inspiring variety of contemporary Iranian filmmaking. Obviously, this year’s festival had to include A Separation (Jodaeiye Nader az Simin, 2011); although it already had a general UK release over the summer, it is a film that can be watched again and again, both for its acting and its intricate layering of truth and deception. The festival also included films which most London audiences will not have encountered before: A Very Close Encounter (Barkhord-e Kheyli Nazdik, 2010), a thriller about the criss-crossing relationships linking two women involved in a car crash, and Please Don’t Disturb (Lotfan Mozahem Nashavid, 2010) a low-budget comedy about an elderly couple afraid of the repairman, a pickpocketed cleric, and a woman threatening to leave her abusive television-personality husband.

I attended a screening of a film that, from its description, seemed to correspond more to the lyrical, child-focused Iranian films of the 1980s. The Other (Digari, 2010) concerns Reza, a boy of about 10, who lives with his recently-widowed mother. Reza goes on a trip to Tehran with Mr. Ebrahim, his father’s old friend and business partner, to sell the business’s van. Reza’s uncle is forcing Ebrahim to sell the van, but doesn’t trust him and so sends Reza to supervise. Mr Ebrahim, himself a widower with a 6-year-old daughter, would clearly like to marry Reza’s mother, but the uncle is opposed to the match. Reza himself is initially hostile towards Mr Ebrahim, but they grow closer over the course of the trip.

The Other is director Mehdi Rahmani’s first film, and in many ways it shows. The film’s technical quality is lacking: its colours are at once saturated and washed out, making the film look like it was made in the 1970s rather than just last year. This, combined with drab, worn-out surroundings means that shots of visual appeal are rare. The script, too, is not quite as unified as it could be: while the dialogue feels largely authentic and moderately interesting, it lacks momentum at times. The exposition is also a little confusing at first: luckily, the film’s plot and characters are restricted, so just by patiently listening to the characters, it becomes clear what is going on and what is at stake—rather as in real life.

With such reservations, I felt like I wasn’t really enjoying the film at the time. Over the hours and days following the screening, though, many themes and images kept coming back to me, making it clear that for all its roughness, this was a film that presented an authentic picture of present-day Iran, and had something serious to say about its social structures. It may have been the austerity and hardship that the film presented that provoked my initial negative reaction, as much as the film’s artistic weaknesses.

In retrospect, it is easy to see why this film won Best Children’s Feature Film at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards last December. On the one hand, The Other will have cross-generational and cross-cultural appeal through its focus on the difficult relationship between children and any adult who attempts to stand in for a missing parent. On the other hand, the film examines Iran’s particular situation with regard to women’s marital rights: aside from the example of Reza’s mother, who can’t remarry until her brother-in-law says so, Reza and Mr Ibrahim encounter a troubling example of family strife in the room next door to theirs at the hotel in Tehran. While The Other can be a troubling film to watch in terms of its portrait of life in Iran, its heartfelt authenticity will remain with the viewer long after the end credits.

For more information about past and future editions of the London Iranian Film Festival, consult their web site: http://ukiff.org.uk/

Going to the cinema is one of many everyday pleasures to be had in Paris: the typical variety of films on offer, particularly in the Latin Quarter, seems like a 365-day film festival. On any given day, you could see the latest Hollywood release, new independent films from around the world, or a range of cinema classics. To see Buñuel, Bergman or Kurosawa on the big screen, there’s no need to go to the cinémathèque or wait for a new restored release: cinemas like the Accatone, the Grand Action and the Reflet Médicis in the 5^th arrondissement show films like this every day, and the they don’t cancel a screening if too few people turn up.

Any tourist can take advantage of the cinematic opportunities in Paris: if you don’t speak a word of French, you can go and see an English film (if it’s a new Hollywood film or a children’s film, look out for the letters ‘VO’ to make sure you see the ‘original version’, not one dubbed in French). If you understand some French, or are fluent in another language, you can watch a foreign film and read the French subtitles. If you’re fluent, or nearly and want a challenge, you can see a French movie: even if you don’t understand every word, Paris’s historic cinemas are so charming that you’ll still have a wonderful experience.

On a trip to Paris last week, I happened to catch actor-director Sylvestre Amoussou’s second feature, Un Pas en avant: Les Dessous de la corruption (2011). It was almost five years ago that I saw his directorial début, Africa Paradis (2007), a fiction film based on a highly original concept. Set in a future where Europe has become uninhabitable, the film imagines what could happen if there were a wave of European immigrants to Africa. Africa Paradis made its social commentary through a reversal of fortunes, showing white people treated as second-class citizens, taking on just the sort of menial jobs that are traditionally assigned to immigrants. The film was enjoyable as a comedy, making the audience laugh by turning a familiar situation on its head. At the same time, Africa Paradis was thought-provoking in the radical way in which it asks you, as a spectator, to put yourself in another person’s place (be that the role of the oppressor or the oppressed). The drawback of Africa Paradis is that it felt a little amateurish, so that it was difficult, at times, to become fully involved in the story.

In Un Pas en avant, Amoussou has created a film with much more professional production values. Like Africa Paradis, over-acting is the rule, but this adds to the film’s comic value, as though the actors and audience share the enjoyment of exaggeration, as in a soap opera. In terms of the film’s technical quality, compelling storyline and often artistic shot composition, Un Pas en avant is a much stronger film than Africa Paradis.

Amoussou himself takes the starring role in Un Pas en avant, playing both greengrocer Koffi Godomey and his twin brother Boubacar, a delivery driver. When Boubacar disappears, and the police investigation seems to be going nowhere, Koffi decides to start his own search for his brother. In the process, he discovers terrible corruption taking place in Benin, at the highest levels of the country’s government and police service, its NGOs and the French embassy. While this storyline has the potential to be confusing, the exposition is clear: the characters are well-differentiated, and the narrative is paced just right, allowing the audience to follow the unfolding intrigue easily.

As in his first film, Amoussou excels in taking serious subject matter and treating it with a skilfully balanced blend of sobriety and tragedy on the one hand, and humour and optimism on the other. Amoussou’s portrayal of the twin brothers is entertaining, the chief difference between them being that one has no hair while the other has quite a lot. There is also a solid dose of comedy in Koffi’s relationship with his wife, who initially makes fun of his efforts to play the detective. The African setting is also particularly enjoyable, in terms of verbal expression and visual aesthetic: the local linguistic expressions and the noises used to express disapproval; the beautiful traditional costumes that the characters wear; the simple but welcoming interiors, and the golden light quality in the exterior shots.

A friend who attended the screening had personal experience of the region, and pointed out that there was a clear effort to Africanise and idealise in this film. In reality, she said, it is common to combine an African wrap with a second-hand imported t-shirt. It is also unrealistic that not a single person showed signs of any past or present illness. That said, this film was intended for a mass audience, and so can be seen as romanticising everyday reality in the way of Hollywood cinema: we rarely complain of American cinema’s beautiful people or the mismatches between the characters’ modest jobs and their spacious apartments or stylish clothing.

Un Pas en avant arguably has more than enough reality in its storyline, which focuses on the way in which some of the most privileged individuals in Benin shamelessly take a cut of donations intended for the poorest. They siphon off a percentage of every food and medication donation that comes into the country. Even more troubling, the film shows how they are able to get away with it: while the majority is very much opposed to corruption, most people never know what is going on. When the average honest person does find out about corruption, those in power try to buy their complicity, and when that fails, readily resort to threats or even murder. Unlike in a Hollywood film, the audience can never be 100% sure that the good guys are going to make it: as the film builds towards its climax, it seems as though no one is safe.

A potential problem with Un Pas en avant is in the degree to which it confirms stereotypes about corrupt African leaders and lawlessness in the region. It is depressing to consider how much this fiction film may reflect reality, and it could discourage people from donating to Africa, let alone visiting. At the same time, it contains a message of hope, in that it shows that  it is possible to speak out and take action against corruption, though very risky. The film implicitly asks every audience member to consider whether they would be brave enough to report corruption in these circumstances. One unexpected element of the film is its handful of openly didactic moments, reminiscent of Eisenstein, where customers at Koffi’s fruit and vegetable stall state their beliefs about the importance of voting, or their refusal to tolerate corruption. This is just one of a combination of characteristics which makes Amoussou’s work so distinctive.

Un Pas en avant: Les Dessous de la corruption is currently screening several times daily at the Espace Saint-Michel, 7 place St-Michel, Paris.

I won’t give too much away about The Skin I Live In (La piel que habito): unlike Woody Allen’s films, an Almodóvar doesn’t come along every year, so it’s important to savour them. Psychologists at the University of San Diego recently discovered that people tended to enjoy short stories more when they already knew the ending. I don’t know if the same holds true for cinema, but Pedro Almódovar’s most recent film would be an excellent test case. As an innocent first-time viewer, you are intrigued as the film uncovers its mysteries and surprises; armed with that same knowledge from the beginning, you would watch the film differently. For its sumptuous visual qualities and dark comedy, Almodóvar’s work has always stood up well to multiple viewings, but the twists in The Skin I Live In add another reason to watch this film more than once.

The Skin I Live In is the story of plastic surgeon Dr Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas) and his patient, Vera, who occupies a room in the doctor’s isolated villa/clinic in Toledo. From the top of her neck to the tips of her toes, Vera is enveloped in a flesh-coloured body stocking: although she is young, beautiful and lithe, it is clear that her body has gone through significant trauma. The calm and elegant Robert embodies contradictions of his own: after a lecture in which he outlines his pioneering work on skin grafts for burn patients, he receives a warning from the prime minister that research into transgenic therapy is strictly forbidden. The surgeon is clearly talented, but unconventional in his approach. His obsession with work is influenced by family tragedies involving his wife and daughter, events which may have driven him to madness.

An obvious reference point for the mad plastic surgeon film is Georges Franju’s Les Yeux sans visage (Eyes Without a Face, 1960), where horror derived from a doctor’s insane determination to perform a successful face transplant for his disfigured daughter. While featuring similar themes, The Skin I Live In is much less frightening than Franju’s film because of Almodóvar’s characteristic blend of comedy and humanity in the midst of adversity. Rather than throwing in moments of comic relief, Almodóvar typically draws out the unexpected humour inherent in life-or-death situations. In some of his films, this technique develops into madcap absurdity, but The Skin I Live In is slightly more sombre.  The film incorporates horror’s conventions of tragic situations that realise our worst fears, but regularly turns a knowing, ironic gaze on such circumstances: as a result, we giggle at tragedy that descends for a moment into melodrama, and laugh nervously as the worst possible thing that could happen, happens.

In addition to comedy, what saves The Skin I Live In from full-blown horror is that its central characters, both male and female, are very strong. Almodóvar has an admirable record of portraying, in particular, women who refuse to crumble: maintaining their individuality, they confront life’s challenges with practicality and common sense. The women in horror films, on the other hand, are victims precisely because they are weak, and while their defencelessness makes the violence seem more cruel, it can also paradoxically make it less important: in the feral world of the horror film, defencelessness naturally invites attack, like a gazelle invites a crocodile. Although The Skin I Live In, like Les Yeux sans visage, has its fair share of defenceless, suicidal women, the most important characters have a sense of self that makes them defiantly adaptable and resilient, exactly the antidote to horror’s terror through annihilation.

It’s a well-worn observation that the book is better than the movie. But what about the graphic novel? It seems reasonable to expect the transition from one predominantly visual medium to another to be smoother. It was pleasing to see Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis gain wider attention through the animated film adaptation she directed in 2007 with Vincent Paronnaud. While fun, that film still had nowhere near the impact of the original.

Satrapi recently paired up with Paronnaud again to direct a film adaptation of her shorter graphic work, Chicken with Plums (Poulet aux Prunes, 2011), this time using predominantly live-action rather than animation. Mathieu Amalric stars as Nasser-Ali, a violinist who decides it’s time to die when his beloved violin is broken. Neither his wife, his two young children, nor his brother can dissuade him. On his elective deathbed, Nasser-Ali recalls his past, above all his doomed relationship with the beautiful Irâne.

Chicken with Plums is a very strange film, but the directors first deserve praise for their remarkably creative approach. Even if the film’s parts did not hang together well, Satrapi and Paronnaud should be admired for their willingness to switch between starkly different aesthetic modes. The film’s dominant style is that of the period piece, a conservative mode which makes creative departures all the more surprising. The directors have reproduced mid-twentieth century Iran with an intimate, almost mystical atmosphere, predominantly green in hue: a sort of fairy-tale re-imagining of place that recalls Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Then, without warning, the film makes a brief departure into garish, mass-produced modernity: a flash-forward to Nasser-Ali’s son’s future life in the U.S., complete with obese children, junk food, and chihuahuas. While embarrassingly caricatured in its portrayal of the American lifestyle, this episode could be an Iranian response to the West’s equally stereotyped images of Iran.

Later, in one of the film’s most pleasing sequences, Chicken with Plums incorporates a colourful animated episode to illustrate a story that the devil, Azraël, tells to Nasser-Ali. Speaking of the devil, Satrapi and Paronnaud also open the doors to the imaginary within the film’s period setting: the giant, black, long-horned, bright-eyed Azraël, for example, or Nasser-Ali’s suicidal and erotic fantasies. These imagined elements, which can be easily incorporated in an illustrated medium, often appear literal-minded in a live-action film: unnecessarily grotesque enactments of every idea that passes through the character’s head. Here again, the film recalls Jeunet, but without that director’s sense of charm and nuance.

Aside from its uneasy baroque tendencies, there is the issue of the story itself, which is based on the life of one of Satrapi’s relations. In the context of one’s own family, it is easy to see how a story of lost love could be intriguing. In the wider world, though, romantic disappointment is all too common, making it hard to see why Nasser-Ali’s story should be of special interest to the public. Given that his love story is unremarkable, it makes it even more difficult to accept the story’s other details: that he agreed to marry a woman he didn’t love, and that he now decides to die, leaving his two young children alone with their overly-demanding mother. Perhaps Nasser-Ali was more a more likeable character in the original work. In any case, when it comes to stories with a more personal relevance, literature may be a more sympathetic medium than film.

Chicken with Plums was screened at the BFI London Film Festival.

The feature debut of director Tomáš Lunák, Alois Nebel (2011) is an animated film based on a trilogy of graphic novels by Jaromír99 and Jaroslav Rudiš. The film’s black-and-white images sometimes look like a graphic novel come to life. At other times, they possess the stark enchantment of woodblock prints. Through the use of rotoscope animation, the characters’ smallest gestures are incredibly lifelike.

Alois Nebel is a middle-aged train dispatcher in the village of Bilý Potok. It is the period leading up to the Velvet Revolution, which will see the end of Communism in Czechoslovakia, but Alois keeps remembering the end of another era. Every time a train passes through the station with a cloud of steam, a ‘fog’ descends on him, and he has flashbacks of the end of World War II, when Germans were deported en masse from the region—including a woman who had been a mother to him during the war. As a result of these episodes, his opportunistic comrades place him temporarily in an institution. There, Alois meets a mute fugitive with an important connection to his past.

A ‘fog’ is an entirely appropriate term for Alois’ rememberances of the past, as the exact events remain hazy for most of the film. This may have been a deliberate choice, in order to build suspense, and reflect the repression at work in Alois own memory. Yet even at the film’s end, when the mystery seems to be cleared up, some details remain obscure. Alois Nebel assumes, in addition, a certain degree of knowledge about Czechoslovakia’s history, which may limit its appeal to younger/international audiences. Still, the film will hold a lot of power for those familiar with the nation’s history, both political and cinematic. The film’s opening, in particular, which introduces the audience to life at the station, recalls the WWII-set Closely Observed Trains (1966): many of the shots of the station exterior, and of the small repeated gestures that make up everyday life inside the station, look as though they were modelled on Jiří Menzel’s film.

The LFF’s final screening of Alois Nebel will take place on Thursday, 27 October at 3:30 pm at BFI Southbank’s NFT 2. For details, consult the festival’s web site.

The Kids Are All Right (Lisa Cholodenko, 2010) was a highlight of last year’s BFI London Film Festival. This year’s highlight looks set to be The Descendants (Alexander Payne, 2011), a film similar in many ways. At the dramatic centre of The Kids Are All Right was the desire of a lesbian couple’s two kids to learn more about their ‘father’ (sperm donor). As its title suggests, lineage is also a concern in The Descendants. George Clooney plays Matt King, the father of a family of mixed ancestry: half European colonialists, half Hawaiian royalty. The family’s ancient history is important in this film because a large tract of coastal land that has been passed down for generations must now be sold. It is up to Matt to decide whether to accept a lucrative offer from developers who will transform the virgin wilderness into a resort. Matt’s immediate family is a more pressing concern, though: his wife is in a coma after a power boat accident, leaving Matt to look after their two daughters, 17-year-old Alexandra, and 11-year-old Scottie. A workaholic, Matt no longer knows quite how to relate to his kids, but knows that he must do his best to stand in for their mother.

Like The Kids Are All Right, The Descendants takes a fresh perspective on modern American family life. Although Hollywood films commonly show kids misbehaving and being rude to their parents, the particular scenarios and language the kids use in The Descendants feels both more spontaneous and more authentic: Matt’s daughters and their friends say surprising things, sometimes shocking things, but not gratuitously. Alexandra’s boyfriend Sid comes out with some incredibly stupid statements, but has his funny and personable sides too. Sid also has his own sorrows to deal with: as is often the case in real life, such details are only revealed later, as we get to know him better. The Descendants is one of those films that is understanding towards all its characters, even the least likable ones, allowing every character their reasons and dignity. Matt’s father-in-law, for example, is aggressive and unfair in his criticisms, but just when he seems to have been dismissed as a grumpy old man, there is a candid shot of him watching over his comatose daughter in hospital, and the audience can appreciate the powerful emotions he must be experiencing.

In spite of their serious and potentially heart-rending subject matter, both The Descendants and The Kids Are All Right are highly watchable films: their engaging narrative, original comedy and, last but not least, big-name stars ensure their appeal to a broad audience. Last year, some people were complaining that aside from featuring lesbian parents, The Kids Are All Right was essentially a conservative film in its assertion of family values. The Descendants also centres on a well-to-do middle class family, valorises ancestry and presents a Hawaii where all residents are firmly in touch with the region’s specificity, from their dress and decor to their use of local greetings. At the same time, the film immediately challenges the romanticism commonly associated with warm climates: over shots of average people in Hawaii who are old, overweight, or in poor health, Matt introduces the film in voiceover, saying that when someone is ill, idyllic surroundings don’t change a thing.

One of director Alexander Payne’s previous successes, Sideways (2004), concerned a pair of middle-aged men going on a tour of California’s vineyards, not necessarily a subject that would interest everyone. The story of a family with a comatose mother also doesn’t sound like the most engaging film, but in both cases, with an outstanding script Payne manages to make the subject appealing. In The Descendants, he doesn’t achieve this by avoiding the pain of illness entirely: there are moments in the film that are very sad. Yet the film balances these moments with a lot of comedy, interesting dialogue, and character study. Moreover, he ventures into risky territory by allowing the family to criticise the mother, even though she is very ill and can’t defend herself. Again, this is not exploited for mere shock value: while it does give perspective, illness doesn’t erase a person’s mistakes. The Descendants recognises the spectrum of feelings that a family may go through in such a situation.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen star in "50/50"

Making a comedy about cancer is risky business. Making a comedy about a young, attractive person with cancer is self-sabotage. People don’t go to mainstream movies to be bummed out, or to be offended by the trivializing of something that should bum them out. Director Jonathan Levine (“The Wackness”) has a simple solution to this dilemma. He didn’t make a comedy — or a movie about cancer. Contrary to the marketing, “50/50″ isn’t a laugh-a-minute raunch-fest aimed at teens and 20-somethings; it’s a sweet, balanced drama for adults about the utility and power of friendship and family in the face of life’s cold, indifferent realities. Sometimes relationships don’t work. Sometimes dear friends and loved ones die for no reason. Sometimes young people get cancer. But these facts, immutable as they are, are not immune to the marginalizing power of context.

Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a 27-year-old public radio journalist in Seattle. His swanky pad houses his gorgeous artist girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard), his dapper wardrobe and all the hope and anticipation of a life that’s just getting going. But wait, what’s this lump on my back? Oh probably nothing. It really hurts though. Better get it checked out. How the fuck did I get spinal cancer? Or more accurately, how the fuck did I get spinal cancer? And so the battle begins.

“50/50″ could have easily been one of the worst films of the year. It tip-toes around so many potential pitfalls and clichés it’s a marvel it turned out as well as it did. Cancer movies are generally composed of a series of teary melodramatic scenes that serve only to teach the characters some pseudo-profundity and set up a sentimental payoff, usually in the form of a tortuous (for the audience) hospital bed death scene. That the screenplay was written by Seth Rogen’s real life friend, Will Reiser, who really had cancer is probably a major factor in making this movie feel so balanced, honest and non-manipulative. It never feels like there’s a lesson necessarily attached to the struggle, or that the filmmaker expects any specific emotional response from the audience. The fact that the principal character wrote the script makes it obvious he survives the cancer, but since the story isn’t driven by suspense, the effect is a positive one.

As good as the script is, it’s really the cast that pulls this thing together. Gordon-Levitt, after a stilted performance in “Inception,” is a welcome surprise. And though their scenes sometimes feel forced, the presence of fellow chemotherapy patients played by Philip Baker Hall and Matt Frewer, when it works, adds a pitch-perfect mix of levity and perspective. But, the real star of the show is Seth Rogen. His role as the goofy unflappable optimist with a heart of gold is the best of his career. It’s hard to imagine even the most ardent Rogen-haters won’t be won over by this, the most naturally likeable character I’ve seen all year.