The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies
The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies |
- Films from Iran, Chile, Romania lead pack for Berlin prizes
- "Gold" shines on Paralympic trio despite Pistorius affair
- Deneuve shines in Berlin contender 'On My Way'
| Films from Iran, Chile, Romania lead pack for Berlin prizes Posted: 15 Feb 2013 09:26 PM PST BERLIN: A Chilean feel-good movie about ageing, a picture made in secret by Iranian dissident director Jafar Panahi and a drama about Romania's new rich were the odds-on favourites for prizes Saturday at the Berlin film festival. In what critics called a fair-to-middling competition at the Berlinale, now in its 63rd year, women of a certain age were the breakout stars, with views from around the world of how middle age can be just the time for a fresh start. "Directors seem to have discovered the value of maturity and been anxious to explore the female face and psyche as they age, gracefully or otherwise," the trade magazine Hollywood Reporter wrote ahead of the awarding of the Golden Bear top prize by the jury president, Chinese director Wong Kar Wai. Audiences swooned over Chile's "Gloria" starring Paulina Garcia, until now known mainly for television roles, as a divorcee pushing 60 who is determined to seek happiness despite the knocks life has to offer. "Gloria is like Rocky: she takes a hit, picks herself up and gets back out there," said director Sebastian Lelio, 38, who took inspiration from his mother's friends, a generation of survivors of the country's brutal military dictatorship. The picture topped a critics' poll by British film magazine Screen taken after 14 of the 19 competition films had been shown. Another fierce performance, this time with a darker tinge, came in the Romanian drama "Child's Pose" by Calin Peter Netzer, about a wealthy and controlling mother who fights to get her son acquitted after he kills a poor teenager with his car. Luminita Gheorghiu dazzled movie-goers in the role and was hotly tipped next to Garcia for a Silver Bear prize as best actress. Panahi appears on screen in his haunting feature "Closed Curtain", for which he flaunted a film-making ban imposed by the Iranian authorities to show the crushing effect state oppression is having on his life and work. The picture was the front-runner in a poll of German critics published by Berlin's daily Tagesspiegel newspaper, which called the picture "harrowing" and "courageous". In a strong year for eastern European entries, Oscar-winning Bosnian director Danis Tanovic drew applause for "An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker" which told the true story of a desperately poor Roma couple denied life-saving medical coverage. Tanovic said his rage over the scandal led him to seek out the protagonists, who play themselves in the ultra low-budget docu-drama. Other crowd-pleasers included "On My Way", an upbeat road movie with Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche's turn in "Camille Claudel 1915" as Rodin's ex-lover whose family confined her to an asylum, and what Steven Soderbergh called his last cinematic venture, the thriller "Side Effects". Quirky US buddy movie "Prince Avalanche", bullying drama "Harmony Lessons" - the first Kazakh picture ever in competition in Berlin - and Austrian bad boy director Ulrich Seidl's "Paradise: Hope" set at a teen diet camp also found fans. Typical of the Berlinale, the first major European film festival of the year and a champion of politically charged movies, many pictures sharply divided critics. "The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman" starring Shia LaBeouf in a romantic thriller set in Bucharest had many reviewers howling but picked up a few supporters. The hotly anticipated woman's Western "Gold" featuring German star Nina Hoss had a hometown advantage but many found the two-hour Yukon trek stultifying. And Canada's "Vic+Flo Saw A Bear", which the New York Times highlighted as "a determinedly odd mishmash of lesbian romance, melodrama and thriller" in a positive review, left director Denis Cote explaining his intentions to a baffled press pack. The Berlinale, which wraps up Sunday with screenings of the most popular among its more than 400 films, last year awarded the Golden Bear to Italian veterans Paolo and Vittorio Taviani for the docu-drama "Caesar Must Die" about prison inmates staging Shakespeare. - AFP |
| "Gold" shines on Paralympic trio despite Pistorius affair Posted: 15 Feb 2013 09:24 PM PST BERLIN: The inspirational story of how three athletes turned their individual disabilities into Paralympic gold won over the audience at the world premiere of "Gold - You Can Do More Than You Think" on Friday. But despite the stirring narrative, it was impossible to escape the shadow cast by probably the world's best known Paralympian, the South African Oscar Pistorius, accused of the Valentine's Day killing of his girlfriend. One of the stars of "Gold" admitted he had been shocked by the Pretoria tragedy. "It's just incredible," Australian wheelchair Paralympian Kurt Fearnley told AFP. "I met him a couple of times, he seemed like a gentle, kind person. That's someone's daughter, someone's son. It's tragic." With German president Joachim Gauck and the documentary's three stars in the audience at the 63rd Berlinale, South African director Michael Hammon insisted "It's time for opportunities, not sympathy" for the disabled in our society. "I've never had an ovation like that for any of my work before," he admitted, clearly moved by the thundering applause for the film and its three stars. While the backdrop to "Gold" is how Kenyan runner Henry Wanyoike, German swimmer Kirsten Bruhn and wheelchair racer Fearnley prepared for the 2012 London Paralympics, the focus is on their personal stories. "You can forget about walking," Bruhn recalls being told by a doctor as a 22-year-old in 1991 after being left paralysed following a motorbike accident while on holiday in Greece. "I looked out the window at the clouds and wanted to be on one. There were moments when you wanted to close your eyes forever, but you have to go on." Having started competing in 2002, Bruhn won the first of her three 100m breaststroke Paralympic gold medals just two years later in Athens. "Getting the medal and hearing the anthem was very emotional. The best day of my life was a result of the worst day of my life," she admitted. Blind since losing his sight as the result of a stroke when aged just 21, Wanyoike recalls how life in his Kenyan village changed forever after he woke up one morning having lost 95 percent of his vision. "Friends left me as they thought I was cursed. They thought it must have been because of alcohol or drugs, but I have never touched either," said the 38-year-old. "I thought the best thing would be to die and forget everything." Having rebuilt his confidence at an rehabilitation clinic, Wanyoike made his Paralympic debut at Sydney 2000, where he won 5,000m gold, only just missing the world record despite virtually dragging his able-sighted guide over the line. A significant problem later emerged as none of his guides could keep up with him as he went on to run in able-bodied races and became one of the world's fastest long-distance runners. "He's more than a friend or a brother," Wanyoike said of current guide Joseph Kibunja, who was by his side when they set the 5000m T11 world record on their way to gold at the 2004 Paralympics. "Since the moment he first won gold, he has never stopped smiling," said Kibunja. Whether surfing at a local beach or scaling a barbed wire fence using just his body and hands on his parent's New South Wales farm, Fearnley, who was born without the lower part of his back, refuses to let his disability hinder him. "I've built a life about being independent and strong," said the 31-year-old wheelchair racer who won a marathon gold at both the 2004 Athens and 2008 Beijing Paralympics. "My main fear is being told I can't do something because I am in a wheelchair." The trio encountered highs and lows in London, but while Bruhn, 42, admits feeling daunted with retirement looming, Fearnley is focused on the 2016 Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro and is mentoring promising wheelchair athletes. Wanyoike is working with young Kenyan long-distance runners and has set up several local initiatives including the Cows 4 Kenya farming project, funded by the Boris Becker Foundation. "I have lost my sight, but not my vision," he said. - AFP |
| Deneuve shines in Berlin contender 'On My Way' Posted: 15 Feb 2013 05:28 PM PST BERLIN: French icon Catherine Deneuve's feel-good road movie "On My Way" ended the Berlin film festival competition on a high note Friday at an event that has highlighted fresh starts for older women. Deneuve plays Bettie, the owner of an ailing family restaurant in a small town in Brittany who, freshly dumped by her lover for a younger rival and driven to distraction by her elderly mother, pops out to buy cigarettes one day and just keeps driving. "It's an impromptu journey and along the way all sorts of things happen. Bettie started asking new questions and getting new answers," Deneuve, 69, told reporters after a warmly received world premiere. "Some people always attract trouble, there are people who kind of draw mischief. She's got her feet on the ground, she got a fairly healthy, pragmatic approach to life and she doesn't generally get it wrong when she trusts people." The film is by Emmanuelle Bercot, one of three women directors in competition at the 63rd Berlinale, which will be awarding its Golden Bear top prize at a gala ceremony Saturday night. The upbeat picture sees Bettie end up first at the French equivalent of a honky tonk bar, where a goofy but sweet younger man plies her with caipirinhas and beds her, telling her the next morning, "I bet you were a knock-out when you were young." Bettie climbs back behind the wheel when her estranged adult daughter calls and asks her to pick up her son and take him to his grandfather's house because she has a job interview. They hit the road together, and the boy warms to Bettie's down-to-earth sassiness. When she runs out of cash, she realises her only option is to take the boy to a seaside hotel which has invited the 1969 beauty queens of France's various regions to a reunion photo shoot - an offer she had initially turned down. In a performance with little vanity and long on humour about middle age, Deneuve looks at the pictures of herself in her prime with a wry smile. And when the boy's attractive grandfather finally arrives to pick him up, the fact that the final plot twists are predictable did not dampen the fun for the Berlinale audience. "It's not easy for a woman to get older, and it's not easy if that woman is an actor," Deneuve said. "That doesn't mean you need to get obsessed about it. If there's nothing you can do about it, you might as well learn to live with it." She said she was drawn to the chance to work with Bercot, herself an actress by training, as well as the "optimistic" story. "There are retirement homes where people fall madly in love and get married aged 70, 75 or older, it happens all the time," she said, adding that her character was "definitely not a diva". Bercot, 45, said she wrote the film's screenplay with Deneuve in mind. "She is just herself in the film, someone who is very easy-going," she told AFP, noting that that simplicity may be far from the image most cinema-goers have of the cinema legend. "I like her enormously as an actress and a woman. She is very inspiring." Films featuring seasoned actresses in starring roles have made a big splash at this year's Berlin festival and are widely expected to take home prizes. Audiences swooned over Chile's "Gloria" starring Paulina Garcia, until now known mainly for television roles, as a divorcee pushing 60 who is determined to seek happiness despite the knocks life has to offer. Another fierce performance, this time with a darker tinge, came in the Romanian drama "Child's Pose" by Calin Peter Netzer, about a wealthy and controlling mother who fights to get her son acquitted after he kills a poor teenager with his car. - AFP |
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