Late Bloomers (Die Herbstzeitlosen)
2006 (Switzerland)
Director: Bettina Oberli
I’ll allow that Late Bloomers manages to be “heartwarming,” but only in the most calculated and undemanding way. Bettina Oberli’s story of elderly women who open a lingerie shop in a tiny, conservative Swiss village wears its life-affirming, faux-rebellious intentions with pride. There’s not much to object to here from a storytelling perspective: Oberli introduces four women with a panoply of personal problems, adds some obligatory crises, and by the time the credits roll all is neatly (if not happily) resolved. The villains, primarily a political leader (Manfred Liechti) and the village parson (Hanspeter Müller)–both sons of the entrepreneurial women–are so aggressively loathsome that there’s no wiggle room in the story. Doubt creeps in for Oberli’s silver dames when their enterprise gets rocky, but Oberli signals with simplistic strokes that unexpected thematic shifts aren’t in order (just cheap tragedy). What we’re left with is “Be True to Yourself” pablum, served up with rich helpings of schadenfreude and a knowing condemnation of rural Swiss stuffiness. The film’s saving grace is Stephanie Glaser as ringleader Martha, a widowed hausfrau portrayed with a fine blend of tentativeness, moist romanticism, and comic spunk.
Vanaja
2006 (India)
Director: Rajnesh Domalpalli
Overflowing with aimless melodrama, Rajnesh Domalpalli’s sprawled (though not sprawling) Vanaja is covered in the fingerprints of Dickens. Set in the Indian state of Andrha Padresh, the films follows the luminous Vanaja, a skinny, low-caste fifteen-year-old brought as a servant into the household of her Brahmin landlady, where the precocious girl hopes to learn the art of Kuchipudi dance. The story slogs through endless back-and-forth that isn’t worth recounting in detail: friendship, discovery, temptation, rape, pregnancy, politics, blackmail, and death. It’s not that Vanaja is incoherent–first-time director Domalpalli steers this behemoth well enough–just unnecessarily convoluted and thematically sketchy. In short, there’s an undisciplined whiff to it, all the more frustrating given that Domalpalli discovers some gorgeous sights, especially in the small, human details. The film’s dramatic heft relies overwhelmingly on the strength of Mamatha Bhukya’s performance as Vanaja, an eye-catching, textured portrayal despite is unevenness as written and delivered. It says something that the central pleasure of Vanaja is Bhukya’s hypnotic Kuchipudi dance routines. Domalpalli is most confident when reveling in the aesthetic joy of this gawky adolescent conjuring something so exquisite from mere motion and color.
Blind Mountain (Mang Shan)
2007 (China)
Director: Yang Li
Conceptually, Yang Li’s terrifying, exhausting Blind Mountain is a stone’s throw from Deliverance, save that his heroine, Bai Xuemei (Huang Lu) blunders into her nightmare ordeal not via foolish adventurism, but rather naïveté at the hands of vile predators. Li dives into the topic of rural sex slavery in China–”bride purchasing” is the polite euphemism–with an unblinking need to show every sadistic, ugly jot. His approach invites squirming, but only because there’s no inkling that Li is exaggerating the horror of the general reality with his fictional specifics. Blind Mountain is the sort of film that’s not really “entertaining” in the least, but nonetheless harrowing and sobering. Ferocious and narratively merciless, it takes us deep inside the tribulations of Bai’s kidnapping, rape, and enslavement by a family of barbaric farmers, emphasizing not just the harsh physical details but also the young woman’s inner hell. All the more remarkable, then, that Li achieves this focus while indulging a fascination with the miserable gray-green landscape of China’s impoverished countryside. The film’s bleak naturalism calls attention to the story’s inertness–in 95 minutes, not much truly happens–but this too is a part of the film’s horror, one that paints escape as an illusion.
The Unknown Woman (La sconosciuta)
2006 (Italy / France)
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
Lurid and relentless, The Unknown Woman is a thriller that would catch the attention of Hitchcock, Argento, and De Palma–although they would no doubt find much to pick at in the roteness of its third act, as well as its refusal to conclude with dignity. Oh, but there’s bloody pleasure to be had in the first forty-five minutes, as director Giuseppe Tornatore weaves a mystery spattered with sex, savagery, and sinister intentions. Kseniya Rappoport, all hangdog eyes and chilly Slavic ferocity, holds the film together as Ukranian anti-heroine Irena, who engages in an elaborate scheme to ingratiate herself into the household of a wealthy Italian jeweler (Claudia Gerini), with clear designs on the family’s young daughter. Stacatto bursts of flashback intrude into Irena’s conspiracy, heightening the menace by revealing the lost happiness and nightmarish abuse of her past. This is a woman who has nothing to lose, but what she wants–revenge? money? family?–flutters tantalizingly in our peripheral vision. There are some twists that strain credulity, but Tornatore generally keeps things humming along until a conclusion that he doesn’t how to cut short. The black sizzle is by then gone, aside from a bitter, devastating answer to a lingering question. Still, what a ride!