North Face (Nordwand)
2008 (Germany / Austria)
Director: Philipp Stölzl
Richard Wagner is name-checked in Philipp Stölzl Nazi-era mountaineering thriller, North Face, which is appropriate (and not just due to the swastikas). Towering and bombastic, often in moments when such a grandiose tone is entirely unearned, the film chronicles the attempt by two German enlisted men goaded by Nazi propaganda (and a little ambition) to conquer the north face–a.k.a., “The Murder Wall”–of the Eiger in the Bernese Alps. Stölzl’s approach is strictly Hollywood by way of Deutschland, complete with soaring orchestral gestures and a pining love interest (Johanna Wokalek, as far from her radical she-devil in The Baader-Meinhof Complex as can be.) The director frequently overplays his hand, particularly with vaguely repugnant supporting characters that have little function other than to compare unfavorably to our Aryan heroes. Which isn’t to say the North Face isn’t damn thrilling in the moment, particularly with Stölzl keeps his focus on the climbers’ ordeal and their astoundingly low-tech methods and tools. With a little CGI wizardry, the film renders the Eiger as a truly terrifying creature in its own right, seemingly more at home in one of Wagner’s Teutonic myths (or Middle-Earth) than Switzerland.
XXY
2007 (Argentina)
Director: Lucía Puenzo
High-profile films that address intersexuality are few and far between–When will HBO ever pull together that rumored Middlesex adaptation?–and so it’s no small thing when a work like XXY comes along, which tackles the reality with commendable sensitivity and frankness. Director Puenzo takes her sweet time uncoiling the story of Alex, an adolescent intersexual who has been living as a girl in an Argentine seaside town. The story is a slight little thing, and it’s hard to shake the disappointment that Puenzo didn’t do a little more with the subject than offer a slice of Alex’s life at a critical juncture in the development of her identity and sexuality. Furthermore, the concessions to melodrama–a gratuitous rape scene especially–make the film less potent, not more. Still, XXY is poignant and appropriately anxious in tone, and its principal characters are full of subtly conveyed intricacies that elevate it beyond a crude coming-out story (of sorts). Puenzo utilizes a richly presented sun-bleached aesthetic and a prominent marine life motif to fine effect. The film’s emotional success, however, lies principally with a Inés Efron, who at twenty-two plays the fifteen-year-old Alex with a riveting blend of boldness, anger, and vulnerability.
Blackspot
2008 (New Zealand)
Director: Ben Hawker
For what it is–an ultra-low-budget bit of horror mindfuckery that employs only a handful of actors and locations–Ben Hawker’s Blackspot is a worthwhile, white-knuckle stuff. While Hawker cribs a little from urban legend for his story, Blackspot is essentially a pleasurable mash-up of contemporary horror film tropes, Twilight Zone twists and “It-Was-All-a-Dream” fake-outs, and, most surprisingly, David’s Lynch brand of pitch-black psychological surrealism. It’s hard not to ignore the debt to Lynch in the film’s identity-swapping and (seemingly) context-free interludes, not to mention its direct referencing of Lost Highway’s iconographic speeding interstate stripes. Hawker nails both the distinctive creepiness of a nocturnal rural road at night as well as the flesh-crawling sense of the uncanny that pervades nightmares. Yet he is too enamored with jump-scares and comic releases to permit grimness to overtake the film. This is both to Blackspot’s advantage and its detriment, stranding it in a middle ground between an old-school ghost story and something more ambitious. While Hawker eventually comes around to something like an explanation for all the preceding weirdness, it seems weak tea compared to the dizzying fear that swells the film’s best moments.
An Education is a fairly conventional coming-of-age-story that is enlivened and elevated by abundant, magnificent acting. To be sure, Nick Hornby’s screenplay boasts plenty of cheek and a canny, understated awareness of its early 1960s British setting. Meanwhile, director Lone Scherfig operates in a mode that is comfortable with melodrama and also assured enough to toss aside its emotional excesses. Scherfig permits her narrative’s most pivotal developments to unfold off-screen, but her commanding storytelling ensures that the film never misses a beat. Everything we need to know is up there. That said, An Education would probably have been nothing more than an old story–girl falls for charming cad, girl gets burned, girl moves on–told quite well. It would have, that is, if not for a plethora of dazzling performances. Carey Mulligan is almost spookily well-cast as ambitious and dissatisfied teen Jenny, but equally vital are Peter Sarsgaard in a challenging role as her creepy, oddly vulnerable, and (much) older paramour, and an engrossing Alfred Molina, proving yet again that his best characters are usually well-meaning boobs. Heck, Rosamund Pike deserves praise for lending texture to her ditsy playgirl almost entirely through sideways glances and glum expressions.
B - Antichrist is an aggressively unpleasant film, but that’s not the same thing as a bad film. In fact, the latest effort from Lars von Trier, the noted asshole and self-appointed ambassador of pretentious European film-making, is the most intriguing work from the director I’ve yet seen. I have never understood the contempt his films often arouse, but my prior experience with von Trier has been admittedly underwhelming. Antichrist, however, proves to be audacious and original. The film is suffused with unforgettable images, seemingly plucked out of a bad dream and given a rotten, mythic life on the screen. Von Trier has achieved a fresh alchemy, blending his essential cynicism with intellectually engrossing themes and a new-found instinct for terror. While a bothersome lack of emotional heft prevents it from succeeding as a genuine work of horror, Antichrist is nonetheless harrowing, provocative stuff. It seems ordained to lurk in the cellar of cinema for years to come, it noisome bellows drawing attention to our unexamined assumptions about remorse, sex, and especially gender. You are forewarned: von Trier has summoned forth an ugly, ugly beast, and staring it down is not enjoyable in the least, but there is something nonetheless compelling in its scabrous eyes.
Where The Wild Things Are