FILM .... with Tim Milfull
Norwegian Wood (MA15+)
Director: Ang Hung Tran
Rating: 4.5/5
114-minutes, now screening
Some find the writing of Japanese author Haruki Murakami something of an acquired taste, even if just for his habit of segueing off into magic realist tangents, or obsessing about jazz. Mind you, this is exactly why many others love reading his novels and short stories.
But Norwegian Wood, one of his most popular novels, doesn’t feature any of the magic realism of The Elephant Vanishes or Kafka on the Shore. This angst-ridden story of love both requited and unrequited is firmly grounded in reality, and Vietnamese writer-director Ang Hung Tran (The Scent of Green Papayas) made such an effective adaptation that I walked straight out of the cinema and into a bookshop to read the novel.
Tran’s film begins with Toru Watanabe (Ken’ichi Matsuyama) reminiscing about his adolescent friendship with his best friend, Kizuki (Kengo Kôra) and his girlfriend, Naoko (Rinko Kikuchi). But when Kizuki suddenly leaves their lives, Toru and Naoko find themselves coping with their loss in very different ways. The young woman flees to grieve in an isolated sanatorium, while Toru throws himself into his studies.
There, at university, while the world explodes in student activism, he tentatively tries his hand at a succession of unsteady relationships with women, until he meets the intriguing Midori (Kiko Mizuhara), whose vague hints at something more in their relationship might just depend on how Toru deals with Naoko.
Murakami’s story is so much more than simple melodrama and angst, and in the hands of Tran, Norwegian Wood becomes quite an astonishingly sensual film, with visual and aural nods to other great contemporary filmmakers like Wong Kar Wai.
If there is a fault, it comes in Tran’s over-reliance – and simply too loud volume — on the score by Jonny Greenwood. But this is only a small complaint in light of such a beautifully told story.
Dafoe shines, as does the scenery
The Hunter (M)
Director: Daniel Nettheim
Stars: Willem Dafoe, Frances O’Connor, Sam Neill
Rating: 4/5
88-minutes, screening from 6 October
Dragging in a big-name Hollywood or European actor to spice up local affairs can often be a problem, especially with schlock like the Logies, but sometimes paying those extra bucks can pay off handsomely; I’m thinking of stars like Josh Lucas bringing a slightly charming presence to some rather gauche Pilbara ratbaggery in Kriv Stenders’s recent hit, Red Dog.
But in his first film in more than a decade, the very busy television director Daniel Nettheim has scored a legendary name to take the lead role, and with very impressive results. In The Hunter, the craggy Willem Dafoe plays the title role, hired by a mysterious intermediary to travel to the very ends of the world to find something that almost everyone considers a myth.
In the wilds of Tasmania, Dafoe’s Martin sets out to investigate a credible sighting of a Tasmanian Tiger, but where this accomplished human predator can handle himself quite well in the wilderness, there are forces – sinister and otherwise – playing at foiling his plans. Martin’s long-disappeared predecessor, Jarrah (Marc Watson-Paul) has left behind a despairing and sedated wife, Lucy (Frances O’Connor), and two surprisingly self-sufficient children, Sass (Morgana Davies) and her silent younger brother, Bike (Finn Woodlock).
And the remote roads that lead to Martin’s hunting grounds regularly see battle between scruffy greenies and even scruffier loggers, all of whom suspect the seppo’s motives. Dafoe carries himself with consummate skill as the quietly spoken hunter more comfortable in the bush than around other people, and Nettheim’s casting of O’Connor, Davies and Woodlock is inspired, while Sam Neill makes a brief appearance as a duplicitous go-between.
But the real pleasure in this much too short film is the scenery on and around Cradle Mountain, and the obvious delight cinematographer, Robert Humphreys takes in photographing the region.
THE BINGE
2011 Lavazza Italian Film Festival screening at Palace Cinemas from 5-23rd October
The Human Resources Manager (M) available from October through Madman
Tucker & Dale versus Evil (MA) available from October through Icon
The Last Circus (MA15+) available from 5 October through Madman
The 2011 Lavazza Italian Film Festival will be one of the biggest yet, with more than 35 films, including 29 new features, two documentaries, and three cult films.
Opening with a remake, Welcome to the South, that promises to exceed the hilarity of the French original about a reluctant fish-out-of-water, Welcome to the Sticks, there also are several special events to consider booking early for, including the Opening Night and After Party, the premiere of Basilicata Coast to Coast, Giovanni Veronesi’s The Ages of Love, which features Robert De Niro and Monica Bellucci, and a closing-night screening of John Turturro’s Passione.
For more information about what’s on offer at the Lavazza Italian Film Festival, go to www.italianfilmfestival.com.au
I saw Eran Riklis’s subtly beautiful The Human Resources Manager at BIFF last year, and the story of a taciturn mid-level manager forced to accompany the body of an expatriate bakery labourer from Israel to her Eastern European home still resonates with me. Mark Ivanor plays the titular role, and grumbles his way to his own personal enlightenment as he makes his way across Europe with a coffin bearing his charge.
In Tucker and Dale versus Evil, director, Eli Craig upends all our expectations about teen slasher flicks, as he pits a pair of kind-hearted hillbillies against a half-dozen or so blood-thirsty preppies, and the results had me aching with laughter.
Starring Firefly star, Alan Tudyk as Tucker, Tyler Labine as Dale, and a cast of relative unknowns as the nasty teens, this one is a perfect bookend for the Spanish film, The Last Circus, which features ruthless fascists and insane clowns with automatic weapons – enough said.
