Foreign films come into their own
Sundance has more international movies this year than ever
Premieres
— "Away From Her" is from Canada — which is almost "next door" rather than "foreign" in the way that films from Asia, Africa or the Middle East might be — it will also be this year's opening night film in Salt Lake City, and it is one I recommend with great enthusiasm.
Young but highly respected Canadian actress Sarah Polley has now directed her first film, and it is a very assured and major work that ranks right up there with the best of them. With three screenings in Park City and one in Ogden, "Away From Her" is a film you ought to try your best to get into.
Based on a short story by Alice Munro (titled "The Bear Went Over the Mountain"), which Polley expertly adapted for the screen herself, the film deals with a woman, beautifully played by British actress Julie Christie (of "Darling" and "Dr. Zhivago" fame), who has early Alzheimer's. The role of her husband, who finds himself broken-hearted at his wife's new illness, is equally brilliantly played by Gordon Pinsent. It's a wonderful film — definitely one of the best of the year — and it simply shouldn't be missed.
— "Son of Rambow" is also from Britain, set in the 1980s, when technology suddenly gave young people the possibility to see their own dreams and imaginations come to life on film.
World Cinema Dramatic Competition
— "The Legacy 'L'Heritage)" is a highly anticipated film — at least by anyone who, like me, was dazzled by the highly artistic "13 Tzameti," created by young but very talented debut-director Gela Babluani, who comes from Georgia in the former Soviet Union but now makes his home in Paris.
His new film is co-directed with his father, Temur, himself a well-known Georgian filmmaker, and promises to be a fresh, off-beat and original look at not only contrasting cultures but also clashing moral prerogatives
— "The Island," by well-known Russian director Pavel Lounguine, follows the daily habits of an old, gaunt, bearded hermit who, having been rescued after a cataclysmic event in his youth, has spent his life on an isolated island in the sea, stoking the boiler of the island's monastery and sharing what sees to be holy powers of healing and foresight with the locals who make a pilgrimage there.
— "Ezra," set in Nigeria, deals with a boy who, kidnapped by rebels at the age of 7, has been trained to be a soldier.
— "Ghosts," from the U.K., focuses on a young Chinese girl who arranges to be smuggled into Britain in order to find a job, using forged work permits, to, hopefully, support her family back in mainland China.
— "Khadak" concerns a boy and his grandparents who live a nomadic life herding sheep in the frozen hills of Mongolia.
— "Once" is about a young Irish guitarist and a piano-playing immigrant girl from the Czech Republic who bond and find that making music is a way to ease their burdens and broken hearts.
— "Sweet Mud" deals with the painful coming of age of a young boy living with his lonely mother in an Israeli kibbutz in the mid '70's.
— "Noise," set in Australia, focuses on a young police constable trying to understand two horrible and possibly connected crimes in a closed mistrusting community.
— "How Is Your Fish Today?" is a lyrical but enigmatic story set in a remote Chinese village, where a frustrated writer goes to complete a screenplay about a man who is his own alter-ego.
— "Buried Dreams" takes place in the vast desert expanses of Burkina Faso, where a Nigerian peasant climbs down through dangerous shafts in the sand, desperately searching, with his small hand pick for elusive gold.
— "Eagle vs. Shark" from New Zealand is a funny but excruciatingly real story about an awkward, stringy-haired cashier in a fast-food joint who links up with another misfit, a geek who works at a nearby computer store.
— "How She Move" is a Canadian film about a girl who, in order to earn money for tuition to a private high school, becomes the only female in a step-dancing competition.
— "The Night Buffalo," set in Mexico — and by the writer of "Babel," "Amores Perros," and "21 Grams" — is a dissonant love story featuring two best friends and the girlfriend with whom they have both fallen in love.
— "Driving With My Wife's Lover," set in Korea, is an interestingly stylized depiction of a man who hires a cab for a long-distance journey, and the cab driver is the very man with whom his wife has been cheating.
— "Blame It on Fidel," from France, depicts the transformation of a very smart but feisty little girl whose parents decide to devote themselves full time to radical activism.
Spectrum
There are also foreign dramatic films scattered about in other divisions at Sundance — primarily the Spectrum series, which includes these intriguing entries.
— "Angel-A," Luc Besson's latest from France, in which a down-on-his-luck con man finds a sort of "guardian angel" in a woman whom he rescues from the Seine.
— "Bugmaster," set in 19th-century Japan, blends live action with computer animation in a tale dealing with a gifted healer who rescues people from the phantom spirits that plague them.
— "Tuli," from the Philippines, deals with a daring young girl in a male-dominated society.
— "Fraulein" is a Swiss/Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian co-production that deals with the relationship between three women from various parts of Yugoslavia.
— "Reprise," a Norwegian film, uses a splashy, energetic, French new-wave style to tell the clever story of two young aspiring novelists and their aspirations and disappointments.
— "Red Road" is a prize-winner from this year's Cannes Film Festival, a very daring and surprisingly graphic Scottish film in which a wronged woman attempts to get revenge on the man who had seemingly disappeared from her life.
E-mail: marshalldj@iveracity.com
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