Biutiful

The only innovation in "Biutiful" is having different colors for subtitles in different languages (white for Spanish, blue for Chinese, yellow for Senegalese), something that last year's confusing Oscar nominee "Ajami" could have used. Otherwise, "Biutiful" is an emotionally manipulative, 147-minute tapestry of cliches and poorly-developed characters that Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu puts together clumsily and without much coherence. A good but not necessarily Oscar-worthy performance by Javier Bardem (co-winner of Cannes Best Actor) and a pretty touching (and at times pleasantly mechanized) score by Gustavo Santaolalla (et al.) are to the film's benefit but don't really help it work as a whole.

Uxbal (Bardem) is a disciplinarian who has a handle on everyone but (you guessed it) himself. He tries to get money to support his children but his long-lasting felonious venture (something involving construction) seems to be nearing its end. His other job, telling people what their recently deceased family and friends (who look like something out of J-horror) said, is also losing steam as people are tired of him sayingthat their kids stole things (even if they did). His separated wife, Marambra (Maricel Alvarez), whom he still loves, claims to be stable but engages in an affair with his brother Tito and, when Uxbal moves back in with her, displays all of the problems she's said to have overcome.

Before his life bursts by itself, he finds he has contracted cancer (portrayed gratuitously with bloody urinations and needles) and neglected it beyond the point of return. Uxbal doesn't want the same thing to happen to his kids that happened to him when his father (whom he never met) passed early on in his life, but there's very little he can do about it. And that's all I'll say about the film's plot, since I'm getting annoyed describing it and also because I don't want to transcribe the whole movie right here, which is sort of tempting.

Bardem has some nice scenes of anger, tenderness, and sadness, but the performance isn't exactly the slam-dunk I was expecting. He, along with the other actors, is at the mercy of Inarritu's screenplay (with Armando Bo and Nicolas Giacobone). It throws in corny characters (a cop, a fellow supernatural friend, a conflicted immigrant), kills off minor ones to try to grip us, and doesn't treat the substantial ones as well as possible. The film's ending (and also prologue) is a mild triumph for the script, though. Despite lingering on an overplayed image, it made me feel something. "Biutiful," between its introduction and conclusion, however, doesn't really dig that deep. C

I've now seen all the nominees of the "above the line" categories at the Oscars. This enables me to do my feature to its fullest extent, though I'm unsure of how that'll work out. Stay tuned, though.

Dogtooth (Kynodontas)

"Dogtooth," perhaps the year's most abrasive film (and the winner of the Un Certain Regard Award at Cannes 2009), puts you in the company of people you would never, ever want to know and makes you feel awkward about it for every one of its 94 minutes (especially with its contracted aspect ratio). It sees a family with parents who control the lives of their college age children, who've never actually left their property before. They do this by redefining words that are connected to the outside world, by manufacturing stories about a brother who left the house and who was slaughtered by a house cat, by neglecting to give them names (perhaps to swat off the implications behind each), and by convincing them the only way that they can exit the expanse is by car (which is what the father, played by Christos Stergioglou, uses to go to work).

The children can go off "when their dogtooth falls," but only learn to drive when it grows back (which makes it I'm pretty sure impossible to ever get out, though my knowledge of dentistry is limited). The film gives no motivation behind the parents raising their family like this, which viewers may complain about. But that's entirely beside the point. "Dogtooth" is about how parents try to shield their children from the world, and how that's not necessarily a good thing.

The parents of the film do allow one other person into their system, a parking attendant named Christina (Anna Kalaitzidou) who comes periodically to have sex with the son (Hristos Passalis) and who is valued by the two sisters (Aggeliki Papoulia and Mary Tsoni) as a contact with the outside world. Things get a bit out of order when Christina gives the girls contraband items (a "sparkling" headband, "Rocky," "Jaws," and "Flashdance") in exchange for the oral sex their brother won't give her. When she exits the picture later on, and I won't say why or how, the parents decide to have their children practice incest. (Just to let people who are hanging on to the thread of hope that this is still viewable with young children know, full-frontal nudity and explicit sex are present here.) At this point, director Giorgios Lanthimos proves he will leave no rock unturned, which qualifies as an achievement of some sort. This is one guy who knows he'll never have another crack at this same material, and that when you've gone a certain distance, it's best to go all the way.

"Dogtooth," believe it or not, is also a pretty comical movie. It's enjoyably unpredictable in its etymological invention, sprawling to cover "zombie," "pussy," and "keyboard" (possibly the biggest zinger in the entire film). It's one of those works that bends familiarity for laughs, but whereas in others this is an extremely annoying technique, here it produces some good results. (Also amusing: the mother's threats of "giving birth" if her children don't behave.) The film also knows how to agonize you. There are a few instances of this, none more prominent than the one involving a weight.

The film's oppressiveness is both its biggest strength and flaw. If it made concessions, it would be a lesser film, yet the audience may retain more of a connection with the characters. Also, like the film I just saw, Chomet's "The Illusionist," the scenes sometimes feel disconnected and poorly put together. This could be deliberate (as so much of this movie is), but perhaps not. Finally, the ending is very logical in a "1984"-conclusion sort of way but noticeably abrupt. If the rest of the film is a kick in the groin, the very end is a middle finger thrown on top of it. But I'm not upset at Lanthimos about it, in the way that I was with Godard over "Film Socialisme." With solid acting and atmosphere, and a director who's definitely not asleep at the wheel, "Dogtooth" earns Greece's spot on this year's Oscar Foreign Film Shortlist (and perhaps even more than that; we will see tomorrow and in upcoming weeks). B+

If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle

"If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle" works and falters much like other genre films that I've enjoyed, like Ben Affleck's "The Town" and Matthew Vaughn's "Kick-Ass," in that it collapses underneath itself. It seems to offer more than it does, which comes as an unfortunate realization for the viewer at the end. However, the film would not be the same without the huge gamble that it takes, which is astonishing despite the fact it doesn't quite pay off. It jumps from a relatively easygoing first hour to a final, heightened 34 minutes from which there is no return.

Adapted from a play by Andreea Valean (but not feeling truly stagy until the very end, my guess being that they were more lenient in the transposition of the beginning), the film (the Best Foreign Film Oscar submission from Romania) follows Silviu (George Pistereanu), who's been stuck in a juvenile penitentiary for 8 years. He's apparently not caused too much of a fuss and has even helped out the head in naming names when the time was right. As the film opens, Silviu is left with under a month until he's set to be let go and seems to be cruising along. That's until his younger brother shows up telling him that he's going to be taken away to Italy by the two's absent mother. We learn (through a pretty excellent confrontation scene that signals that a change is coming) that Silviu's childhood was ruined by his mother's careless promiscuity and see that Silviu fears that his brother will experience the same neglect (and may end up in jail like he is).

The screenwriters' (and by way of virtue playwright's) command of exposition is superb. With (I believe) not ever naming the crime that Silviu committed (which is a common MO for crime movies, but still), nor giving away too much about his pre-prison life, the film is able to keep what comes from not drifting entirely into the surreal (which it threatens, and at some points manages, to do). But the film's observation of Silviu is not always impeccable. Florin Serban and Catalin Mitulescu sometimes make him do weird things for the plot to advance. The film also presents him as having limited skill in dealing with those of the opposite sex. I understand that it's tough for someone who was shut off from the outside world before he was an adolescent to carry on with a woman. But the film may push a little too far, presenting him as essentially insane when he desperately tries to court Ana (Ada Condeescu), one of the people who interviews the soon-to-leave prisoners. How his relationship with her plays out I will leave for you to see. I will only comment to say that it's pretty harrowing.

Another interesting uncertainty is how Silviu is perceived by the other inmates. They at first seem to be happy with him, but there also appears to be conflict regarding what he reveals to the superiors about illicit activity and also his incessant demanding to use one guy's phone. Silviu is seen to only have one true friend, a quiet one who listens to him and who at one point springs himself from the prison. But what Silviu does at the end inspires some degree of awe from everyone. I guess that's what happens when something out of the ordinary occurs and when one man steps out from the rest. (On a side note, these characters are apparently played by people who go through the same experiences that they do.)

The cinematography by Marius Panduru must be mentioned here. Dabbling a bit in crime-cinema technique (i.e. follow shots, utilization of the photogenic decaying buildings) but also doing some extremely impressive compositions and some eye-capturing one-takes, Panduru boosts the film during the down-time. Also significant is the work by Pistereanu, making his debut. Out of the gate, the script doesn't do him a lot of favors, but in the aforementioned confrontation scene as well as the climax he excels.

The film has a tight resolution may be off-putting to people. It was and still is for me. An argument can be made that it highlights the bizarre psychology and limited ambitions of Silviu. "If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle" is provocative enough for it to be tempting for me to make that rationalization and excuse it. It deserves a small recommendation, but as a whole, I find it too flawed for my taste. B-