THOROUGHLY MIFFED - PART II: THE DREGS DON'T WORK

Okay, so it's been firmly established that the Melbourne International Film Festival is my favourite time of year, in fact, it's my -- and many Melburnian film buff's and fan's -- idea of Christmas.

Now, let's take that metaphor a step further.

You remember when, as a kid, you waited for Christmas to come since, like, I don't know, April. All those months of anticipation, and every time there's a sign that the season-to-be-jolly is getting closer, you mentally ticked it off in your head -- major department stores start stocking Christmas trees and props, tree-shaped signs and displays start popping up around the city, your favourite TV shows start winding up for the year, your parents become more strangely circumspect about what they've been buying on shopping trips, and so on -- and have started making your lists of what you want, hoping at least one or two of the items makes an appearance under that new addition to your living room: the hulking sap-dripping pine tree that barely fits beneath your living room ceiling...

Cut to: the night before Christmas: the time of joy is almost upon you, and you try to sit up all night, waiting for Santa to come grab those cookies and milk you left out there for him 'cause, after all, he's such a rotund bastard, he has to scoff them all, right? But, inevitably, you fall asleep, and when you wake up the next morning, there are now PRESENTS where there were none before, under the tree! You're so incredibly pumped, there are some sweet looking boxes under there, your carefully prepared Christmas list is at the forefront of your mind, there were 20 or so items on there, this has GOT TO be one of them, although the box doesn't quite look big enough to fit an Action Man Army Helicopter/Barbie Dollhouse and Corvette Combo but, even so, you pick it up with both hands and with unmitigated glee, you tear it open, your huge eyes bulging happily out of your small head as you see...

...undies and socks. Or next year's school books. Or (as I once received from a beloved relative), a can of deodorant.

See, MIFF has those too, even amongst all the brilliance and coolness. The cinematic equivalents of your box-'o-socks: they look good in the box, but when you open 'em up, it's full of rubbish, or just stuff you didn't want.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, the crappy clothes I got for Christmas:

(Don't worry, the cool toys will come later. I promise.)

MY WORST FILMS OF MIFF 2008

50th (Dead Last) - WORDS OF ADVICE: WILLIAM S BURROUGHS ON THE ROAD
WOW. I've seen some woeful, cack-handed dreck in my time, and WORDS OF ADVICE is as deserving of the title as any. Without doubt one of the worst documentaries I've ever seen, managing to make a highly interesting subject utterly uninteresting, by focusing on the most inactive period of his life, rounding up the least interesting people he knew and a "who-cares?" of random academics, then shooting it like your parents fumbling around with their old crapped-out handicam. Amateurish from top to toe, the whole enterprise apparently spring-boarded from an interview the filmmakers (Danes Lars Movin and Steen Moller Rasmussen) saw, between Burroughs and a Danish writer named Dan Turell, a Richard O'Brien lookalike who allegedly idolised Burroughs, yet acted like a pompous jerk the entire time and completely rubbed his idol up the wrong way. Upon seeing this, the filmmakers thought, "Wow, William S. was in Denmark during the 80s! I wonder what he got up to…?" To which anyone -- and I'm happy to speak on behalf of even the most ardent of Burroughs fans here -- would've answered, "WHO CARES?!??" Why talk about all his Beat-heyday shenanigans with Ginsberg and co., his accidental manslaughter of his wife or, hell, even his work in any detail, when you can burn film on crap poetry readings, book signings by a man well into his autumn years and doomed confrontations with second-string Danish poets... 'cause that's what everyone's breaking shit down to see. It’s hideously shot, moronically edited (at one point, some poet Burroughs knew is describing him as "The Greatest Performing Artist in the World"... and this is followed by footage of Burroughs stumbling over his lines at a poetry reading -- without a hint of irony) and, while just 74 minutes long, manages to feel padded and interminable. The documentary form has come a long way in the last two decades -- via Morris, Moore, Herzog, et al – but these chumps futz about like it never happened, turning out a shambles that would struggle to get an airing on community TV, let alone slip into a major film festival. Disgraceful.

49th - ETOILE VIOLETTE (short)
Shown as a short, but as it clocks in at (seemingly endless) 45 minutes and screened with a 59 minute "feature", it's fair game. Shown as the first in a double feature to showcase the, umm, talents of French actor/auteur Serge Bozon -- the second being his slightly less turgid mini-feature MODS -- the pairing succeeds only as a warning. Written and directed by frequent Bozon collaborator Axelle Ropert, what could've been a potentially sweet 15 minute short about an introverted, not-terribly-gifted tailor (Bozon) who takes night classes in French literature to boost his education and meet people, becomes a grossly overlong, masturbatory exercise in a thoroughly French style of mind-numbing pretension. To wit: the tailor slips into a dream sequence where he meets the 17th century writer he's studying, where they walk aimlessly through the forest, trading utterly pointless philosophical questions, before deciding to walk backwards, in slow-motion, for about, oh, three or four minutes. The closest thing to a bright spot is the class' lecturer, whose gung-ho devotion to his curriculum is intermittently amusing, but it's crushed beneath the weight of this dreadful, elongated bore. And where does a "short" get off being 45 minutes long?!?!?

48th - INSIDE
Speaking of terrible French films, I give you INSIDE. I'd heard this was boundary-pushing horror, promising extreme savagery, white-knuckle suspense and some intelligence, but -- aside from the film's one signature moment towards the end -- it delivers nothing bar the savagery. Well, it may have, if we could see any of it: the entire film is appallingly underlit, often taking place in pitch darkness. (Setting the tone for Greater Union fiascos to come, we were shown a muddy DVD copy of INSIDE, rather than a 35mm print. While I'm sure this didn't help the colour woes, I'm still convinced the picture could've used a Kinoflo or three.) Beatrice Dalle plays a psycho (for a change) who craves the unborn baby of an emotionally isolated young woman, who is still recovering from a car accident which claimed her husband's life. Spurning her family, the girl insists on being alone on Christmas Eve, where she's visited by Dalle instead of Santa. We know that Dalle can do nuts, and if you've seen anything from HAUTE TENSION to FRONTIERES, you know the French can do gore, but apparently all directors Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury can add to the equation is to shoot it in pitch darkness. It's so incredibly annoying, as once you can't see anything, all suspense vanishes, and one's involvement along with it. What promised to be a fun blast of shock value turns out to be a highly disappointing gorefest.

47th - DONKEY PUNCH
This film has copped some rapturous reviews from horror buffs in the know, but after watching it, I'm baffled, and can only speculate that they're high on the same gear the film's characters are ingesting. A paranoid slasher thriller for the Ibiza generation, the film admirably takes the time to set up its characters... well, it would be admirable, if any of these characters were remotely likeable or interesting. Instead, we're stuck on a yacht with seven of the most despicable people you're ever likely to meet trying to get into a beach dance party, and then we're supposed to feel something as they turn on each other. Why can't a modern horror film ever have decent characters we can give a shit about?? The suspense is surprisingly ineffective; the scene leading up to the titular event works the best, but from then on the film grows increasingly banal. The death scenes are badly shot and uninspired; we are constantly treated to lingering close-ups of weapons tearing into skin, yet poor camera geography and a limited makeup FX budget conspire to confuse just what part of the body we're slashing now. Very standard, well-below-average fare.

46th - GOMORRAH
The scourge of organised crime, specifically the damage it does to and influence it has over the wider Italian community, is probed here with a SYRIANA-style structure, with four or so vignettes interwoven to create a large socioeconomic canvas. Unfortunately, this is not nearly as interesting as it sounds, as it is so dry, bland and lifeless that it's really tough to get involved, piling boring or annoying characters atop pale, uninteresting tableaus, rushing about an urban battleground with no foundation to keep the audience grounded and engaged. Yes, it's a real-life tragedy, and I admire director Matteo Garrone's intention to tackle the subject realistically, but it has to succeed as an arresting piece of cinema, and he misses that mark by a wide margin. And what did the plotline about the tailor surreptitiously working with the Chinese have to do with anything?? What should've been engrossing ends up being yawn-inducing.

45th - MODS

Written, directed and starring French actor/auteur Serge Bozon in 2002, MODS kicks off seeming like a film from the Wes Anderson universe, or possibly a throwback to the kinds of 1960s French films which influence Anderson so much, but, like Anderson's films, you quickly realise the film is being quirky for quirky's sake, and begins to get on your nerves. However, unlike Anderson's films, which have a sharp sense of humour and crack actors to save them, this is more dead than deadpan. The performances are just serviceable, the story -- concerning two impassionate soldiers who visit their brother at University, who's bedridden with a serious case of ennui, which seems to affect the entire campus -- goes nowhere at a rate of knots and, despite frequently breaking into odd dance sequences (scored to '60s-sounding songs you've never heard of), the film is devoid of any kind of energy, which is key to a picture of this type working. More French pretension without substance.

44th - 40 X 15: 40 YEARS OF THE DIRECTORS' FORTNIGHT
For me, MIFF 2008 was not good for the French. This year's films seem to be falling into all the bad old habits: rampant pretension, quirk overload, emotional detachment, a lack of focus. The latter is especially applicable to this lifeless documentary, which refuses to inject any sort of verve or energy into the format, which is ironic considering its raison d'etre is to celebrate 40 years of boundary-smashing filmmaking. Detailing the inception and history of the Cannes Film Festival's non-competitive sidebar for innovative directors, the film meanders between talking heads (an uneven split between lengthy anecdotes by former Cannes programmers and all-too-brief vox pops from filmmakers like Werner Herzog, Spike Lee and Jim Jarmusch), and is bafflingly split into "Part 1" (the retrospective) and "Part 2" (an insider's look at last year's selection process), even though Part 1 seems to comprise the first 70% of the film. It's like they suddenly got the insider access at the last minute and felt obligated to use it. They needn't have bothered; the "fly on the wall" novelty lasts about ten minutes, after that it's like watching paint dry. As for the historical section, the film makes a real point to describe the turbulent political state which gave birth to the Fortnight, but does absolutely nothing to set the scene or create a palpable sense of time and place. Anathema for your average person, this is for rabid art film buffs only.

43rd - MIFF FOOTY SHORTS
A collection of 12 short films celebrating the role of Australian Rules Football in various communities. The program kicked off with a sour taste, when MIFF Director Richard Moore announced that a longtime MIFF employee had made a film for the competition and, despite it not being selected in the final 11, he was going to show it anyway. Talk about "who you know"... and true to form, the film (about two brothers who played over 500 games with Ormond FC) was rubbish, by far the worst of the bunch. I didn't see the last film, but most of the first 11 were all very nice, inoffensive handicam/DV-shot documentaries ticking off all the heart-tugging subjects: a women's football team, the 60 year old guy pulling on the boots, the little kid playing Auskick, the club with an Autistic statistician, the country footy team keeping the town afloat, the country town keeping the footy team afloat, the team who hadn't won for three years, and so on. (I was surprised at the absence of the Indiginous experience, actually. It was about the only football minority not represented, and arguably one of the most important.) Diverting from this formula were CLEM, a mockumentary about 3 generations of footy supporters, notable only for its unintentionally creepy Photoshop work, and ALONE, TOGETHER, the only fiction film of the bunch, featuring comedian Lawrence Mooney as a coach -- oddly obsessed with fabric metaphors(!) -- trying to rev up his team of losers, who all have something else on their minds (revealed by inner voiceovers). While cute and mildly amusing, it didn't rock my world. The only film I really responded to was Sky Davies' and Paul Green's CHILD REARING FOR RICHMOND SUPPORTERS, a genuinely funny mockumentary about the not-immediately-apparent benefits of making your child barrack for Richmond -- builds strength in character, makes them ask the big philosophical questions of life, etc. It's rough and amateurish, but has plenty of wit and spunk, and will appeal to anyone who's devoted their lives to a pack of battlers. Overall, a pretty middle-of-the-road program.

42nd - LITTLE DEATHS

A fairly middling collection of short ruminations upon love and relationships, from emerging Australian filmmakers, tied together by the conceit of a lonely tollbooth cashier's (Abe Forsythe) speculation upon his customers' lovelives. It's a wraparound story that feels much too cute by the end, an affliction which plagues most of the shorts, too. Two or three are funny (my favourites were segments featuring a pickup artist, and a peeping tom and his all-too-willing object of voyeurism, and the adventures of Caroline Craig and her dildo -- man, the more I go on, this is starting to sound like '70s Oz Sexploitation film FANTASM, but I assure you it's not), one or two are genuinely sweet, about three almost-but-not-quite deliver on good concepts and the rest are merely misconceived. I was expecting an anthology film and got exactly what it sounds like: a Australian short film program. It's not a bad film -- well, some of it is -- it's mostly cute and harmless, yet very little of it sticks in the memory, and something tells me that will be a fairly common reaction amongst filmgoers -- if it gets a cinema release at all.

41st - THE PLEASURE OF BEING ROBBED
I have to confess something here: this is one of two films that your intrepid reviewer was massively late for, missing the first 20 minutes. Which, for a film that's only 71 minutes long, I'm sure is a handicap. However, so little occurs in the 51 minutes I did see that I felt almost vindicated; surely not too much could've happened in the first section? The premise of the film is this: we follow a young woman, Eleonore, around for a day. Eleonore approaches every situation with childlike wonder, and likes to steal objects -- bags, cars, bikes, whatever -- to enjoy them, then gives them back. Thing is, that -- to me -- is the pleasure of robbing, but I saw no evidence of the pleasure of being robbed. Maybe it was all in the first 20 minutes, but I sincerely doubt it. Sure, the film is mildly diverting and more than a little French New Wave-y, but it forces you to ask questions about what you believe a film is. Should a film require a plot? If a film consists of watching someone, no matter how sweet, go through their day, does that constitute a real film? I have to say, I did find this mildly diverting to watch, but felt next to nothing when it was done. In soccer (or "football", for our British readers) parlance, a 1-1 draw.

That's the ten worst down, we're getting ever closer to the good stuff, only... 40 to go!

Yikes.

Till the next installment (I'll try to get them out quicker, I promise!),
TSIK