Animated Waltz with Bashir' defies expectations

By Sarah Sluis

This is the age of "reality" television, where everything from "Man vs. Wild" to "The Hills" claims they depict the truth, only to be besieged by scandals when, for example, the public finds out a survivalist stages his "life or death" situations and goes home to a hotel every night.  In this context, seeing a documentary that makes a point to include its subjectivity is incredibly refreshing.

Waltz with Bashir, screening Oct. 1 and 2 at the New York Film Festival, exists on another plane from how mainstream culture represents reality.  An animated documentary, the film uses a combination of flash, classic, and 3D animation to explore director/writer/producer Ari Folman's quest to find out what really happened during the 1982 Israel-Lebanon war, which he had completely blocked from his memory (watch the trailer to get a sense of the graphic novel-esque visuals).  The film goes back and forth between his interviews with people who were there, often with him, and the recreation of events based on these memories.

Waltz with Bashir deviates from genre and tone expectations of a "war" film.  In moments where you
are trained to expect bravery and heroics, there is fear and disorganization.  In one scene, the commander of a tank is shot.  The soldiers seem puzzled by why he has stopped moving.  Then, their whole tank comes under fire, and they flee without weapons, all dying save one soldier hiding behind a rock, who watches the supporting tank roll away in the distance, abandoning him.

So Waltz is not a "war" film, but it's also not an "anti-war" film.  Folman most wants to recover his memory of the Massacres of Sabra and Shatila, and when that memory finally comes to light�the moment where the Israelis found themselves playing the role of the Nazi�he leaves the emotions of guilt and complicity unaccented.  Nodding to the bureaucratic stagnation that perpetrated the action, he shows the numbness and matter-of-fact attitude of a soldier carrying out orders.  Whether his reaction or atonement is enough, right, appropriate?  Beside the point.  By defying our expectations of a war or anti-war film, or that of a hero searching for redemption, Waltz with Bashir develops more emotional nuance.  The climax includes a break with animation to include archival video footage, a final jolt that places the film within the evening news and expands its scope and reach.

The film has already swept the Israeli Oscars, the Oshir awards, and will likely be in the Oscar running for Best Foreign Film�and possibly Best Animated Feature, so make a point to see this unique documentary when Sony Pictures Classics opens it in late December. It deserves the buzz.

NYFF: Closing-Night Film 'Persepolis'

By Katey Rich

Adaptations of graphic novels for the screen are all the rage�just check out the upcoming slate from Warner Bros.�but Persepolis is not exactly the younger sister of 300 or Sin City. Marjane Satrapi's two-volume memoir about her childhood during Iran's Islamic Revolution has plenty of action and even guns, yes, but is much more a funny and poignant coming-of-age story with universal appeal. Given that Satrapi's film just closed the New York Film Festival, that appeal is clearly extending beyond the usual graphic novel fanboys.

In 1978 Marjane is a spunky nine year old who idolizes Bruce Lee and doesn't understand the fuss about events unfolding outside her family's modest apartment. After the overthrow of the Shah, life becomes more difficult, however, as her beloved uncle is jailed and executed and war erupts between Iran and Iraq. Marjane's parents send her to school in Vienna, but after several misspent years there she returns home, only to find a drastically changed country. Forced to wear a veil at all times and abide by strict Islamic codes, Marjane resists until realizing she must leave Iran for good.

At the press conference following the film's screening, Satrapi explained that until she went to live in France in her twenties, she had a typical false impression of the power of graphic novels. "Before that I had the idea about comics that everyone else has about comics�it's really for kids or adolescents or retarded adults. Then I read [Art Spiegelman's] Maus and it was like a slap in my face, and I realized, it was just a medium like any other to express yourself. In my mind the images and the text, they are not separated. It became an obvious way to express myself."

Satrapi teamed up with French graphic novelist Vincent Paronnaud to direct the film, as a way to distance the film from the highly-personal graphic novel she had spent so many years writing. "We took this project as something independent from the comic," Paronnaud said at the press conference. "Of course, we read the comics again, we had the story, [but] we decided that we were going to start something new out of the story, to find a new territory."

The visual look of the film is fairly different from the graphic novel�you can see pages of the book here-- and is also by far the most stunning aspect of Persepolis. The way images and scenes flow into one another, and moments of time are frozen for emphasis, would be impossible to achieve in live-action film. Despite Paronnaud's contribution, the film remains Marjane's; the power of the animation to bring the audience into the character's head keeps Persepolis a subjective, personal experience�key to a story set in an exotic location during a confusing political era. Satrapi said it best herself: " [If we had done it in live-action] it becomes the story of these people who are far from us, we cannot relate to this, they are not like us, etcetera. It's something very abstract in the drawing that anybody can relate to."

Putting pressure on a small autobiographical film to foster understanding between the United States and Iran is a tall order, but if the film finds an audience and is seen by people who otherwise would not think about Iran, it will be a success," said Satrapi. "If [people] watch this movie and say it's about a human being, and this human being could be me, then we have reached our goal." If any film has a chance of achieving that, it's Satrapi's funny and deeply human Persepolis.

NYFF: Brian De Palma's Scuffle Over 'Redacted'

By Katey Rich

A strange thing has happened since last Monday, when I attended the New York Film Festival press conference for Brian De Palma's Redacted: the press conference itself got press. For months now De Palma has been loudly decrying Mark Cuban and his HDNet productions, which financed the film, for forcing him to "redact" a portion of his movie. During Monday's conference Cuban struck back�or, well, Eamonn Bowles did; Bowles is a representative of Cuban's Magnolia Pictures, which is distributing the film. De Palma was discussing the montage of the photos at the end of Redacted--real war photographs which include dead American soldiers; HDNet demanded that black bars be placed over the eyes of the subjects, and De Palma was just getting into explaining the reasons why when a voice chimed in from the back of the Walter Reade Theater. Here's the transcript:

J. Hoberman (panel moderator, NYFF selection committee member): Could you explain to us how Redacted is itself now in danger of being redacted?
De Palma:Redacted is in fact redacted. The montage of photographs at the end�I had nothing to do with that. The film was submitted to all the film festivals unredacted, but because Mark Cuban, the man who financed this movie, was disturbed by the photographs--

Bowles: That's not true
De Palma: Excuse me?
Bowles: That's not true.
De Palma: Who is that?
Bowles:Eamonn Bowles from Magnolia Pictures
De Palma: Well I'm sorry Eamonn, I have direct testimony to that. In any event, I am protesting it. I am protesting it, and I'm trying to get the pictures unredacted.
Bowles :It's a legal issue, but that's okay.
De Palma: It's a legal issue that we're going to resolve. In any event, I felt that my cut was violated and I'm seeking to have those pictures unredacted.
Hoberman [to Bowles]: Are you saying that there's not a problem with the photographs?
Bowles: The problem is that none of the people in the pictures had legally signed off to have the pictures--.
De Palma: How do you get releases for war photographs, Eamonn?
Bowles: We're in an untenable legal situation. If anybody, someone's parents-- I really like the film, I appreciate it greatly. It's a legal issue. You cannot have people--
De Palma: A specious legal issue.
Bowles:It's not specious. There would be no legal recourse if someone put a case in. No legal recourse whatsoever. Brian, the photos are extremely disturbing as�In fact, I think, thematically, if even works better. On a thematic basis I really like that.
De Palma: That's not your judgment to make.
Bowles: Who else would have made this film? What company?
De Palma: I made the film.
Bowles: Okay, but what company would have made this film?
De Palma: A lot of companies would have made this film.
Bowles: That's not possible. We're actually letting the film go as is, with the only incident being the legal ramification of this.
Hoberman: I think we get the position of the distributor. Let's see if there are any questions.

Whoah. The argument wasn't even over after that exchange; at the end of the press conference one of the film's producers, Ryan Kliot, took the stage to explain further. "Errors and omission insurance has been incredibly difficult to get," he said. "The fair use laws in America are completely unfair. They set it up so we cannot use images of our own culture to tell the truth about our own culture. This is a much larger issue."

For many in the audience�well, for me at least�the dispute was a crash course in Hollywood legalese. "Errors and omission" insurance, according to the Allen Insurance Group's website, is the insurance that covers any lawsuits that may be brought against the studio for copyright infringement, libel, or, likely in this case, invasion of privacy. Because none of the subjects in the photos, or their families, gave permission for the photos to be used, both Bowles and Kliot have argued that Magnolia would be open to a bevy of lawsuits. As for the fair-use laws that Kliot mentions, these usually apply to use of copyrighted works for educational or other public purposes; they don't cover use of photographs obtained without a release. J. Hoberman agreed with Kliot's criticism of fair-use laws, saying "It's apparent, yes, that there are tremendous problems with fair use in this country, but the only way that will change is if this goes to the court." It's hard to tell if this is him trying to make a point or just move things long, though I can't really blame him for striving for the latter. The fracas aside, De Palma had some interesting thoughts about what went into making the movie, his stance on the Iraq War and his decision to shoot in Hi Def video. Not surprisingly he was on the offensive, and didn't respond to questions asking about his penchant for voyeurism, whether or not his movies glorify violence, and a particularly pointed barb asking if he had made "a horror film for hipsters." (One-word answer: "No.") Below are some selected questions and answers.

De Palma: I was in Toronto last year going to see some movies and someone from HDNet came over to me and said 'Would you be interested in making one of our movies?' They give you $5 million and you can make it on anything you want, you just have to make it on Hi Def. Certain images come to mind. I don't know if you ever saw Baghdad E.R. on HBO�that left quite an impression on me. It was because it was shot in Hi Def that it had such a direct hold on the audience. It wouldn't have been as effective on film.

You've got a lot of political controversy coming down on you with this film. From your position, which kind of controversy is harder to deal with? [De Palma has been accused of misogyny in some of his previous films.]
You mean being a misogynist or a traitor? Articles have been written about me, the man they love to argue about. I just sort of see it as it is. I've hardly ever been in step with much. To me, especially this war has been so misrepresented in the major media, and it was consciously done by the Bush administration. I keep saying all the time, where are the pictures, where are the pictures? If we're dropping bombs and occupying countries and killing innocent people and I'm paying for it, can you please let me see the pictures? The pictures that I saw in Vietnam got me out into the streets. You know when this administration's over all the things they did are going to come out. [�] We basically just want to sort of end this war, and by trying to show what the reality of this war is, to stop sugarcoating it.

How do you deal with making films for a public that's desensitized to violence?
I don't necessarily agree with that. I think the films we were making the sixties and the seventies, just in terms of the ratings board, we could never get these films past the ratings board now. I think the whole clamping down of the censorship has been going on for quite a few decades. What you see on television in relation to what's going in Iraq has been completely sanitized.

Who are you supporting for President?
I don't think I'm going to let the right-wing bloggers have that. I'm still viewing the field. We have many months to make up a decision.

New York magazine is now reporting that DePalma has given up the fight, and will let the film be released as is, with the black bars over the pictures. "I couldn't get around the legalities. I tried to, I fought a hard case. But it was the difference between letting the film go out or just keeping at this."

Honestly, it seems like the right idea at this point. De Palma is turning the black bars incident into a free speech campaign, but putting the financial risk on the shoulders of a distribution company is not the way to wage it. It seems the best we can hope for is that someone with less to lose and a better argument toward fair-use rights-- 60 Minutes, Seymour Hersh, hell, even Jon Stewart�will bring these photos to the forefront, maybe with a little less shouting than De Palma employs. Maybe history will vindicate De Palma as a Cassandra who tried to show the truth to a blind country; for everyone's sake, let's just hope the scuffle between him and Eamonn Bowles�and Mark Cuban�isn't the last word.

NYFF: No Country For Old Men

By Katey Rich

Javier Bardem stalks his prey as hitman Anton Chigurh.

It's inaccurate to call No Country For Old Men fun�you've probably got some issues to work through if you do�but man, is it satisfying. The Coen Brothers return to crime and the American West after a string of recent comedies, and No Country is proof that they can still do suspense and black, black humor better than just about anyone else. It's hard to think of anyone else more capable of filming a potential execution-style killing that makes you laugh.

And speaking of fun�the Coens seem to be having a blast with one of their three main characters, the indefatigable psychopath Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). Sporting one of the worst haircuts in cinematic history -"We inflicted the hair on Javier," Ethan Coen says�and a face incapable of cracking a smile, Chigurh stalks western Texas in pursuit of Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a retired welder who, by chance, has made off with $2 million belonging to Chigurh. A professional assassin by trade and total psychopath, Chigurh lets his victims flip coins to decide their fate, performs surgery on himself, and walks away from a car explosion without flinching. It's cruelly delightful to watch Chigurh anticipate his next destructive move, but when he pairs up with another man seeking the money (Woody Harrelson), it actually becomes funny: Chigurh is a ruthless hit man who seems unfamiliar with the concept of an ATM.

Brolin stars as Llewellyn Moss.

Also involved in the pursuit of Llewellyn and his cash is Sheriff Ed Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), an old-fashioned lawman who is baffled and disappointed by the amount of violence disrupting his hometown. Bell's crisis gives the film its title, a belief that events such as these mark a new era, one in which traditionalists such as Bell have no place. Though Bell's role is reduced from that in Cormac McCarthy's novel of the same name, on which the film is based, his narration and moments of doubt and exhaustion give the film its emotional core, elevating it above a cat-and-mouse thriller.

Asked about the film and the book as being an "end of the road" for the Western, Jones and Joel Coen both refused to draw too many connections, with some characteristic humor thrown in as well. "It's really hard for me to speak to the idea of there being a genre called Western that can get old and die," Jones said. "I really like making movies that are set in my home (Jones was born in San Saba, Texas), and I'm really interested in the history of my home, and I like horses, and I've got a lot of big hats."

The Coens were reluctant to discuss details about their intention with the film during the press conference following the Saturday screening at the New York Film Festival, a reticence that seems to have been part of the filmmaking process as well. "We kind of trust the actor," Ethan Coen said. "For better or worse it's the actor's interpretations." Brolin, who noted that the brothers are men of few words on the set, put it this way: "I think we were more worried about Joel and Ethan not being in our face than the camera being in our face."

<>

Bardem: far less terrifying in real life.

Following such an intense and gripping film, it was a little jarring to see Brolin and Bardem, who had spent the last two hours locked in mortal combat on the screen, joking before an audience of critics like old pals. Brolin told the story about the night Bardem got his brutal haircut for the film: "We went to the Cowgirl Caf, which is a lesbian bar in Santa Fe. He was kind of depressed and he said, "I'm not going to get laid for three months!"

Bardem, who made his career in Spain, said that, as a European, he was more uncomfortable with scenes of violence than he would be with sex scenes. Given the opportunity to work with the Coens, however, he was willing to step into the shoes of a psychopath. "It took like one second for me to say yes [to the Coens]. From there, I thought it was just fun to be there and kill people, go back to the motel and sleep."

Though Bardem nearly felt sick when he saw blood splattering motel room walls in one scene�"And I'm there to play the bad guy, so it's weird"�he said the brutal role didn't take its toll mentally, but visually. "I was in character, even if I didn't want to [be], because when I woke up and I took a shower, and I looked at myself in the mirror, I had the same haircut. When you go to buy milk, people get quite frightened."

The critical raves for No Country for Old Men already abound�check out Jim Emerson at The Chicago Sun-Times, who seems to think the Coens epitomize cinema itself. I have to agree. Everyone has put in their best work here�special mention to cinematographer Roger Deakins�and the Coens continue to be the most inventive and versatile auteurs working today. No Country isn't exactly a pleasure, but few films lately have made me so excited about the act of being a moviegoer.

NYFF: I Just Didn't Do It

By Katey Rich

It's been 11 years since Masayuki Suo's last film, the romantic comedy Shall We Dansu? Since then he has worked on many projects, but none inspired him until I Just Didn't Do It, a dramatic expos of the Japanese criminal system.

"It has been six-and-a-half years since I started working on [this project], but this was the one I felt I absolutely had to do," he said at the press conference following the festival screening of his film.

Ryo Kase stars as Teppei Kaneko, an ordinary young man whose life is changed when he is accused of groping a teenage girl on a crowded commuter train. As it is on New York City subways, groping is a common occurrence, and often a case of one person's word against another's. Teppei is immediately taken into custody and languishes in jail for weeks, as his best friend and mother work to find lawyers to represent him. An astonishing 99.9% of defendants in Japanese trials are convicted, a sobering statistic that gives Teppei little hope of exoneration.

Teppei is apprehended on the subway platform.

"The fact that there is 99.9% percent conviction rate--that alone means the judges are presuming the accused are guilty," Suo said. "That's what's wrong with the Japanese trial system."

Suo's film is deeply earnest, striving to convey all the ways in which an innocent man's pleas of innocence can go unheard by prosecutors looking for a conviction. They constantly remind Teppei that it took the girl, only 15 years old, great courage to confront him on the subway platform; it's a strong reminder of how many girls and women suffer these indignities in silence, and extends the film's empathy to the victims as well as the wrongly accused.

"I wanted to stress that this really could happen to anybody, and that's how I wanted the audience to relate to this film," Suo explained. "Any ordinary Japanese man could be mistaken as a perpetrator, or any female, or anyone could become a victim of this crime."

Unfortunately the film's honest goals often get in its way, despite attempts to add style and character depth. The film plays as straight as an episode of Law & Order, except the only villain here is the legal system itself. Teppei is innocent, the judges are seen as well-intentioned, and even the prosecution is just doing its best. The result is a film that's often as dull as an encyclopedia entry, with no characters to guide the audience through a sea of legal terms and explanation of jail sentencing.

Curiously, Suo also gravely misunderstands the power of a flashback early in the film, when he shows two differing versions of the groping: Teppei's story, in which he is innocent, and the prosecutor's extrapolation, which shows Teppei pulling up the girl's skirt. The parallel flashbacks seem intended to cast suspicion on Teppei, but Suo remains firmly on Teppei's side for the rest of the film. The conflicting scenes hint at the more interesting film that could have been made, rather than the rah-rah social crusade shoehorned into a simple drama.

NYFF: Margot at the Wedding

By Katey Rich

Nicole Kidman stars as the titular character.

Though Noah Baumbach has discussed the ways in which his own childhood inspired his previous film, The Squid and the Whale, the origins of Margot at the Wedding came from a single idea: a mother and a son sitting on a train. I had this idea, [and] I thought something seemed exciting to me," Baumbach said at the film's press conference. "I felt like I could feel the movie even though I didn't know what the movie was."

That image became the first scene of Baumbach's film, a meditation on familial relationships that may not contain the same narrative elegance as his previous, Oscar-nominated film, but tells a far more universal story.

Kidman at the festival.

Nicole Kidman stars as Margot, a Manhattan-based writer who travels with her son Claude (Zane Pais) to Long Island, where her estranged sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is marrying Malcolm (Jack Black), an unemployed "artist" for whom Margot has nothing but contempt. Margot is contemplating leaving her husband Jim (John Turturro) for another writer who lives near Pauline, and when Jim arrives for the weekend against Margot's wishes, she's forced to confront him and her feelings. In the meantime, Pauline and Malcolm deal with pre-wedding issues and revelations, while Claude copes with oncoming puberty through friendship with Pauline's daughter Ingrid (Flora Cross) and a crush on the babysitter (Halley Feiffer).

The film earns both its humor and poignancy thanks to the characters, all of whom are fully realized through the taut screenplay and dedicated performances. "When I'm writing I pretend these people really exist," said Baumbach. "I don't really think about actors--in my head they're all existing in some alternate world.'

Each of the actors had praise for the depth with which their characters were written. "I think Noah's writing is very precise and quite human," Turturro said. "I had a small role, and Noah kept telling me it was very important. When we worked on it, I could see what it meant to him." Leigh added, "The scenes were really alive, and well-written."

Kidman, whose character criticizes and pushes away nearly everyone and everything in the film, said taking on an unlikable character was a welcome challenge. "I think the wondrous thing about being an actor is, when something's really well-written, all you have to do is put yourself in the director's hands," she said at the press conference. "As much as people described [Margot] as a monster, I wanted her to be someone [whose pain] you could feel, and you could feel all of the sort of fears and defensiveness and the way in which she can sting people and hurt people and ultimately hurts herself."

Baumbach and Leigh at the festival.

Kidman, Leigh and Black all moved into the house in which the film is set weeks before shooting began, achieving an intimacy that caused many members of the press to compliment Baumbach for the film's relaxed, realistic atmosphere. Kidman explained, "You see the film start to grow just because you start to embody the characters gently, without feeling like you have to show up and quickly find the scene. It helped all the relationships in the film." Despite the naturalness of the dialogue, Baumbach said there was no improvisation, just lots and lots of rehearsal. "Clearly [the actors] put so much of themselves in the movie. I want the actors to say the lines as they're written, but at the same time I want this thing that only they can bring. A lot of the time I feel that it's more about finding a way for them to find a way into these lines, and sort of making it their own."

The film feels as comfortable as the Hamptons mansion in which it takes place, with the actors at ease with one another and the dialogue as unvarnished and complicated as real life itself. Baumbach may still be writing about New York-based intellectuals, but by getting out of the five boroughs he's created a simpler, and more accessible, film. Everyone has a Margot, the constant critic, or a Pauline, an optimist until pushed past her limits. As one of the few comedies in this year's festival, Margot at the Wedding came as a pleasant relief; it deserves to find the same welcome amid this fall's line-up of drama-heavy films.

NYFF: Go-Go Tales

By Katey Rich

Bob Hoskins keeps things in line at the Paradise Lounge.

The Paradise Lounge in Abel Ferrara's Go Go Talesisn't based on a specific New York strip club�wink wink, nudge nudge. As Ferrara said in the press conference following the film, "Somewhere in a city to be nameless, on a street that will remain nameless between 19th and 21st, there was a place. It was more or less like this."

Fair enough. Though Ferrara isn't giving details thanks to what he calls a "litigious society," we can assume it's the inspiration of a real place that gives Ray Ruby's Paradise Lounge such verisimilitude. Easily compared to Altman or Renoir's ensemble casts, Go Go Tales follows the chaotic, unpredictable and hilarious happenings at a New York City gentleman's lounge on the verge of financial crisis. Willem Defoe plays Ruby, the optimistic but beleaguered owner; Bob Hoskins and Frankie Cee help manage the club, Roy Dotrice plays Ruby's financial manager, Matthew Modine is Ruby's successful brother, and Asia Argento is one of the many tempestuous dancers demanding their due. Sylvia Miles holds court as the club's landlord, who constantly threatens to shut down the place and rent to Bed, Bath & Beyond. The key to their salvation is a winning lottery ticket hidden somewhere in the club for safekeeping; now, if only Ruby can find it�

The dancer looks happy here, but behind the scenes, they're ready to strike.

Ferrara describes Go Go Tales as his "first intentional comedy [�] I remember when I told Scorsese we were doing a comedy, he started laughing so hard." Ferrara looks fondly on the club on which Ruby's was based: "You walked in and it was like the neighborhood bar for me, which meant I got drinks for free. [�] The thing is, there's something magical about it. We wanted to do the film not the way that life is, because it's a very difficult life. We tried to take a very harsh reality and find a comic movie."

The film was shot entirely on a set at the Cinecitta Studios in Rome, where Ferrara and company built a full strip club, down to the surveillance cameras. "It's totally practical," Ferrara said. "We had the best club in town. We could stay open any hours we wanted, and we didn't need a liquor license." Multiple cameras were running at a time and improvisation was encouraged, which led to conversations and entire scenes being made out of only an outline.

Miles, who sits at the bar for most of the film, learned to expect the unexpected and be able to react to everything as her character. "You don't really know when you're in the scene or not in the scene," she said. "With that many cameras going at one time, you have to have a life of your own going [�] It got to be actually like a home. I felt like I was in a tacky hotel with all my friends."

"And you were the boss," Ferrara told her. "You had the keys."

Miles shot back, "Little did they know, if it was really up to me I would close this fucking place in a minute."

How else to save the club but put on a show?

Dafoe, who was called to set each day regardless of whether he was in a scene or not, said the improvisation that took place wasn't what normally occurs�Miles agreed that "There's no improvisation; there's just behavior." Dafoe explained, "Because the relationships were set and strong and the world was complete, it was fairly clear, it didn't feel like you were inventing things. You were taking on that role from a very practical standpoint."

Seeing the group of them up onstage at the press conference, it's easy to get a feel for the jovial atmosphere they described on set. Frankie Cee told the press "To be honest, if Abel says to me �Do the film for free, we're going to do it again,' I would gladly do it."

"Don't say that," Miles warned. "He's going to ask you to do it for free."

NYFF: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

By Katey Rich

Like Blade Runner, a fellow film selected for the New York Film Festival, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days depicts a bleak world with little color, serious governmental control and no hope for the future. Unlike Ridley Scott, though, Cristian Mungiu is telling his story in a world that already existed: Romania in the 1980s, in the final days of Communism and the brutal dictatorship of Nicolai Ceausescu. His Palme d'Or-winning film follows one harrowing day in the lives of two college students: Gabita (Laura Vasiliu), who must get an illegal abortion, and her roommate Otilia (Anamaria Marinca), who makes huge sacrifices to help her desperate friend.

It feels wrong to review a film like 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days in anything less than ten pages. It's so richly detailed, so full of technical skill and brilliant performances, insight and political wisdom, it's the kind of film I would have written film papers about back in college, and it will almost definitely be written about in the future. Plenty of other critics have weighed in on the film's merits (it currently has a 100% rating at Rotten Tomatoes), but perhaps the most important 2 cents I can throw in is this: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, yes, has subtitles, and yes, it deals with dark issues, and yes, it uses a series of long takes to tell its story, but it is not boring. As Mungiu said himself in the press conference following the film's screening, "I wanted to point out that it's possible, just using the means [of] an art-house film, to have the tension that you have with an American thriller."

Anamaria Marinca as Otilia.

After directing commercials for several years, Mungiu returned to features intending to tell a story about his twenties, during the Ceausescu regime. "I got this story directly from the girls that have been involved, which made all the difference when I wrote this. I never thought I would make a film out of this story to start with. Last year when I was writing and trying to find a strong relevant story from my twenties, this story came again in conversation. It came with so much anger, I realized it had the potential to become a good story."

Though the film is set in one of the most controversial and dismal periods in Romanian history, Mungiu deliberately set out not to make a political film--as he points out, the words "Ceausescu" and "communism" are never mentioned. "What I try to do is never write down what my film is about before I start. If you write down your message or what the film is about, the film is going to be about that," he explained. "I never tried to portray something specifically in it, or make any kind of metaphor about anything. I started making films as a reaction to those very metaphorical things, to say something very precisely but not directly."

The closest the film comes to a stand-in for Communism is the menacing Mr. Bebe (Vlad Ivanov), the abortionist who bullies and shames Gabita and Otilia both into paying an enormous, personal price for the abortion. Each of the girls is powerless over him in her own way; though Otilia is more aware of the situation than her friend, and resists Mr. Bebe's demands, in the end she has no choice. She faces similar choices regarding her future; before the fall of Communism it was nearly impossible to leave Romania, and though Otilia tells her boyfriend she does not want to spend the rest of her life peeling potatoes for him, there is likely no other option.

Mungiu employs extensive long takes to tell his harsh story, filming many of his scenes in a single take. He and director of photography Oleg Mutu worked together to plan scenes, though Mungiu insisted there was no storyboarding. "I never knew in advance in detail, because it's limiting to know from the beginning you're going to shoot it from what take and to decide what's important. Sometimes we had no idea at the beginning which is the best shot. We just needed to rehearse and see."

Marinca as Otilia and Vasiliu as Gabita.

The long takes also provided a challenge for the actors, who would be required to memorize up to ten minutes of dialogue at a time. Mungiu said this demand made casting difficult, but worth it in the end. "I not only tried to choose the right characters, but people I could trust. I thought it [long takes] was worth trying, even though it's difficult to do this. It allows the viewers to be part of the story in a very different way. There's a strength coming from this emotion that the characters are developing in front of the camera directly."

That strength of feeling is what makes 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days much more than an exercise in long takes, the kind of film seen by film students and no one else. Each actor powerfully brings the audience into the action, working in tandem with the camera to create an uncannily deep connection on the screen. The narrative is deliberately rambling--"It's coming from film school that all the questions have to have answers in the film," Mungiu said. "It is not that way for me." What it lacks in dramatic closure, though, it makes up in emotional impact; at its heart, this is a simple slice-of-life story, but rarely has an idea so simple been so compelling.

NYFF: The Last Mistress

By Katey Rich

Vellini and Ryno get it on despite better judgment.

Who better to bring a little sex to the New York Film Festival than Catherine Breillat? The French director famous for her blunt eroticism chose an apt novel to adapt for her latest, The Last Mistress, Jules-Amde Barbey d'Aurevilly's tale about a 10-year love affair between a French nobleman and a passionate Spanish woman. Fu'ad Ait Aattou makes his film debut as Ryno, the playboy who spends his fortune on his lover Vellini (Asia Argento), and eventually must marry a richer woman (Roxane Mesquida) despite his unwilling love and lust for Vellini.

For Breillat, much of what went into making the film was "destiny," as when she auditioned Aattou for the role of Ryno. "When I looked at [Fu'ad], I said to my assistant, oh this one, he's Ryno, he's my dream. You have to run after him because you never can find for me some boy like him. It's a sign of destiny." Breillat chose d'Aurevilly's novel because "if I had lived in the 19th century, the author would have been me."

Vellini watches her lover from afar at the opera

Though the film is a period costume drama, with muttered gossip behind elaborate fans and conversations in opulent sitting rooms, Breillat's touches come out in the details. "I'm an artisan, so I get very involved with colors and materials," she said during the film's press conference. "For the movement, I inspire myself from bodies like in paintings. I think Caravaggio's bodies that are tilted back inspire me a lot."

One of Breillat's most eccentric touches occurs during a party scene, when a guest stands at the piano and sings Ralph Benatzky's 1930s song "Yes Sir," in German no less. Why this anachronistic, Baz Luhrmann-esque moment? "It's to show that you can make a historical movie while being very conscious of the precision of history and still incorporating fantasy." Breillat also cited Marlene Dietrich's performance in The Devil is a Woman as an inspiration for the character of Vellini. "The song "Yes Sir" is a song that resembles very much the songs of Marlene Dietrich . In a certain sense, it's an homage."

And, of course, there are the sex scenes. As Vellini and Ryno's relationship becomes more one-sided, their lovemaking demonstrates the growing distance; often Vellini is the only character moving. "It's she who's making love to him, and not the opposite way around," Breillat said. "She uses him like a statue of flesh, an emotional statue."

Vellini and Ryno have a dalliance in the park.

Mesquida, who has a smaller role in this film, had high praise for Breillat's filmmaking method. "I think she's very manipulative, because she works with her hands, and it's really physical," she said. "It's a little bland with the other directors. I really love to work with her, because every time I feel that I go farther and farther in my job."

The Last Mistress can be trying, with its starchy dialogue and endless assortment of counts and countesses parading about, but the passionate romance at the center of the movie makes up for much of it. At the very least, Argento and Aattou are attractive to watch together, even if their story feels a little familiar and, well, stuffy.

NYFF: The Orphanage

By Katey Rich

Beln Rueda stars in The Orphanage

One of the neater and more relaxed aspects of the New York Film Festival is their midnight screening selection. Usually the source for high-class, prestige films, the festival cuts loose at the witching hour and screens films that, while very good on their own merits, might have a little more in common with the grindhouse midnight screenings of old.

The first weekend's midnight show, The Orphanage, takes the horror standard of a haunted house to new, emotionally resonant levels. The film by first-time director Juan Antonio Bayona is presented by Guillermo del Toro, who pulled off a similar feat by making fantasy an Oscar-winner with last year's Pan's Labyrinth. Bayona's film hews much closer to its genre roots than the transcendent Labyrinth, but provides the combination of thrills and genuine storytelling that American directors seem to have forgotten about lately.

The child in the sack mask who haunts Laura in the film.

Bayona and del Toro had been friends for years before Bayona, who had previous experience in shorts, decided to take on Sergio Sanchez's screenplay. Bayona went to his old friend to ask for help in making the film happen, as he explained in the press conference following the film's screening. "He created space for us so we could do the film as we wanted without having to restrict ourselves. He was very, very sensitive to the needs of another director. He did make many suggestions, but I have to say we didn't pay much attention to them. He was very nice about that, actually. What was important to him was that we made the film that was in our heads, that what we wanted to make appeared onscreen."

The emotional and dramatic crux of the film is Beln Rueda's performance as Laura, a woman who grew up in an idyllic orphanage and returns there with her husband and son Simn, hoping to open the home to children with disabilities. Laura's life is turned upside down when her son disappears, and she retreats further into the mysteries and ghosts of the house to find her son and the unexamined secrets of her childhood.

Rueda threw herself fearlessly into the role both onscreen and off; her powerful evocation of a grieving mother came about both from her experience as a mother and research done with grief-support groups. "At first you begin to put a lot of your own experiences, memories, thoughts into the creation of the role," Rueda said. "Then there's a point where you meet people who have been through those experiences. That was really important to me, to see that full range of hope and despair, to get a handle on the experiences of the people who have been through that."

Laura' mental state deteriorates as she delves deeper into the secrets of the house.

Bayona spoke extensively about his goals in creating the character of Laura, a devoted mother who begins to lose her grip on reality and responsibility as she becomes more desperate to find Simn. "People spoke about Peter Pan [references in the film], and perhaps there's nothing sadder in Peter Pan than the image of the mother sitting by the window waiting for them to come back. More than the mother, though, [Laura] becomes Wendy. What I was trying to do was create the idea of an irresponsible heroine. That was much more what I was after in this character than the classic sort of character that you get in horror films."

"We focused more on the research of the character of Laura, what it's like to lose a child," Sanchez said about the writing process. "We had meetings with people who had kids who disappear. That's the kind of research that we were more interested in. I think what's really interesting in the movie is the grieving of the mother."

The inspiration that Bayona found in old American melodramas likely contributed to his fine sense of Laura's character. "For this film, more than, say, other horror films, I had in mind melodramas, especially the melodramas of David Lean. I think something horror films have in common with melodramas is both of them find a way of visualizing, onscreen, emotions. I studied the films of David Lean and melodramas for exactly that reason."

Still more a horror film than a melodrama�I confess to seeing about half the film through my fingers, terrified of what was coming next�The Orphanage is spine-tingling in all the best, intelligent ways. Spoiler alert: No limbs will be hacked off, no one will be tortured, and there is (almost) no blood. Just the way we like it.

This image will probably give you nightmares.

NYFF: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

By Katey Rich

Marie-Jose Croze plays Jean-Dominque Bauby's first nurse in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

"I'm not going to ask everybody to raise their hand who took LSD in this room. I'll spare you that embarrassment. I did."

You can't say Julian Schnabel doesn't know how to work a room. Dressed in a flannel shirt with four top buttons undone, sporting unruly hair and colored glasses, Schnabel brought a casual air to the press room following the screening of his film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. The film earned Schnabel the Best Director prize at Cannes--though, Schnabel insists, "Probably if I was French I would have won the Palme d'Or." Schnabel's third film about a real-life artist, Diving Bell tells the story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor of France's Elle magazine who had a stroke at age 43 that paralyzed his entire body except his left eye. After some resistance Bauby learned to use a system devised by his nurse in which he could blink out, letter by letter, whatever he wanted to say. Using this system he wrote a memoir about his time trapped within his own immobile body, which was published 10 days before his death.

In a flashback, Bauby (Amalric) shaves his elderly father (Max von Sydow).

Schnabel, who has also made films about American painter Jean Michel Basquiat and Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas, figures there's a good reason he's made so many films about artists: "I guess I know more about being an artist than I know about being a stockbroker." Schnabel first learned about Bauby's story thanks to a nurse who was caring for Schnabel's father, on his deathbed with prostate cancer. "When my father died, he was terrified of death. I felt like I had failed him because I couldn't help him through that. I really made this movie, I think, as a self-help device. I couldn't help my dad, but I thought I could help somebody else."

Schnabel originally planned to write the screenplay in English and have Johnny Depp play Bauby; a behemoth in the form of a pirate ship got in a way, though, and Depp was too caught up with the Disney trilogy to play the part. Schnabel always planned to film in France, however, and soon the script was rewritten in French and Mathieu Almaric took the part.

Amalric jumped eagerly into a role that required him to be still for vast lengths of time. "He's an extraordinary person," Schnabel observed. "He said, 'I don't really need to be an actor, I just need to be a human being to do this.' That's not really true. He is a great human being, but he's an incredible actor."

Schnabel shot several scenes with Amalric inside the diving bell of the title--a clunky, old-fashioned scuba-diving suit that epitomizes the word "trapped." "I didn't go into the diving bell, but I know why Jean-Dominique Bauby picked that metaphor, because it is terrifying in there," Schnabel said. "There was one moment where he was acting like he was freaked out and the guy who was photographing him stopped photographing and pulled him out. This made Mathieu furious, he had to tell the guy, �Listen, I'm acting.'"

Bauby flashes back to his time as a fashion editor.

In his memoir Bauby explains that, with his imagination, he is actually limitless; he can imagine whatever he likes, regardless of being trapped in his diving bell. In the film Schnabel, who was a visual artist in the 1960s and 70s before turning to filmmaking, represents this imagination--the butterfly of the title--with hundreds of visual images, from Marlon Brando on the set of Candy to, breathtakingly, glaciers collapsing into the sea. "I could put anything in this movie that I wanted to, and that was very liberating," Schnabel explained.

The film's most daring technique, however, is to film the first 30 minutes entirely from Bauby's point of view, from the moment he awakes from his stroke to the beginning of his language training with his nurse. "The crew thought I was going to abandon that at certain moments. How long, they thought, can people take this thing? Is this going to get in the way of the storytelling?" Schnabel said of the POV style. "I felt like his POV was him, was us, I didn't want to lose that." Schnabel employed various tricks, from using a skewed-focus swing-and-tilt lens to actually screwing his own glasses into the camera, in order to create the proper perspective. The effect is remarkable, transporting the audience into Bauby's groggy, disoriented state, and letting them learn the stakes of his newfound condition along with him.

And as for the LSD? As with many of Schnabel's anecdotes, the story of his bad trip on a surfboard in Texas doesn't have the closest relation to the point he's making about the film. "Maybe death is not horrific for everybody in this room, but in this case it was this thing coming back like a bad trip. He was in that bed, he was in that bed all the time. What he was able to do for himself was figure out a way to escape."

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is so much less a story about illness and hospitals than it is a story about art, the effort and perseverance it takes to make any work of art come to life, regardless of circumstances or perhaps even because of them. A talented writer though he was, before his stroke Bauby was, as Schnabel put it, "quite superficial and normal�[After the stroke,] all of a sudden this guy was put at this vantage point that was very unique. He was able to speak back from that place, and I think he reported back some things that are able to help all of us."

NYFF: The Darjeeling Limited

By Katey Rich

The brothers Whitman share a rare laugh on the streets of India.

We're used to seeing Wes Anderson with a familiar cadre of his collaborators�the Wilson brothers, Anjelica Huston, Bill Murray, etc.�but some newcomers joined him onstage at the New York Film Festival press conference following the screening of The Darjeeling Limited. Anderson's co-writers Jason Schwartzman (who starred in Rushmore) and Roman Coppola (a second-unit director on The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou) were old faces, and Waris Ahluwalia had a small role in The Life Aquatic, but new to the party were actors Adrien Brody and Amara Karan.

The Darjeeling Limited tells the rambling, heartfelt story of three American brothers (Brody, Schwartzman and Owen Wilson) traveling northern India by way of the colorful, rickety train of the title. Oldest brother Francis Whitman (Wilson) wants them to have a spiritual journey, but years of rivalries, each brother's personal agenda and an unexpected tragedy get in the way. Karan plays a stewardess on the train who falls�kind of�for Jack's (Schwartzman) uneasy charm, while Ahluwalia is a humorless steward constantly trying to kick the brothers off the train for their persistent rule-breaking. Anderson and his collaborators took a number of questions on the film, discussing their inspiration for making it, creating familial ties, and the challenges of working on a set that moved.

Schwartzman and Natalie Portman share a moment in Hotel Chevalier.

Before shooting of The Darjeeling Limited even began, Anderson, Coppola and Schwartzman teamed up for the short "Hotel Chevalier," filmed in Paris in 2005. Schwartzman stars as Jack Whitman, the same character he plays in Darjeeling, an American writer living in a Paris hotel and awaiting a visit from his ex-girlfriend (Natalie Portman). Packed with Anderson's trademark visual flair and quirks, "Hotel Chevalier" neatly sums up Jack's character�a crucial introduction for The Darjeeling Limited�while also telling a succinct little love story all its own. The short showed before the press screening of Darjeeling (titled, simply, "Part One"), but the studio doesn't plan to release it along with the feature.

"It took me a moment to figure out how I want to do this," Anderson said. "In the end, we have the short on iTunes now, so people who are interested can see that before they see the movie, or after they see the movie. At a certain point we are going to add the short back in with the movie. I sort of like the idea that different people can see the movie in different ways."

After making "Chevalier" with no studio backing, Anderson, Schwartzman and Coppola traveled to India to write The Darjeeling Limited. Anderson noted Jean Renoir's 1951 film The River as an influence: "I managed to see it because Martin Scorsese had gotten a print of it, and he thought I would like it. When he showed it to me, it was sort of the culmination of something that had been brewing in my mind," he said. "When we were writing, Roman and Jason and I, we were traveling in India. The last night of our first trip to India together, we watched The River together. That was part of what got us going."

Each of the actors took a moment to explain the impact shooting on location in India had on them; Karan, who makes her feature debut here, said, "I think that what was enlightening about being in India is just reminding yourself, getting some perspective on your life, being in a completely different environment forces you to think about where you live and the background that you've come from." Brody, who plays middle brother Peter, appealed to the hometown crowd: "I grew up here in New York. I thought New York was a very unpredictable place, but when you get to India, it's a very different story."

"I'm enlightened already, so it was a big waste of time for me," deadpanned Ahluwalia, who also admitted that, traveling with newcomers like Anderson "was rediscovering India. To see it through their eyes was incredible."

Brody, Schwartzman and Wilson squeeze into their train berth.

The film tackles sibling relationships in a distinct way, from elegant, slow-mo shots of the brothers riding a motorcycle three to a seat to the hilarious dialogue, quoted in the trailer: "You don't love me!" "Yes I do!" "I love you too but I'm going to mace you in the face!" Schwartzman pointed out that with the close quarters on the shoot�many of the three brothers' scenes take place in a cramped railway suite�the sibling dynamic developed naturally.

"We really didn't leave the set between shots, there was really nowhere to go, it was on a train. We just stayed with each other, played games with each other, rehearsed lines," he explained. "We were three American actors living in India with nowhere to go but towards each other. It really felt like family being on set, because of the camaraderie between us."

Brody also pointed out some extracurricular activities off the set that helped create a brotherly bond. "They're wonderful guys, so it wasn't difficult to connect to Owen or Jason. There were a lot of badminton games, so we felt some rivalry there."

"I never felt rivalry," Schwartzman interjected.

"Well, you're a better player," Brody responded.

The reviews are already out for Darjeeling�the film opened the NYFF on Friday and played in other New York City theatres over the weekend. As with The Life Aquatic, Anderson's quirks and obsessions are maddening to some but endearing to more. A.O. Scott at the New York Times calls it "a treasure: an odd, flawed, but nonetheless beautifully handmade object as apt to win affection as to provoke annoyance." Slate's Dana Stevens is harsher, calling a key part of the film "Anderson at his worst: self-serious, aestheticizing, and morally yucky." Elsewhere in Slate is a fascinating article detailing Anderson's touchy treatment of race, in this and all his films.

What's certain, though, is that The Darjeeling Limited is something new for Anderson; whether that's just visually or also emotionally depends on the viewer. For me, it didn't pack the same emotional wallops as Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums, or even the same visual glee, but every time I look back on the film I'm genuinely struck by the relationships between the brothers. Anderson works well with the colors and natural chaos of India�a nice departure from his usual, heavily art-directed style�and all of the actors jump into the flow nicely. I've always been perfectly willing to fall for Anderson's hipster-detached storytelling, even when he slows down the film for the umpteenth time to the tune of a Kinks song. Despite all the flaws in Darjeeling�its truly problematic relationship with spiritualism and race, poorly defined characters�I was drawn in by the Whitman boys, and hope some other viewers will be too. While Anderson still hasn't managed to top Rushmore, Darjeeling is still a ride worth taking.

Not even prayer can solve these family disagreements.