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Cannes in 2004 had a whole bunch of big names competing for the top prize. Already here we've looked at a couple - Oldboy and Tropical Malady (from this year's winner Apichatpong Weerasethakul) measured up against such directors as two-time Palme d'Or winner Emir Kusturica, a new film from previous winners the Coen brothers, Wong Kar Wei, Olivier Assayas, and the eventual winner that year Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. It wasn't necessarily a banner year on the French coast (compared to the pedigree of this year, for example), but it seems to have made a decent play at making its mark in this here blog.
That was a very longwinded way of getting to the point. The Consequences of Love
, Paulo Sorrentino's uber-stylish second feature also played in the competition. It is a beautiful and pointed, very precise film strikingly shot by Luca Bigazzi, rendered somewhat distant by its own insistence on pitch-perfect on-screen beauty.
Titta (Toni Servillo) has spent the last eight years living in a hotel in Switzerland, separated from his family who don't really want anything to do with him, doing a mundane delivery job for the Italian mafia as a punishment for losing an extraordinary amount of their money on the stock market. He is too afraid to start anything with Sofia (Olivia Magnani), the girl behind the bar, because he doesn't want to complicate things. His brother, a flighty character, convinces him to leap off and go after her, and Titta follows his advice. How much of what follows can be attributed to this action is debatable, but it must be said that things do indeed start to go wrong.
It is truly beautiful to watch. From the opening shot of a big long hallway with a porter on a travelator you know you're in for something special. And then there is the beautiful 180 degree spinning shot of Titta in the hotel room - stunning. Matched with some exceptional music, both original by Pasquale Catalano and existing from bands such as Mogwai, it truly lends an incredible backdrop from which to build the characters.
And don't get me wrong, the characters do build. Titta, who is the undeniable focus of every moment of the film, is a hard character to get into, but he does let his guard down and gradually allow you to see inside his emptiness and hopelessness - he has been almost entirely hollowed out emotionally and spiritually by his strange form of imprisonment by the Italian mafia. What hasn't been emptied, however, is quickly given over to Sofia. Servillo especially excels, dominating the characterisation. But you're never really allowed to see totally inside him, or, for that matter, Sofia. His grand gestures are nervous, with fear of failure that you know he is going to try and convince himself he doesn't feel but which is electrically charged through every movement. And Sofia, with her reactions, shows her fear of all of the unknowns surrounding the strange man who lives in the hotel. Even after all of his secrets are spilled, however, this fear still seems to permeate. And while you are swept away by everything you are watching as the film moves towards its terrific climax, I never truly found myself engaged with the people within the film. I was there intellectually, fine, it got me there. But I was still entirely able to switch it off at the end, say I was done and move on. What stands out to me are the visuals without an emotional attachment - unlike, for example, Days of Heaven where the visuals may well have been what stood out but they brought with them the associated feelings announced through the narrative.
I don't really know where to place this film. I liked it. I really liked it. I thought it was very entertaining, it kept me watching, I was never bored. But I also never felt. It's a strange feeling (and one that I'm going to be repeating soon when I get up to writing up a certain summer blockbuster that everyone has been talking about...), but it's not necessarily a bad one. I am convinced, however, that it could have been that little bit more, that it should have been a little bit more. Producer Domenico Procacci has brought us plenty of films that manage that before (see Gomorrah) but here he couldn't quite get all the pieces aligned. But there is enough promise to make me look forward to my next engagement with Sorrentino, and indeed Procacci (whose relationship with Rolf de Heer will always keep me intrigued.) 4 stars.
I must say I found myself a little confused by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul's (say what?) 2004 Cannes Jury Prize winning film Tropical Malady. Which isn't to say that I didn't like it. Actually, maybe confused is the wrong word. (And maybe I should actually go back and edit my post, rather than rambling on in stream of consciousness fashion. You know what? No.) Intrigued would be a good word. There are other good words, but moving right along.
What I got from the film is that is is essentially two stories, a real story at the beginning and a myth at the end, featuring the same actors, the myth acting allegorically for the story at the beginning. I must say that the blurb on the DVD is terrible in terms of trying to ascertain what the film is about - it made the narrative structure sound more Mulholland Drive than anything else, so I kept waiting for various random and confusing, fantastical threads to start coming through, which obviously didn't happen. That's not a bad thing, just a note to whoever is writing copy on DVDs that if you start dicking around with the reality of what the film is, you're just going to piss people off.
So, the real story is about two guys in love (one, two, three: awww), one in the army, one not. Their story moves quite slowly, without much real drama, but it's really sweet nonetheless. Things like going to the movies, sitting in the jungle, talking and just generally enjoying what does look like the early flushes of romance and a relationship. Weerasethakul really works to make sure you're as enamoured with the couple and what they have going on as the couple is themselves.
The second part of the film comes in, however, and ditches these two lovers as they were, turning them into a soldier (again), sent to a village and subsequently hunting down a shapeshifting shaman who is able to turn himself into a tiger. Here, there is a love affair of sorts going on, and the allegorical use could seem to speak to the truth of the relationship preceding - is it more of a fascination that a love affair? Are they each merely serving as an entertainment, an aside, a challenge? After all, Tong, the non-soldier in the initial story, never seems to return the proclamations of Keng. While he does seem to be enjoying their friendship, Keng is the one turning it from friendship into something more, maybe somewhat against Tong's wishes.
It's an interesting film. It looks and feels beautiful, all those jungles. And tonally it's very good - the rhythm flows naturally and lulls you into this world where nothing seems to matter. This is then picked up at the end for the tenser scenes between the soldier and the tiger/shaman. A valiant effort, I can't help but feel that it is a little disjointed, that the latter story could have been incorporated or felt more relevant if the technique of simply slashing down the middle hadn't been employed. There were times as well when the love story seemed to drag, clawing for material to sustain it to pad the film into something feature length.
I don't want this to come off as a negative write-up, because I did quite like the film, I'm going to give it 3.5 stars. But you need to be prepared going in.
