The Indie Auteur Musings on filmmaking by Stephan Vladimir Bugaj.

Venice Film Festival

Due to a packed art hopping schedule and a chance evening of drinking with friends from Platige Image in Poland (whom I randomly ran into in Lido, and who turned out to have a short film called “Kinematograf” in competition), wound up only seeing three feature films in Venice: “Women Without Men”, “Zarte Parisiten”, and “Repo Chick”.  The first two were excellent European style dramas, both very much worth seeing, and the last is Alex Cox’ latest low budget feature — and definitely not a drama.

Based on the novel of the same name, Shirin Neshat’s “Women Without Men” is a heart-wrenching look at the life of women in Iran, one which is simultaneously overtly political, and utterly personal.  It doesn’t play as a political polemic, but rather a magical-realist journey of four women — a young woman obsessed with politics, her “good girl” friend, a prostitute, and a General’s wife — all seeking to escape their lives and find something better.  Escaping the world, be it through revolution or a retreat into paradise, proves illusory, but the film still ends on a hopeful note.  The cinematography and acting are both incredible, and the story is compelling — and utterly relevant given all the current goings on in Iran (the Green Movement).

Oliver Schwabe & Christian Becker’s “Zarte Parisiten” is what Hollywood likes to call a “slice of life” film that follows two grifters who earn their living by taking on the role of surrogate family members in the lives of the lonely and grieving.  Most of the write-ups of this film focus on the love story between the grifters, Manu and Jakob, and short-sell what I consider to be the clear central relationship of the film: the one that develops between Jakob and Martin, the man who hires him to fill the void left by his deceased son.   The film is emotionally compelling, and I didn’t find myself bored for even a moment despite the contemplative pacing.  A relatively original concept, and very well executed all around.  I continue to be impressed with German films as of late.

Alex Cox’ “Repo Chick” borrows from his classic “Repo Man” not only its title and the lead character’s profession, but also the structural framework of a high value repo target with a mysterious cargo.   Cox decided to take his low budget limitations and run with them in this film, creating an absurdist characiture of terrorism and its discontents, and the American culture of debt and income inequality.  Lampooning the police state and radicals alike, “Repo Chick” wears its politics on its sleeve in ways that more serious films can’t really get away with these days.  And Cox shot all the exterior shots with miniatures, and generally made copious use of green-screen actors on comped-in backgrounds, adding to the cartoonish feel of the film.  As a farcical satire, “Repo Chick” has as much in common with “Idiocracy” or “Team America: World Police” as it does with “Repo Man”.  While I probably won’t watch “Repo Chick” over 100 times like I did with “Repo Man”, it’s got its own charms and I certainly will see it at least once more.

We also saw two Art videos in the Venice Bienale that are particularly worth mentioning.  As they are art pieces, they’re certainly not going to everyone’s cup of tea, but I liked them.  One was the featured work at the Great Britain pavilion in Giardini: Steve McQueen’s “Giardini”.  A two-channel, thirty minute video about the secret life of the Giardini when then Bienale is not in session, McQueen’s video primarily follows a pack of dogs wandering the grounds, and an unknown pair of men who smoke cigarettes and seem to stand guard over the grounds.  But the real “main character” is the Giardini itself.   It does a good job of evoking the feeling of a lonely Giardini, untended between the throngs, but full of a whole other kind of life.

David Bestué and Marc Vives’ “Acciones en Casa” is a hilarious piece of conceptual video art that simultaneously lampoons conceptual video art, and is itself a piece of conceptual video art.  It features the sublime (“make a fountain in the kitchen”) and, primarily, the ridiculous (“dress up as a wall”).   Most conceptual video art doesn’t grab me, but I actually watched “Acciones en Casa” all the way through twice, laughing (and thinking) the whole time.  Admittedly, you’ll laugh harder if you’re familiar with conceptual art, but even if you’re not, you may still find “Acciones en Casa” quite enjoyable.

Another excellent piece was Simon Starling’s “Wilhelm Noack, oHG” — a kinetic sculpture that is a descendant of a Robert Morris’ famous conceptual sound sculpture “Box With The Sound Of Its Own Making”.  Starling’s work is a sculpture that plays a conceptual film about its own making, and the company that fabricated it.  The soundtrack is similar to “Box” — the industrial sounds of the machining process.  I found this piece quite mesmerizing and watched it loop for about a half hour before being dragged away to see the rest of the Biennale.