By Jonathan Romney on September 6, So for all intents and purposes, this was my first visit. Getting the hang of an unfamiliar festival can be difficult, but my ride was made easier by the fact that I was doing jury service for the Swatch First Feature Award: build your viewing around a strict timetable of 20 films, and everything else slots into place easily. At first, her linguistic limitations leave her flailing to understand the new world around her, but as she comes to achieve fluency, her prospects—and her emotional and imaginative universe—expand accordingly.
Sharply self-reflexive, with a serious underlay of philosophical inquiry, the film features a deliciously downbeat performance from Zhang Xiaobin. This impressionistic but savage piece is set almost entirely within a slaughterhouse, the action seen largely through the eyes of a dog, the companion of a young abattoir worker.
Ending with a haunting utopian vision of a post-human republic of dogs, this was one of the steeliest statements here. Petrova depicts a totally corrupt post-Communist world in which hope, justice, and compassion seem absent—yet keeps a tiny flame of possible redemption alight for her antiheroine, one of whose patients conducts a religious choir.
There were two terrifically enjoyable Japanese films. Concise at 77 minutes, and hyper-economical—a week to write, a week to shoot—it features Yuki Mamiya as a walking isotope of female libido, who latches onto a reclusive playwright and brings the house down with her frenetic activity. Sebastian thrown in.
But no, The Challenge apparently records a real tournament, and marks a fascinating convergence between ethnography, style-magazine reportage and art-video surrealism. It was a vintage year for Argentinian cinema. Constantly signaling itself as a filmic construct, sometimes in willfully jarring fashion, Hermia and Helena is a reminder that, as much as any director working today, Pineiro is defined by a peculiar sensibility, rather than necessarily a style.
