A Different Type of Photobomb

At its heart a story about a complex father/daughter relationship, with 2016's Toni Erdmann, writer/director Maren Ade charts her tale down a highly original course as the pair work out their many issues in the most unorthodox of ways. The German motion picture was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards this past year, with many seeing it as the outright favourite. . . it lost to the more politically relevant Iranian film The Salesman – Asghar Farhadi’s second win in this category. Winfried Conradi (Peter Simonischek) is an all-out kook – a prankster who loves playing games with everyone he meets. Like a child in a man’s body, we first meet Winfried as he receives a package from a courier. Claiming that it is his brother’s (and that he was just released from jail for putting bombs in the mail), he leaves, returning moments later with a new outfit and fake teeth, pretending to be his criminally eccentric sibling.

A very meta film about film making itself, François Truffaut’s 1973 romantic dramedy Day for Night transports us behind the scenes of a movie being made at the famed Victorine Studios in Nice, France (think classics like To Catch a Thief and Children of Paradise). The title itself is a reference to movie making, highlighting the term used when scenes are filmed during the day, only to make it look like they were done at night (by way of using filters). The Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film in 1974, Truffaut casts himself as the movie’s director, Ferrand, who is currently filming the tragic, if clichéd, melodrama "Meet Pamela" – not likely to be the next classic.

Claustrophobia is a key component of the zombie horror sub-genre. Though the whole wide world may be the protagonist’s playground, there is something ultimately daunting about having millions (maybe billions) of the world’s population transformed into deadly infected corpses – each one drawn to those few still attempting to survive, encroaching on their oh-so-important space. This concept is pushed to its most tense breaking point in the 2016 South Korean horror film Train to Busan, co-written and directed by Sang-ho Yeon. As you may have guessed from the title, most of the story takes place on a confined, tightly packed train (a perfect setting for this type of flick). The narrative’s driving force is a father/daughter pair living in Seoul, Seok-woo (Yoo Gong) and Soo-an (Soo-an Kim). Having recently separated from his wife, the family is in disarray. It is a complicated matter in which Seok-woo, a self-centred individual, sees himself as a sort of selfless father and husband, working insane hours as a fund manager for the betterment of his family. His daughter (and wife – we must surmise), see him as a non-existent patriarch – selfish and caring about no one but himself.

One of the most buzz-worthy performances of this past Awards season, Isabelle Huppert’s multi-dimensional turn as rape victim Michèle Leblanc in the French film Elle, directed by PaulVerhoeven, led to a wide array of nominations and wins, with her taking home the Golden Globe for Best Dramatic Performance but ultimately losing the Oscar to Emma Stone. The film also took home Best Foreign Language Film at the Globes. Beginning with the intense, jarring end of the horrific rape (the only witness, her less than helpful cat), Michèle (Huppert) doesn’t hysterically scream or phone the cops after her masked assailant has departed, but quietly cleans the mess left by the attack (and then herself) – simply returning to the normalcy of her life after doing the tasks.

Director Chan-wook Park, a visual mastermind who concocted the intoxicating Stoker in 2013 (a loose remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s superb Shadow of a Doubt), his first, and to date, only English language film, follows it by putting his talents into making another striking, intricately plotted psychological mystery/thriller in The Handmaiden. Loosely based upon Sarah Waters’ novel "Fingersmith", the filmmaker moves the tale from Victorian era England to 1930s Korea – which is under Japanese colonial rule. Divided into three parts, he utilizes the technique to great effect, providing us with only part of the story each time. In many ways it’s like being given a puzzle with only the edges to start with, so we think we understand what is going on, as we have been given the outline, but only truly gain a stronger appreciation of its complexity and beauty when provided with the pieces that fill in the whole picture. Park’s unique style slowly divulges the true essence of this film by providing alternate angles, different perspectives, flashbacks and flash forwards (those essential remaining puzzle pieces).

World War 2 films have long been an important staple of Hollywood movie making. Even from the early days of the conflict, filmmakers delved into the intense, worldwide happening, seeing the importance and relevance of showcasing such a heart wrenching, profound war that had astronomical consequences. Just think of Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator or Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca as two premium examples. If there is one thing though that I have found frustrating, it is the cookie cutter way in which the Germans have been depicted – either as maniacal villains or as ludicrous buffoons. Though there are a few films, especially in the recent past, that have changed this trend, it has been a rarity to find a more nuanced perspective on the Second World War in relation to this aspect. Interestingly, in 1959 Austrian director Bernhard Wicki released a German feature titled The Bridge (in German, Die Brücke), the first anti-war film to come out of the country that lost the war. Revolving around a small group of teenagers, namely Hans (Folker Bohnet), Albert (Fritz Wepper), Walter (Michael Hinz), Jurgen (Frank Glaubrecht), Karl (Karl Michael Balzer), Klaus (Volker Lechtenbrink) and Sigi (Günther Hoffmann), they are a class full of schoolboys who are dealing with the universal aspects of being of that age – sometimes making things more than complicated. They struggle with their respective families, friends and girls, but also find camaraderie in their tightknit group. Living their lives as the intensifying war swirls just around their little city, and despite the horrendous happenings, we get the feeling that ‘boys will be boys’. When a bomb lands on the outskirts of town near a nice stone bridge, they unanimously decide that they are going to the edge of the river to investigate.