MAY 26 — If you have the hunger, there can and never will be enough films to watch in your lifetime, and these are just the good ones.
Provided, of course, that you cast your net far and wide, and not just at obvious areas like Hollywood blockbusters or Sundance indies.
Even the niche area of “foreign language films”, which is a catch-all term to describe non-English language films, is rife with all sorts of potential contradictions (e.g. would you call Adnan Sempit a foreign language film?) and therefore more than deep enough pools to dive into.
As we begin to enter the summer blockbuster season, with Avengers: Infinity War, Deadpool 2 and this week Solo: A Star Wars Story already opening in Malaysian cinemas, I somehow found myself indulging in the exotic delights of foreign language films for the last two or three weeks, perhaps as an early antidote to the upcoming barrage of formulaic tentpoles that I’m set to experience in the coming summer months.
Whatever the reasons, I’m pretty glad I saw these films, some good, some even great!
The Insult
Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at this year’s Oscars, which was won by A Fantastic Woman, The Insult may well turn out to be one of my absolute favourite films this year.
Probably a little too conveniently melodramatic and programmatic for some people’s tastes, to me The Insult felt almost as revelatory as A Separation in its thrilling ability to put forward the many difficult (and sometimes unanswerable) questions that it wants to ask regarding the conflict between Palestinian refugees and right-wing Christian Arabs in Lebanon.
The story is about two insults; the first uttered by a Palestinian contractor to a Christian Arab, and the second by that Christian Arab to the Palestinian at a later time, which leads to a court case, which then became a national issue as old wounds are opened, and new ones may have just been created.
It’s a story so specific that it becomes universal, because you can basically set the same story anywhere in the world, pitting two ethnic groups who hate each other (no matter what the reasons are), and its tale of how an insult can snowball into something bigger because of pride and hate will probably not lose any of the raw power on display here.
In The Fade
German-Turkish director Fatih Akin (famous for Head On and Soul Kitchen) has been in the scene for quite a while now that a return to form almost seems unlikely, but that’s exactly what he pulled off with In The Fade, winner of Best Foreign Language Film at this year’s Golden Globes and also Best Actress at last year’s Cannes.
In essence a revenge film spiced up with a bit of arthouse tactics, which basically makes this an elevated genre film, the film tells the harrowing story of Katja, a German woman who loses her child and ex-con Turkish husband to a bombing.
This first part of the film is laid out in painful detail, from the police questioning about her husband’s shady past to the murder trial of the bombers, with prejudice, racism and exploited legal loopholes all combining to foster a truly frustrating sense of injustice that when Katja does decide to take the law into her own hands, we’re with her all the way.
Like The Insult, it’s a simple scenario made rich by the real life questions it dares to ask about the current state of the world and the racism and prejudice inherent in even the best of us.
Perfect Strangers
A lot of people may answer “Pedro Almodovar” when asked who their favourite Spanish film-maker is, but to me there’s simply no contest, it has to Alex De La Iglesia, the auteur behind so many demented gems like The Day Of The Beast, Muertos De Risa, La Comunidad, 800 Bullets, Witching And Bitching and The Perfect Crime.
His latest film continues his recent pattern of making ensemble films (like My Big Night and last year’s The Bar) that may look a bit like mainstream flicks, but have a pretty dark and twisted sense of humour as they play along their runtime.
Perfect Strangers is no different, although there is the caveat that it’s a remake of an Italian film also called Perfect Strangers (which I haven’t seen, so I can’t really comment on its fidelity to the original), but right from the first five minutes you can clearly see that it’s an Alex De La Iglesia film, not only from the visuals but also from the way the characters talk and carry themselves.
The story’s about a group of friends having dinner, which coincidentally happens during a rare blood moon, and they then decide to play a game where everyone puts their phones on the table and whatever calls or texts that come in during the dinner will have to be answered or read out loud.
That simple setup sets the stage for all sorts of secrets and revelations to come out in the open, to both good and bad effect for their friendship, which is really not a bad way at all to spend around 90 minutes of your time.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
