Inside America

This is a masterpiece. We really need more films like that. What kind of impression do we have of America? Hollywood is very busy delivering one sugar coated blockbuster after another. Well move over cheesy film factory, because this is a breathtaking, raw, edgy film with great characters who you want to follow much longer than it's 2 hours. Barbara Eder and Constanze Schumann have created a really moving film which understands its characters and sympathizes with them without being preachy in any shape or form. Unlike many other filmmakers who decided to enrich the world with their ideas of a place and attitudes to it (e.g. Slumdog Millionaire) Eder has spent some time as a teenager in Brownsville and can really communicate the emptiness of the architecture and the nowhere feeling of this place.

The acting ( Raul Juarez, Aimee Lizette Saldivar, Patty Barrera, Carlos Benavides, Zuleyma Jaime and Luis de los Santos) is some of the best I have seen in a while and the camera is just right. Not too arty and contrived (yes too arty is actually possible) and no sugar coating whatsoever. Instead I had the feeling that I had actually been there and got to know the people. Even Linklaters "Dazed and Confused" which is a cult movie is glossy compared to Christian Haakes camera. Bright colours make you taste the heat of Texas on the tip of your tongue and the natural light of the summer heat is edgy and fascinating. The story intwines the lives of different teenagers, they are all from the same school and they have different ways of coping with boredom and their daily lives. These nowhere places, there are also many in New Zealand and Australia, these endless suburban spaces where you are stranded if you don't have a car are somewhat arty and disturbing at the same time. Anything can happen, I find them alien like and unpredictable.

In the beginning you could assume that the movie is slightly tempted to play with your typical cliches, which we know soo well from the O.C or Gossip Girl. The cheer-leader, the nerd, the rebel, the woman who seems to want a family. But Eder doesn't waste any time on that, every character is deeply fascinating in itself, the problems of each individual are carefully observed and you can't help but like all of them and sympathize with their lostness and sheer boredom. The ending is left open and that's a good choice, because what could be a happy ending? Moving away perhaps, getting out, starting afresh, but is there any difference from any other place? And does the lost feeling ever subside? One thing is for sure: this film lingers in your head long after the lights have been switched on, because of its sheer perfection, achieved by the small team of five people. So drop everything and go and see it now.

Black Swan

So this is another movie you could technically be excited about, Portman has already won the Golden Globe for it, but I couldn't help leaving the cinema with a "Meh" on my lips. It leaves you sort of lukewarm. Portman is a very good dancer, all the ballet training has finally paid of, but she failed to move me and really make me feel sorry or anything else for this woman. Vincent Cassel as the dodgy manipulative French choreographer doesn't have enough of a part to come across as a villain and there are a lot of events which happen throughout the movie that are not explained. At some point I thought that the filmmaker had intended to go the Fight Club way and give the film an interesting twist, but it just didn't deliver. I felt like I was in a restaurant and people kept serving different dishes, but none of them had any kind of flavour.

But the camera is remarkable. Matthew Libatique the cinematographer who already worked with Arnofsky on the much more profound "Requiem for a Dream" is using a very reflective and invasive camera technique. You have the feeling you can see what Nina, the main character, sees and really experience her increasingly freakier psychosis which sometimes is also very gory and horrible. I had the feeling they couldn't make their mind up about the genre. Was it a horror film? It felt like it sometimes. But the characters had no chemistry and weren't given enough dialogue to be able to build up any. Sure Portman just lives for the art of dance so she kinda shuts herself off from everyone else, Kunis is ok, but a rather sketchy and unconvincing character and the mother? She totally has different issues of her own which are never disclosed to the audience. There are films where people obsess about one thing, usually art, and it's still very good. Shine, Pollock, All about Eve, Frida, Basquiat, Amadeus are all films about obsession and they are soo amazing. So no it's not the subject that's the problem. When Cassel tells Nina not to be so tense and loosen up you can't help wonder if that wouldn't be good advice for the whole movie. Just live a little, and get plenty of popcorn to hide behind to avoid all the bloody and creepy scenes. Or maybe that's just me.