Starlet

Starlet; drama, USA, 2012; D: Sean Baker, S: Dree Hemingway, Besedka Johnson, Stella Maeve, James Ransone, Karren Karagulian

Jane lives in a house with Melissa and her boyfriend Mikey. They work as porn actors. One day, after buying a thermos from a certain Sadie (85) who has a yard sale, Jane discover bundles of money inside. She spends thousands of dollars on herself, but then has guilt and decides to meet Sadie better. At first, Sadie is suspicious and evasive, but slowly Jane becomes her friend and they play lottery. Jane lets Sadie watch after her dog. The dog escapes, causes stress for Sadie, but she manages to find him again. Jane buys Sadie a plane ticket for Paris. Melissa informs Sadie that Jane took her money from the thermos. During their ride, Sadie tells Jane to stop at a cemetary to gie flowers to her deceased husband. Jane goes to the cemetary and finds out it also contains a tombstone of Sadie's 18-year old daughter.

Sean Baker's 4th feature length independent film, "Starlet" once again follows his fascination with people living on the margins of society. On the one hand, it shows the isolation and neglect of people at old age, presented through the character of the 85-year old Sadie; on the other, it shows three young people living together in a house, until it is only later on revealed what their profession is—at 53 minutes into the film, the protagonist Jane goes to a film set of a porn to film a sex scene. Highly unusual blend of two extremes—and it is kind of a pity these two social groups never quite interact fully with each other. Baker, as a screenwriter, is not able to write a fully developed storyline, as if he is never interested in his stories any more than just the outline for his social themes. As such, "Starlet" has banal, schematic dialogue—Jane says she wants to re-decorate the room; Jane says to Sadie she wants to be her friend; Melissa says she needs money for her debt... All of this is said just at face value, without much sense for intricate writing or creative prose. The best line is actually said by someone who makes a surprising cameo, real AV actress Asa Akira, who delivers a funny joke that stands out, the one about how it would look like if Captain Hook was fingering someone. Baker strives towards de-glamorization and naturalistic depiction of life as it is, as realistic as possible, and as such creates a 'raw', messy and vital film. The supporting characters of Melissa and Mikey are annoying (especially Mikey who can only be a "pothead" and play video games the entire day), and thus the friendship between Jane and Sadie is the anchor of the film. Remarkably, this is the first and only movie role for Besedka Johnson, here playing Sadie with genuine ease, and it feels a bit sad that she is so underused here. Baker's trademark "surprise ending" here gives Sadie another layer, but isn't as effective as it could have been. She needed more "character build-up scenes". Compare what Nicholson says in the movie "As Good As it Gets" at the dinner sequence, about how he wants to be "a better man", and what Hunt says back to him—in just one sequence, these two lines are so creative they make time stop for the viewers. Is there any dialogue here between Jane and Sadie that ever comes close to that?

Grade:++

Tangerine

Tangerine; drama, USA, 2015; D: Sean Baker, S: Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, Mya Taylor, Mickey O'Hagan, Karren Karagulian, James Ransone

Los Angeles on Christmas. African American transgender prostitutes Sin-Dee and Alexandra meet at a donut shop. Upon hearing that her pimp and fiance Chester has been cheating on Sin-Dee with Dinah, Sin-Dee storms off and walks the streets to find said woman. Razmik, an Armenian taxi driver, has a sex encounter with Alexandra in his cab. Sin-Dee finds Dinah at a motel and drags her to Chester, to confront him. Chester admits having sex with Dinah, but only to "check her out" as a prostitute. Alexandra sings at a bar, but there are no customers there. Razmik leaves his family's Christmas dinner to feign he has to go to work, but instead finds Alexandra at the donut shop. Razmik's mother-in-law finds him there and confronts him cheating on his wife. Upon hearing Chester also had sex with Alexandra, Sin-Dee leaves them all. Someone throws urine on Sin-Dee, so Alexandra comforts her at a laundromat and gives Sin-Dee her own wig.

"Tangerine" is another naturalistic social drama by Sean Baker about the people on the margins and the lower class, in this case two transgender prostitutes (impressive performances by first time actors Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor), but uncharacteristically set on Christmas. For all his humanistic and noble approach, Baker is again not that good at writing a proper, focused storyline—the narrative is often improvised, comprised just out of random episodes and disconnected adventures of his protagonists without much plot strategy, which hinders the enjoyment value of the viewers. However, on the other hand, that is Baker's intent—he creates movies as 'raw', messy, dirty (drunk passenger throwing up in the cab) and unglamorized as daily life, in accordance with his movie influences (Cassavetes, Loach, Jarmusch). This is not very cinematic, but it is genuine and honest. One major plot point isn't that convincing, though, and feels forced (would a transgender woman really just drag another woman through the streets, against her will, without anyone intervening or without the latter at least screaming for help in public?). The best moments are when Bakes turns a bit more creative and intimate: Armenian taxi driver Razmik cleverly conceals his sex encounter with prostitute Alexandra by driving his car in a long car wash; the Christmas dinner of the Armenian immigrants where Razmik feigns he has to go to work because their Christmas is actually celebrated later, on January 6. In a very innovative idea for independent cinema, the entire film was filmed using only iPhones. Baker's trademark are startling, emotional endings, and the viewers never know how he will surprise them. The ending in "Tangerine" isn't as strong as the one in "The Florida Project", but it is still endearing—despite all their disagreements and problems, the two main characters have only each other for support.

Grade:++

Inspector Palmu's Mistake

Mysteriet Rygseck; crime comedy, Finland, 1960; D: Matti Kassila, S: Joel Rinne, Matti Ranin, Leo Jokela, Jussi Jurkka, Leevi Kuuranne, Elina Pohjanpää

Helsinki. Bruno Rygseck is a decadent millionaire who stages parties at his mansion, and killed the cat of his aunt Amalia as a prank. Inspector Palmu is informed the next day that Bruno has been found dead, drowned in his giant swimming pool, allegedly after tripping on a soap on the ground. Palmu arrives with Detectives Kokki and Virta to the mansion, but concludes it was a murder based on the butler's testimony that the lights in the swimming pool room were turned off. Bruno's wife Alli is poisoned via a drink, and Palmu assumes it was intended for Bruno. Since her brother Aimo was forging Bruno's signatures to repay his debt, Airi agreed to go to Bruno's room. Airi's fiance Erik claims he killed Bruno, but Palmu disputes this. It turns out Amalia killed Bruno because he killed her cat, and uses Virta's pistol to attack Airi, but is arrested by Palmu's men.

The first film adaptation of the novels about Insector Palmu, "Inspector Palmu's Mistake" is a light crime comedy that works as some sort of a Finnish version of Agatha Christie or Inspector Columbo 'whodunnit' murder mystery, without adding anything specific or new to it. It is elegant and fun, albeit straightforward and lacking in surprises or humor, except for the funny "twist ending" as to what the motive was for the murder. Some of the plot points are more of strained ploys than true clues to solving the mystery (for instance, the only hint that Bruno's drowning in the swimming pool was murder is that the room's lights were switched off from the inside, which is overstretched). The most was achieved out of the leading actor Joel Rinne as the title Inspector, who is both competent and charismatic enough to carry the film even when objectively there isn't much happening on the screen. The best segment is when a group of friends make a bet at who will perpetrate the best misdemeanor without the victim having the guts to contact the police due to embarassment, so a woman feigns she fainted in front of a man, he takes her inside his apartment, but as he goes to the kitchen to get her some water, she "wakes up", steals his manuscript for the novel and escapes, while he is unable to tell anyone because "he could not explain to his mother what a foreign woman was doing in his apartment". A few dynamic camera drives, an occasional cinematic technique (Alli drinks the poisoned drink and falls down with the glass, as it dissolves to the same (later) frame of Palmu's shoes standing above said glass on the floor) and a couple of solid jokes, but otherwise a rather standard and at times overstretched little crime flick.

Grade:++

Uncle Marin, the Billionaire

Nea Mărin miliardar; comedy, Romania, 1979; D: Sergiu Nicolaescu, S: Amza Pellea, Jean Constatin, Sebastian Papaiani, Brândușa Marioțeanu, Ștefan Mihăilescu-Brăila

During a flight from Frankfurt, a group of gangsters drugs and kidnaps Samantha, the daughter of rich American Marlon Juvett, and escapes from the plane via parachutes in Romania. They hand Samantha over to another group of gangsters, who then kill them in a car explosion. An ordinary peasant, uncle Marin, arrives for a visit to Constanta, so his nephew Gogu arranges for him to stay at a hotel room reserved for Marlon. When Marlon arrives with a briefcase containing a million $ to pay for the ransom of the gangsters holding Samantha, it turns out he looks identical as Marin, and their briefcases switch often, causing chaos. Finally, Marlon persuades Marin to help him. In the meantime, Samantha escapes from the gangsters and returns to Marlon. The gangsters kidnap Marin, thinking he is Marlon, but Marin makes them all drunk, so the police and an inspector arrest the gangsters.

"Uncle Marin, the Billionaire" unexpectedly became the highest grossing Romanian film of the 20th century, with over 14,600,000 tickets sold at that country's box office, gaining an almost mythical reputation in Romania, but outside of its home country, it still feels below all the hype, rarely managing to be something more than just mildly amusing. A peculiar pastiche of American screwball comedies and Romanian mentality, this film also carries some of their clichees revolving around the concept of a comedy of mistaken identity, since the main actor Amza Pellea plays both the simplistic peasant Marin and the American billionaire Marlon—it suffers from forced set-ups, contrived coincidences and occasionally spasmodic situations, whereas not all jokes ignite. However, there is still enough of good moments here to be found that are surprising, and they arrive swiftly thanks to the elegent directing by Sergiu Nicolaescu, who usually directed serious movies. 

In one of the best jokes, Marin is annoyed by a fly in his hotel room, so he tries to hit it with his hand, but instead pounds the top of the TV set which just turns off (after it was previously turned on by a pounding in the first place) and then hits the fly standing on the button to call the room service, a maid (as Marin comments: "Her mind is as short as her skirt"). In another visual gag, Gogu chases Marlon across the hotel hallway, finds a door locked, so in order to try to break it, he runs a few steps back to gain momentum, but goes too far and instead falls down a shaft on the other side of the wall, landing (again) in the basement with the dirty laundry. And in a commotion at a crowded night club, Marin's wife Veta mistakes Marlon for Marin and starts attacking him for dancing with another woman, which goes so far that Veta at one point walks to the singer, tells him: "Shut up!", takes his microphone away (!) and uses it to say: "Marin, stop! You can't get away from me!" The car and motorcycle chase sequences at around 49 and 54 minutes into the film, respectively, were inserted for more dynamic charge, but while it is amusing watching motorcycles driving across a beach full of tourists, they don't quite translate into humor. Overall, "Uncle Marin, the Billionaire" is a fun and relaxed light comedy, creating problems and twists, but in the end, just like in the works by Moliere, everything is resolved with a relieved gusto.

Grade:++

It Rains in My Village

Biće skoro propast svijeta; drama, Serbia, 1968; D: Aleksandar Petrović, S: Ivan Palúch, Annie Girardot, Mija Aleksić, Dragomir Bojanić, Eva Ras, Bata Živojinović

A village in Syrmia, Vojvodina. Triša is a pig owner on a farm who claims to enjoy his independence as a bachelor. Joška, another farmer, gets Triša drunk and finds a priest who marries him to Goca, a mute, mentally handicapped woman. Triša and Goca get a son. When an art teacher, Reza, arrives in the village to teach painting, Triša falls in love with her and even chases Goca away from his house. A pilot crash-lands with his plane on a tree and continues the affair with Reza, who dumps Triša. Later, Goca is found killed, and the police suspects Triša, but his father gives himself in, instead, thereby saving Triša from prison. The pilot leaves, admitting to Reza he is already married. The villagers tie Triša's arms and legs to church bells, leaving him having above the ground, and then kick him until he dies.

Compared to his wonderful film "I Even Met Happy Gypsies" where he had an impeccable sense for 'magic realism' which he combined with unexpected avant-garde, the director Aleksandar Petrovic delivered a weaker, meandering and vague film "It Rains in My Village", which didn't quite satisfy as the follow-up to his interest in rural areas and minorities living there. Petrovic aimed for a lyrical, surreal, even disconnected approach in his movie style, but some disjointed and underdeveloped moments clash badly with each other, and simply don't fit well. The relationship between the pig farmer Trisa and the mute, mentally handicapped woman Goca is handled the worst, since Petrovic ignores Goca so much it borders on artistic negligence—take, for instance, their sequence of ending up together: Trisa is drunk and then tricked into marrying Goca at night of a ruined church in a montage without any dialogue; in the next scene there is a baby next to Goca while the villagers stare at them; in the next scene the kid is already a five-year old and speaks to a slow-moving snail on a table... all these ellipses happen within only three minutes, with an impossible sense for rushing through such a delicate and crucial sequence that simply is not given due weight, and already the new character is introduced coming to the village in the car, the art teacher Reza, with whom Trisa will have an affair. 

But as the old film rules says, before the viewers can sympathize with the poor girl whose brute husband cheats on her, they first need to get to know the girl better, and the movie needs to conjure up emotions towards her, as Babaja rightfully concluded in his similar drama "The Birch Tree". Here, Goca has only maybe 5 minutes of running time in total in the entire film, which is not only too little, but is at the disservice to the excellent actress Eva Ras who had so much more potential. The rest of the film's focus in amost exclusively on the love triangle between Goca, Trisa and a pilot who randomly enters the film and stays there. Petrovic doesn't bother with the classic narrative and instead insists on random collection of episodes, some of which work better, and some worse. One interesting episode is when farmer Joska stumbles upon Czechoslovak cars parked in the meadow, and the drivers listening to the Yugoslav radio, depicting the then actual Soviet-Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, claiming that "500,000 foreign soldiers are in the country" and that they are "shooting at every moving vehicle in their way". Another is the comical bit where Trisa's father confesses on his deathbed that he lied about the murder to protect Trisa, but the man (Bata Zivojinovic) who wore black and pretended he is the priest, just takes his black robe off and reveals to be the police inspector. The ending aimed at being a great tragedy, but since the emotional anchor was missing (Goca's intimate state), it didn't amount to quite the punch it intended, and feels rather overstretched. 

Grade:++

Haibane Renmei

Haibane Renmei; animated fantasy mystery series, Japan, 2002; D: Tomokazu Tokoro, S: Ryo Hirohashi, Junko Noda, Akiko Yajima, Eri Miyajima, Fumiko Orikasa

A girl is falling from the sky, with a crow flying next to her. The girl finds herself in a womb-like cocoon and "hatches" inside a room, where she is greeted by other girls with wings and a halo circle above their heads. The girl, who also has these wings, is given the name Rakka, and her mentor is Reki, who tells her they are "Haibane". They are in a small town surrounded by huge walls, and nobody is allowed to exit them, except traders with masks who don't speak. Rakka has a sense of guilt, but cannot remember anything about her previous life. When's Haibane's halo starts to flicker, it is time for them to go to the western wall and disappear in a beam of light. Reki is frustrated that she is bound by a sin she can't remember and wants to die in front of a speeding train, but Rakka saves her, gives her forgivness, and thus Reki also disappears in a beam of light. 

Anime series "Haibane Renmei" is one of those stories that cram in more mysteries than they can chew. Just like "Lost", it brings up a riddle, then another one, and another one, and another one, but in the end, nothing is resolved, and the viewers have the impression as if the ending and a conclusion are missing. Set in a mysterious little town, where the main heroine Rakka was born from a cocoon in a room and doesn't remember anything from her past, and now has angel-like wings and a halo floating above her head, "Haibane Renmei" poses some universal existential questions where the viewers ask themselves: who are we? In what kind of a world are we living in? What is our purpose in life? Where did we come from? Where are we going? "Haibane Renmei's" world is fictional, but some of these universal parallels to our world overlap. One interpretation is that these characters died too young—maybe through suicide?—and are now in this town, stuck in a limbo of sorts, until they have repented for their errors and catch up with their lost time, when they are sent back to Earth, but not enough data is given for sufficient conclusions. The mood is overall depressive and "mellow", with only small bits of humor (a plate with a cake on it placed on the halo of Hyoko's head).

Most of the 13 episodes revolve around bland, mundane daily events of Rakka and other haibane: Reki works in a kindergarten with kids who also have wings and halo circles above their heads; Kana is fascinated with making the clock tower tick and ring; Hikari works at a bakery... It is almost a sort of 'slice-of-life' with slow pacing. The huge city walls keep them all inside, and Rakka observes some crows as they fly across the other side, back and forth, in a lingering shot that symbolizes their need to outgrow this narrowed-down status and set themselves free. Unfortunately, this never happens—the characters are all simply too passive to do anything outside this grey area. In one episode, Rakka follows the crows and falls at the bottom of a well, where she spots a skeleton of a bird at the ground. She has a feeling that she is somehow to blame for the crow's death, even though she doesn't remember anything from her past, so she burries its corpse and finds some relief and closure. This should have been explored more, but is, unfortunately, left frustatingly vague and never brought up later on. In another episode, the masked interpreter gives Rakka the assignment to clean the inside of the city walls, which are connected with a small water cannal, and she observes the unknown script written on it. Does this play role in the story later on? Is it expanded upon? No, just another throw-away mystery. "Haibane Renmei" is too cryptic and hermetic for its own good. It wants the viewers to decipher all these abstract allegories for themselves, but ultimately it makes the viewers think more about the practicality of the story than the sole authors did. Imagine if "The Truman Show" had just stopped at halfway into its story, and you would get the impression of the flawed vagueness of this anime.

Grade:++

Snow White

Snow White; fantasy, USA, 2025, D: Marc Webber, S: Rachel Zegler, Andrew Burnap, Gal Gadot, Jeremy Swift (voice), Tituss Burgess (voice)

Snow White works as a maid in a castle ever since her father, the King, died, and her stepmother took over as the new Queen. Citizens of the kingdom live in poverty. When the magic mirror on the wall says that Snow White is more beautiful than her, the Queen orders a hunter to kill Snow White, but he lets the girl escape into the forest. Snow White finds refuge in a cottage inhabited by the seven dwarfs, who become her friends. The Queen disguises herself as an old grandmother and gives Snow White a poisoned apple from which she dies. However, Jonathan's kiss revives Snow White who returns to the castle and becomes the new Queen after the old Queen dies upon breaking the mirror.

The live-action remake of one of the most famous and critically recognized animated Walt Disney films of all time, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", is naturally far below that level, but still an overall solid, innocent and honest family film with emotions, on par with other live-action remakes, Favreau's "The Jungle Book" and Condon's "Beauty and the Beast". Due to pre-production misinformation and the US culture wars, it became the scapegoat of ridiculous anti-woke counterculture fanatics (the scandalously malformed rating of only 1.6/10 on IMDb, when in reality it should have been a 5.5/10, signaling the abuse and misuse of the IMDb voting), which makes it more difficult to watch the film in a neutral, objective way without prior biases, but as it is, it is an easily watchable film where Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot actually delivered good performances as Snow White and the Evil Queen (though the latter is underwritten and doesn't get much to do except being mean). 

The live-action remakes of Disney's animated classics are unnecessary, and the bland musical sequences bother and feel shoehorned, whereas it was pointless to have CGI of the seven dwarfs instead of real human actors, though this film has its funny moments. One is when Snow White wants to confront the Queen regarding poverty in the kingdom, so they have this exchange: "Snow White, have you finished your chores? It's important we all do our share." - "Well, that's what I came to speak to you about, actually. Sharing." Cue to the Queen angrily lowering her spoon to stop eating from her luxurious table for a moment. When the guards bring a thief to the room, the Queen has this exchange with him: "Find his home and burn it to the ground." - "Funny thing is, I don't actually have a home." And that the movie can even be charming and sweet at moments can be found in the moment where Snow White gives her necklace to Jonathan before he departs, who says: "I can't accept this." - "I'm not giving it to you. I'm just giving you reason to return." The seven dwarfs have very little character development, which is a pitty, and thus some of the bonding with Snow White feels too mcuh like a shortcut. Nonetheless, Jonathan is a good addition, and the final 20 minutes give a new, unpredictable finale to the story. It's a flawed "Snow White", but it's still "Snow White".

Grade:++

Frieren (Season 1)

Frieren; animated fantasy series, Japan, 2023; D: Keiichiro Saito, S: Atsumi Tanezaki, Kana Ichinose, Chiaki Kobayashi, Yuichi Nakamura, Nobuhiko Okamoto

After spending 10 years fighting and defeating a demon king, elf magician Frieren and humans Eisen, Himmel and Heiter return back to a city that hired them. Frieren, who has a much longer lifespan and is a thousand years old, leaves to collect books with magic spells. Returning after 50 years, Frieren meets the old Himmel, who dies. Saddened that she never got to know him, Frieren goes to visit Heiter, who also dies, but leaves an adopted girl, Fern, to be her apprentice. Frieren and Fern travel across the land, and meet Stark, a clumsy dragon slayer. They also get another companion, Sein. They go to a city in the north to a tournament where Frieren wants to obtain the certificate of a magician of the first order from Serie, an elf with blond hair who is still angry that Frieren's mentor, the late Flamme, gave the knowledge of magic to humans.   

Anime "Frieren" is a gentle meditation on the passage of time and how the deceased can live on in memory of people whose lives they affected, just told in a fantasy setting. A big problem is that the authors keep changing the direction of the story three times, which makes its tonal shift a little bit inconsistent—it starts out as a meditative, quiet contemplation on transience; then switches to a road movie where Frieren and her three companions travel from town to town and meet people; and then, suddenly, almost as if the authors got scared this will not be able to keep the attention of the viewers, they changed it to an action-battle subplot, with even some bloody moments. "Frieren" starts out there where "Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" ends, by presenting Frieren returning to a city with her three human companions Eisen, Himmel and Heiter after defeating a demon king in a campaign, which is only mentioned off screen. The mood, the patient character development and stunning animation give an outline of this anime, which is continued later on. Frieren, an elf with huge longevity, is even depicted as somewhat arrogant towards humans who live much shorter lives, obvious in episode #4, where Eisen has this exchange with her: "Don’t you want to take an apprentice with you?" - "That would be a waste of time. As soon as I would have tought him something, he would have already died." - "That’s not the point of a journey". - "It is for me. My time with you wasn’t even a hundredth of my lifespan". Later on, though, she develops more compassion and starts living in the moment by living with humans. 

Some inserted bits of humor are refreshing. For instance, in episode #5, "dragon slayer" Stark is introduced, standing still, seemingly to confront a dragon attacking a village. The villagers celebrate him as a defiant hero who confronted the beast. But then he admits to Frieren he was just too petrified to move at that moment, while the dragon was cutting rooftops, until it got bored a flew away. Episode #12 introduces Frieren's magic potion that dissolves women's clothes and which Frieren wanted to give to Stark as a birthday present, but Fern pours it on Frieren herself and it dissolves her clothes and leaves her naked, so she puts a blanket on. Episodes #8 and #9 are the first to offer a strange action de-tour, where demons Lugner and his assistant Linie use own spilled blood as solidified spears. This leads to one genius moment in episode #10: demon Aura has a "scale of obedience", which causes the person with stronger magic powers to control the weaker one, but Frieren suppresses her own magic powers to trick Aura into thinking she is stronger, but then the scale starts tipping in Frieren’s favor—and thus Frieren unleashes her true capacity and simply orders Aura to kill herself with a sword. After that, there is another bland road movie subplot, until the exciting finale with the tournament battle. This leads to two more brilliant moments: one is in episode #21, where Kanne cannot fight the powerful mage Richter because she depends on water for magic powers, so Frieren breaks the giant dome barrier above them, rain starts pouring down all over, and thus Kanne now has a trump card and uses this as a catalyst to defeat Richter in a giant magic water bubble. The other one is in episode #26, where Ubel outfoxed a magician with an invincible magic cape and a hood by simply cutting his cloth with scissors and then killing him from the inside with her magic powers. A undefeated clay clone uses her long hair to create spikes that pierce participants, but Ubel simply cuts the clone’s hair and thus finishes her off, Samson-style. Sadly, Frieren's two companions are absent from this finale. "Frieren" is composed out of three substories, but only the one featuring action and battle sequence truly rise to the occasion with ingenuity and inspiration, and thus it would have been better if the meditation and road movie substories had been cut way shorter than the undue weight they got.

Grade:++

Alpine Fire

Höhenfeuer; drama, Switzerland, 1985; D: Fredi M. Murer, S: Thomas Nock, Johanna Lier, Rolf Illig, Dorothea Moritz

A small desolate house somewhere in the Alps consists out of a family of four: father, mother, their deaf teenage son Bub, and teenage daughter Belli who teaches Bub how to spell and write. They feed pigs and chickens on the farm and try to manage their finances. Bub is acting more and more erratic. When the lawn mower shuts down and Bub throws it off the cliff, the father gets angry and Bub hides in the mountains from fear. Belli brings Bub food and they sleep together and have sex. Then they return back to the house. When Belli finally admits to mom she is pregnant with Bub, the father takes a rifle and aims it at Belli, but Bub intervenes and in the chaos the father is shot. The mother quickly dies, too. Bub burries their corpses in the snow and now leads the house with Belli.

Ranked in a local poll by film critics as the best Swiss movie of the 20th century, Fredi M. Murer's "Alpine Fire" is a 'raw', astringent and unglamorous ethnographic incest drama that plays with a combination of several disparate elements—it has both slow and powerful images, and is both minimalist and expressionistic at times. Filmed on only one location of the house on the mountains and featuring only four people (except for one brief excursion in which the family descends down to visit grandmother and grandfather at their house), the story slowly builds up a feeling of isolation which is embodied in the deaf protagonist Bub who feels sexual frustration, pressure, discomfort and a need for some relief. He acts peculiar, nervous, and seemingly incomprehensible, such as when he throws his sister Belli's radio in the water or when he lies on the ground to play with little pigs on the farm. Murer has a sense for aesthetic images supported by the stunning Alpine landscapes—for instance, the unusual frame of the father mowing the meadow on the highly steep hill or the tracking shot of Bub running across the long stone wall. 

The middle of the film, where a "fugitive" Bub in nature is visited by Belli who gives him food from the house, is highly poetic and subtle: they hug and fondle during the night, the fire burns, and then there is a wonderful, cathartic scene of their blanket on the meadow with a mountain in the background. Did the sex between the brother and sister happen suddenly? Not really, since there were subtle clues before—one scene at 45 minutes into the film indicates already something. In the first half of the film, the pressure is all on Bub—whereas in the second half, the pressure is all on the rest of the family, after the incest "twist". Nothing is presented as black and white, and Murer shows understanding for the shortcomings his characters found themselves in, so that even the brute father is not a real villain—in two seperate sequences, the grandmother tells to Belli everything about both the father ("Many nights your mother cried because of Franz's mother. She ruled the house till the end. All the children left home quickly. Franz was the youngest so he had to stay, engaged for 15 years. She didn't let another woman near as long as she lived") and Bub ("Nobody is to blame. For three years nobody noticed that he didn't hear. When he was small he laughed and screamed like all children"). It's an uncomfortable topic, but done with a lot of comfortable humanism, and as difficult it is to start watching this film—the longer it lasts, the more engaging it gets.

Grade:+++

Cognac

Tajna manastirske rakije; comedy, Serbia, 1988; D: Slobodan Šijan, S: Rick Rossovich, Catherine Hicks, Gary Kroeger, Dara Čalenić, Velimir 'Bata' Živojinović

A Yugoslav-American billionaire invested a fortune to restore a defunct monastery on a Yugoslav island because he is obssessed with its brandy which he didn't taste for decades. The mute monks who made it have disappeared, so the billionaire's daughter Ella travels from the US to the island to help re-create the brandy herself. Attracted by a large sum of money, numerous scammers show up pretending to be monks, including Bogoljub, their only requirement being that they don't speak. Bogoljub has to hide from his mother, Zorka, but when she shows up on the island and recognizes him, his cover is over. A gypsy band kidnaps Zorka by mistake, thinking she is Ella, to demand ransom to create an independent gypsy state, but Zorka saves herself. An old monk in the cave shows up and helps re-create the brandy with the final touch: igniting its surface in the glass. Bogoljub and Ella fall in love.

The director Slobodan Sijan ("Who's That Singing Over There?", "The Marathon Family") didn't manage to stand out with this overstretched and thin comedy which runs out of steam fairly quickly. "Cognac" (literal Serbo-Croatian translation: "The secret of the monastery brandy") starts out well, with at least one sympathetic and funny joke: while describing the life of the monastery, the American assistant says that the monks "never spoke or cried-out even during the direst emergency", as the flashback shows a monk trying to pick a herb on top of a cliff, but a rock breaks underneath him, so he just opens his mouth in "silent shouting" as he falls down into the sea, not ushering a single word. However, the main tangle where the rich American Ella travels to the island to restore the monastery but all the people showing up there are scammers pretending to be monks to get her money had much more potential than the rather routine story flow we got. Some jokes still manage to ignite (American Ella goes to a bank to exchange her money, but since one US dollar is worth a 1,000 Yugoslav dinars, the bank clerk gives her a full sack of money, so she goes: "The exchange rate here is great!"), but there is too much empty walk and the story drags. The authors wanted to make an "international film", so the majority of the dialogue is in English, and it features several American actors, including even Rick Rossovich ("The Terminator") who plays one of the fake monks who cannot say a word, whereas the locations on the Mljet island are wonderful. Unfortunately, the movie didn't have inspiration to conjure up better jokes (one missed opportunity, for instance, is the the underground cave laboratory to try to distill the brandy, which could have been used for several gags), and thus the last third feels especially faded and tacky, ending on a stale and pale note.

Grade:+