Chiko, Özgür Yildirim, Germany 2008

One could easily dismiss Yildrim's film as yet another German Mean Streets set in Germany's immigrant community, if it wouldn't make for such compelling viewing. Like a string of similarly themed films, Chiko, too, takes place in Hamburg. This may be explained by the fact that it was produced by Fatih Akin's Corazon Films, and with Hamburg being Akin's home town it is also the base of his production company.

An edge-of-your-seat thriller, Chiko has doom written all over it and with its fratricide at the end, it actually has all the makings of a Greek tragedy. Volkan Oezcan and Denis Moschitto play two friends - Tibet and Chiko - who are so close that they consider themselves brothers. Driven by dreams of easy cash for fast cars and trashy women they get involved with big-time drug-dealer Brownie, played by Moritz Bleibtreu, only that Tibet decides to skim some of Brownie's money to buy a kidney for his mother, who depends on weekly visits to the hospital for dialysis. Once Brownie gets wise to Tibet, he gets on Brownie's bad side, and it's a really bad one. While at first Chiko still stands by his brother manqué, his yearning for the lush life eventually make him turn against Tibet. Chiko goes on to garner brownie point after brownie point with Brownie, especially after a drug deal gone awry in which Chiko narrowly avoids getting killed.

The tides turn towards the end when two of Brownie's cronies are on the hunt for Tibet for having tried to finish off Brownie. Although Tibet's attempt at shooting down his former boss was unsuccessful, Brownie demands his head, and while turning the flat Tibet inhabits with his mother upside down, Brownie's cronies accidentally kill his mother. Earlier on in the film Chiko mentions how he regards "Tibet's mother as also being his own". No surprise then, that her killing puts him in a fury that results in him shooting down Brownie. Tibet, however, is absolutely inconsolable over the loss of his mother, and blaming Chiko for her demise, he stabs him to death before, it is suggested, turning the knife on himself.

Yes, there sure is a lot going on in a mere 90 minutes and there certainly is enough violence to put Tarantino and Scorsese (in his heydey) to shame as virtually every protagonist in the film gets killed. But as I said above, although Chiko could be dismissed as little more than a German version of Mean Streets while the genre it helped create is akin to a German-Turkish version of the Blaxploitation films of the 1970s, Yildrim's film no doubt is very absorbing and well crafted. Fast paced, well acted, and peppered with snappy dialogues which, sadly, don't always translate well into English, Chiko offers a different, fascinating, side to German cinema, though one which, at least in the Anglo-Saxon world, is still largely ignored.

Watch the trailer to Chiko here!

Chiko is out on DVD.

Laurel Canyon, Lisa Cholodenko, USA 2002

Similarly to one of Cholodenko's previous films, High Art, Laurel Canyon also revolves around a couple, Sam and Alex, confronted by a small group of people, in this case musicians, collaborators of Sam's mother, Jane, who is a producer in LA's music industry.

Sam and Alex are academics whose lives take them from their Ivy League universities on the east coast to Los Angeles, Sam's hometown, where they stay with Jane. Jane's life is as unconventional and unrepressed as Sam's and Alex's is controlled, restrained and dominated by the mind rather than indulgence. The first five minutes of Cholodenko's film set the tone for the remaining 90 minutes, as from the campus of an Ivy League university, where during a formal occasion we see Sam talking to Alex's parents, the film cuts to the free-spirited, bohemian Laurel Canyon neighbourhood of Los Angeles, where Sam and Alex are on their way to his mother's new house.

It goes without saying that with these polar opposites confrontations are bound to happen. Sam's relationship with his mother is complicated, to say the least, although he clearly doesn't hate her. He is far too rational a person to be able to feel anything as intense as hatred. There is only one single scene in Laurel Canyon in which Sam loses control of his emotions - when he discovers Alex in bed with his mother's lover and his mother. Sam is, however, ashamed of Jane, as he admits to Alex early on in the film. It is up to the viewer to imagine what Sam's childhood must have been like, growing up in Los Angeles in the free-wheeling 1970s with a mother working in the music industry. Moreover, Jane's new boyfriend, Ian, is sixteen years her junior, which puts him in Sam's own age range.

Although at the beginning Laurel Canyon seems to focus on Sam And Alex, it is Jane who gradually emerges as being at the centre of the film and undoubtedly, she is Laurel Canyon's most fascinating character. What Jane lacks in motherly instincts she more than makes up for by her integrity, honesty, and level-headedness. Never mind that she smokes dope and can't hold down any serious relationship. But make no mistake, although it may be her son who's the family's intellectual, Jane's not born yesterday, either. Quite the opposite. However, unlike her son, whose emotional life is held in check, Jane is free of all inhibitions and takes life as it comes. At first I thought - feared - Jane would be a reprise of the Norma Desmond character, replete with being obsessively jealous of her younger lover and afraid of losing her looks. But nothing could be further from the truth. Played by the brilliant Frances McDormand, giving one of her best, most nuanced, performances of her career, Jane became a complex, dexterous, charismatic, character, who for all her shortcomings, does have her scruples and principles.

I'm always amazed, yet relieved, that films like Laurel Canyon are still getting made, even though their commercial prospects are no doubt limited as they are about little more than the complexity and frailty of human relationships. But to see disaster and destruction in the cinema there is no need for a bonanza of special effects.

Abigail's Party, Mike Leigh 1977

Having watched Career Girls again a few days ago, prompted me to revisit some other, earlier, Mike Leigh gems, among them Abigail's Party, Leigh's made-for-television movie from 1977.

What really struck me about Abigail's Party this time is how Leigh was quite obviously inspired by Nichols'/ Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Although Woolf is less a statement about class than an observation of marriage - although one could argue that the two are related - the parallels between the two films struck me as quite interesting. For starters, there is the obvious parallel of two couples being at the centre of the narrative. Never mind that Abigail's Party has one additional character, Sue, one whose functions it is to provide the narrative with its elephant in the room - the party of her daughter Abigail. Both Abigail and her party are frequently referred to by Sue and the other characters, however, we neither actually get to see Abigail nor the party. This has its parallel in Woolf in the non-existing son, invented by George and Martha to fill the void between them and to make up for the son they never had. In fact, all couples in Woolf and Abigail are childless.

Another fascinating parallel between the two films concerns some of the characters. While Beverly, who is at the centre of Abigail's Party has her equivalent in Martha, Angela, the simpleton, is akin to Honey in Woolf. On the same token, the shift in the dynamics between the two couples in Abigail's Party is also not dissimilar to Woolf as both Albee/ Nichols and Leigh allow their characters to develop and reveal unexpected strengths and weaknesses. In other words, both films avoid easy categorisation of their protagonists, and as their attitudes shift, so do our sympathies towards them. For instance when Beverly, who, through most of the film comes across as obnoxious and pretentious, reveals an unexpected sympathy and vulnerability at the end when faced with the sudden death of her husband whom only minutes ago she had nothing but contempt for.

However, although Leigh may have used Woolf as a blueprint and inspiration for his own film, there is no denying that at their heart, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Abigail's Party have been made for different reasons with both films having a rather different premise. That said, Leigh's mockery of the middle-class and those who aspire to be part of it may be at the core of his own film, Nichols', too, also is not entirely without its own statement on class as Martha's contempt for George is based on his lack of ambition which prevents him of becoming head of the faculty which would have resulted in a step up the social ladder, not to mention in a rise in salary.

Bound, Andy & Lana Wachowski, USA 1996

I don't think I can be accused of hyperbole calling Bound a classic. After all, it put the Wachowski siblings on the map, resuscitated Gina Gershon's career after the Showgirls disaster the year before (which, as some may recall, caused some critics to proclaim the end of Gershon's career as well as that of her co-star Elizabeth Perkins), not to mention that Bound remains the only film that I know of which has two lesbian lovers as the protagonists. What's more, two lesbian protagonists who take on the mob and beat it at their game. Oh, and there is the small matter of Bound keeping the viewer at the edge of their seat literally from the beginning through to the end. No mean feat for a film that clearly is not a popcorn movie, although, come to think of it, that most probably is part of the reason why.

Having watched Bound twice in a row when it first came out I saw it again last night and I wasn't surprised to notice that it has stood the test of time. Bound is an exercise in slick, taut, story-telling matched by an equally slick cinematography. Considering that a few scenes aside, almost the entire film takes place in two adjacent apartments, never losing the attention of the spectator is a rare achievement in film-making. On the same token, although the storyline is not always easy to follow, it is not confusing, either, and it is apt to - almost - satisfy even the most discerning viewer out to spot holes in the plot. But if after the third viewing I picked up on - notably one - weak point in the narrative doesn't mean a first-time viewer will, too. Nor is that in any way compromising the credibility and the probability of the narrative, much less ruin the excitement. That precisely is the artistry of Bound, or rather its script, that the way the story is told - and acted! - makes you overlook these tiny flaws, and I think the last time that happened in a film Mr. Alfred Hitchcock was still alive.

But some of the credit must also go to Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon, who play the lesbian couple, Violet and Corky. They are not only convincing, not to mention sexy, their chemistry also is so real, so intense, that again, it made me think of Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant in, say, Hitchcock's Notorius. Actually, Bound is one of those way-too-rare examples of an outstanding synergy between scriptwriter, director, cinematographer and the actors, all of whom are at the top of their game.

Although I doubt that there is any self-respecting movie-lover out there who hasn't seen this early Wachowski-gem, there's little point in delving into the detail of Bound's narrative as it'll bore those who have seen it while it'll spoil the fun for those that haven't.

Hans Fallada (Rudolf Wilhelm Ditzen)

Hans Fallada (1893 - 1947)

A few years ago, the US-based Melville Publishing House had a small number of novels by German writer Hans Fallada - among them Every man Dies Alone - re-translated into English which heralded the rediscovery of Fallada by the Anglo-Saxon world.

Looking at the decades between Fallada's death in 1947 and today, it is easy to forget that Fallada's books once were as popular abroad as they were in Germany. One of his best known novels, Little Man What Now?, was an immediate success in both the UK and the US when it was first published there in 1932, and already two years after its publication Universal acquired the rights and turned it into a film starring Margaret Sullavan with Frank Borzage directing.

Margaret Sullavan and Douglass Montgomery in Universal's Little Man, What Now?

Sadly, after his death, in the UK and the US Fallada disappeared almost completely into oblivion while in his home country, Fallada remained a well known writer though no longer a widely read one. A lot of his decline in popularity has, particularly as far as the US and the UK are concerned, I believe, to do with the fact that he was one of those writers who did not emigrate during the Nazi reign. Other, so called 'inner emigres', included Erich Kaestner, Ricarda Huch and Nobel prize laureate Gerhart Hauptmann. However, although Fallada's position towards Nazism and its leaders may at times have been ambiguous, as the war wore on Fallada's stance towards the Nazis did shift to almost open opposition as evident in some of the works he wrote while being in incarceration in 1944, making no bones about his opinion of Hitler's regime, much to his own detriment.

It may well be the fact that the black-and-white picture, dividing Germans into either Nazis or opponents, read: emigrants, which prevailed over the past 65 years or so, has begun to shift, resulting in a new evaluation of those Germans who sat out the Nazi years at home rather than emigrating. This, in turn, may have prompted the rediscovery of writers such as Hans Fallada.

And what does all this have to do with film?

It appears that Stefan Arndt of X-Filme (Goodbye Lenin; The White Ribbon) in conjunction with Vincent Perez - who is of German descent - have just acquired the rights to what arguably is Fallada's best and most significant book, Jeder stirbt fuer sich allein (English title: Alone in Berlin; American title: Every man Dies Alone).

American edition of Fallada's Every Man Dies Alone/Alone in Berlin

Alone in Berlin/ Every Man Dies Alone is based on the real-life story of Otto and Elise Hampel, a married, Berlin-based, couple, who were executed in 1943 for resisting the Nazis. Archival documents about the Hampels were passed on to Fallada by a returning emigre, Johannes Becher, who rightly deemed it important to make the fate of the Hampels accessible to a wider audience. Indeed! None other than concentration camp survivor Primo Levi considered Alone in Berlin to be the best existing book about the German Resistance.

A previous film version of that book exists in the form of a German made-for-television movie dating from 1975 and starring Hildegard Knef, no less. I have long been thinking that more than any other of Fallada's novels Alone in Berlin does indeed merit rediscovery, not to mention a remake for cinematic release. It'll be interesting to see what Arndt's X-Filme and Perez will make of it.

Locarno Film Festival, 04 - 14 August, 2010

The Locarno Film Festival opened last night with Benoit Jaquot's film Au fond des bois (France/ Germany 2010). The two main sections of the festival are the Piazza Grande, named after the location where these films are shown and the International Competition.

Besides Benoit Jaquot's opening film, in this year's schedule of Piazza Grande are new films by Francesco Rosi, Daniel von Aarburg and Baran Bo Odar, while the International Competition includes films by Bruce LaBruce (US), Pai Marais (Germany) and Christoph Honore (France).

Also part of the Locarno Film Festival's programme are a complete retrospective of the films of Ernst Lubitsch, covering his German as well as his US period, and so-called special programmes on the work of director Jean-Marie Straub and actor John C. Reilly.

For the full programme, including all sections and sidebars of the Locarno Film Festival, please click here.

Career Girls, Mike Leigh, UK/ France 1997

Ever since it was made, Career Girls, Mike Leigh's follow-up after his triumph at the Cannes Film Festival with Secrets and Lies the year before, has somehow always been eclipsed by his more high-profile offerings - Vera Drake, Topsy-Turvy, etc. - yet to me, Career Girls is one of the best, most human, films of his career.

Career Girls tells the story of a friendship - some might argue love - between two girls who met as room-mates, but whose relationship gradually turns into a deep and lasting friendship. Although how deep, Hannah and Annie only realise once they meet again after a 6-year break. To show the various stages in the development not just of their relationship but also in Hannah's and Annie's character and persona, Leigh uses a lot of flashback, like he had already done in his previous film. Although flashback may be a rather conventional device, Leigh uses it to great effect.

Career Girls starts in the present, when we see Annie travelling on a train in what appears to be the first class compartment. In the flashback that follows we become aware of the changes Annie has gone through, for not only does she now seem more confident and more settled than she did in the past, she also suffered from a skin disease which resulted in ugly scabs on her face. Apart from causing her to constantly lower her head, her skin disease occasionally also made her the brunt of Hannah's jokes. But if Annie was visually scarred, Hannah's scars are internal, having suffered under a domineering mother who always preferred her other daughter over her. Annie is met on the platform by Hannah. While it takes the two women a while to break the ice, to overcome the initial awkwardness, their relationship intensifies over the course of the weekend. Both have moved on from the struggling, penniless, students they were when they first met. Hannah is now a successful executive while Annie is working as a psychologist.

It is one of Leigh's trademarks to caricature the middle class, and surely Career Girls would have lent itself to do just that for this is precisely where both Hannah and Annie are eventually comfortably placed. However, while there are still some traces left of Leigh's contempt for the middle class - notably at the film's beginning - these are not so much expressed as caricature, but more so in observations of the conventionality both women, particularly Hannah, have succumbed to. That said, it is Hannah who has one of the best of the many witty lines in Career Girls. Looking down from the balcony of a posh apartment she and Annie are viewing, she says to the property owner, "I suppose on a clear day you can see the class struggle from here".

While Leigh has rightly gained a reputation for his clever scripts full of sharp observations and witty one-liners, the dialogues in Career Girls are without a doubt among the best of his career. And although Career Girls revolves around both Hannah and Annie, it is Hannah who is at the centre of the film. That Career Girls turned into the timeless gem it has become is due to a considerable degree to the outstanding talent of the late Katrin Cartlidge who plays Hannah. This is not meant to diminish the achievement of the other actors - far from it. But Cartlidge breathed life into a character - Hannah - that is as complex and negative as she is hilarious and ultimately likeable. In Hannah Cartlidge created one of Leigh's most remarkable, most memorable, characters and no doubt gave one of that year's best performances.

Career Girls is out on DVD.