The Berlin International Film Festival stands out in the crowd of other movie fora thanks to its emphatic globalism and a powerful aura of civic activism. Often its premieres become not so much film events as social happenings.
This year’s geographical span was immaculate: among the contestants were film directors from Korea, Chile, the US, Senegal, and a dozen of other countries. Genre diversity was not forgotten either: there were comedies, dramas, documentaries, and even animation. Topical or socially significant themes were also represented, ranging from Django (France) revealing the genocide of Roma people during the Second World War to The Party (UK) and The Dinner (US) about corrupt politics to The Other Side of Hope (Germany – Finland) on refugees.
However, it seems that this year those responsible for selection decided to shift the accent in a direction totally unexpected for Berlinale: towards low-key privacy and even a certain retreat from social themes. The jury, led by the famed Paul Verhoeven (who in his day conquered Hollywood with his erotic drama Basic Instinct and now made an as convincing a comeback in the genre of erotic thriller, Elle), enthusiastically supported this tendency.
The Golden Bear for the best film in the main section was awarded to the Hungarian melodrama On Body and Soul by Ildiko Enyedi. It is a love story between a somewhat autistic quality control inspector and chief financial officer, both working at the same slaughterhouse. The inspector, a young woman, plays with her dolls in her free time, and has a punctilious daily schedule. Both she and the CFO dream about themselves as deer. The direction is almost impeccable (cameraman Mate Herbai deserves the prize indeed), but after quite a witty start the story steadfastly and irreversibly sinks into melodramatic banality.
The Silver Bears for Best Actor and Best Actress went respectively to Georg Friedrich (Bright Nights by Thomas Arslan, Germany – Norway) and Kim Min-hee (On the Beach at Night Alone by Hong San-soo, South Korea). Friedrich, currently one of the most popular German actors, appeared also in a cameo role in another selected movie, Wild Mouse (Austria). In Bright Nights he plays a father who overcomes his difficult disposition to go on a long trip into the wild with his son in order to repair their father-son relations. Friedrich is indeed convincing, but his effort alone is not enough for this tepid family saga to hold your attention. Kim Min-hee plays an unpredictable beauty who is hunted by mysterious and sometimes dangerous men; a potentially strong image is smothered by a mediocre directing. By the way, the festival public expected the Best Actress award to go to transgender actress Daniela Vega, who actually played herself in A Fantastic Woman by Sebastian Lelio, Chile (this being the only interesting thing about the movie). However, this melodrama about the woman fighting for her rights was only awarded a Silver Bear for Best Screenplay.
Another family story, Romanian Ana, mon amour, was seen as a candidate for a big award, since the director Calin Peter Netzer already holds a golden prize for Child’s Pose (2013). Ana, mon amour is essentially a two-hour-long psychoanalysis session: a middle-aged patient talks to his therapist trying to understand what busted his marriage. He had saved his wife from a psychic disorder, was happily married and had two children, but at last they had to part. The camera and actors (especially Diana Cavallioti as Ana) are here practically perfect, as is always the case with Romanians, but there are serious problems with dramaturgy. Too much stuff is excessive: absolutely unnecessary scenes with the protagonists’ parents, too much psychoanalysis as such; sometimes you get an impression that the director tries to subordinate family relations to clear-cut Freudian formulas. Finally, the jury awarded only one Bear (“for outstanding artistic contribution”) to Dana Bunescu for editing.
Another family drama, but with a strong social bias, was the Grand Prix winner Felicite (by Alain Gomis, France – Senegal – Belgium – Germany – Lebanon), whose protagonist is trying to save her son’s life in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Extreme poverty, miserable hospitals, pervasive corruption and bribery, total criminalization of relations and personal deprivation of rights sound all too familiar. The only problem is that Gomis submerges the whole story way too much into local circumstances, while his actors and actresses impress more with the local exoticism than with their talent to transform. A certain similarity can be seen in Polish Spoor by the veteran director and screenwriter Agnieszka Holland: poor countryside, the protagonists are anything but wealthy, inequality is perceptible, but a way out is found in a sort of personal rebellion: the main female character, a provincial English teacher, opens a hunt on hunters to protect wild animals, and eventually starts something like a hippie-style commune with like-minded fellow countrymen. Again, there are no particular revelations in acting or directing, but the jury were obviously impressed by the plot and awarded Holland the Alfred Bauer Prize for “opening new perspectives on cinematic art.”
And last but not least: the best film according to most festival’s critics, The Other Side of Hope (Germany – Finland), winner of the Silver Bear for Best Director.
The Other Side of Hope is a new creation by Aki Kaurismaeki, an outstanding Finnish film director and screenwriter. It is a story of Khaled, a Syrian refugee, who tries to obtain asylum in Finland and looks for his sister at the same time. Kaurismaeki already addressed the theme of illegal migrants in Le Havre (2011), but here he offers a more dimensional approach with active migrant characters. This film partly resembles Kaurismaeki’s most titled movie The Man Without a Past (2002, Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival): it also features a miserable traveler attacked by street hoodlums (this time by skinheads), good Samaritans, and even a dog that befriends Khaled. In the meantime a parallel plot shows how a handful of Finns are trying to build a successful restaurant business. The author spares neither humor nor sarcasm for his fellow countrymen. The result is very witty; the dialogs and funny situations, with the characters’ totally imperturbable expressions, have always been Kaurismaeki’s strong side. The premiere cracked up the audience. Importantly, the director succeeded at creating true-to-life images of migrants, which was quite a challenge as such cross-cultural collisions always harbor risks for authenticity of plots based in a strange culture. Yet both Kaurismaeki’s Finns and Arabs are very convincing.
As to the audio-visual matter of the movie, with its painting-like deep chiaroscuro, fascinating quality of analog film and a brilliant soundtrack, was a breath of fresh air amidst the art house boredom of the competition. After all, all ends well in The Other Side of Hope. And this is not a happy end at any price, but a conscious and strong gesture of an artist who passionately experiences the world’s injustice and keeps his faith in humanity.
Finally, I will not deprive myself of the pleasure to remind that the Grand Prix in the competition of films for children and youth Generation 14plus was awarded to the Ukrainian-German documentary drama School No. 3. Partly it offers an answer to the question how our movies could become interesting for festivals like Berlinale: you need to speak to the world in a language it understands. The co-directors of School No. 3 succeeded due to making a film not about war but about absolutely universal things like love, death, and growing up, and the message was read and accepted. Just like that of Kaurismaeki, but then, on another level of course. Countries, names, and talents might vary, but the recipe is always the same. And it is not as unattainable as it seems.
