Pitons

The film has its moments, but overall, it's a bit disappointing. There are many interesting characters, though I'd had more than enough of the headmistress by the end.

At first the surreal elements are carefully introduced, and blend very nicely with the almost reality of the rest of the plots. The Beaver hunters are particularly good. As the film goes on, however, some of the surreality descends into random bits and pieces without a lot of relevance.

By the last part of the film, where one particular surreal element is reacted to in semi-realistic fashion, I was no longer engaged by the characters and didn't care any more about the main plot, and was rather more interested in some of the other stories that hadn't been so laboured. Even though its only 88 minutes, I was waiting for the end for quite a while.

The camera-work, while interesting at the beginning, started to grate too - long slow pans across a table or room with nothing happening, with voices off, sometimes resolving on the people in the scene, sometimes not.

The landscapes were cool, with solid but dilapidated eastern bloc buildings. The characters were well drawn - except maybe the caretaker guys, I never quite understood what was going on with them - particularly the old man with the pit-bull who hates kids. His scene with the policeman was lovely. The ending also finished the film up nicely.

Maybe I'm just not enough into the context of the film, or perhaps it lost something in the translation. Pitons was interesting, but it got a bit stale about halfway through.