marinelad

Previewing a number of short films for Sarajevo Film Festival I was amazed by this one. This mini social drama made me interested in other Ellis' works so I've spent some time exploring his home page. Beautiful photos, funny stories, plenty awards, bright young man...

In this brilliant 14-minute film Ellis shows father who's having a problem with raising his son the way he learns to fight for himself, father who is not able to confront, to stand up even for himself. Being attacked and humiliated by the same street gang, they are both scared. For a boy, it is natural to get terrified by older and violent kids, but father seems even more frightened. Since his father is too weak (soft), the boy takes the role/responsibility of an adult. So vivid and truthful, so excellent story, great actors and superb editing - I could barely name any weak point.

Cannot wait Ellis' first feature film!

It would take a lot of space to describe the long and windy road that Alexander Trocchi's novel had to go through to become filmed. Almost forgotten beat generation writer, pornographer, drug addict and vagabond who seem to be a person with a lot of talent for destruction, was re-discovered by David McKenzie who made a script based upon this novel. It took several years to get this film made and the fight was tough and exhausting. The leading actor, Ewan McGregor, did many efforts in this direction as well – and here we are, watching (even on the Bosnian TV!) a sharp and pretty brutal film about a womanizer who seduces and abandons almost all women in his surrounding. Although the film starts with a romantic scene of a beautiful swan on the calm water, the floating female corps appears immediately after the bird and turns all the beauty into the gloomy mystery. As the story folds up, we discover the secret life of the main characters following explicitly their sexual relationships and hidden past. In a true beat manner it seems that the whole life of the main character lacks some kind of purpose. Joe's senseless drifting from one woman to another comes in the flash-back retrospective episodes while the boat hovers through the channel between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Two men and a woman on the boat more mumble than talk and more communicate with the body language than with words. While Joe seduces Leslie's (great Peter Mullan) wife Ella (absolutely brilliant Tilda Swinton) in the present, it becomes clear that the deceased girl was a young vagrant's previous lover and that he knows very well how she died. Besides superb acting from the whole team, very special taste to this erotic, dark tale gives brilliant music by David Byrne which softens it when it becomes too mean to digest.

The most common description for Nishikawa Miwa's feature debut is "a dark comedy". It is obvious that a lot of darkness is there, as it shows a total collapse of one dysfunctional middle-class family, but calling it a comedy… this could be further discussed. It is not funny to discover that almost all family members lie every day to each other, they cheat, hide things and keep their secrets under the simulated calm surface. The already explored topic of a father who had lost his job but still pretends that everything is like it used to be is widened with an enormous amount of debt he produced. The debt is publicly announced at the grandpa's funeral, in front of all friends, family members and daughter's boyfriend. This causes not only a downfall of a family, but also a failure of a relationship between daughter Tomoko, the only decent and ethical person in this crew, and her boyfriend. This occasion also brings sudden come-back into the family of Suji, the disinherited son and a major fraud, who ironically comes as a family saver. Actually, the things went so deep and so wrong that there is nothing that could save this family from failure. The most impressive move of a young director is an excellent occasional use of a slow motion combined with broken sounds. Nishikawa Miwa uses it to emphasize the moments of emotional tense and gets very good effects. Besides this, the soundtrack is great. It is composed by Masaru Nakamura and performed by the Cauliflowers.