I'm Right Here encourages, and rewards, persistence and doing the right thing (Film review)

  

Hong Kong International Film Festival and other event

literature available at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre

 

I'm Still Here (Brazil, 2024)

- Walter Salles, director

- Starring: Fernanda Torres, Selton Mello, Valentina Herzage, etc. 

- Part of the HKIFF's The Masters program

 

After having viewed a dud of a movie earlier in the day, I returned to the Hong Kong Cultural Centre a few hours later to view a second Hong Kong International Film Festival offering.  With a start time of 9pm, running length of 136 minutes and heavy subject, I hoped that I'm Still Here wouldn't be too hard going.  And so it proved, as Walter Salles delivered a cinematic gem that was thoroughly involving and appealed to my heart, soul and mind.

 

A period drama based on real life events, I'm Still Here is based on the memoirs of Marcelo Rubens Paiva, the only son of Brazilian politician and engineer Rubens Paiva and housewife turned lawyer-activist Eunice Paiva.  Set largely in Rio de Janiero in the early 1970s, when Marcelo was just a boy (played by  Guilherme Silveira for the most part; and Antonio Saboia as an adult), the film opens with scenes of people swimming in the sea and playing volleyball, and generally frolicking, on the sandy beach which the Paiva family home is within walking distance of and looks out to. 

The Paivas are depicted in the early section of I'm Still Here as a happy, loving, upper (middle) class (they employ a housekeeper) family -- comprising a cheery father (Rubens Pavia is played by Selton Mello), mother (Eunice is primarily portrayed by Fernanda Torres and later in the movie by her mother, Fernanda Montenegro) and five children -- whose home teems with life and regularly plays host to friends of the adults and children alike.  But with Brazil being under a military dictatorship (after the 1964 military coup which had sent Rubens Pavia out of congressional office), trouble lurks and the less optimistic among the people, including bookstore-owning friends of the Pavias, go into exile, if they are able to do so.

 

One night, a group of armed men descend on the Pavias' home and take the family patriarch away.  Eunice and the children -- bar for the eldest daughter, Vera (played by Valentina Herszage), who had been sent abroad for a year -- are effectively put under house arrest for a time. Later, Eunice and another older daughter, are taken away for questioning. And while the younger woman is returned home after 24 hours, Eunice ends up spending several harrowing days in a cell where she can hear screams and a room where she's interrogated whose floors are stained with blood.

 

After she is returned home but her husband is not, Eunice mounts a campaign to locate him and find out what's happened to him.  For the sake of her children, the youngest two of whom were still pre-teens, she tries to maintain a general sense as well as facade of normality but the tension, stress and fear is palpable and impossible to wish away.  And yet she determinedly carries on, refusing to rest until she uncovers the truth about what happened to her husband and, also, why.

 

Throughout it all, there's a sense of authenticity to the story and sincerity in its telling.  It's worth noting that director Walter Salles was one of the children who was regularly invited into the Pavia's house in Rio de Janiero, being close friends with the younger members of the family.  And that in Fernanda Torres, I'm Still Here has a lead actress who is absolutely masterful in portraying a woman who tries to mask her feelings, yet whose face periodically -- and heart-breakingly -- betrays her emotions.

 

Based on what I've seen, I'm Still Here rightfully won the Best International Feature Film Oscar this year.  I've not seen all the other films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar and performances nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress.  They must have been absolutely fantastic; otherwise, this movie and its lead actress can count themselves very unfortunate indeed to not also got those awards.

 

My rating for this film: 9.0

They Shot the Piano Player compares favourably to a number of Oscar-winning works! (Film review)

 

My life in Hong Kong: film festing, and way too ubiquitous 

police presence (See the police van on the 

other side of the road from the HKIFF advertising?) :S

They Shot the Piano Player (Spain-France-The Netherlands-Portugal-Peru-U.K., 2023)

- Fernando Treuba (who's also wrote the script) and Javier Mariscal, directors

- Voice actors: Jeff Goldblum, Tony Ramos, Abel Ayala, Roberta Wallach

- Part of the Hong Kong International Film Fetival's Animation Unlimited program 

 

The last animated movie I viewed prior to viewing this multinational offering was Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron (Japan, 2023).  I realise it's unfair to compare these two very different cinematic offerings -- but if I did so, I'd say that I actually liked They Shot the Piano Player better, and am surprised that it didn't even get nominated for the Animated Feature Film Oscar that the Studio Ghibli production won this year.

 

Speaking of Oscar nominated animated works: Persepolis (France-U.S., 2007) is one of three works I got to thinking of when viewing They Shot the Piano Player; with the other two being the non-animated Academy Award winners Searching for Sugar Man (2012) and Missing (1982).  For like Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi's work about a girl growing up in Islamic Revolution-era Iran, this offering from Fernando Teruba and Javier Mariscal is an animated docudrama -- in the latter case, about an American journalist trying to figure out what happened to a musical hero who appeared to have vanished into thin air, a la Searching the Sugar Man's Sixto Rodriguez, in a foreign, South American country similar to the fictional one that's the setting for Costa-Gavras' Missing.

 

It's 2010 and New York music journalist Jeff Harris (voiced by Jeff Goldblum) is planning on writing a book about the Brazilian bossa nova craze of the 1960s.  Early on in his research, he comes across a recording featuring the piano playing of Francisco Tenório Júnior and determines to learn more about this Brazilian musical talent.  

 

On research trips to Brazil, Jeff interviews illustrious Brazilian bossa nova musicians like Gilberto Gil, João Donato and Chico Buarque (voicing themselves in the movie) about their music, and memories of Tenório Júnior.  At some point, he changes the subject of his planned book to the piano player whose music, life and mysterious disappearance back in 1976 he has become well nigh obsessed with.  And eventually, he is able to piece together the tragic story of a much beloved musician and man who went missing while on tour in then dictator-ruled Argentina -- leaving behind a wife, children, mistress and many friends mourning his disappearance from their lives.

 

At one level, They Shot the Piano Player is a enthralling dramatic investigation into what happened to a piano player who look to have unwittingly got involved in South American politics, to his great detriment.  At another, it's a chilling indictment of totalitarian regimes and their state terrorism -- which, in South America, led, among other tragedies, to the "disappearance" tens of thousands of people, many, if not all, of them innocents.  At the same time, it's also a beautifully hand-drawn work that's a thoroughly affecting celebration of bossa nova, and the life of Tenório Júnior.

 

It is very much to its makers' credit that they attempted to do so much, and succeeded in doing so.  A feast for the eyes and ears, this work -- which also happens to be tri-lingual (English, Portuguese and Spanish) -- is also heart-breaking and heart-warming at different parts of its story -- which, it is worth emphasizing, is, at heart, non-fiction. (The fictional bit comes from the man who became obsessed with the story of Tenório Júnior -- so much so that he kept at it for some two decades! -- being not Jeff Harris but the film's co-director and scriptwriter, Fernando Trueba -- and instead of writing a book about the Brazilian musician, he made They Shot the Piano Player!)

My rating for this film: 9.0

More Hong Kong government missteps in the battle against the Wuhan coronavirus

If only things were that simple...

 

In recent days, people have been looking at Israel and Chile -- two countries with higher vaccine rates than much of the rest of the world -- and questioning whether vaccinating against the Wuhan coronavirus is enough to get us out of the pandemic.  For some folks, it's obvious: yes, vaccines help but only if they are ones with high efficacy.  

 

Israel has opted for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine (which has a reported efficacy rate of 95 percent) and it looks to have paid dividends.  Specifically, there has been found to be a 94 percent drop in symptomatic infections and a 92 percent drop in serious cases of the disease among those vaccinated with it.  On the other hand, Chile went for the Sinovac vaccine and despite more than 33 percent of the Latin American country's population having had one or both jabs, it is currently encountering problems quelling a second coronavirus wave.        

 

At a medical conference in Chengdu this past weekend, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention director, Gao Fu, acknowledged that current Chinese vaccines (including Sinovac) don’t have very high protection rates.  Back in January, a Brazilian study showed that Sinovac had just a 50.4% efficacy rate.  Worse, it was reported earlier this month that: "A recent study of the effectiveness of Chile’s vaccination programme found that two weeks after receiving a second jab [of the Sinovac vaccine], it is 56% effective, but with one jab effectiveness drops to just 3%"!   

 

As it so happens, Hong Kongers have the option of getting either the Pfizer/BioNTech or Sinovac vaccine.  Based on their efficacy rates, it should be a no-brainer which one people should choose.  And, if one factors out political considerations, it's hard to understand why the government has even bought and is administering Sinovac vaccines to people here.

But the truth of the matter is that how the Hong Kong government is choosing to fight the Wuhan coronavirus seems to be informed more by politics than medical concerns alone.  And today, Carrie Lam has reaffirmed that with her revelation that further relaxing of social distancing regulations affecting such as restaurants and bars are predicated on the use of the government's Leave Home app (which many people -- including IT people I know -- see as spyware and consequently shun) even more so than vaccinations.  

 

With Hong Kong recording just two new coronavirus cases today and its fourth coronavirus wave looking to have finally come to an end, people aren't exactly rushing to get vaccinated -- and this continued lack of incentives from the government is not going to encourage the vaccination drive.  Indeed, one could make a case for these latest government announcements making them less likely to want to do what the government wants, including going and getting vaccinated!

 

And what of the people without smartphones or any mobile phones (who are unable to download the government's app even if they wanted to)?  Furthermore, what of the people not (yet) eligible to get vaccinated (even if they wanted to) -- who currently includes everyone under the age of 30 -- as well as folks who are immunocompromised and otherwise have health reasons for not getting the vaccine?  

 

I guess Carrie Lam and co didn't think of them as they don't fall into those categories.  Put another way: she and her government don't seem to consider these people who are unlike her to be worth considering or caring about.  And then she -- who really seems to go from blunder to blunder in the fight against the Wuhan coronavirus, as with so much else - wonders why people don't consider her a trustworthy leader of Hong Kong!  Or maybe she -- who has taken off her mask (literally as well as figuratively) in recent weeks -- really doesn't give a damn anymore.  

Hong Kong's Wuhan coronavirus records broken twice in the past two days, and medical experts make clear who's to blame!

Voluntary masking (for the most part) 

on the Star Ferry back in January

 Mandatory masking and social distancing 

on the Star Ferry this July

Hong Kong's daily Wuhan coronavirus case tally hit a record high of 113 yesterday.  As if that was not bad enough, the daily number of confirmed cases exceeded that number today by five -- making for a new record high of 118 cases, with additional bad news coming by way of the territory recording its 15th fatality from the coronavirus to date earlier today.  

I realize that there are people in other, way harder hit parts of the world (like the USA or Brazil) who would celebrate if their country had Hong Kong's Wuhan coronavirus numbers.  But it needs to be borne in mind that it took Hong Kong just 56 days to double its coronavirus case numbers from 1,066 to 2,132 (as of yesterday).  Also, while the territory had its first coronavirus fatality in early February, and lost four more people to the coronavirus between then and early part of July, it now has had a further eight coronavirus fatalities in the past 11 days.  In other words: This past few weeks have been a disaster relative to the previous months with regards to the coronavirus' impact on Hong Kong.

So it's only to be expected, then, that anti-Wuhan coronavirus measures have been further stepped up; with face masks now being mandatory in all indoor public spaces (including malls and building lobbies) as well as on public transportation.  Ironically, this makes it so that Hong Kong both has regulations mandating the wearing of masks as well as making the wearing of masks in public illegal (with the legal challenge to the latter still ongoing!)!

Although there is some joy to be had from seeing Carrie Lam effectively doing a big u-turn with regards to mask wearing, there also is a sense that all this mask talk is an attempt to, well, mask the real problems. After all, it's not like the vast majority of Hong Kongers haven't already been wearing masks when venturing out of their homes.  

Rather, it's widely believed that Hong Kong's third Wuhan coronavirus wave came about by way of further government mis-steps: namely, "a cavalcade of quarantine exceptions granted by the city's government". (And making things worse it its strange decisions as to what constituted "high risk" places for coronavirus infections; with the likes of the USA, Brazil and UK not being considered to be such even while such as Indonesia, the Philippines and India justifiably are).

 

There therefore have been calls to further tighten the SAR's border controls and make it so that far fewer people are allowed into Hong Kong without being tested for the coronavirus or going through quarantine than the 200,000 or so that freely entered the territory between February and June thanks to their falling into the 33 categories of persons exempted from doing so.  And those demands surely will only become louder after Dr Gabriel Leung, dean of the faculty of medicine at the University of Hong Kong, stated for the record today that new analysis of recent coronavirus samples suggests that the current wave of infections was brought in from outside of Hong Kong, most likely by people exempted from mandatory quarantine.

Should it not be clear: This medical expert's statement goes against the Hong Kong government's position that the exemptions did not trigger the recent surge in infections.  And further signs that medical experts are dissatisfied with how the Hong Kong government is (mis)handling the pandemic came about at the Hong Kong Medical Association press conference this afternoon, when the association's president, Dr Gabriel Choi Kin, ascribed Hong Kong's inability to carry out as many coronavirus tests daily as Singapore (20,000) or Macau (11,000) to its having a different head of government from them (with the clear implication being that he's talking about a qualitative difference between Hong Kong's and the two other territories!). 

More than by the way, Dr Choi seems to be quite the interesting fellow.  Among other things, he's both a past as well as current president of the Hong Kong Medical Association -- which would make him a real sucker for punishment as well as popular among, and respected by, his peers.  The good doctor also has a track record for being rather cheeky.  Exhibit A from earlier this year: the hand gestures he made when posing for photos at a previous Hong Kong Medical Association press conference.  Exhibit B, also from earlier this year: his having suggested that the People's Liberation Army bases in Hong Kong -- and/or the premises of the old Central Hotel, close to the Chief Executive's residence -- be used as quarantine facilities for coronavirus cases! :D

In the Intense Now and The China Hustle at the 2018 Hong Kong International Film Festival (Film reviews)

Chinese language banners for the Hong Kong International 

Film Festival and touting Hong Kong as "Asia's World City"

 

In the Intense Now (Brazil, 2017)

- From the HKIFF's Reality Bites program

- João Moreira Salles, director and scriptwriter

- Featuring: Daniel Cohn-Bendit

 

The late 1960s saw political turmoil in France (which saw a period of civil unrest that included labor strikes and students regularly taking to the streets to protest), Czechoslovakia (where the Prague Spring was followed by the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops led by the Soviet Union) and China (with the Cultural Revolution beginning and lasting all the way into the 1970s), among other territories.  

 

Born in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, in 1962, João Moreira Salles and his family were living in Paris in May 1968 but has no memories of those events even while retaining childhood memories of the holidays he spent back in Brazil during the same period.  Instead, he draws on the memories of others and a mixture of archival footage and precious "found footage" shot by unnamed private individuals (sometimes surreptiously, at what can be imagined to have been at no small amount of risk to their personal safety) to look at and consider how things were and must have felt to witnesses to history along with those who had a hand in making history in Paris and Prague while making use of amateur film footage that his mother shot while travelling in China the same year.

While there are some who might consider In the Intense Now lyrical, poetic, even profound, I feel obliged to admit my feeling disappointed by this essay film not being as, well, intense as I was expecting a documentary with that word in the title -- as well as the type of subject matter it addresses -- to be.  Also, I feel rather perplexed, even disturbed, by the way that Maoist China ended up serving as a bucolic backdrop for his mother's personal journey rather than be accorded the kind of socio-political analysis that was granted to France and Czechoslovakia in the documentary.

 

It's not just that this made In the Intense Now's China sections seem less interesting than the others in the film.  Rather, it shows up a cultural ethnocentrism that privileges the West over the East whose exoticism appears to overly enchant but also render less human and meaningful.  In this context, it says a lot that while individuals like French student activist Daniel Cohn-Bendit are explicitly named and focused on, along with then French president Charles de Gaulle and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, not a single Chinese person is actually named and otherwise rendered individually distinct at any point in this offering.

 

Then there's the matter of his perspective on Brazil in the film.  Serving in the main, like China, to tell a more personal story seemingly intended as a counterweight to historical events taking place around the same time in Paris and Prague, there's no mention of Salles' home country being under military rule -- a rule that came after a 1964 coup d'état and which only came to an end in 1985 with the election of its first civilian president since 1960.  In short: Even while much of what ended up being covered in In The Intense Now was intriguing watching, I found myself thinking of what Salles omitted and feeling the film suffered as a result of what he chose to leave unmentioned even while going on and on about events in other lands.

 

My rating for the film: 6.0 

 

The China Hustle (U.S.A., 2017)

- Also from the HKIFF's Reality Bites program

- Jed Rothstein, director and scriptwriter

- Featuring: Dan David, Matthew Wiechert, Carson Block, James Chanos, Soren Aandahl, Wesley Clark

 

Back in the 19th century, P.T. Barnum was moved to observe that "There's a sucker born every minute".  More than one hundred years on, we keep on being reminded of that, including by makers of documentaries such as Inside Job (2010), the Oscar winning work about the 2008 financial meltdown, and now also The China Hustle, which shows that various lessons have stayed unlearnt in the years since.

 

An economic suspense-thriller whose jaw-dropping last act effectively points to the show not being over yet by a long chalk, this documentary looks at American financial operators who conspire with businessmen in China to poach billions of (American) dollars from regular American investors who mistakenly place to much trust in their government and financial institutions, including big-name auditing firms and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.  But while it does feature a number of "talking heads", its use of film footage shot over in various parts of Mainland China as well as Hong Kong and American locations as diverse as Flint, Michigan, and Wall Street gives an idea of its ambition as well as reach.

 

Early on in The China Hustle, its de facto protagonist, investor turned short trader Dan David, announces that "There are no good guys in this story, including me."  In a story like this though, he and his fellow "bulls turned bears", including Matthew Wiechert, and the likes of fellow whistleblower James Chanos and his colleagues, are the fellows you'll find yourself rooting for -- even while what they do can destroy the fortunes and reputations of others (including personalities like General Wesley Clark, who, at first glance, seems to be the personification of a straight arrow guy) and financially enrich themselves.

 

Unearthing scams so large and bare-faced that it's a shock not only to realize that they're going on but that they're not punishable as a result of their perpetrators having figuring out how to take advantage of certain legal loopholes, The China Hustle is the kind of film that had me leaving the cinema all abuzz and eager to discuss what I had seen with somebody else who had seen it too.  Fortunately, in my case, I have such a friend -- whose review of the work had whetted my appetite to check it out even while admirably allowing for me to make my own discoveries along the way! 

 

My rating for the film: 8.5

Black Code should be a "must watch" for anyone who values freedom and the internet (film review)

Canadian filmmaker Nicholas de Pencier (with an HKIFF 

interpreter by his side) at his film's Q&A session

Black Code (Canada, 2016)

- Screening as part of the HKIFF's Reality Bites program

- Nicholas de Pencier, director, scriptwriter, producer and cinematographer  

After many years of resisting the impulse to do so, I finally joined the Facebook community a few weeks ago.  In so doing, I've been witness to how people can seem willing to reveal so much about themselves via the posts they put up, share and like on that social media platform; many of which tend to be on the light-hearted side but some of which are also are seriously political in nature.

How many Facebook users, I wonder, really do realize and care that they are leaving a super detail-filled information trail out on the internet for such as various government agencies to see?  And can they envision that even seemingly innocous comments could land one in big trouble and result in one getting tortured and forced to flee one's homeland?

To be sure, the Facebook user in question who recounted his having undergone precisely that experience in the disturbingly thought-provoking Black Code is Syrian (rather than, say, American, Japanese or living in some other country whose citizenry tend to trust their government).  And it's also true that the vast majority of cases that Canadian filmmaker Nicholas de Pencier has chosen to focus on in his work are Third World ones.  

But, as the cinematographer turned documentary director sought to make clear in a Q&A session after the Hong Kong International Film Festival screening of his film that I attended: he's by no means intending to say that the Chinese, Ethiopian, Pakistani, Syrian, Brazilian and other national governments shown monitoring the moves of their citizens in his documentary are the only ones out there engaging in internet surveillance along with censorship and cyber espionage.  (Also, he pointed out, it's not like he's unaware of companies also engaging in activities that threaten free speech and privacy on the internet; instead, it's just that the subject is so vast that it's worthy of a whole different film.)

Inspired by Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace, a book by University of Toronto political science professor Ron Diebert, whose Citizen Lab has been examining government actions designed to disrupt and/or control the internet for more than a decade, Nicholas de Pencier travelled the world to chronicle diverse examples of state surveillance, political activism and citizen journalism to show how governments seek to crush political dissent but individual citizens also are seeking to fight back. 

Certain segments of his powerful documentary are disturbing and horrifying, with real deaths being shown on film and also being shown having been preceded by violent threats and other inflammatory comments against the eventual deceased posted online.  And there are points when watching Black Code that one might feel tempted to just give up on the whole internet thang and get out of cyberspace.  

Probably realizing how his often alarming work would make many thinking people feel, Nicholas de Pencier consequently also goes out of his way to not only emphasize how brave many of the people (political activists, content providers, journalists, etc.) who feature in his documentary are but, also, that there are indeed netizens out there who have managed to strike blows for free speech, freedom, justice and a whole plethora of human rights.  

Something else that Black Code makes clear is that there really are some benefits to our world being increasingly interconnected, by the internet and otherwise.  For example, Brazilian citizen journalists can better do their job using an app that previously was only popular in Japan.  And here in Hong Kong, people watching a documentary by a Canadian filmmaker can see parallels, say, not only between what the Mainland Chinese government is trying to do in Tibet and Hong Kong but also people protesting political injustice and economic inequality in Brazil and participants in -- and those who continue to be sympathetic to -- the Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement.  

My rating for this film: 8.5

The Second Mother has a lot to say about people and society (film review)

Some Hong Kong International Film Festival screenings

are less crowded than others but be prepared to

queue for a bit to get in regardless!

The Second Mother (Brazil, 2015)

- Screening as part of the HKIFF's The Passion of Latin America Cinema program

- Anna Muylaert, director and scriptwriter

- Starring: Regina Casé, Camila Márdila, Michel Joelsas, Karine Teles, Lourenço Mutarelli 

So much for gender equality.  Although I viewed other works at the 40th Hong Kong International Film Festival with a female protagonist (The Bacchus Lady) and scriptwriter (with Erica Li being the principal scriptwriter of both Nessun Dorma and The Mobfathers), Brazilian drama The Second Mother is the only film of the 19 offerings I checked out at this year's fest with a female at its helm. 

Anna Muylaert also scripted this fascinating cinematic effort which revolves around Val (Regina Casé), a woman who left her hometown and her daughter in Brazil's impoverished northeast to go and work as a live-in housekeeper for a wealthy Sao Paulo family of three, and also shows much of the goings-on in that household from her point of view.  

As a brief prologue establishes, Val had looked after Fabinho (Michel Joelsas), the biological offspring of her employers, Barbara (Karine Teles) and Carlos (Lourenço Mutarelli), from when the high school senior was a young boy.  Ironically, even while she's become like a second mother to him -- and, in fact, may have stronger ties with Fabinho than he has to Barbara -- Val's daughter, Jéssica (Camila Márdila), feels closer too to another woman than her biological mother on account of her having lived apart from Val for much of her young life.      

Seemingly from out of the blue one day, Val gets a phone call from Jéssica telling her mother that she's coming to Sao Paulo and wants to stay with her.  Unexpectedly, the young woman didn't realize until she gets to the big city that her mother lives in the very house in which she works -- in a small room that Jéssica turns her nose at.  In another surprising turn of events, it's revealed that Jéssica is in town to take the same entrance exams for a prestigious and highly competitive university that Fabinho also will be sitting for.

To say the least: Jéssica's arrival into the midst upsets the household's social order; one with clearly defined class divisions that everyone -- both masters and servants -- had adhered to.  Suddenly, there had arrived someone whose behavior and outlook they had assumed would be similar to her mother's but actually turned out to be quite a bit more educated and culturally sophisticated.  In addition, Val appeared to have ensured that Jéssica had grown up with more creature comforts than the older woman had allowed herself.  Most unnervingly of all to the others was that the young woman possessed a confident, assured air that made it patently clear that she didn't only see herself as needing to always obey her elders but also didn't consider herself the social inferior of Val's employers.   

It's interesting, and enlightening, to see how Fabinho, Barbara and Carlos react to, and treat, Jéssica -- whose skin, more than incidentally, has the same light shade/color as that upper-class trio's rather than the darker skinned Val.  But what's even more riveting and thought-provoking to behold are Val and Jéssica's interactions, and how it is that the tables get turned as the story goes along as to who is the more ignorant person who still has a lot to learn about life in general, and their place in the world.

Far more than the upstairs/downstairs or family drama it initially looks like it's setting out to be, The Second Mother actually offers up lots of points to ponder about a variety of social situations and existing inequalities.  Rather than be heavily didactic in tone, however, this capably directed and scripted film actually is an engaging offering -- filled with fine acting (particularly from lead actress Regina Casé and the considerably younger Camila Márdila), and possessing some comically absurdist moments, poignant scenes and also quite a bit of suspense and tension at times!   

My rating for the film: 8.0

Bringing my 2011 HKIFF coverage to a close with a film each from South America and Africa

2011 HKIFF advertising -- featuring festival
ambassador Miriam Yeung and mascot Puppet-kid

With this blog entry, my coverage of the 35th Hong Kong International Film Festival comes to a close. Beginning with Carlos on the afternoon of March 20th, I viewed a grand total of 21 films at this year's film fest (all of which I will have reviewed in 12 blog posts over the past three weeks or so -- all (not including this one for now!) of which I'm happy to say have attracted a fair amount of comments -- thanks to those who gave me proof that people have been indeed reading these entries!).

And for the record: I really did pay for all the tickets to the screenings out of my own pocket -- and have no media or other official affiliation with this fest that I've come to not be a fan of in a professional capacity but still very much love in my leisure hours!

Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within (Brazil, 2010)
- From the Gala Presentation programme
- Jose Padilha, director
- Starring Wagner Moura, Irandhir Santos, Andre Ramiro, Pedro Van-Held, Maria Ribeiro, Sandro Rocha, Milhem Cortaz, etc.

Three years ago, I viewed Jose Padilha's Elite Squad. The 2008 Brazilian winner of the Berlin Film Festival's Golden Bear as well as a multi-award winner at the Brazilian equivalent of the Oscars actually didn't impress me all that much at the time -- and in the records I keep of films I watch, I rather dismissively described it as a "[s]implistic, crude and violent action[er]" even while conceding that it "nonetheless is undeniably engrossing to watch".

In the years since, however, I have come to hold a more positive opinion about the crime drama which sees an elite police squad (known as "BOPE" for short after the initials of the Portuguese Portuguese equivalent of "Special Police Operations Battalion") wage a no-holds barred war against drug dealers and associated criminals in Rio de Janiero; not because I re-watched it again but, rather, due to certain memories of the film having lingered longer and more vividly than I thought anything from the effort would.

So I was very excited to see Jose Padilha's follow-up film getting its Asian premiere at this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival -- and, of course, made it a point to get a ticket to one of the film's two screenings at the fest. (More than incidentally, I really felt like I was in Movie Mecca when, at the screening I attended, I found myself sitting just two seats away from Teddy Robin Kwan... aaah, Hong Kong, where one doesn't only get to see cool movies but is liable to have these cool chance spottings of celebrities one admires and/or respects!)

Getting back to Elite Squad 2: the 2010 follow up film largely takes place 13 years after the events of the first Elite Squad. Some flashbacks help get the viewer up to speed with the latest events and developments -- one which sees BOPE's Lieutanant-Colonel Nascimento (Wagner Moura) now a government under-secretary, his former BOPE lieutanant (Andre Ramiro) disgraced and demoted, and their biggest enemy now being corrupt policemen who have become de facto militia kingpins who have whole communities under their thumb and at their mercy.

This time around, there is less brutal action on view but no less of an adrenaline rush when viewing this movie that doesn't lack for plot twists, complex plotting and intriguing characters -- and a pulsating soundtrack that keeps things feeling energized, even when the movie pauses to have characters offer up whole lines of expository dialogue -- be it on screen or via a reflexive narrative voice-over.

And whereas I found the first Elite Squad to espouse a simplistic, close to fascistic "the ends justify the means" point of view, Elite Squad 2 really does feel more admirably complex in terms of the opinions that are tendered in the film as well as in its story-telling. For one thing, the protagonist (who still is referred to as Colonel Nascimento even after he ceases to wear the uniform and skulled badge of BOPE) is now able to take a wider view of things, including one that reaches back several years in order for him to pinpoint where certain things starting going wrong and such.

For another, even while Wagner Moura owns the screen whenever he's on it, the film has some other interesting characters -- notably liberal activist turned legislator Diogo Frava (Irandhir Santos)... who just happens to have married Nascimento's ex-wife and now is co-raising Nascimento's son along with his spouse! And while this kind of twist can seem soap operatic, it actually does help the film -- and, of course, increase tensions -- that Nascimento doesn't just take his work personally but actually ends up having personal reasons to go after the bad guys.

My rating for this film: 9

A Screaming Man (Chad-France-Belgium, 2010)
- From the Auteurs programme
- Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, director
- Starring Youssouf Djaoro, Diouc Koma, Emile Abossolo M'bo

A friend and I were talking earlier today about our respective 2011 HKIFF experiences. Interestingly, we had not seen a single film in common -- despite her having viewed 16 movies and I 21; a state of affairs that got me recalling David Bordwell's observations about an earlier HKIFF and how it can feel as though "you [and your friend have] both been in the same town, and probably hit the same venues, but you've been to different festivals".

This friend also shared that the last work she had viewed at the 2011 HKIFF had not been great -- and how disappointed she felt that her personal HKIFF-ing had not ended on a high note. To which I replied that I can relate... for even while the final film I saw of this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival -- or, at least, its mega part 1 -- was actually okay, the fact of the matter is that it sadly lacked the adrenaline rush and high of Elite Squad 2.

Instead, A Crying Man is a generally languid work about a middle-aged African man trying to do generally mundane things like hold on to a job he loves while living in increasingly desperate times. Modest in scope and feel, its protagonist is a former Central African swimming champion who has worked for decades now as a pool attendant at a plush -- by African standards -- hotel now managed by a French-speaking Chinese woman. Taking no small amount of pride in being his country's first ever pool attendant, he has brought his son in to be his assistant.

As times get rough though, some workers get let off and the man popularly known as "Champ" (but whose first name, we also learn, is Adam) finds himself coming up against his son in a battle for the pool attendant job. What he proceeds to do -- or not do -- in the days after he learns about this development is something that will come to haunt him and cause him a significant amount of pain and remorse.

A study in understatement, A Screaming Man is one film in which screams tend to be silent but are perhaps even more heart-wrenching because they are not heard by others for the most part. On an associated note: quite a few significant developments largely happen off screen or internally -- though, and here I'll credit helmer Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, much does get realized and understood.

Stylistically, things are on the minimalist side as well. For example, the singer-girlfriend of Adam's son is never heard singing with a band or any instrument accompaniment, only a cappella. Additionally, the cinematography is so restrained that it's only after a shot lingers for several seconds on screen that the viewer is liable to realize that it is indeed beautiful or consumately composed.

In theory, all this is well and good. And I must say that I did come away from the screening with much respect for the film's maker. At the same time, I must admit to wishing for some (more) "oomph" and "pizazz" to the work -- so that I could come away not only respecting the restrained effort but possessing more emotional reactions to the sad and bitter story that unfolded within it.

My rating for this film: 7.5