MIFF: what to see
Guaranteed to please ... Wes Anderson's deliciously funny Moonrise Kingdom.
This year's Melbourne International Film Festival lasts for 17 days and offers more than 400 sessions. You can't attend everything, so how do you choose what to see and what to miss?
The festival program arranges the films into broad categories - International Panorama (where you'll find the latest from well-known directors such as Michael Haneke and Ken Loach), Accent on Asia (including three features from Takashi Miike), Spotlights on the work of two French filmmakers (Leos Carax and, from deep in the vaults, Jean Epstein), documentaries (in abundance), a tantalising retrospective of Swedish crime thrillers (including Bo Widerberg's gripping 1976 policier, Man on the Roof), and so on - but you're not going to find much discriminating going on there. Its mission is to get you excited about everything.
Some films have already been scheduled for local releases later in the year - such as Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom (August 30), Walter Salles's On the Road (September 27) and Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights (October 11) - so you could set them aside for a later date and focus on those films you mightn't get another chance to see on the big screen.
But if you spend all your time dashing around town from one cinema to another, how are you going to squeeze in all the sidebar events? Such as the numerous Talking Pictures sessions in the Festival Club at the Forum. Or former London Film Festival director Adrian Wootton's lectures on films and TV dramas adapted from the work of Charles Dickens, which MIFF has programmed as part of the wider Melbourne Celebrates Dickens season.
My advice is to listen to the word-of-mouth around town during the festival, check out the on-line buzz, and, of course, take note of what The Age critics recommend. All of this can help, but I'm not sure that simply taking pot luck isn't your best bet.
The opening night film is local director Wayne Blair's feature debut, The Sapphires, and it's sure to go down well. Based on the Tony Briggs play that debuted in late 2004 at the Melbourne Theatre Company, it was shot in Albury and Ho Chi Minh City and is scheduled for a general release on August 9. The inspiration is the real-life story of a Koori girl group that overcame local prejudice and toured war-torn Vietnam in 1968. Briggs's mother was the lead singer. Deborah Mailman revisits her role from the stage play and finds strong support from Jessica Mauboy, Shari Sebbens and Miranda Tapsell, with Chris O'Dowd shining as their rough-diamond manager. Not great filmmaking, it's nevertheless bright, bouncy and a lot of fun.
Of the 40 or so films I've managed to see so far, several are guaranteed to please. One is Wes Anderson's sweet-natured, affecting and deliciously funny Moonrise Kingdom; another is Quebecois writer-director Philippe Falardeau's glorious, moving Monsieur Lazhar, a drama about an asylum seeker who discovers a new home in a Montreal classroom. On general release from September 6, it should be compulsory viewing for every member of our state and federal parliaments.
Then there's Japanese writer-director Hirokazu Koreeda's delightful I Wish, which embraces its youthful characters' quest to make things right in their world, their adventure fuelled by a rumour that, if you yell a wish at the precise moment two bullet trains hurtle past each other for the first time, it will come true (possible release next year).
Set in South-West China in 1975 and drawing on his own experiences of growing up as the son of urban intellectuals exiled to the countryside as part of Mao's "Third Front movement", Wang Xiao-Shuai's moving and politically astute 11 Flowers expands on an incident from his childhood concerning a fugitive from the law and a stolen shirt (possible release next year). Also drawing on actual events, French writer-directors Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache's hugely enjoyable Intouchables (scheduled for an October 25 release) is a platonic love story about two men coming out of their shells in ways neither could have managed without the companionship of the other. It stars Francois Cluzet as a Paris millionaire who's been left quadriplegic after an accident and the charismatic Omar Sy as the immigrant with a shady past who ends up as his carer. According to Toledano, the real-life characters on whom the film is based agreed to having it made only if it was a comedy. Intouchables keeps its end of the deal.
Then, for those who prefer films that do things a little differently, there's Portuguese director Miguel Gomes's Tabu (scheduled for release next year). Formally austere, shot in striking black and white in the old-fashioned Academy ratio, set in Lisbon and Africa and moving back and forth in time, it's a tale of forbidden love featuring echoes of the 1931 film directed by F. W. Murnau from which it borrows its title.
For his challenging rendering of Goethe's Faust, Russian director Alexander Sokurov plunges us into a Breugel-like panorama of twisted, distorted humanity, digitally de-colouring his operatically dark melodrama about a man who sells his soul to the devil and pays the price. Equally uncompromising is Belgian veteran Chantal Akerman's Almayer's Folly, set in the jungles of Malaysia, “freely based” on Joseph Conrad's first novel, filled with long, meditative takes, and telling a familiar story of love and loss across a racial divide.
There are documentaries aplenty at MIFF 2012 and many highlights among them. Written and directed by Israeli filmmaker Ra'anan Alexandrowicz, The Law in These Parts places members of the Israeli judiciary in the dock and examines the laws governing Palestinians in the occupied territories. The testimony is as revealing as it is astonishing. Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin's Oscar-winning Undefeated tells a compelling story about an all-black, underdog high-school football team in North Memphis and the inspiring white volunteer coach who became their moral guide and gave them a sense of direction (possible release next year). Werner Herzog's bleak Into the Abyss takes us inside death row in a Texas prison, introduces two young men, details their appalling crimes and reflects on the consequences for those left to clean up the mess.
And don't miss When a City Falls, Christchurch resident Gerard Smyth's moving account of the recent earthquake assault on the city and the residents' courage in the aftermath. Or Swedish filmmaker and festival guest Fredrik Gertten's Big Boys Gone Bananas!*, a sequel to his Bananas!*, which charted the exploitation of Nicaraguan workers by the US-based Dole Fruit Company and screened at MIFF in 2010. The new film is a riveting David-and-Goliath tale about the Dole corporation's attempts to have the earlier film banned.
Tom Ryan's top 10 MIFF highlights*
1. 11 Flowers (China)
2. Big Boys Gone Bananas!* (Sweden)
3. Caesar Must Die (Italy)
4. Intouchables (France)
5. In the Company of Rohmer (France)
6. I Wish (Japan)
7. The Law in These Parts (Israel)
8. Monsieur Lazhar (Canada)
9. Moonrise Kingdom (USA)
10. Undefeated (USA)
* in alpabetical order
■ The Age is a festival sponsor.
Visit the MIFF website for session details or to purchase tickets