Berlin 2012 Reviews Round-Up & Awards

Going into this year's Berlinale you could be forgiven for thinking that all the A-list talent was presiding over the jury. It's an impressive roster: Mike Leigh is at the head, accompanied by Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi (last year's Golden Bear champion for A Separation), Hollywood star Jake Gyllenhaal, French auteur Francois Ozon (Potiche), Dutchman Anton Corbijn (Control), and Charlotte Gainsbourg. By comparison the competition line-up seemed extremely obscure. Whilst Cannes and Venice tend to lead with premieres from established directors, the Berlin Film Festival continues its recent tradition of backing more obscure auteurs. Out of the directors in the main competition only Italian veterans the Taviani brothers (with drama-doc hybrid Ceasar Must Die) and actor-turned-director Billy Bob Thornton (Jane Mansfield's Car) came with anything like a reputation. Most of the films come via relative unknown talents with few previous features to their name, such as Ursula Meier (Sister), Kim Nguyen (War Witch) and Miguel Gomes (Tabu). The result is a competition selection that has been enigmatic and interesting to explore, yielding its share of honourable failures as well as a half-dozen very solid works. Of course most of the 18 competing films are unlikely to see significant UK distribution and in the case of Greek inter-monastery love story Metéora that might not be a bad thing. Though there is some neat and imaginative (if crude) animation, overall it's a trite story about sexual repression and forbidden love in the church as our two protagonists - known simply as "monk" and "nun" - brood over whether or not to get it on. Similarly hard to imagine making an impression in the UK are two French language films with interesting concepts, found lacking when it comes to execution. Senegal-set film Aujourd'Hui (Today) is the story of a man who wakes up knowing he is living the last day of his life, exploring what he does next - with underwhelming results. French drama A Moi Seule (Coming Home) likewise has a promising synopsis - looking at the relationship between a young girl and her kidnapper, as she grows up in a Fritzl-like dungeon. Star Agathe Bonitzer is an interesting Lisbeth Salander-lite presence but otherwise it falls flat. The other French entries could play better, for instance Captive, which sees Isabelle Huppert cast as a French holidaymaker who is among those abducted at gunpoint from an Indonesian beach resort by Islamic terrorists. It's the only film I really hated, finding it more than a little Islamophobic, but it's got arthouse credentials. Well shot, big gallic star, white middle class panic etc. More palatable was Les Adieux A La Reine (Farewell My Queen) - which presents a handheld-reliant servant's eye view of Versailles Palace in the days leading up to the French Revolution. Mission: Impossible 4 star Léa Seydoux plays a lady in waiting in service of Diane Kruger's Marie Antoinette, with Xavier Beauvois cast as the king. Another period drama proved one of the competition's highlights, with Danish 18th century true story En Kongelig Affære (A Royal Affair) proving unexpectedly funny, solidly entertaining, and pretty emotional by the end. It stars former Bond villain Mads Mikkelsen as a German provincial doctor who is unexpectedly appointed as physician to the mentally incompetent Danish king, Christian VII (a brilliant Mikkel Boe Følsgaard), and uses his new-found influence to, effectively, rule the kingdom himself - enraging nobles as he seeks to implement the ideals of the enlightenment to improve the lot of the peasant class. With great sensitivity, stunning Swedish actress Alicia Vikander plays the young Queen Caroline, whose steamy affair with Mikkelson's Dr. Struensee proves their undoing. Intelligent and socially conscious filmmaking. This year's German entries were pretty solid but stand almost no chance of making their way abroad. Barbara was a favourite of audiences here, with Nina Hoss playing an East German doctor who's heart is set on sneaking into West Germany to be reunited with her lover. The German crowd laughed throughout, though I fear a lot of the humour - which seemed to come from tone, play on regional differences and specific word choices - is lost in translation. Hoss is terrific in it though and it looks lovely. Gnade (Mercy) is more compelling and universal - a morality play about a German family who move to remote Northern Norway, to a land of perpetual polar night. In it a married couple accidentally kill a young girl in their car and, having gotten away with it, spend the rest of the film juggling the ethics of the situation, wondering whether they should turn themselves in. Was Bleibt (Home for the Weekend) was also effective - a drama about a seemingly perfect, affluent middle-class family who wear false smiles and avoid discussing their (it turns out many) problems. The drama turns on the whims of a manic depressive mother who stops taking her meds and, early one morning, disappears into the nearby woods. One of the more obviously commercial prospects is low-rent Spanish horror Dictado (Childish Games) - an eerie story about a couple who adopt a child only to discover she may be possessed by a vengeful spirit with a connection to long-repressed past events. It takes a while to get going but culminates in intense, frenzied madness and some really dark turns. It's never believable, even when the ghost story is eventually rationalised, but it's always refreshing to see something intended to thrill in a festival context. Also daring to entertain was Billy Bob Thornton with the aforementioned Jane Mansfield's Car: a story about the romanticism of tragedy, namely war. Perhaps a bit unfocused, with too many characters and a wildly changing tone, the 60s-set film is nonetheless a very enjoyable black comedy with a great ensemble cast. Robert Duvall and John Hurt are fantastic as old patriarchs and WWI veterans from two culturally distinct families, whilst Kevin Bacon, Robert Patrick, Ray Stevenson and Billy Bob himself all show a younger generation sullied by WWII, struggling to connect with their fathers. As the war in Vietnam looms in the background we are asked to consider how each generation fails to educate the next about the horror of armed conflict. Also previously mentioned, the Taviani brothers' film Caesar Must Die was an early competition highlight - a bright spot during a weak first few days. Ostensibly a documentary (though more of a dramatisation) about maximum security felons as they put on a prison production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, the film follows the "rehearsals". Through these imaginatively staged rehearsals we get a loose adaptation of the play as well as a philosophical look at its contemporary relevance, reclaiming the Bard from his rarefied place among academics along the way. Reminiscent of last year's The Forgiveness of Blood (and arguably just as strong) is the gritty Hungarian entry Csak A Szél (Just the Wind), which follows a day in the life of a Romani family. Tense, harrowing and illuminating, this social problem film about recent anti-gypsy violence in the Hungarian countryside is difficult but highly rewarding. Likewise for African child soldier film Rebelle (War Witch), which is pretty distressing - looking at the reality (albeit with scenes of drug-induced escapism) for a young girl forced to kill her parents and become a warrior/spiritual conduit for an undisciplined army battling trained government soldiers. Expect this to play in UK arthouses. From a director know as Edwin comes the visually arresting and entirely odd Indonesian film Postcards From the Zoo. It looks beautiful and the central performance of actress Ladya Cheryl is great. It's the most beautiful film this year (appropriately enough for a film with "postcards" in the title), and certainly the most elliptical. From what I can tell it's about viewer complicity and the parallels between people and animals held in captivity - with the lead character, Lana, going from living in Jakarta zoo to working in a "massage" parlour, studied through one-way glass by clients. Another strong film, one of best in fact, is Ursula Meier's aforementioned Sister. This (again) stars Léa Seydoux, who is brilliant as the neglectful older "sister" of young Kacey Mottet Klein's Simon - a boy who escapes a life of poverty in a tenement building by sneaking into the luxury ski resort in the mountains above, where he steals equipment in order to survive. If that sounds bleak it isn't filmed that way and Simon, going by the name of Julian when on the resort, is reminiscent of a great French New Wave anti-heroes. Occasionally very funny and sweet, but it also has the potential to hit you in the guts. My favourite competition entry is Portuguese melodrama Tabu from Miguel Gomes, which belies its black and white, academy aspect ratio trappings to feel breezy and vital. Told in two parts (recounted in reverse chronological order) this is a highly stylised account of a 60s colonial love affair that ends in tragedy. Mostly silent, save for the narration, Tabu has more imagination and charm than anything else on show this year. Finally, I ended up in a screening with German subtitles and so managed to miss 188 minute long Chinese epic Bai Lu Yuan (White Deer Plain), which I've heard excellent things about. Some have compared it to Days of Heaven in terms of how the characters relate to their agricultural surroundings. Everyone has said it's extremely bleak in its depiction of death and starvation during the Chinese civil war. Sounds grim. This being Berlin the competition strand also includes a select group of high-profile "out of competition" features, most of which are already out in the UK (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Haywire, The Iron Lady). Of those yet to be released in Blighty, Robert Patterson vehicle Bel Ami swerves between entertaining and unbearable, Christian Bale's Chinese epic The Flowers of War is hilariously awful and oh so wrong, whilst James Marsh's Irish "troubles" thriller Shadow Dancer is tense and all-round good value. Golden Bear: Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, Cesare Deve Morire (Caesar Must Die) Jury Grand Prize: Bence Fliegauf, Csak A Szél (Just the Wind) Best Director: Christian Petzold, Barbara Best Actor: Mikkel Boe Følsgaard, En Kongelig Affære (A Royal Affair) Best Actress: Rachel Mwanza, Rebelle (War Witch) Best Outstanding Artistic Contribution: Lutz Reitemeier - cinematographer, Bai Lu Yuan (White Deer Plain) Best Script: Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg, En Kongelig Affære (A Royal Affair) Alfred Bauer Prize for Innovation: Miguel Gomes, Tabu Special mention: Ursula Meier, L'enfant D'en Haut (Sister)