A documentary about Father Bob Maguire, In Bob We Trust, is one of the best Australian films for years.
This year’s Melbourne International Film Festival was marked by the now almost complete switch to digital projection – and by the triumph of the Americans.
To start with, there was Brian De Palma’s return to form with Passion, a sexy corporate thriller in his most delirious, experimental vein. The director of pop classics from Carrie to Scarface, De Palma might have been born to exploit the possibilities of an era when images circulate ever more rapidly and freely – when anyone can become a star on YouTube, or secretly photograph others using a mobile phone.
The origins of that era are explored in Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess – a deceptively quaint study of 1980s computer geeks, shot in black-and-white on an analogue video camera, that was another of the best films at MIFF. (Stanley Kubrick, the primary influence, would surely have loved it.) Other highlights among the lowbudget American ”indie” films were Joe Swanberg’s beautifully shaped romantic comedy Drinking Buddies and Dan Sallitt’s unorthodox coming-of-age story The Unspeakable Act.
French cinema also made an impressive showing, with Claire Denis’ scary Bastards, Serge Bozon’s antic Tip Top, Bruno Dumont’s harrowing Camille Claudel, 1915 and Arnaud Desplechin’s fascinating US co-production Jimmy P.
Festival guest Jia Zhangke headed in a bold new direction with A Touch of Sin, a quartet of mordant stories about life in modern China. Two more stand-outs were Antoine Bourges’ exquisitely calm, visually balanced East Hastings Pharmacy and Manoel de Oliveira’s gorgeously lit Gebo and the Shadow. Lynn-Maree Milburn’s In Bob We Trust, a documentary portrait of the extraordinary Father Bob Maguire is one of the best Australian films of any kind in years.
Of the 70-odd features I saw, my biggest disappointment was Nicolas Rey’s highly praised differently, Molussia, which struck me as a patchwork of avant-garde cliches.
I was also let down by a number of essay films, including Museum Hours, The Missing Picture, The Last Time I Saw Macao and The End of Time. Jean-Luc Godard’s punning, free-associative contribution to the anthology 3x3D was, naturally, in a class of its own.
The most stunning revelation was the digital restoration of Lino Brocka’s 1975 masterpiece Manila in the Claws of Light – a work of heightened, operatic social realism that ranks as one of the great city films. Brocka, who died in 1991, is a legend in the Philippines, but much of his prolific output has barely been seen in the English-speaking world; clearly, a large-scale retrospective is overdue.
Jake Wilson – THE AGE – August 13, 2013