Frames from afar

Ervell E. Menezes recounts foreign films that made the grade at the 35th IFFI in Goa.

THE 35th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa will be remembered more for the entertainment dished out on the Panjim waterfront than for the quality of films in the cinemas. And though the fare was initially poor, the quality gradually improved and towards the end some excellent films were screened in the Cinema-of-the-World category. Denys Arcand’s The Barbarian Invasions (Canada) is a real winner as it records the last days in the life a university professor Remy and how his son does all in his power to make these painless and happy. Remy has cancer and though he did not get on well with his son Sebastian, he comes from London to be with him. He also breaks the rules, bribes the hotel staff, gets Remy’s old pals to come and meet him and it is real fun and games till the time comes.

Who are the barbarian invaders? Those who break the rules and misuse power and we come to realise for both the World Wars, Korea, Vietnam and 9/11, the 20th century wasn’t as bad as the age in which the colonisers, Spain and Portugal wrought havoc which killed millions. It is Arcand’s compelling narrative that makes it my favourite film (I’ve seen only 20) of the festival. His Jesus of Montreal was also at Cannes in 1989.

In the same class is Walter Sallas’ The Motorcycle Diaries (Argentina), about the young Che Guevara’s travels on a motorbike and on foot in South Africa and the incidents that later moulded his revolutionary mind; Andrey Zvyagintsev’s The Return (Russia), an amazing story of how two young boys react to the return of their father, estranged for 12 years; and Per Zalica’s The Fuse (Bosnia-Herzegovina) about life in that troubled region and how the locals are able to pull the wool over the eyes of the United Nations’ observers.

Then comes the Marathi film Shwaas already written about and which is India’s entry in the best-foreign-film category in the Oscars; the Uruguayan film The Wait, about the trying time a spinster daughter has to endure with her ailing old mother; and The Horseman, a Croatian love story narrated against the backdrop of the Christian-Muslim wars and strife. Then there are the two French films A Real Man and Nickel and Dime which showcases the sparkling wit and brevity the French know so well; Claude Chabrol’s Flower of Evil which is a wee bit of a let-down for all its Hitchcockian allusions; and the Brazilian Daughters of the Wind which is about family relationships, a topic which is dealt with in a number of films. Reconciliation is another issue dealt with often in the 35th IFFI.

Mira Nair’s Vanity Fair is quite disappointing, to say nothing of Nair not being able to get any of her stars for the opening of the festival. So is Sophia Coppola’s Lost in Translation which flatters only to deceive as it deals with the lives of Americans in Tokyo. Amos Gitai’s The Promised Land, about white slavery, is far too pornographic for a serious Israeli filmmaker like Gitai and The Colour of Happiness quite a disappointment for a country like Hungary, which is heavily into cinema. Of course, I concentrated on Cinema of the World and there were far too many middling films. Yet, half a dozen excellent films surely helped to make the festival memorable, even if the manner in which it was run was quite forgettable.

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