Cinematic treat

Movie buffs were in for a visual delight at the 13th Mumbai Film festival, which gave them a taste of the best of world cinema, writes Ervell E. Menezes

Once again, the Mumbai film festival (it was earlier known as MAMI after the Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image) brought to this film city an infinite variety of films and connoisseurs should be smacking their lips with retrospective relish. The focus was in Andheri (the new Mumbai Central) but there were numerous screens spread all over the city where more than 150 films were screened. Sadly, there was not much awareness created either by advertising or in the newspapers with the result many cinema buffs missed this treat.

Colombian film Karen Cries on the Bus brings out the extreme poverty in Latin America and how hard it is for a woman to find a job

There were more that a dozen different sections like International Competition, Cinema of the World, Above the Cut, 4th Rendezvous with French Cinema and Film India Worldwide to name a few and this critic decided to limit himself to the ones at Metro Big Cinema.

One of the best films is Robert Guediguian’s The Snows of Kilimanjaro, which most graphically brings to the fore the rich-poor divide as it deals with the life of union worker Michel and his post-retirement days. After he and his wife Marie-Claire celebrate 30 years of wedded bliss, his children give them plane tickets to Africa and hence the title which has nothing to do with the Ernest Hemingway novel. In fact, it is inspired by Victor Hugo’s poem "How Good Are the Poor?"

The film is about realising how the other half of the world lives and director Guediguian does an excellent job in bringing out the camaraderie between Michel and his union worker colleague. There’s humour and pathos and one ends up with an elevating feeling.

French film My Little Princess bagged top prizes at the festival, including the best movie, best director and best actress awards

Among the films that impressed was Eva Ionesco’s My Little Princess. The French film delicately handled the love-hate relationship between a mother and her daughter.

Another powerful film on the rich-poor divide is Prashant Nair’s Delhi in a Day in the Film India Worldwide section. It is a dark comedy set in the sprawling South Delhi household of the noveau-riche Ghambirs, who are entertaining the son of a British business contact. It is a rapid learning curve for young Jasper (Lee Williams), especially after he realises his money has been stolen. The small talk among the servants is as candid as it is witty. So are the offish ways of Mukund (Khulbushan Kharbanda) and Kalpana (Lillete Dubey). Kalpana’s dad (Victor Banerjee) is ill at ease in this setup.

Director Nair does an excellent job projecting the divide and except for a somewhat weak middle it then picks up to end on a strongly satiric note. Debutante Anjali Patil steals the show supported by Lillete Dubey and a scarcely recognisable Victor Banerjee.

Daniela Dar-Creutz’s Arranged Happiness is somewhat amateurish but nonetheless thought-provoking as it touches on the Islamic influence on marriage and how it differs from the West. Daniela is the German wife of Ashiq who is trying to get his third sister Waheeda married. It is surprising that an orthodox Muslim family allowed her to make the film, which is realistic but the couple cannot help but resort to duplicity as their current thinking is opposed to orthodoxy and gives one an indication of folks breaking away from the fold. And speaking of religious duplicity Spanish film The Monk is even more scathing, picking holes in Bro. Ambrose’s so-called mission of saving souls.

The Colombian film Karen Cries on the Bus is the story of a bored housewife, who after 10 years of marriage wants to live on her own and so goes to Bogota to find a job. Though the subject is common enough, it brings out the extreme poverty in Latin America and how hard it is for a woman in her thirties to find a job. Influenced by a more permissive roommate, she sort of resolves to make the shift but then finds the process more complicated than it looks.

The French film 17 Girls is quite a daring subject inspired by an incident in which 18 American high school girls are involved in a pregnancy pact. Directed by Muriel and Delphine Coulin, it enters the psyche of these young girls bent on rebelling against the dull and boring life of their parents.

Then there are the Hollywood films like Moneyball and The Whistleblower, the latter being really excellent but they will be commercially released. It is also surprising that both the opening and closing films are from Hollywood. At festivals like these, one wants to see other countries getting more mileage. It was refreshing to see about a dozen oldies from the 1960s Film Forum group wending their way regularly.