Illiterate (Las analfabetas).

Moises Sepulveda debut film is a beautifully observed study of a middle-aged woman who has spent the last fifty years hiding the fact that she can neither read nor write. Ximena is a lonely, sad moody woman who lives by her self in the shabby apartment that her father left her. She spends her day smoking and tending plants in her small garden virtually oblivious to the world that goes on around her. That is until an old friend, who used to read the newspaper to her, sends her daughter to enquire if Ximena would like her to read to her. A rather tetchy on/off relationship follows. Jackeline is a frustrated trainee teacher who can’t find a job but loves teaching so when she finds out that the older woman’s father has left her a letter which she has never been able to read, she offers to teach Ximena to read and write.

 

Paulina Garcia.

Valentina Muhr.

This wonderfully entertaining two hander stars Paulina Garcia who repeats her flawless performance as the lonely hermit Ximena first performed in Pablo Paredes play on which the movie is based. She recently won the prestigious Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin International Film Festival for her performance in Gloria (2013). The wonderfully expressive Valentina Muhr plays Jackeline. This delightfully touching movie is the latest example of the brilliant cinema coming out of Chile in the last few years, including No (2012), Post Mortem (2010) and Tony Manero (2008). Hopefully, following the success of Gloria, Illiterate (2013) may get a general release, if it does make every effort to see it, you will not  disappointed.

A tetchy relationship develops. 

Grand Central.

Although interestingly described as a romantic drama set against the dangers of the nuclear power industry, Grand Central (2013) was a wee bit of a let down. Co-written and directed by Rebecca Zlotowski it does however have a powerful cast headed up by Lea Seydoux who won very high praise in one of the best films of 2013 Blue is the Warmest Colour and Tahar Rahim who was in the award winning French prison drama A Prophet (2009) and also took the lead in Free Men (2011) which tells the largely untold story of the role the Muslims played in the French resistance and the rescue of Jews from under the noses of the German occupation.

 

Illicit meetings by the river. 

Gary Manda (Rahim) is an unskilled and therefore expendable worker who gets a job in a nuclear power plant to clean and repair nuclear reactors. He works under the supervision of veteran Gilles (Oliver Gourment), a man whose family has left him because of the pressures of his job, and Toni (Denis Menochet) who lives with, and plans to marry, Karole (Seydoux) an attractive sad looking women who also works at the plant. Radiation contamination is a daily risk and if a workers radiation levels rise they not only loose their job but there is a good chance of getting a cancer related disease. Adding to this sense of danger Gary has fallen for Karole whose illicit meeting’s on the riverbank has not gone unnoticed by the other men.

Testing radiation levels.

This is unfortunately an unfulfilling film that promises a lot but delivers little considering the importance attached to its subject matter. The story does not really go anywhere and is difficult to follow at times. But Rebecca Zlotowski should be commended for showing us a world that the majority of us were unaware of.

Ida.

For his latest film Pawel Pawlikowski returns to his native Poland for what is probably his most powerful film to date Ida (2013), following two English language films Last Resort (2000) and My Summer of Love (2004) and the predominantly French language film which stared Kristin Scott Thomas The Woman in the Fifth (2012).

As far as Anna knows she has no family, having been brought up in a convent. Called into the Mother Superiors office she is told that a living relative has come forward and before she takes her final vows she should go and meet the women. Her dead mothers sister Wanda is a good-looking middle-aged lady with no family of her own. She was employed as a judge in political trials during the Soviet Stalin regime, which gave her power over life and death. She is now a very bitter woman, a heavy smoker with a drink habit that borders alcoholism. Her causal sex life consists of one-night stands. Into this life steps the young novitiate nun who has never been out of the close confines of the Catholic convent.  But it's the secrets that date back to the time of the Second World War that her aunt has too impart that's shocks Anna, learning that even her name is not her own, originally being given the name Ida!

 

Is Anna, the novitiate nun, ready to take her vows? 

Her sadly beautiful Aunt imparts secrets that could change her life forever! 

This intimate road trip into the secrets of the past is beautifully composed in black and white by Ryszard Lenczewski who has worked with the director on his previous body of work. His scenes are 'bottom weighted', by that I mean that although a scene would fill the square frame format, the characters heads and shoulders would appear at the bottom, said by the director to give them ‘grounding’.

 

Family relationships are not always easy.

Filmed in the Lodzkie district of Poland and set in the early 1960's, it paints the urban landscape as a bleak, cold and austere place, a place that has never come to terms with the devastation brought on by the war. Newcomer Agata Trzebuchowska intimately plays the role of Anna/Ida, with the great Polish actress Agata Kuleska playing her aunt, who if your are a regular at the EIFF would have seen her in two great movies Roza (2011) and Traffic Department (2013),

 

This Polish road movie asks questions of us all!

This cheerless but ‘masterful evocation of intimate dilemmas and the weight of history’[1] raises many questions about the fundamental meaning of life! It goes some way to give us an incite in to the relationship between the Catholic Poles and the Jews, it makes us question our belief in the decency of mankind, who are saints and who are the sinners? In Ida’s case will she be tempted not to take her vows avoiding a closed life of worship. Is there more to life than sin and happy families? If like many other Polish films this will probably not get a wide release, which is a great shame.

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[1] GFF 2014 programme notes.

Capturing Dad.

Like all the best Japanese family drama's Ryota Nakeno’s film has a very simple premise. 17-year-old Koharu Higashimura (Nanoka Matsubara) and her older sister Hazuki (Yanagi Erisa) have been asked by their mother Sawa (Makiko Watanebe) to visit there estranged father in hospital because he has terminal cancer. Although the girls are not too keen on visiting the dying man, as he had abandoned the three of them 14 years ago for another women, they set out to carry out their mothers wishes. During the long train journey there mother phones and informs them that their father has since passed away and they should arrive just in time for the mans funeral.

 

A father and his two girls.

This beautifully sentimental family drama asks the question “what do children inherit from there parent’s” an it can't just be the love of tuna fish!  It's not necessary the intensity of a story that's important but how a story is depicted. The deft touch of the director, the beautifully shot scenes and the delicate and fully believable acting of its cast, especially the three main leads, gives Capturing Dad (2012) the right to stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the best of this particular Japanese genre which would include Ozu's classic movies and more modern drama's from the likes of Hirokazu Kore-eda including his recent movies I Wish (2011) and Like Father, Like Son (2013). Ryota Nakeno is a new director who shows great promise if his debut feature film, which is both humorous, and emotional, is anything to go by. Very highly recommended.

Koharu and her sister travel to see their sick father.