The highs and lows of Mumbai Film Festival 2013

How many films can you watch in a week? During the Mumbai Film Festival, I watched 27. (And that doesn’t mean I saw everything on my wish list. Sadly, I couldn’t catch a number of films, including Stray Dogs and Fandry.) Now, if this had been the regular filmi fare that we’re subjected to on a regular basis, my brain would be oozing out of my ears. (Imagine five back to back shows of Boss or Chennai Express. It’s the sort of thing I figure they can use as interrogation tactics at Guantanamo Bay.) But Mumbai Film Festival isn’t about blockbusters, despite the presence of mediocre to rubbish titles like Don Jon, The Fifth Estate and The Butler. It’s got it share of crowd pleasers, sure, but what makes the festival stand out is that it brings world cinema to our doorstep. Some of the best films from Cannes International Film Festival, Berlinale and Toronto International Film Festival come to Mumbai and that is, simply put, awesome. No wonder we brave queues, brawls, skipped meals and chaos in order to watch everything that we possibly can. So, 27 films later, here are the films that topped my list of favourites along with the ones that were disappointments. Best of the fest: La Grande Belleza (The Great Beauty) Paolo Sorrentino’s film about an ageing journalist in Rome is one of the most stylish films you’ll see. Toni Servillo is magnificent as Jep Gambardella, a writer and art critic who lives in a house that overlooks the Colosseum and parties to distract himself from the weariness of Rome’s decadence. The film opens with David Lang’s “I Lie” being performed and I feel like if I closed my eyes and imagined Rome, I would still be able to hear the strains of that ethereal chorus. In Sorrentino’s film, the city is a place of indulgence and disillusionment; a place where dreams wither because of cynicism. And yet, despite its crumbling beauty, it’s also where the parties are electric, where the music is haunting and the glinting wit in everyday conversation puts sparkling diamonds to shame. The magic of The Great Beauty stays with you for days. The Missing Picture Documentary filmmaker Rithy Panh turned his gaze upon personal history with this film about Khmer Rouge’s regime in Cambodia. Panh was 13 when the Khmer Rouge entered the capital city of Phnom Penh and forced two million of its residents into labour camps. His experiences of four years in these camps along with his memories of life in pre-Khmer Rouge Cambodia make up The Missing Picture. Using archival photos and family photos is expected in a documentary, but Panh creates diorama with clay dolls. These hand-crafted figurines recreate scenes of parties in his home in Phnom Penh, starvation in labour camps, the wretchedness that was the foundation of Khmer Rouge’s horrific, extremist Communism. The Missing Picture also has the most lyrical and powerful narration I’ve heard in a documentary. Panh’s script could easily be published as a volume of poetry. A Touch of Sin Jia Zhangke is known for making elegant, slow films that don’t build up as much as they glide. With this film, however, the director unleashed his inner Mr. Hyde. Within the first 30 minutes of A Touch of Sin, there are five murders and one beating. There’s blood spatter everywhere and this holds true of the rest of the film. Four loosely-connected characters from different parts of China live normal lives, but opt for extraordinary violence either because they feel driven to it or because it just seems the simplest, most obvious way to go. In the China of A Touch of Sin, being unhinged is almost normal and that makes it the most scathing criticism of the silences imposed upon China by its political establishment. Closed Curtains Censorship need not always be gloom, doom and gore. In Jafar Panahi’s new film, it inspires a bittersweet, surreal story to unfold in which there is much despair, a little bit of madness and a touch of hope. At the heart of the film is the idea that has spurred Panahi on since he was banned from film making by Iranian authorities — you can force a ban on an activity or a person, but you can’t stop the imagination from imagining. [caption id=“attachment_1195785” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Courtesy: Facebook[/caption] A writer and his dog take refuge in a house in a remote part of Iran because dogs are banned and are being viciously slaughtered by the government. Once in the villa, the writer shuts out the rest of the world by locking every door and closing all the curtains. Still, people and ideas appear and the house is haunted with conversations and hallucinations. Closed Curtains is a little gem made all the more sparkly by the fact that Panahi himself is one of the characters who shows up in the film. Ilo Ilo At the start of the screening, director Anthony Chen described his film as “a small small film with a big big heart”. That describes Ilo Ilo perfectly. Set in middle-class Singapore, Chen’s film is about a family — a pregnant mother, father and son — who are struggling to live the tranquil, ordered life you expect from a regular family. The son is constantly being hauled up in school for misbehaviour. The father isn’t doing well at work. The mother is petrified she’s going to be fired because her company is laying off people every day. She decides to hire a maid because she can’t manage work and home in her pregnant condition. And so, Teresa comes into their lives and while some things stay the same, a lot changes. Ilo Ilo is a carefully-observed film that doesn’t ever give in to exotica but is superbly observed. From prejudices to strengths, so much about the Singaporean Chinese community is held up with elegant simplicity and humour. No wonder Chen won the Camera d’Or at Cannes this year. Also in favourites: The Selfish Giant, Bad Hair, Vic + Flo Caught A Bear The disappointments: Blue is The Warmest Color There’s been so much buzz about this film about two young women’s love story and on some accounts, the hype is well deserved. Blue is The Warmest Color has some fantastic acting. The way the script uses elements like lectures on philosophy and literature as touchstones for the plot is interesting. But while all this deserves applause, the only thing outstanding about Blue… is the hype. It’s a good film but it isn’t anywhere near as spellbinding or clever as, for instance, The Great Beauty. Most importantly, the graphic nature of the film makes it extremely problematic. Director Abdellatif Kechiche isn’t able to use the sex scenes to either further plot or elaborate on the nature of the relationship between the lovers. It’s slickly choreographed and extremely graphic sex that is entirely gratuitous. Worst of all, those scenes are so distinctly meant to turn the women into sexual objects that they’re off-putting. The Rocket This film is Australia’s official entry to the Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film and it’s so cheesy that it makes the quattro formaggi pizza seem like a minimalist concept. It’s competently made, but filled with every simplistic trope you can imagine. Cute kids: check. Quirky dude: check. Seemingly insurmountable challenge which is obviously totes surmountable: check. Redemption and group hug at climax: check. There’s just one moment of surprise in the film, when a woman is killed on dry land by a boat, but aside from that, The Rocket was the classic underdog story that has made millions at different box offices. Dialogues in Laotian isn’t enough to make cheesy become arty. Bekas So many people in Cinemax loved this film that I had to sit on my hands to keep myself from either boxing them for praising this silly film or tearing my hair out. The premise of Bekas is charming: two orphans in Iraqi Kurdistan catch a glimpse of the movie Superman and decide that they’re going to go to America even though they have neither money nor paperwork. The two boys cast as these orphans look adorable, which is what you need to have audiences fall in love with them. But that’s the end of Bekas’s strengths. It’s difficult to tell which was worse: the acting or the dialogues. The combination of ineptitude, however, was deadly. The script is full of ridiculous coincidences and incredible inanity. For example, which kid who has been surviving on the streets by his wit would be stupid enough to jump into a pond (despite not being able to swim) to find a locket for a girl he’s ogled at a few times? And it didn’t help that the younger boy didn’t speak his dialogues but shrieked them. Also-ran in the list of disappointments: Don Jon, Medeas, Son of Cain, The Butler, The Fifth Estate