A banquet of movies is back to please gluttonous (not always a bad thing) cinema-goers at the 12th World Film Festival of Bangkok, which begins next Friday at SF CentralWorld. As usual, European titles, Asian mavericks, Latin American stories as well as hot documentaries pack the 10-day programme that shows a total of 60 films.
This year, the festival has introduced an Israeli Cinema section, a sidebar of animated films supported by the French embassy and three classics that rarely get to be seen on the big screen — Godard's Pierrot Le Fou, Truffaut's The Last Metro and Lang's Metropolis.
The opener on Oct 17 is Thai documentary Pu Somboon by Krisda Thipchaimetha, a heartfelt record of an old man who takes care of his sick wife. Besides this, the Thai offerings are not particularly plentiful this year.
Below, I parade before you my 10 favourites that might hopefully help you navigate through the full programme. Although some may not be to your taste (or timetable), it's a start and I'm sure the festival will have other smaller, overlooked films that might be pleasant surprises. I'll have more on some of these films next Friday.
The Congress.
The Congress
Oct 19 at 8pm & Oct 22 at 3pm
From the sci-fi novel by Polish master Stanislaw Lem, the animated film by Ari Folman expands — for better or worse — the original text into a black comedy about alternative identities, potent illusion and movie stardom, set during a mass congregation of egg-headed futurologists. Robin Wright plays herself (her character isn't even in the book) as an actress looking for a comeback and trapped in the cartoonish, hallucinatory war.
Whiplash
Oct 18 at 8.20pm
What a sadistic, relentless, rhythmic and fun movie! I'll put my neck on the chop block here and announce it as one of the best I've seen so far this year. The story is set in an elite jazz conservatory in New York, and the central drama revolves around an ambitious drum student Andrew (Miles Teller) and his fascistic, scathing, bullying teacher (J.K. Simmons) who drives his students to either perfection or madness. A lot of jazzy music and psychological violence (plus blood-soaked drum sticks). The good news is, if you miss it at the festival, it will be released in cinemas later in the month.
Goodbye To Language 3D.
Goodbye To Language 3D
Oct 20 at 7.50pm & Oct 22 & 7.50pm
There's no such thing as the Nobel Prize in Cinema. But if there was, then Jean-Luc Godard might be the first to win it — and like Sartre, he'd then refuse to go to Stockholm to pick it up for the sheer nonsense of it all. Still, this is the new film by a genuine visionary of the film art: the 70-minute Goodbye To Language is a 3D film about a man, a woman, a dog, a menagerie of philosophy, banter, musings and optical dreams. A marvel of ideas and possibility of cinema, the film will not have a regular release, so this is the only chance to see it on the big screen (which is the only way you should see it).
Timbuktu
Oct 19 at 3.20pm & Oct 21 at 3pm
From Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako, the film tells the story of the arrival of Islamic fundamentalists in the peaceful town of Timbuktu. They start enforcing Shariah law, which destroys the ancient way of life of the population (cigarettes are forbidden, music is forbidden, football is forbidden) — but their hypocrisy, stupidity and moral confusion proves them to be equally repulsive and tragic. A topical film amid the threat of fanatics who justify their evil by evoking God.
The Blue Room
Oct 18 at 3.20pm & Oct 21 at 6pm
Mathieu Amalric's murder mystery/adultery drama is only 75 minutes long (a sign of good films these days: either shorter than 90 or longer than 240 minutes). As elegant as it is complex — plot-wise as well as for the psychological chiaroscuro — it tells the story of a passionate affair between two lovers, both married to someone else, and a murder that rattles a small French town. Sexy, sweaty, seedy, with the possibilities of the crimes and culprits shifting with a mere glance or a twitched eyebrow, the film is adapted from a novel by the master of mystery Georges Simenon (who was believed to be pursued by Hitchcock for a writing job when both of them were still alive).
Ice Poison
Oct 18 at 1pm & Oct 21 & 8.20pm
Taiwan's submission to the Oscars this year is a film directed by Myanmarese Midi Z, who's based in Taipei. The film tells the story of two ethnic Shan men who are lured into the dark zone of crystal meth dealing.
The Tale Of Princess Kaguya.
The Tale of Princess Kaguya
Oct 26 at 7pm
The Japanese classic story of the "bamboo princess" gets an animated adaptation here by Isao Takahata (Grave Of The Fireflies). His style is fluid and his humanity is touching. The ending will wrap you in a state of bliss and heartache. Good news: it will have a regular release later in the year.
Footnote
Oct 19 at 1pm & Oct 26 at 1pm
Part of the Israeli Cinema programme, this 2011 film wrestles a drama out of an unlikely subject: Talmudic studies and academic pedagogy. The thrust comes from a father-son rivalry, both famed scholars, as they deal with familial jealousy and professorial competition.
Metropolis.
Metropolis
Oct 21 at 7.50pm & Oct 25 at 7.50pm
We all know Fritz Lang's Metropolis and recall its Art Deco futurism and pre-Nazi dystopia. The festival will show the restored version of the 1927 silent film that runs at 147 minutes, close to the original length when it was first shown nearly 87 years ago. This version came into being after a 2008 discovery in Buenos Aires of footage thought to have been lost and a long restoration process by a team of technicians in Germany. The version most people have seen in the past 80 years was cut down massively by Paramount executives, who claimed in the 1920s that the original was too long and too complicated for American viewers. So now it's time to see it in full.
Pierrot Le Fou
Oct 21 at 3pm & Oct 26 at 3.20pm
This 1965 film by Jean-Luc Godard stars Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina. A funny, strange experiment on narrative and political cinema, the film remains fresh after all these years. I recommend it since it's rare to get to see it on the big screen. To complete the French New Wave experience, you should see Francois Truffaut's wartime drama The Last Metro, starring Catherine Denueve, too.
- The 12th World Film Festival of Bangkok runs from Oct 17 to 26 at SF World, CentralWorld.
- The schedule, along with short synopses are available at www.worldfilmbkk.com
