Isabelle Adjani in SKIRT DAY
© Jean Marie Marion/mascaret films
In the San Francisco Chronicle, Mick LaSalle briefly discusses several of the films he saw at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival:
"So the [Paul] Schrader film [Adam Resurrected] was a disappointment. To a lesser extent, so was the Chabrol film Bellamy, with Gérard Depardieu as a cop investigating an insurance scam: not bad, but languorous and a bit like a TV movie. Another French entry, Skirt Day, was more interesting. A mix of black comedy and social comment, the film marks the screen return of Isabelle Adjani, who plays a frustrated teacher in an ethnically diverse school who finally gets the attention of her students by holding them at gunpoint.
"Skirt Day is a mess, but it comes as a refreshing antidote to a glut of politically correct films overtaking Europe — the same film, over and over — about how wonderful immigrants are, and if one happens to turn nasty or violent, it’s your fault for being a greedy Western slime. By the way, the film’s title refers to the short skirt Adjani wears to work that fatal day. The sartorial choice sets off her students, who come from cultures that tell them a woman in a skirt is a prostitute or loose woman."
***
LaSalle also recommends An Education, Cheri, The Messenger, High Life, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, and My One and Only.
Berlin 2009: Michelle Pfeiffer, CHERI
Berlinale 2009: Kate Winslet, Tom Tykwer
Kansas Silent Film Festival 2009
Sundance 2009: I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS, Susan Sarandon, Richard Gere
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