Monday Picks at the AFI FEST
November 6th, 2006 by Andre Soares
Today at the AFI FEST 2006 - a few picks:
At 12:30pm, screenwriter-director Florian Henkel von Donnersmarck’s Das Leben der Anderen / The Lives of Others, a much-praised drama about East Germany’s feared state police, the Stasi. The Sunday evening audience enthusiastically applauded the film, though I was quite disappointed. I was expecting a hard-hitting political tragedy but got instead an overlong, old-fashioned melodrama. Ulrich Mühe, however, is remarkable as the Stasi eavesdropper who starts questioning his allegiance to the ruling party, and was certainly a deserving winner of Germany’s 2005 Best Actor Lola Award. More interesting than the film was von Donnersmarck’s lengthy discourse on current German politics — but more on that later.
At 4:15pm, Alanté Kavaïté’s Ecoute le temps / Fissures is a gritty psychological-paranormal drama that boasts an outstanding performance by its young lead, Emilie Dequenne. The film revolves around a sound engineer (Dequenne) who, while staying at the crumbling house of her recently murdered clairvoyant mother, manages to capture sounds from the past that will eventually help her crack the case. Both director and star were present at the Sunday evening screening.
At 6pm, Marwan Hamed’s The Yacoubian Building, a controversial drama involving sex, corruption, and assorted human relationships in an iconic Cairo building. The film caused a furor among political and religious reactionaries in Egypt, and is that country’s submissions for the Foreign Language Film Oscar.
At 7pm, David Lynch’s Inland Empire. The film stars Laura Dern, Justin Theroux, Harry Dean Stanton, and Jeremy Irons, among others. The AFI website refers to it as a " sophisticated puzzle." Some who’ve seen it have been left quite puzzled indeed.
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