To Each His Own Cinema (2007)

AKA Chacun son cinéma ou Ce petit coup au coeur quand la lumière s'éteint et que le film commence

Directed by
Theodoros Angelopoulos (segment "Trois Minutes")
Olivier Assayas    (segment "Recrudescence")
Bille August (segment "The Last Dating Show")
Jane Campion (segment "The Lady Bug")
Youssef Chahine (segment "47 Ans Après")
Kaige Chen (segment "Zhanxiou Village")
Michael Cimino (segment "No Translation Needed")
Ethan Coen (segment "World Cinema")
Joel Coen (segment "World Cinema")
David Cronenberg (segment "At the Suicide of the Last Jew in the World in the Last Cinema in the World")
Jean-Pierre Dardenne (segment "Dans l'Obscurité")
Luc Dardenne (segment "Dans l'Obscurité")
Manoel de Oliveira (segment "Rencontre Unique")
Raymond Depardon (segment "Cinéma d'Eté")
Atom Egoyan (segment "Artaud Double Bill")
Amos Gitai (segment "Le Dibbouk de Haifa")
Alejandro González Iñárritu (segment "Anna")
Hsiao-hsien Hou (segment "The Electric Princess House")
Aki Kaurismäki (segment "La Fonderie")
Abbas Kiarostami (segment "Where is my Romeo?")
Takeshi Kitano (segment "One Fine Day")
Andrey Konchalovskiy (segment "Dans le Noir")
Claude Lelouch (segment "Cinéma de Boulevard")
Ken Loach (segment "Happy Ending")
David Lynch (segment "Absurda") (special edition)
Nanni Moretti (segment "Diaro di uno Spettatore")
Roman Polanski (segment "Cinéma Erotique")
Raoul Ruiz (segment "Le Don")
Walter Salles (segment "A 8 944 km de Cannes")
Elia Suleiman (segment "Irtebak")
Ming-liang Tsai (segment "It's a Dream")
Gus Van Sant (segment "First Kiss")
Lars von Trier (segment "Occupations")
Wim Wenders (segment "War in Peace")
Kar Wai Wong (segment "I Travelled 9000 km To Give It To You")
Yimou Zhang (segment "En Regardant le Film")

 

A 2007 French anthology film commissioned for the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival. The film is a collection of 34 short films, each 3 minutes in length, by 36 acclaimed directors. Representing 5 continents and 25 countries, the filmmakers were invited to express "their state of mind of the moment as inspired by the motion picture theatre".

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0973844/

Syndromes and a Century (2006)

AKA Sang sattawat

Directed by
Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Written by
Apichatpong Weerasethakul

 
The film is a tribute to the director's parents and is divided into two parts, with the characters and dialogue in the second half essentially the same as the first, but the settings and outcome of the stories are different. The first part is set in a hospital in rural Thailand, while the second half is set in a Bangkok medical center.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477731/

Battle in Heaven (2005)

AKA Batalla en el cielo

Directed by
Carlos Reygadas

Written by
Carlos Reygadas

Marcos (Marcos Hernández) is a working class man in Mexico, employed by "the general." Marcos learns that the baby that he and his wife kidnapped for ransom had accidentally died. The remainder of the film follows a despondent Marcos, seemingly haunted by the moral and/or legal implications of his actions.

Marcos stands next to his wife Berta (Berta Ruiz) at the subway as she sells clocks and sweets at a stand. He travels to the airport to meet the "general's" upper-middle class daughter, Ana (Anapola Mushkadiz) whom he has known since she was a child. Ana orders Marcos to take her to the "boutique" where she works in the sex trade. While driving, Marcos is very distracted, and at one point stalls the car. Ana recognises that something is wrong, but Marcos claims he's distracted only because of his wife's supposed ill health.

Ana invites Marcos into the "boutique" so that he can have sex with one of her "friends." Marcos is apparently not aroused by the "friend." The friend tells Ana that Marcos would prefer her instead. Ana goes to talk to Marcos, and reminds him that they have known each other since her childhood. Marcos then reveals that he and his wife kidnapped a baby but the baby died before they could collect any ransom. Ana seems to remain composed at hearing this news.

Back home, Marcos has sex with his wife, Berta. They seem united in their sorrow regarding the dead baby. Marcos tells Berta that he told Ana about the kidnapped baby, indicating that the confession brought him relief. Berta, upset, demands that he make sure that "the princess" does not tell anyone. The next day, Marcos visits Ana. She seems annoyed by his visit, but drives him to her place where they have sex. Ana advises Marcos to turn himself in to the police.

Marcos, Berta, their son, and a few friends (including the mother of the dead baby, who does not know who took her child, nor that it has died) go out to the countryside. Marcos tells Berta that he is going to turn himself in. She asks him to wait until after the pilgrimage (which is in honor of the Lady of Guadalupe), an event that Marcos had earlier shown disdain for. Marcos seems to agree with his wife. Marcos' mental state seems to worsen. Instead of driving back with his party, he treks through the countryside. He reaches a peak with Christian crosses, overlooking a valley. Marcos buries his face in his hands.

Marcos visits Ana at her home. He tells her that he will turn himself into the police that day. She gives him a goodbye kiss. Marcos leaves the apartment. He pees his pants, goes back to the apartment and fatally stabs Ana.

The police become aware of both the attack on Ana and the death of the baby, and are in search for Marcos. Marcos seems to have joined the pilgrimage to the Basilica, at first on foot, and then on his knees. Someone places a hood over his face, but Marcos continues to hobble forward. The hood becomes increasingly stained with blood as he makes his way into the Basilica during the church service.

Eventually the pilgrims are gone, and the Basilica is vacant. The police allow Berta to go in to see her husband. She touches him on the head and he collapses.

Not counting the opening and ending credits, the film begins and ends with Ana giving Marcos oral sex.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387055/

Samaritan Girl (2004)

AKA Samaria

Directed by
Ki-duk Kim

Writing credits
Ki-duk Kim

In an early episode of Kim Ki-duk’s Samaritan Girl (2004), the adolescent Jae-yeong (Min-jeong Seo) tells her classmate and best friend Yeo-jin (Ji-min Kwak) the tale of an Indian prostitute named Vasumitra whose clients, as the curious legend goes, became devout Buddhists after their sexual encounter with her. It is an innocuous topic of conversation that takes on an inherently disagreeable tone within the context of their troubling activity, as the demure Yeo-jin helps the more uninhibited Jae-yeong apply make-up in preparation for a rendezvous with an older client, a transactional “date” arranged by Yeo-jin on her friend’s behalf (albeit using her own name) through an online chat. The fanciful Jae-yeong interprets the anecdotal spiritual awakening as a testament to Vasumitra’s feminine prowess, and it is this naive belief in sexuality’s nurturing, revelatory potential that seems to embolden Jae-yeong into following through with their sordid enterprise. Determined to reach their superficial goal of earning enough money to be able to travel to Europe, and seemingly obsessed with the mythical prostitute’s powers of transfiguration, Jae-yeong exhibits a fearlessness (or perhaps, wanton disregard) of consequence that, one afternoon, in the presence of her trusted lookout Yeo-jin, will lead to an irrational and tragic leap of faith.

The recurring theme of transcendence through a transformative encounter defines the course of the film, as Yeo-jin attempts to come to terms with her complicity in Jae-yeong’s incomprehensible act by retracing her friend’s liaisons through a meticulously kept personal diary that had also served as an account of their financial progress towards their hoped-for European trip. Contacting each client under the familiar pretence of shared intimate history, Yeo-jin embarks on a guilt-ridden journey of sexual and financial restitution: arranging to reunite with each of Jae-yeong’s “dates”, consummating their transaction, revealing the plight of the “first” Yeo-jin, then concluding their meeting by returning the money once given to her friend by them. Her unexpectedly sincere, obliquely Samaritan act proves cathartic to the thoughtless, exploitative clients, turning their seemingly inconsequential dalliance with the under-aged prostitute into a humbling moment of reckoning for the transgressions and emptiness in their own lives. However, as Yeo-jin perseveres in her humiliating, delusive obsession with self-atonement, the toll becomes even more unbearable for her doting father, a widowed police detective named Yeong-ki (Eol Lee) who, already grieving from the senseless death of his wife (a still unsolved, ongoing police investigation), becomes an inadvertent witness to his only child’s unfathomable descent into prostitution: a discovery that ironically occurs as he investigates the crime scene of a violently murdered young woman – most likely, another under-aged prostitute – in an opposite room of a similarly decorated love motel. Consumed by a sense of impotence over his daughter’s debasement and corruption, he begins to follow Yeo-jin as she conducts her bizarre, invariable after-school routine.

Consisting of three chapters, “Vasumitra”, “Samaria” and “Sonata”, and exploring such spiritually fundamental themes as sin, moral bankruptcy and atonement, the film suggests a cursory – but fitting – modern-day parallel to the tripartite structure and redemptive themes of Dante Alighieri’s epic narrative poem, The Divine Comedy. Set in the alienating urban landscape of contemporary Seoul (although its human desolation could be typical of any despiritualised, materialistic society), The Samaritan Girl is a figurative descent into the soulless, impersonal spaces of anonymous Internet chat rooms, tawdry love motels, and secluded public parks (which seem to be populated more by statues than by real people). These are the spaces that Jae-yeong inhabits in a misguided quest for connection and material gain, and that Yeo-jin must later traverse in order to expiate her own feelings of culpability. Moreover, the film is also a chronicle of spiritual dilemma, intrinsic to the sentiment of wishing to bear another person’s burden (and more broadly, of Catholic guilt) that motivates the actions of both the prodigal daughter, Yeo-jin, and, subsequently, her father Yeong-ki. It is this figurative Christ-like cross-bearing for the perceived sins of others that is illustrated in the indelible image of Yeo-jin carrying a critically injured, partially clothed Jae-yeong on piggyback through the crowded city streets to seek medical assistance at a nearby hospital (a martyr image that recalls a foreshadowing shot of a Sacred Heart picture displayed on Yeo-jin’s dresser mantle).

The title of the concluding chapter, “Sonata”, provides a further useful insight into the thematic structure of the film. Alluding through this title to the contrasting movements within a single musical composition, the film is also an illustration of contrasting reactions to similar transgressions. The recurring images of cleansing between Jae-yeong and Yeo-jin are intimate, supportive, and even purgative. In contrast, the image of Yeo-jin’s shower after leaving the hospital – later recalled in a similar shot of Yeong-ki – is devastating, isolated and bereft. In essence, while Yeo-jin and Yeong-ki can see past the failings and imperfections of others, they cannot forgive themselves. Inasmuch as Yeo-jin serves as a passive and enabling protector of Jae-yeong in her seemingly voluntary exploitation, Yeong-ki’s responsibility as his daughter’s guardian and omnipresent watcher becomes more complex and inescapable. Resorting to dispensing small doses of anecdotal parable and recounting cryptic, Fatima-like visions of apocalypse to a preoccupied Yeo-jin as he drives her to school, Yeong-ki does not confront his daughter with his shattering discovery; instead, he turns his grief inward and begins to confront his daughter’s “dates” after their encounters with her. Casting the proverbial first stone onto the car windows of a married businessman (whose daughter is later revealed to be older than Yeo-jin) in a secluded field, Yeong-ki’s innately protective paternal role turns from brooding sentinel to avenging angel.

In the final shot of Samaritan Girl: the errant sight of a wobbling, out of control car struggling to chase a sports utility vehicle through a flooded gravel road in the rural countryside, doggedly navigating the inhospitable terrain using an innate compass that elusively, but transfixedly, points home.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0397619/

Hidden (2005)

AKA Caché

Directed by
Michael Haneke

Writing credits
Michael Haneke

The quiet life of a Paris family is disturbed when they receive a series of surveillance tapes of their own residence from an anonymous source. Georges Laurent (Daniel Auteuil) is the successful host of a French literary TV programme, living with his wife Anne (Juliette Binoche), a book publisher, and their school-age son Pierrot (Lester Makedonsky). Unmarked videocassettes arrive on their doorstep, tapes that show extended observation of their home's exterior from a static street camera that is never noticed. At first passive and harmless, but later accompanied by crude, disturbing crayon drawings, the tapes lead to questions about Georges' early life that disrupt both his work and marriage. But because the tapes do not contain an open threat, the police refuse to help the family.

One videotape leads Georges to the modest HLM apartment of an Algerian man named Majid (Maurice Bénichou), whose parents worked for Georges' family when they were young. When his parents were killed in the Paris massacre of 1961, Majid remained with Georges and his parents, who intended to adopt Majid into their family. Georges confronts Majid about the tapes, but he denies involvement. However, the encounter intensifies his guilty flashbacks and recurring nightmares of a young Majid spitting blood, cutting off a rooster's head, and menacing him.

One day Pierrot does not come home from school and Anne cannot locate him. Georges and Anne suspect that Majid has kidnapped him. They go to the police, who accompany Georges to Majid's apartment. There they find Majid's son (Walid Afkir), and father and son both deny knowledge of the kidnapping. The police arrest them but they are released the next morning. On the same morning, Pierrot returns. He had spent the night at a friend's house without telling anyone. When Anne scolds Pierrot, he accuses her of committing adultery. In an earlier scene, we saw a distressed Anne permitting a few romantic caresses from Pierre, a family friend.

Georges returns to Majid's apartment at his invitation, and, after stating that he had nothing to do with the surveillance, Majid says he wanted Georges to be present for what follows: he kills himself by slashing his own throat. Now Anne insists Georges explain the whole story with Majid, and he tells her of the time they spent living in the same household so many years ago. He was six years old when he tricked Majid into cutting off the head of a rooster, then told his parents that Majid did this to scare him. This sufficiently disturbed his parents that they sent Majid to an orphanage.

Majid's son confronts Georges next. He denies involvement with the tapes, while Georges denies responsibility for his father's unhappiness and death. Majid's son says he only wanted to know how Georges felt about being the cause of his father's death, and Georges angrily leaves. Georges goes home, takes two sleeping pills, and goes to bed.

A man and woman arrive at Georges' childhood home in a 1960s-model car. They enter the house, returning momentarily with an Arab boy who protests, resists getting in the car, and runs away before he's finally caught and overcome by the man. He's forced into the back seat with the woman and the man drives the car away.

Under the credits, Pierrot and Majid's son meet in front of Pierrot's school, though their conversation cannot be heard. Majid's son leaves, as does Pierrot with a couple of his friends soon after.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387898/

Three Times (2005)

AKA 最好的時光 (Zuì hǎo de shí guāng)

Directed by
Hsiao-hsien Hou

Writing credits
T'ien-wen Chu
Hsiao-hsien Hou

Three stories set in three times, 1911, 1966 and 2005. Two actors (Qi Shu and Chen Chang) play the two main characters in each story:

A Time for Love
(Chinese: 戀愛夢; pinyin: liàn ài mèng) Set in Kaohsiung in 1966, with dialogue in Taiwanese Hokkien.

A Time for Freedom
(Chinese: 自由夢; pinyin: zì yóu mèng) Set in Dadaocheng in 1911, with dialogue presented only through on-screen captions.

A Time for Youth
(Chinese: 青春夢; pinyin: qīng chūn mèng) Set in Taipei in 2005, with dialogue in Mandarin.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0459666/

3-Iron (2004)

AKA 빈집, Bin-jip

Directed by
Ki-duk Kim

Written by
Ki-duk Kim

Tae-suk (Jae Hee) is a loner who drives around on his motorbike, taping takeout menus over the keyholes of front doors and breaking into apartments where the menus have not been removed. He lives in the apartments while the owners are away, even washing their clothes and mending broken appliances for them. When he breaks into one large home, he is unaware that he is being watched by an abused housewife Sun-hwa (played by Lee Seung-yeon). Tae-suk leaves after he makes eye contact with Sun-haa, but returns after silently contemplating on the roadside. He witnesses Sunwha's husband abusing her and proceeds to catch his attention by practicing golf in the yard. He hits Sunwha's husband with golf balls and then leaves with Sun-hwa. The couple begin a silent relationship, moving from one apartment to another. At one home, after drinking, they are caught by the returning owners, sleeping in their bed and wearing their pajamas.

The couple gets into trouble with the law when they break into the home of an elderly man, who they discover to have died alone and proceed to give him a proper burial. When the man's son and daughter-in-law arrive at the apartment, they assume that Tae-suk and Sun-hwa killed him. They are interrogated at the police station but remain steadfastly silent; Sun-hwa's husband arrives and takes her back home. Despite an autopsy of the man reveals he died of lung cancer and the great care shown in burying the body, Sun-hwa's husband bribes the policeman in charge of the investigation to allow him to similarily hit Tae-suk with golf balls. Tae-suk ends up attacking the police officer and is sent to jail, where he practices golf with an imaginary club and balls and develops his gifts for stealth and concealment (to the frustration of his jailers). After being released from prison, invisible to her husband's eyes, Tae-suk rejoins Sun-hwa in her house. Sun-hwa appears to say "I love you" to her husband, but reaches out for Tae-suk. Tae Suks skills involve staying out of his jailers line of sight and peripheral vision and he does this as he stays behind Sun Hwas husband, moving as he turns and grabbing food from the dinner table and kissing Sun Hwa over her husbands shoulder (seen in the poster) as he leaves on another business trip. After he leaves, Sun Hwa and him embrace, kissing deeply.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0423866/