Gabhricha Paus
India

Circa 2009 will go down in Indian cinematic history as the year Marathi films got the world to sit up and notice. Paresh Mokashi’s Harishchandrachi Factory made it as India’s entry to the Oscars, even as another very special Marathi film did the rounds at big-ticket international film fests like Rotterdam. One of the entries for the Golden Peacock Award at IFFI, Satish Manwar’s Gabhricha Paus deserves kudos for presenting the tragic subject of farmer suicides in Vidarbha with empathy but sans melodrama. Kisna (Girish Kulkarni) desperately attempts to get a good cotton crop in rain-parched Vidarbha where fellow farmers burdened by debt have been ending their lives. Petrified that Kisna is suicidal, his wife Alka (Sonali Kulkarni) gets their little son Dinu to accompany his father wherever he goes and makes every conceivable attempt (from love-making to borrowing money to making his favourite sweet, puranpolis) to cheer him up. Impeccably researched – it helps that Manwar, himself from Yavatmal in Vidarbha, has witnessed first-hand the trials and tribulations of hapless farmers – the film is far from a dry documentary. Injected with plenty of wry humour and irony, the human drama comes alive in all its complexity thanks to palpably real performances.

Granaz
IRAN

Abbas Rafei’s tender little film delights with its simplicity. Strikingly reminiscent of Abbas Kiarostami’s style of film-making in its child-centred theme and minimalist treatment, the plot revolves around little Milad, who encounters an old lady on his way to school. Her name is Granaz and she’s lost. A stranger in the city, Granaz speaks in a local Baluchi dialect so no one can understand or help her. Wary of invoking the wrath of his parents and his school teacher by being late for school, Milad nonetheless cannot get himself to leave this grandmother-like figure in the lurch. He makes a valiant attempt to help her find her son but his absence from school spells big trouble. A happy twist in the tale finally leads to Milad being rewarded for his uncommon act of kindness towards a stranger. A tribute to human goodness, the heart-warming film was deservingly included in the competition section of IFFI and could well have been the winner. Iranian new wave cinema has been praised as among the most artistic cinemas in the world. Rafei’s neo-realist Granaz lives up to this revered tradition.

Cairo Time
CANADA

A hit at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival where it was chosen as the best Canadian feature, this quaint romance by Montreal-based film-maker Ruba Nadda won plenty of feel-good votes at IFFI. The story line is simple. An unexpected attraction blossoms between 50-something Juliette, a magazine editor and Tareq, a café owner, when she visits Cairo on a three-week vacation. Her husband, a UN officer, gets held up in Gaza and is unable to join her. Ergo, Juliette finds herself seeking the company of his friend Tareq, a friendly local. The rough and tumble of the Egyptian capital proves unnerving for the westerner as she finds herself accosted by locals on the streets. And yet the quieter pace of life in the city urges gradual adjustment to ‘Cairo time’. Without much of a plot, the film stands out for its mature sophistication and charm. Understatement is the soul of the romance between Juliette and Tareq – many scenes between the two are almost sans dialogue. The travelogue format and the couple’s meanderings in Cairo recall films like Before Sunset and Under The Tuscan Sun. Cameo queen Patricia Clarkson’s (we’ve seen her in Woody Allen films like Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Whatever Works) looks brings an endearing vulnerability to her character even as the suave Alexander Siddig does justice to his turn as her chivalrous travel companion.

Broken Embraces
BRAZIL

Pedro Almodovar’s latest offering is a cinephile’s delight, the ultimate ode to the craft of film-making by a master film-maker. Using the film-within-film format seen earlier in Fellini’s 8 ½, the noirish flick is sophisticatedly self-referential in its umpteen allusions to Hollywood classics. The action involves a blind screenwriter and filmmaker Mateo Blanco (Lluis Homar), his beloved muse Lena (Penelope Cruz), Lena’s jealous billionaire husband Ernesto Martel and Blanco’s devoted secretary Judit. Martel agrees to bankroll Blanco’s film – a movie that recalls Almodóvar’s own comedy Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown – starring Lena in the lead but is enraged when he discovers their adulterous affair. A tragic ‘accident’ kills Lena and blinds Blanco (the photo of the two embracing lovers torn into a thousand pieces is an apt visual metaphor for a film that celebrates the beauty of fragments over the whole). Fourteen years later Judit’s revelations about the tragedy bring back the past with a fresh spin. A slick thriller replete with twists and turns it is, but the real joy of Broken Embraces lies in its cinematic verve. Delight in Cruz doing an Audrey Hepburn or sporting a Marylin Monroe wig even as her director-lover tells her, ‘Don’t smile. The wig is false enough.’ Pastiche with panache.

Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky
FRANCE

Anne Fontaine’s Audrey Tautou starrer Coco Avant Chanel might be the mainstream darling but don’t miss the other Chanel biopic starring Anna Mouglas and Mads Mikkelson and directed by Jan Kounen. The closing film at Cannes 2009, Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, based on Chris Greenhalgh’s novel, chronicles the brief yet intense romance between Chanel and the revolutionary Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, two great cultural icons of the 20th century. The film begins in 1913. Deeply infatuated with polo player Arthur ‘Boy’ Capel, Coco Chanel attends the landmark performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. The radicalism of the ballet causes a riot but she is instantly drawn to its iconoclastic flavour. Seven years later, Chanel, now mourning the tragic death of Capel, gives refuge to a penniless Stravinsky, his tubercular wife Catherine and their children by offering them to live at her rented villa in Garches. A passionate affair ensues between the style icon and the music genius inspiring their best work. Chanel launches Chanel No. 5 with her perfumer Ernest Beaux while Stravinsky reaches new heights as a composer. A must-watch for Gabriel Yared’s original score and immaculate costumes including several original garments from the Chanel collection and a Karl Lagerfeld dress designed for the movie. The brilliantly choreographed Rite of Spring is among the best opening sequences this writer has witnessed on celluloid.

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