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It’s not rocket science to sense that THE ROCKET may well be the best Australian film of the year.
Set in the rarely seen tribal mountains of Laos, THE ROCKET is a gripping yarn of a young boy triumphing over stigma. Twins are considered bad luck in the stupid superstition of Laotian culture and when one twin survives the other, the grandmother midwife is quick to remind her daughter in law that it would have been better if both had died for the kid is cursed.
First signs that her prophesy has substance is some years later when their village is flooded by an Australian financed hydro scheme and they need to relocate. The trials and tribulations endured only seem to consolidate the credence of the curse as the family proceed on a calamity filled journey through a land scarred by a long ago war.
THE ROCKET stars acclaimed Thai/Lao actor Thep Po-ngarm in the role of a damaged but hilarious former CIA soldier who becomes a mentor to our young hero, played by Sitthiphon Disamoe . Bunsri Yindi as the grumpy, garrulous and goading granny is a treat and Loungnam Kaosainam a pure delight as Kia, the puppy love attractor of the young hero, Ahlo. University of Wollongong graduate, the beautiful and talented Alice Keohavong, is impressive as Ahlo’s mum and stuntie Sumrit Warin plays the stoic dad.
Written and Directed by Kim Mordaunt, THE ROCKET has its genesis in a documentary he made called BOMB HARVEST about bomb disposal experts clearing ordinance leftovers from US missions that were sidebars of the Vietnam conflict. From such a lethal legacy, Mordaunt has salvaged a story of great hope and strikes a blow against savage superstition.
Exotic, exhilarating, excellent, THE ROCKET launches a potentially great feature film career for this artful, heartfelt film maker.
The Sydney Film, playing at various venues, runs between the 5th and the 16th June, 2013.
Inside the feature film, UPSTREAM COLOUR, is a short film struggling to get out. Not so much as a piece of cinema rather a panacea for insomnia, UPSTREAM COLOUR is a colossally confusing cut-up narrative that plays as if the director was on a particularly bad trip. Mescalin motivated mise en scene. This is telegraphed visually from the film’s first frames where grubs are cultivated for hallucinatory effect. Like the tequila worm myth multiplied to methic (sic) distortions these bugs bring on Burrough’s type hyper hypno-paranoia, parasites that elicit illicit acts. A sort of para-sight by parasite.
The following brain numbing non narrative transports us to towering tedium and the pinnacles of pretentiousness and thoughts of rolling ushers down the aisle and poking the eyes out of the projectionist start to pervade your consciousness. Or unconsciousness. Or subconsciousness.
THE CATCHER IN THE RYE purportedly made Mark David Chapman pull the trigger on John Lennon. Henry David Thoreau’s WALDEN was the trigger for this film. Go figure.
A tangle and a wreck, an esoteric brain draining, bum numbing lingam pull. Destined to be a festival luvvy.
Sarah Polley’s STORIES WE TELL consolidates her ascendancy as one of contemporary cinema’s superior practitioners.
The film begins with a quote from Margaret Atwood’s ALIAS GRACE:
“When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you ‘retelling it’, to yourself or to someone else”.
STORIES WE TELL is an inspired, genre-twisting film that playfully excavates layers of myth and memory to find the elusive truth at the core of a family of storytellers. Sarah’s mother, Diane, was an actress married to her father Michael, also a thesp and a procrastinating writer.
When Diane becomes pregnant with Sarah after being on tour with a show, true paternity became a running family joke. After Diane dies, Sarah seeks to establish whether there was any foundation to the scuttlebutt and embarks on an enthralling endeavour that is sensational in its secrets and surprises.
A story within stories, a film within a film, this is damnably and compulsively watchable cinema.
CHILD’S POSE poses questions of maternal culpability.
60-year-old Cornelia (the phenomenal and formidable Luminita Gheorghiu) leads a life of privilege, social power and abundant material wealth in contemporary Bucharest, but life is not perfect. More than anything in the world, she longs for her 34 year-old son Barbu (Bogdan Dumitrache) to reciprocate her unreserved affections. But the pair barely speak, something the domineering Cornelia blames on Barbu’s live-in girlfriend, who has a child from a previous relationship.
When Barbu is involved in a tragic traffic accident, Cornelia sees her chance to reconnect with her son going to extraordinary lengths to do so, including perjury and bribery.
Emasculated and infantilised, Barbu doesn’t want a bar of her, more inclined to take chances with the authorities and the other parties involved.
This quietly unforgettable film poses a lot more thought provocation than the power of a dominating mother. Forgiveness and compassion are cornerstones of the piece, finally a conduit for manning up to mama.
Director CĂLIN PETER NETZER and co-screenwriter RAZVAN RADULESCU have fashioned a searing narrative of overweening nurture usurping sweet nature.
Luminata Gheorghiu’s central performance is powerfully galvanising. The scene where she has a tete-a -tete with her son’s lover is something you won’t forget in a hurry. And the situation and ramifications of the road accident that is the catalyst of the narrative is something we can all identify with.
The Sydney Film, playing at various venues, runs between the 5th and the 16th June, 2013.