Oficial Section
Le Refuge
Contracorriente
Eyes wide open (Einaym Pkuhot)
Plan B
Je te mangerais
El Cuarto de Leo
J’ai tué ma mère (I killed my mother)
L’homme de sa vie
*** Inaugural Session ***
The Refuge
Directed by François Ozon
Performed by: Isabelle Carré, Louis-Ronan Choisy, Pierre Louis-Calixte
Feature Film, France, 2009
90´
Special Jury Award, San Sebastian Festival 2009
Première in Barcelona
One of the most interesting aspects of the work from François Ozon – Sitcom; 8 femmes or La Piscine – is of his capability to study the habits of the French Bourgeoisie by showing with great delicacy and details its miseries. Refined and sharp with the forms, ruthless and critic with the message.
In The Refuge, his last film awarded in San Sebastian, Mousse and Louis and a young, beautiful and rich couple in love. Drugs barged in tragically and Louis looses his life due to an overdose at the same time that Mousse finds out she is pregnant. She runs away from her family and social circle disapproval by taking refuge in a charming house in the Basque Coast. Months later, her placid retirement, is broken by the appearance of Paul, the handsome brother of Louis. His presence, instead of bringing the turmoil she expected, forces her to take a journey of self discovering through an unforeseen outcome.
A film full of live and courage, cold and distant, away from the topics, that speaks to us about maternity, dependence and the need for understanding.
Trailer
***
Contracorriente
Directed by Javier Fuentes León
Produced by: El Calvo Films y dynamo
Performed by: Manolo Cardona, Tatiana Astengo, Cristian Mercado
Feature Film, Peru/Colombia, 2009
100´
Special Award of the Public, Sundance Festival 2010
Première in Spain
Contracorriente is one of the most sincere, honest and transparent movies of this year’s Mostra. It represents with candidness the new author’s cinema that comes from Latin America and puts, without fears, such deep rooted values as religion, death and tradition in question.
Miguel, a beloved young fisherman of Cabo Blanco, married with Mariela, seven months pregnant, meets Santiago, an out-of-town painter, who is rejected by the villagers because his agnosticism and ambiguity, with whom he meets secretly; an unbalanced relationship and obscure by which Miguel has to make some tough decisions, fight with its consequences of his acts and accept himself even if that means to loose the people he love the most. A drama set in a small fisher town of Northern Peru that talks of two people searching meaning in their life surrounded by fear, desire and death, and to whom, only truth will be set them free.
Realism done with exquisite sensitivity, a key work to understand the mechanism of fear and shame when discussing the visibility of sexual orientation. An unforgettable lesson of the fight for commitment and responsibility in love and friendship.
Trailer
Eyes wide open (Einaym Pkuhot)
Directed by: Haim Tabakman
Performed by: Zohar Shtrauss, Ran Denker, Tzahi Grad
Feature Film, Israel, 2009
91´
Première in Spain
With his first feature film, Israelite director Haim Tabakman could sneak last year in the Cannes Festival with a movie with surprising quality and profound message. With fine plastic language and poetic narrative rhythm, this movie is able to infuriate ultraortodoxe Jewish community precisely for his lack of radicalism and impeccable style directed to a global audience.
Aaron is a butcher respected by the orthodox community in Jerusalem, a fair man, a good father of four and model citizen After his father's dead, he hires Ezri to help him in his business; however, his youth, beauty and freedom will make question Aaron's life completely and what resembled at first an spiritual impulse will condemn him to ostracism from his own community.
The religious and social conflict experienced by Jews in Israel are reflected in this movie with a different glance: rain, darkness and desire conduct this peculiar and bright work, from charm to bitterness, from faith to desperation. Close to sin, close to God.
Trailer
Plan B
Directed by: Marco Berger
Performed by: Manuel Vignau, Lucas Ferraro, Mercedes Quinteros
Feature Film, Argentina, 2009
103´
Première in Barcelona
Marco Berger is an example of the new talent in the young Argentinean filmmakers from cinema and theatre schools, with a broad production of short films and the determination of getting the attention of film festivals such as Sundance and Cannes. For his first feature film, the director chose a story of characters, leaned on the extraordinary actors work and, as in most Argentinean cinema, with dialogues and obvious meanings having special importance.
Bruno is dumped by his girlfriend; behind a calm, indifferent expression, his mind plans a cold, sweet revenge. She keeps on seeing him once in a while, but has another boyfriend, Pablo, with whom she builds a new relationship. With the idea of making them split, Bruno becomes Pablo's friend but unexpectedly the possibility of a plan B arises, a more effective one, which will put his own sexuality into question.
Original, cruel and delicious, never seen in a movie such natural and fresh interaction between two actors with a role so seductive and detailed and dialogues so true.
Trailer
You will be mine (Je te mangerais)
Directed by: Sophie Laloy
Performed by: Judith Davis, Isild Le Besco, Johan Libereau
Feature Film, France, 2009
96´
Première in Spain
To improve her piano studies, Maria leaves home and enters the Lyon Conservatory. At Lyon, she moves in with her odd friend Emma, orphan of a father, who lives alone in a large apartment full of the mother’s paintings, who is always absent. The relationship between the two girls goes back and forth between their friendship and the need to study seriously, to a painful love affair. Emma becomes increasingly obsessed by the roommate, and the fight of their mutual feelings will take them to a place they could never have imagined.
With her crafted photography, her sharp and thoughtful view towards adolescence, Sophie Laloy has created a delicate and dense piece, magnified by a brilliant soundtrack where the piano shows all its own tension and force.
Trailer
El Cuarto de Leo
Directed by: Enrique Buchichio
Performed by: Martín Rodríguez, Cecilia Cósero, Gerardo Begérez
Feature Film, Uruguay, 2009
95´
Première in Barcelona
El Cuarto de Leo is another example of the new cinema that comes from Latin America presented at the Mostra. The work of a young Uruguayan director, Enrique Buchichio, that with his first work shows us the odds that many young people must face in their journey of acceptance, not only sexually but emotionally as well.
Leo & Caro are two young men going through a life crisis, former classmates, reunited by a casual meeting in a supermarket. This will show us their lives where sexual identity, the overcoming of deep traumas and the frustration and helplessness of two lost souls, one in searching for himself and the other in full decadence, and either one not realizing what is happening to the other.
A movie where insecurity, fear, virtual relationships and the need to love make the characters to rethink their own place in the world. An authentic film for its proximity and independence.
Trailer
I killed my mother (J’ai tué ma mère)
Directed by: Xavier Dolan
Performed by: Anne Dorval, Xavier Dolan, Françoise Arnaud
Feature Film, Canada, 2009
96´
Young Directors “Quinzaine” Award, Cannes Festival 2009
Hubert Minel can not stand his mother. Everything in her irritates him, from tacky sweaters to his eating habits, including her numerous kitsch decorations in her already overelaborate living room, or the radio programs she listens to in the morning when she drives her son to school. Hubert finds at least some comfort in his boyfriend, Antonin, but life at home is more difficult everyday. Hubert wanders from marginal to typical in a adolescence of discovery, and he will have to confront sudden decisions of separated parents, but predictably united in the lack of understanding for his son.
An incredible first film from Xavier Dolan, writer, director and actor, who at 20 has caused sensation in the international cinema with three prizes in the Directors' Fortnight of Cannes 2009 of the four devoted to feature films.
Trailer
L’homme de sa vie
Directed by: Zabou Breitman
Interpreted by: Charles Berling, Bernard Campan, Léa Drucker, Aurélie Guichard
Feature Film, France, 2006
114’
Première in Spain
Frédéric and his wife Frédérique spend their summer with their large family in a big house in the south of France. One nigh, they invite their mysterious neighbour Hugo for dinner. He talks naturally and with a fun attitude about his homosexuality, and when all go to sleep, Hugo and Frédéric stay chatting until dawn. An intense friendship builds up between them which will change their emotional balance forever.
With a magnificent photography and fine shooting, Zabou Breitman presents very gently that concern in the family environment produced by homosexuality bursting in.
Trailer
