Best festival for several years

Press, 26 July 1984, Page 14

Best festival for several years

The high standard and variety of films at the Eighth Christchurch International Film Festival, which starts at the Carlton tomorrow, is expected to make it the best in four or five years. Gone are the days of starting the festival with a risque, European : barebreast movie, and the concentration this time is on screening works by various master directors, plus an interesting assortment of oddities, including touches of science fiction, horror and documentary. The big-name films include Francois Truffaut’s “Confidentially Yours,” Eric Rohmer’s “Le Beau Mariage” and “Pauline a La Plage,” Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s “Veronika Voss,” Michaelangelo Antonioni’s “Identification of a Woman,” Andrzej Wajda’s “Danton,” George Cukor’s uncut “A Star is Born,” Hans-Jurgen Syberberg’s “Parsifal,” a reissue of Luchino Visconti’s “The Leopard,” Robert Van Ackeren’s “A Woman in Flames” and Robert Duvall’s “Angelo, My Love.” The festival’s two-week programme may be subject to last-minute changes but, at last count, 39 films are scheduled to be screened, most of them at the Carlton, with several also being shown at the Academy and Savoy. The first week’s films “Confidentially Yours,” France, tomorrow, 11.15 a.m. and 8.15 p.mu “ ‘Confidentially Yours’ is every inch Truffaut, unmistakably stamped with his percolating, breathless, mile-a-minute plot, each scene charged. Under the trenchcoat of his homage to 40s-style film noir, a fqiry tale reveals itself. Fanny Ardant has a sophisticated innocence that’s enchanting and emblematic of the film’s romantic spirit.” — David Ansen, “Newsweek.” “Another Way,” Hungary; tomorrow, 5.30 p.m.: “Quite extraordinary. An account of a doomed love affair between two women journalists in the politically volatile period after the 1956 uprising, it is charged with eroticism, undercut by despair and, for all that, a surprisingly elating experience. Above all, the film is daring in its treatment of two forbidden themes — lesbianism and corruption. It would be hard to imagine a film from the West with more guts.” — Martyn Auty, “Time Out.” “The Evil Dead,” U.S.A., tomorrow and Saturday, 11 p.m.: The director, Sam Raimi, bills his film as “the ultimate experience in gruelling horror.” His script has the simple, stupid power of the most persuasive horror stories but it marshalls and unleashes its over-the-a effects with fiendish and panache. “Dark Circle,” USA., Saturday; 11.15 a.m. (Academy): This is a remarkably informative film about what the nuclear age means to those who are working directly in the shadow. Made, over a five-year period and shot primarily in Colorado, California and Japan, it tells the personal stories of those who have been involved in making, testing and selling the bomb. “Daniel Takes a Train,” Hungary, Saturday, 2.15 p.m.: The best and certainly least contrived thriller in

the festival is this work by Pal Sandor. Its central train journey exploits the dramatics of train travel as excitingly as any film in recent memory and its complex web of tensions keeps the viewer constantly on edge. “Le Beau Mariage," France, Saturday, 5.30 p.m.: “At 62, the sharp-witted, sharp-eyed Eric Rohmer has made his sunniest, funniest, warmest and wisest film. This delightful entertainment is like some utopian mixture, of Woody Allen and Roland Bartes. Movies don’t get much more intelligent or witty than this.” — Jack Kroll, “Newsweek.” “Veronika Voss,” West Germany, Saturday, . 8.15 “Fassbinder burned his candle at both ends, and it did not last the night; but at his best, he made a lovely light. How satisfying that his last film to be released before his death was such a masterpiece as *Veronika Voss.’” — Richard Roud, “Sight and Sound.” “For Love or Money,” Australia, Sunday, 11.15 a.m. (Academy): This is an exhilarating, superbly-crafted feature film telling the story of women’s working lives throughout Australia’s history. New Zealand women will recognise that this story has much to do with their own. “My Memories of Old Beijing,” China, Sunday, 2.15 p.mj The most acclaimed of recent Chinese films, and a remarkable achievement for its comparatively young director, Wu Yigong. It is a dreamy, langorous evocation of a 1930 s childhood in Peking, which succeeds balancing between the little girl’s perception of things and an adult perception of what is actually going on. “Identification of a Woman,” Italy, Sunday, 5.30 p.m.: Antonioni’s latest film is the first in 18 years to be set in contemporary Italy and marks a return to the themes and images that distinguished his early work. Thomas Miliah stars as a director in search both of a subject for his new film and a woman to live with. “Android,” USA., Sunday, 8.15 p.mu It’s 2036 and Klaus Kinski, looking like a refugee from “Metropolis,” hides out on a space station where, with his. android assistant, Max, he is working on a secret and highly illegal project: to develop a new and female android. “Danton,” France/Poland, Monday, 11.15 a.m. and 8.15 p.m.: “‘Danton’ is a major work from a major film maker, Andrzej Wajda. It brilliantly illuminates one of the most fascinating periods of the French Revolution — those early months in 1874 when Danton returned to Paris to attempt to stop the Terror.” — Vincent Canby, “New York Times.” “Labour of Love,” West Germany, Monday, 5.30 p.m.: “A seemingly self-as-sured teacher (Hanna Schygulla) befriends a painfully shy and reclusive painter (Angela Winkler), in a relationship that has profound repercussions on themselves and the men in their lives. Schygulla and Winkler have never been better and the feminist theme is developed with sympathy, intelligence and great artistry." — Neil Sinyard, “Daily Telegraph.” “Ascendancy,” Great

Britain, Tuesday, 5.30 p.m_A film drama set against the conflict in Belfast in 1920, “Ascendancy” has the deceptively elegant surfaces of British period drama. Aided by a shattering performance by Julie Covington, Edward Bennet constructs a detailed portrait of a privileged class whose violence is turning on itself. “A Woman in Flames" (“Die Flambierte Frau”), West Germany, Tuesday, 8.15 p.m.: “Robert Van Ackeren’s highly combustible but coolly observed film proceeds from an outrageously lurid premise to become a mordant anatomy of middle-class notions of love, sex, freedom and property.” — David Ansen, “Newsweek.”

“A Star is Born,” U.SA., Wednesday, 11.15 a.m. and 8.15 p.mj With' painstaking detective work, the film historian, Ronald Haver, has rediscovered one and a half excised musical numbers in Warners’ vaults, together with the complete soundtrack of the missing scenes and certain wide shots stored in the studio’s stock footage library. From this material he has assembled a reconstituted “A Star is Bom," just seven minutes short of George Cukor’s original 182-minute version, starring Judy Garland, which was first released in 1954. “Angelo, My Love,” U.SA., Wednesday, 5.30 p.m.: Robert Duvall, fresh from his triumph in “Tender Mercies,” has written and

directed a tribal study of Manhattan gypsies, using real gypsies to play fictional versions of themselves. “Demons in the Garden,” Spain, Thursday, 11.15 a.m. and 8.15 p.m.: This is a darkly amusing comedy of sibling rivalries and sexual tensions during the Franco period. The pressures and hypocrisies of the time are beautifully assembled, and the film is full of rich moments. "Lianna,” U.SA., Thurs- • day, 5.30 p.m.: To get away from the house, husband and children, Lianna is taking a course in child psychology. What happens when she ; falls in love with her . woman professor is the starting point for this gem of a movie.