Notes on films seen So Far

by Alex Deleon, filmfestivals.com

Market film at Gray D'Albion:

"La Habitación" (The Room) ~ A film about a room that has seen a lot of history and the people who have lived in it.

This Polish-Mexican co-production was a complete surprise and an eye opener. I was attracted to the title because it stars Swiss-French actress Irène Jacob who leapt to international prominence in two films by famed Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski, "The Double Life of Veronique" 1991, which earned her a Cannes best actress award, and the final film of Kieslowski's  Three colors trilogy "Red" in 1994. Since then she has kept busy mostly in French films but her star more or less faded from the global scene and, while enthralled then, I haven't seen her since.

Startlingly beautiful back in the nineties I was curious to see what she would look like two decades later -- in a totally Spanish language film, no less.  The answer: Still striking at roughly age fifty in this 2016 production, and still a mesmerizing actress.

The film is set mostly in the main rooms of a Mexico City house where four stages of Mexican history since the 1911 Revolution up through the Olympic Fames of 1948 and finally murderous youth gangs in current day Mexico are observed.  It's a kind of if the walls had ears" type story divided into four historical segments each directed by a different batch ofbdirectors,meight in all, and featuring a bevy of top Mecican actors beside Ms. Jacob. In the first two sections which are by far the best.

Jacob plays the French wife of a sordid Mexican Aristocrat who treats the servants like scum and is eventually brutally murdered by one if them when the Revolution turns everything upside down.

An interesting racist sequence  takes place when enemployed rowdies break into the house to brutalize the new Chinese servants. "Foreigners go home -- you don't belong here" -- scenes which resonate ominously with today's anti-immigration racism in western countries -- but this is Mexico way back then.

Mexicans against Asians!

The Chinese mother is played by former star Japanese actress Momoe Kaori in a bit of casting the nuances of which only one familiar with Japanese cinema can appreciate.

Although there are many Polish names in the production credits this is a totally Spanish language film and as far a I could tell, Ms. Jacob spoke her own lines in a gripping nuanced sexy lady performance.

With all the historical references to Porfirio Diaz, Huerta, Obregon, Zapata, er al, this film is clearly aimed at Mexican audiences familiar with the history concerned , however the drama stands on its one two legs even for outsiders because of brilliant performances all around, and tight direction, especially in the first half.  

In part 2 Jacob who was always kind to  the servants returns from France twenty years later to sell the property.  The youngster who killed her popmpous husband years before is now a retired army colonel and the prospective buyer of the house.

Recalling an early scene where he as a boy he observed her taking a bath when she hid him in a closet she now takes him to bed for a quickie fulfillment of a nearly forgotten sex fantasy.

To me the later portions with different directors could have been excised and it would still have been a perfect film. The English release title is Tales of Mexico. The first two were a complete story in themselves with a brilliant return to earlier form by a still compellingly beautiful actress, Irene Jacob, born 1966.



Saturday. two films A Loser and a Winner in Un Certain Regard

Lerd (L'Homme intègre) is an Iranian film about a handsome young farmer and his wife who live out in the country on a farm devoted to goldfish raising, and the rats who oison his fishery because they want to take over his property to serve their own dirty political ends. The film is all about corruption and dirty dealing but Mesmerizingly dull, Terrible. depressing and nothing else. Certainly not up to the level of other recent Iranian films which have walked off with numerous festival prizes. 117 minutes of drudgery.



'"La Belle et la Meute"  (beauty and a herd of beasts) Tunisian by young woman director Kaouther Ben Hanis is the

Terrific tale of a voluptuous young girl,mage twenty  who is raped after a school party  by two policeman,then agonizingly bullied and tortuted by the very  policemen she tries to file a report with. They if course want her to drop the charges but she holds out ferociously until the real culprits are exposed and supposedly arrested and she is finally released.  This is all based on an actual case and a title at the end tells us this

After the film I met top Tunisian director Ferid Boghideb. He

said it's too bad she didn't add another final title to inform the audience that the cops who committed the rape were tried and sentenced to fifteen years in jail.

This is an extremely powerful film that will be given fuller treatment in a subsequent review.

 Alex with top Tunisian director Ferid Boghedir

Ferid's next film will be a black satire of the so-called Arab Soring in Tunisia,

Ferid Boighedir   Marsafilm@yahoo.com



New film, Parfum de Printemps , Best arab film of 2016 at Cairo IFF. Nov. 2016

famous for A Summer in La Goulette,  Berlin competition, 1996