DVD OF THE WEEK

SILENT WEDDING *****
Dir: Horatiu Malaele
Starring: Alexandru Bindea, Meda Andreea Victor, Alexandru Potocean

To say that this is the best Romanian film I have ever seen doesn't really provide much competition. Romanian cinema has apparently been going through something of a revival, with the likes of The Death of Mr Lazarescu, but I don't think I've ever seen more than half a dozen films from the country. But this is, hands down, about the best film I've seen this year.
It is short and sweet, a miracle of economical filmmaking.
Flashing back from the present day in a clever story within a story structure it tells a bawdy, lively, funny tale of life in a rural Romanian village under the dysfunctionally brutal rule of communist Russia. With flashes of magical, almost surreal beauty and undercurrents of tragedy, it adds everything to the mix, from a ghost story to a black and white slapstick sequence, and it all fits perfectly.
The titular events comes about when, just as the eccentric village folk are joyously celebrating a wedding, it is announced that 'father” Stalin has died and seven days of national mourning has been declared. Any public events will incur a charge of high treason. The consequent solution leads to a brilliantly sustained climactic sequence.
While proudly unique, this does remind me of a few things: Lasse Halstrom's early Swedish film My Life as a Dog and its acute observation of village life, or even the Finnish Babette's Feast. There is also the vitality and sudden wonder of the films of Serbian director Emir Kusturica (Time of The Gypsies, Underground).
Don't miss this one - it really is that good.

A new Martin Scorsese film is always an event, and Shutter Island (****) is certainly the strangest film from the director in decades. It is a lurid, delirious thriller, a throwback to the entertainingly overwrought B-movies of the fifties, which finds Leonardo DiCaprio's police marshal arriving at the titular facility for the criminally insane to apparently investigate the disappearance of an inmate. There are a myriad of twists and turns, the central one possible beyond any rational suspension of disbelief, and a host of delicious cameos from a distinguished cast. But is this really a project worthy of Scorsese's brilliance? Perhaps it would have been more suited for Brian De Palma. And how did this enjoyably over-the-top piece of pulp fiction end up 137 minutes long?

Beautiful (**) is an Australian thriller, the debut outing from director Dean O'Flaherty. It's a slightly strange pic, combining a coming of age tale - as the gawky neighbourhood fourteen-year-old finds himself under the spell of the scheming local Lolita – and a thriller about the possible weird goings on at the creepy house down the road. And, despite promising blurb on the cover from the likes of Rolling Stone, things don't really come together, the stuttering build-up jarring with a rushed climax and the final reveal seems merely gimmicky, an unearned, and vaguely illogical, denouement.

Worst title of the week goes to Max Manus Man of War (***), which is a shame because the film - the latest in a raft of northern European WW2 resistance tales - is rather good. The story of one of Norway's most famous fighting sons and his exploits with the 'Oslo Gang” skews more closely to the psychological depth of Flame and Citron (Denmark) than the 'Boys Own” heroics of Black Book (Holland) or Female Agents (France) and certainly looks good, with fine period detail and considerable tension. The unusually reflective finale is both moving and uplifting. Small warning: the subtitles, while bold and yellow, contain much mangled English.

The Australian tourism industry takes another hit in Long Weekend (**), as imported Yank Jim Caveizel and local Claudia Karvan head off for a spot of isolated camping and encounter Very Bad Things. A deranged lone farmer? Backwoods Queensland cannibals? Not this time. The bickering couple pay scant regard to mother nature, littering, cutting up trees, lighting fires and generally being eco-unfriendly, and – sure enough – mother nature strikes back. Sadly, it (she?) does so in relatively unspectacular fashion, and the promised payoff for the first half's ample suspense never materialises.