Short cuts

I finally managed to make time for Von Trier’s “The Idiots”, the middle entry in his so-called “Golden Hearts Trilogy”. It’s as unsettling as one can expect, being a film about a group of friends (colleagues?) who spend their time “spazzing” – pretending to be mentally handicapped – as a way to, in the words of Jack Black, “stick it to the man”. Notorious for its orgy scene, “The Idiots” lacks the visual grace that the sexually compelling “Breaking the Waves” had, instead opting for breaking the cinematic illusion regularly and powerfully. And yet, none of the distancing techniques manage to distance the viewer too much; the final scene arrives with the force of a blow to the psyche as Von Trier simultaneously shows us crippling grief and the manipulative power of lies at 24 fps. All in all, the “GHT” marks a deserved watershed in Danish cinema and the Dogme movement itself.

“The Girl on the Bridge”, filmed in gorgeous black-and-white, casts Vanessa Paradis as a suicidal young woman “saved” from death by a circus knife act performer, played by French star Daniel Auteuil. The film is a simple love story unusually told; it is worth a watch for romantics who want a little edge to their dramas, though it’s far from unforgettable.

Chen Kaige’s “Together” is an unashamedly sentimental film about a peasant father who will do anything to realise his son’s musical talent. The film treads familiar territory and one expects most of what happens to happen (family feuding, family secrets revealed, the slightly bonkers music teacher with a nemesis) but Chen handles the material well enough that the final payoff will bring a quiver to just about anyone’s eye.

Acting powerhouses Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney lend their talents to the dark family comedy “The Savages” as siblings who need to figure out not only what to do about their increasingly demented father, but with their own lives. The films makes for rather heavy viewing, presenting the viewer with images of smoke trailing against a grey sky and gloomy conversations about life’s purpose. That said, the acting is superlative, the writing observant and dry, and the cinematography crystal clear and to the point.