Birdy

Johnnie To can be such a delicate, precise action filmmaker. Consider the ballet on shattered mirrors in Mad Detective; the operatic shootouts in Vengeance that puts Woo to shame. In Sparrow, the filmmaker's most lightweight film in a long time, the uber-prolific To approaches the film with a near lack of gravity. As a result, the stylised film, essentially a crime caper of sorts, is so light - thematically, character wise - it seems to float before your eyes, and I mean that as a compliment.

Being a small time crook doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. Kei (Simon Yam) leads a pleasant life, often meeting with his criminal cohorts in a Hong Kong diner to discuss the day’s activities – a stolen wallet here, a lifted mobile phone there. Often tourists are the most visible, easiest targets. Kei is such a pleasant guy that when a sparrow flies into his apartment, he simply puts his fists in his hips and shakes his head, smiling. But when the beautiful, mysterious Chun Chun Lei (Kelly Lin) shows up, Kei’s world is shaken to its surface (there’s not much of a core). One by one, she coincidentally meets up with each of Kei’s colleagues, which invariably leads to trouble. Then Kei finds out about Chun Chun Lei’s secret, and he has no choice but to get involved in her private life.Kei is a bicycle riding, laid back, reluctant hero; Chun Chun Lei is a stunningly beautiful romantic foil.

To orchestrates some beautiful scenes: Kei’s infatuation with Chun Lei, initially caputred through a lense; a chase sequence that undermines what one expects from chase sequences; a delightful invocation of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg in a rainy showdown. In this film, unlike in many of To’s other, far more brutal films, the villains are as simultaneously weightless and grounded. Towards the film’s end, one cannot help but think of the main villain as an old man whose time has come, and not as a violent killer. To seems to endow Sparrow with a sense of inconsequentiality: for many of the characters, things will remains as they have for a very long time, regardless of what happens. 

This is To’s playground, and he’s surprisingly gentle; once we know the players, he directs them towards moments of playful deception and even physical comedy. There’s a romantic subplot but not in the way one might think. Between cleverly choreographed set pieces and some light character work, Sparrow is an eminently rewatchable old school crime flick.

Paternity Matters

I could write a combo-review of Saak van Geloof ("A Matter of Faith") and Jakhalsdans. Both are Afrikaans dramas set in sparsely populated, small South African towns. Jakhalsdans, about a reclusive musician who comes out of hiding in support of a school fundraiser, is set in Loxton and directed by Darrell James Roodt (Yesterday, Faith’s Corner). Saak van Geloof, a religious drama about faith and family, is set in Prins Albert and directed by Diony Kempen, who produced Jakhalsdans. Both films are shot by Andrew Tolmay. Both films represent some of the worst that Afrikaans drama has to offer.

One the one hand, there’s very little to say about Jakhalsdans. It stars Theuns Jordaan and is, to my eternal shock and disbelief, written by well-regarded crime novelist Deon Meyer. It has one of the worst endings in recent memory, a slap in the face of everyone who came to see the film based on its musical promise. It’s all build-up and no pay-off. It took me three attempts to finish the film. It is tedious, badly written, cheap looking and insulting to moviegoers as well as Afrikaans music lovers. The dialogue is as solid as a Karoo rock, by which I mean that it’s heavy, lacking in colour, and that it sinks.

There’s a little more to say about Saak van Geloof, though not necessarily in a good way. Lelia Etsebeth stars as Marietjie Naude, the daughter of Kallie (Robbie Wessels) and Ella (Riana Nel). Shortly before Christmas, Marietjie tells her parents that she’s pregnant, and that the father is none other than the Holy Spirit. Soon the entire town is gossiping about their own immaculate conception while the Calvinist minister (Niekie van den Berg) attempts an intervention.

Due to their similar ages, the three main actors look like siblings; whoever cast this film must suffer from a sight impediment. Also, Nel’s performance is the worst – the worst – performance by a female actor in an Afrikaans film I have ever seen. At least Lika Berning got to occasionally look cute in Liefling, and Jakhalsdans’s Elizma Theron, while robotic, at least delivered her lines with a modicum of intent. Granted, the dialogue in Saak van Geloof is horrid. Much of it sounds made-up on the spot.

I pity the actors for having to wrestle with such bad writing, uninspired plotting and shallow characterisation. The scene where Kallie, having struggled with his faith for a while now, receives an affirmative sign from above is an unintentionally bizarre and funny scene. Miscast and misdirected, the actors stumble from scene to scene aiming at moments of serenity and profundity but arriving at absurdity and foolishness instead. Etsebeth is the only one who delivers something close to a heartfelt performance in spite of how stilted her character often comes across. And Van den Berg’s minister Botha is a clichéd mess prone to over delivery: “This … is a matter… of faith!” Spelling out its themes in capital letters, the film is too simple-minded to offend or stimulate.

I welcome any film that engages religious discourse in a serious minded, informed manner. Bringing Christian discourse into more contemporary settings can be thought provoking (see Pialat’s Under Satan’s Sun) and fascinating (Dornford-May’s Son of Man), not to mention Denys Arcand's superlative Jesus of Montreal. Anyone venturing into evangelical filmmaking surely knows the company they are in, so why produce such a bland drama? Measured against similarly themed films, Saak van Geloof, with its superficial spiritual veneer and misguided messiah motif, is plain ridiculous.

(Note: a fun way of watching a movie is to play a drinking game where you take shot of mampoer – and it has to be mampoer - whenever an extra looks into the camera.)

Dawn is intended literally

Given the saturation with Stephanie Meyer’s young adult franchise, what’s the point of a plot synopsis? Either you know the story and you’re maybe interested in seeing for yourself where things go, or you don’t and you aren’t. For my part, I remain mystified by the franchise’s continued success given as how only two (!) major events happen in this entire film (mild spoiler warning, even though everything was pointed out in the trailer): Bella and Edward’s wedding, and Bella’s surprise pregnancy.

At least Breaking Dawn Part 1 is the best directed entry in the series; credit to Bill Condon in this regard, who provides some spooky imagery, even though the wolves still look far too computer generated to be convincing. Then again, so does Taylor Lautner, who plays the mostly quiet (or verbally stunted) Jacob. Quiet, that is, unless he’s screaming at Bella for what awaits her or threatening the perpetually waxy Edward (Robert Pattinson) for loving Bella. Not even Condon (Gods & Monsters) can completely salvage the vacuous narrative.

In their fourth film together, these characters still define themselves solely by their relationships with one another. Sure, there are social ripples in their own circles – vampires, werewolves – but you get the feeling that if one of the three main characters were to spontaneously evaporate, the other two would shortly follow. The wedding scene is perfectly fine in an adolescent-fantasy-forest-tree-princess kind of way, while the pregnancy is simply tedious. The child (“It’s a monster!”) is making Bella increasingly ill, and that’s all we see: Bella looking thin and frail like a Tim Burton stop motion character.

Bella remains on the road to vampiredom as her lamentably tired and depressing character arc still positions her as one who despises her species. I’m still amazed at how one shot of Carlisle (Peter Facinelli) can out-camp Rocky Horror. In this sense, the Twilight movies are not without their pleasures, but none of the four films so far has managed to be even the slightest bit exciting. Having read the novel, I’m also disappointed that this film didn’t translate all the gore from the book into corresponding blood drenched imagery. The Twilight films continue to fail as character dramas as well as supernatural narratives. At least this one has the dubious honour of introducing the worst character name yet though it sacrifices the homoerotic tension from Eclipse for some more preaching on the dangers of sex (have sex once and CARRY YOUR DEMON SPAWN!).

Artificial sweetener

Semi-Soet is South Africa’s very first post-transitional Afrikaans romantic comedy in the most Hollywood sense of the word. The leads are attractive, the story improbable, the humour often forced; the locations are breathtakingly beautiful; mistaken identities and misunderstandings abound. The formula is as old as classical cinema itself. Director Joshua Rous does not seek to undermine the formula in any way - the film even has a "wild animal" moment - but his command of the Hollywood romcom form is sure and confident. It's a lightweight mix of A Walk in the Clouds meets The Proposal.

Jaci van Jaarsveld (Anel Alexander) works for the ad company Mojo. To her boss’s (Corine du Toit) concern, a corporate cannibal nicknamed The Jackal (Nico Panagio) has indicated that he wants to buy out the company, which leads to large scale retrenchment. When The Jackal arrives for a meeting with Mojo, Jaci mistakes him for someone else and before you know it, Jaci and her corporate nemesis are on their way to a romantic business weekend (!) at Vrede & Rust wine estate. 

In tow are the obligatory supporting characters, with Sandra Vaughn as Jaci’s chirpy sidekick and Louw Venter as Hertjie, The Jackal’s lawyer colleague who here poses as a gay stylist. 7de Laan’s Diaan Lawrenson also appears as Jaci’s ex-boyfriend’s (Paul du Toit) current squeeze, the dim Chadrie. Although her character has little to do, seeing as she plays the consummate blonde bimbo, Lawrenson has one of the film’s best timed comic reactions.

Speaking of stereotypes: how unfortunate that Semi-Soet would resort to so many of them, especially of the gay variety. Surely there’s a romantic comedy that can work without indulging redundant gender stereotypes? So much of the film offers a viable Afrikaans complement to American romcoms that such a major misstep is indeed disheartening. Jodi Abrahams is a fine actor (he was one of the highlights in the TV series Hard Copy), and his talents are wasted as he prances around as an camp model agent.

If you’ve seen a couple of American romcoms you know what to expect, but to their credit the creative team keeps the film engaging for most of its running time (starting with some inventive opening credits). As the film nears its end, things get too farfetched and simultaneously old fashioned as the film utilises the type of plot developments that characterised much of 1990s sitcom fare. Regardless, the film puts some of its American contemporaries to shame; it beats genre prototypical drivel like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days with ease.