Rental Family

Rental Family; comedy / drama, Japan / USA, 2025; D: Hikari, S: Brendan Fraser, Takehiro Hira, Akira Emoto, Shannon Mahina Gorman, Mari Yamamoto, Shino Shinozaki

Tokyo. Desperate due to the fact that nobody wants to cast him, small time American actor Phillip accepts to work for the Rental Family company led by Shinji, which specializes in actors playing real-life roles for clients. Phillip thus plays several roles: a friend of a man who wants to play video games with someone; a husband for a fake wedding of a lesbian woman intended to appease her parents, so that she can get away from them; a father for the 6-year old Mia, since her mother Hitomi believes that her daughter will be enrolled in a prestigious school if she is not a single parent; a reporter interviewing retired actor Kikuo, ostensibly to write an article about him... Phillip gets emotionally attached to the last two jobs. Mia figures out he is not her real dad, is angry, but makes up with him. Kikuo dies after Phillip brings him to his birth town. Shinji thus reforms the company: it now offers no apology services.

An unusual film that explores the unusual 21st century phenomenon of alienated modern Japan, companies for Rental family services, this comedy-drama is both comical and sad, and the more you think about it, the sadder this concept gets. Brendan Fraser is good as the American expat Phillip struggling to understand Japan, and thus accepts the task of playing acting roles in real life for hire to better "blend in", for people who need a friend, a fake husband, and even a fake father. Through it, the director and screenwriter Hikari paints a bigger picture of absence of human touch, contact and connection lost in urban megalopolises, which mutate into stranger and stranger directions. At moments, the disappearing border between deception and reality seems as bizarre as "The Truman Show": Phillip is suppose to fill in the gap for missing relationships, but he feels more and more like a fake himself. Hikari shows a lot of sense for humor (Phillip's over-the-top toothpaste commercial; the scene where Phillip pretends to be Hitomi's husband for the school interview, and when the committee asks them what is the most important in raising a child, he and Hitomi answer differently at the same time: "Honesty" and "Communication", so Phillip improvises to save the situation: "An honest communication"), yet becomes surprisingly emotional in the last third, when Phillip actually becomes friends with retired actor Kikuo and the 6-year old Mia, playing her "dad". "Rental Family" lacks some higher creative "jumps", and it should have included at least one moment where Phillip's separate acting jobs overlap and contradict each other, which is a pity, but it does have an interesting moment where Mia recognizes Phillip playing a pirate in a movie. The emotional bond between Mia and her surrogate father Phillip is surprisingly sweet, showing that sometimes even surrogate emotions can traverse from fake to real.

Grade:++

The Voice of Hind Rajab

Sawt Hind Rajab; docudrama, Tunisia / France, 2025; D: Kaouther Ben Hania, S: Motaz Malhees, Saja Kilani, Amer Hlehel, Clara Khoury 

Gaza War. The Israeli army orders the evacuation of the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood. On 29 January 2024, Red Crescent telephone worker Omar receives a phone call from the 5-year year old Hind Rajab, a girl who is trapped in a car that was shot at from a tank, which left five of her relatives dead. The car is stranded near the Fares gas station, an 8-minute car drive from the Red Crescent building. Omar is pressuring his boss Mahdi, the coordinator, to dispatch an ambulance to get Hind, but they must first wait for the approval of the Israeli authorities. Rana and Nisreen are also on the phone, talking to the girl, trying to calm her. After a green light, an ambulance is finally dispatched to pick up Hind, but is shot at and the contact breaks. At 7:30 pm, Hind is not heard of again. Weeks later, after Israeli army withdrawal, Hind's corpse is found in the car that was shot at with 335 bullets.

"The Voice of Hind Rajab" is a movie that destroys you. One cannot enjoy it, it is impossibly painful, but it is an essential watch. From the cinematic aspect, it is remarkable—it is an re-enactment of the Red Crescent workers who talked on the phone to Hind Rajab, it plays out only within this one location (except for the epilogue which includes archive footage of crime investigators and Hind's mother), and yet it is engaging, gripping and absorbing from start to finish. The title character, the 5-year old girl, is never seen, only heard via audio. The director Kaouther Ben Hania elegantly blends in real-life audio of Hind with actors who play Red Crescent workers, and even in one scene shows actors playing said workers Nisreen and Omar sitting and standing on the table while talking to Hind, while someone is holding a mobile phone in front of the camera, playing a recording of actual footage of Nisreen and Omar in this exact pose, overlayed over actors re-enacting this scene. And yet, the human dimension is the one that stays with you the most. Hearing the voice of this 5-year old child, scared, crying for help, hoping someone will save her from the car, surrounded by five dead relatives, is the ultimate agony of helplessness. It is impossible to watch it without becoming emotional. But then again, this is a story that simply had to be told. Humanity owed it to Hind to tell this story. The viewers share their frustration with Omar who argues with his boss Mahdi that they were not given green light to simply go get the girl—after all, she is only a 40-minute walk away from them, and they have been talking to her over the phone for two hours. Still, anyone who is not given authorization to go to a certain route during Gaza War, will simply be shot, and as the finale shows, some will be shot even in an ambulance van and even with this authorization. This is a chronicle of the war crime of cruel treatment and murder, and the people who just watch this, without having any power to stop it. Some of the most tear-inducing movies that will make you cry are not "Titanic" or "Life is Beautiful"—but "The Voice of Hind Rajab".

Grade:+++

The Fifth Seal

Az Ötödik Pecsét; psychological war drama, Hungary, 1976; D: Zoltán Fábri, S: Lajos Őze, László Márkus, Sándor Horváth, Ferenc Bencze, István Dégi, Zoltán Latinovits

Budapest, World War II. Four friends gather at a closed bar and talk at the table: Gyurica, Kovacs, Kiraly and Bela, the innkeeper. A man with a limp, on crutches, Keszei, unexpectedly enters and joins them. Gyurica poses a philosophical question: on a fictional island, a monarch, Tomoceusz Katatiki, abuses his slave Gyugyu by cutting his tongue, poking one of his eyes, taking away his children. But Gyugyu at least feels comfort that he is superior by being good and innocent, regardless. If they were to die, would they choose to be reborn as Tomoceusz or Gyugyu? That night, all the friends sleep badly, struggling with this question. They are arrested by Fascist agents and beaten in a prison for calling them murderers. A Fascist official shows them a dying anti-Fascist tied in a Christ-like pose and tells them they are free to go if they slap him twice. They all refuse and are executed, except Gyurica who slaps him and is released. As he walks, buildings collapse from bombings.

One of the best movies of the 70s, a one that feels equally as fresh and relevant even today, Zoltan Fabri's "The Fifth Seal" is a phenomenal philosophical film posing the ultimate moral question: if they were forced to pick a side, would people choose the stronger evil or the weaker good? Would they choose to save their soul if it is not rewarding? This is a highly unusual film, contemplating about Jean Paul Sartre's bad faith thought experiment and the external pressures that persuade people to accept false values, but also displaying a strange structure. In the opening 42-minute segment, "The Fifth Seal" plays out on only one location, a bar, consisting only out of five people talking at the table. At first, the viewers are not sure what kind of a film they are watching, nor where this is going. All this is initially static. Until the protagonist Gyurica poses a thought provoking question: if they were forced to choose, would they pick to live as an evil, cruel, powerful tyrant or his slave who is constantly abused and mistreated, but remains incorruptibly purehearted? In the intermission segment, the four friends cannot sleep because they are struggling with this question, doubting their own ethics and integrity. 

As Kovacs and Bela observe, they are passive to the world around them, because that is the least dangerous ("I've got no wealth, but I've got clear conscience!" - "Our names won't be printed in history books, but we never did anything evil, either"). Nothing is shown as black-and-white, either: Gyurica is a cynic, but secretly takes care not only for his three children at home, but is also hiding a Jewish girl during World War II; whereas the opportunistic Bela is paying money both to a Fascist commander and to a woman whose husband was taken away by the Fascists, since he calculates that he can thus have evidence of both pro-Fascism and anti-Fascism after the war, depending on whoever wins. While the first segment is the moral question in theory, the last segment is the practice: the four friends are arrested by Fascists, beaten in jail, and then given an impossible choice. They must abandon their self-respect and show loyalty to the Fascists by slapping a tortured man, half-dead, standing in a Christ-like pose as his two hands are tied up in opposite directions in jail—if they hit him, they are free to go; if they refuse, they will be shot. "The Fifth Seal" is one of the rare movies where the last 15 minutes decisively decide the impression of the whole: all the doubts from the opening act disappear and the viewers are left feeling shattered, trying to pull themselves together after experiencing such intensity and contemplation. This is, in essence, a Christian film about saving your soul and being good. If it had been directed by I. Bergman, "The Fifth Seal" would have been one of the top 5 best Bergman movies. As it has been directed by Fabri, it is one of the best Hungarian movies of the 20th century. 

Grade:+++

The Witness

A tanú; satire, Hungary, 1969; D: Péter Bacsó, S: Ferenc Kállai, Lajos Őze, Béla Both, Zoltán Fábri, Lili Monori

Hungary, 1 9 4 9. Jozsef Pelikan, a Danube dike-reeve and father of 8 children, slaughters a pig in his home basement to prepare meat. However, since that is illegal, a witness snitches him to the Communist authorities who arrive at Jozsef's home and arrest him. Surprisingly, he is released by Communist official Virag who is suspiciously helpful towards him. Virag finds Jozsef new jobs as a swimming pool director or amusement park manager, but each time Jozsef makes a blunder and is arrested again. Finally, he succeeds as an orange institute director. In the end, Virag reveals his true intent: Jozsef has to be a witness at a trial and falsely testify against his friend Zoltan, who fell out of favor against the Communists, and accuse him of being a Fascist agent. But at the trial, Jozsef is confused and angry when he spots an old enemy, Gulyas, as a witness, too, argues with him, and thus Gulyas incriminates Jozsef and Virag as agents, as well. Jozsef is sentenced to death, but released after the death of Stalin.

Already from the opening scenes where the protagonist Jozsef Pelikan arrives with his boat at the Danube shore, while his dog runs towards a giant sign on the meadow that says "Long Live Our Great and Wise Leader!" and urinates on it, it is already obvious Peter Bacso's brilliant "The Witness" will be a giant satirical poke at Communism, unbelievable in its audacity, which is why it was immediately banned by the Communist regime and landed in a bunker for a decade, but after the fall of Communism, it achieved a cult status. Bacso crafts a completely relaxed, casual and laconic film about the misadventures of its protagonist, through which it illustrates several layers of his society and system back in the day. Several jokes arrive so swiftly they play out almost as a kids movie, reminiscent of Czech humor, but always with a sharp edge since the allusions are obvious. The Communist ban in which farmers were not allowed to kill their own pig on their own farm to have meat for their kids is already absurd in itself. 

In one sequence the secret police arrive at Jozsef's home, searching for the "illegal" meat, cannot find anything, but then Jozsef's friend, Zoltan Daniel, a Communist official, appears from the bedroom since he was sick and slept over at Jozsef's place, and scolds the two secret police agents. Zoltan even tells them that during World War II he was hiding in Jozsef's secret bunker, then opens its hidden entrance from the floor—and accidentally reveals the hidden basement full of meat downstairs, which gets Jozsef arrested. The episodes in which Communist official Virag tries to give Jozsef new jobs to rehabilitate him, but the latter does everything wrong by accident, are often very funny. For instance, Jozsef is assigned as the swimming pool director, and is surprised that it is closed since a Communist general is swimming all by himself in the empty swimming pool, and so allows a hundred customers inside, causing a bodyguard to jump into the water to "protect" the general from the kids around him who could be possible assassins. In another, Jozsef is the manager of a dark ride, Communist-themed roller coaster amusement park, and the Communist general is given the first ride inside. He spots a ghost over Europe, a giant hand that smashes the "bourgeoisie", and in the finale a sign says: "The enforcer of our victory" and a photo of himself shows up on the wall, after which the general is so scared he falls unconscious. Bacso elegantly builds a clever deconstruction of Communist system with all its flaws, with a lot of a sophistication hidden inside all the little gags scattered throughout the film.

Grade:+++

Trees Lounge

Trees Lounge; drama, USA, 1996; D: Steve Buscemi, S: Steve Buscemi, Anthony LaPaglia, Chloë Sevigny, Mark Boone Junior, Elizabeth Bracco, Daniel Baldwin, Mimi Rogers, Eszter Balint, Carol Kane, Samuel L. Jackson, Seymour Cassel

Trees Lounge is a bar on Long Island regularly visited by alcoholic Tommy, who is constantly down on his luck. He cannot find a job as a car mechanic since he cannot even fix his own car. He is also resentful at his former boss Rob is now dating Tommy's ex-girlfriend Theresa, pregnant in the meantime. Tommy finds a new job as an ice cream truck driver, and becomes friends with 17-year old Debbie. The two spend a night together. The next day, Debbie's dad Jerry scolds her, and since Tommy is elusive, she moves to her cousin's place. Jerry chases after Tommy, thinking he slept with Debbie, and hits him with a bat. Tommy visits Theresa at the maternity ward after she gave birth, and confesses he would have been happy if they remained a couple.

Steve Buscemi's feature length debut film as a director, "Trees Lounge" is a respectable first independent film, a one where he gets a rare chance to play a fully fleshed-out, three-dimensional character, and not just a caricature. By its setting within a bar, through which it observes alcoholic subculture, it reminds of Schroeder's "Barfly", but it takes a different, more sympathetic approach to its main character Tommy, who tries to break out of this circle and take a new life path. It is very episodic, without a clear storyline, featuring several "throw away" cameos from actors such as Samuel L. Jackson or Carol Kane who sometimes barely last two minutes, but it does align into a more engaging last half an hour, when it becomes more emotional. The opening act has a few humorous moments showing Tommy's cynical, snappy personality. For instance, his arguing with his ex-boss Rob, who is now with his ex-girlfriend: "You're being an asshole!" - "At least I know I'm an asshole. Question is, do you know it?" When Rob protests, Tommy continues: "You're an even bigger asshole than me. And if you don't think you are, you're an even bigger asshole than that!" Some episodes are weaker and less interesting, but some are really well done. The subplot in which Tommy drives an ice cream truck, and a 17-year old Debbie suddenly jumps in and sits at the back, to drive with him and chat, is really charming and sweet. Tommy is never idealized: it is left open if he slept with Debbie when she stayed over at his place or not, and he eventually decides to distance himself from her since she is not 18, but then again, he also feels remorse that such a potential love story will be thrown away. This subplot was elaborated in another Buscemi film, the excellent "Ghost World", filmed five years later. As the ending shows, Tommy longs more for the lost opportunity of his ex-girlfriend Theresa, and thus this downbeat finale meditates on fatalism and determinism in people who don't know how to change their life circumstances.

Grade:++

Flodder

Flodder; black comedy, Netherlands, 1986; D: Dick Maas, S: Nelly Frijda, Huub Stapel, Tatjana Šimić, René van 't Hof, Nani Lehnhausen

Since their land was contamined by the toxic waste dump, the city council approves that the backward, dirty Flodder family is to be moved to a mansion in the elite neighborhood Zonnedael, free of charge or rent. The family consists out of three brothers, including Johnny; two sisters, including Kees and Toet; mother, grandpa and dog. The family causes a commotion among their neighbors, mostly doctors or lawyers, since they use blackmail and theft to gain more money. When their grandpa is killed by a train since his wheelchair was stuck on train tracks, ma discovers a large sum of money among his train toys and buys the mansion. Johnny starts a relationship with Yolanda, but her jealous husband, a military general, steals a tank and shoots at their mansion, destroying it, but Flodders don't mind and instead move to the house of the wounded social worker.

Intended as a European populist comedy for the wider audiences, a one which imitates similar American comedy films, "Flodder" surprisingly became the 6th highest grossing Dutch movie of the 20th century, with 2,314,000 tickets sold at the local box office. Released a year before the similar TV comedy series "Married... with Children", "Flodder" is a black comedy that deliberately goes so over-the-top in depicting an anti-social, dysfunctional, primitive, and overall totally failed freak family that it is not for everyone's taste, but since everything is so exaggerated, it cannot be taken as anything but silly fun. The humor sometimes goes far into crude territory, making fun of incest, prostitution (for instance, the naked brother sleeps in bed with his attractive sister Kees (Tatjana Simic), but is caught during the night by ma and chased away back to his room; another brother takes money from men standing in line at the entrance of his Kees' room, who waits inside to have sex with them...) and even blackmail and extortion (Kees goes to the garage of her neighbor, a married car salesman, and has sex with him, but her brother secretly takes a photo of them. Cue to the next scene of Johnny later going to the office of said car salesman to buy a red car. The car salesman goes: "How do you intend to play? Cash, credit card...?", as Johnny gives him the photo of the car salesman having sex with Kees, and says: "Polaroid!"), showing all the banned "lower urges" of people in society, but it is often very funny. It also depicts a satirical take on anti-gentrification and cultural integration, since instead of the higher class elevating the Flodder family in the elite neighborhood, the Flodders actually drag everyone else to a lower level. A wild, outrageous comedy that breaks loose the stiff civility, flawed and flat, but still amusing, with one remarkable camera move from above a speeding car, to descending down underneath the second speeding car in a chase scene some 35 minutes into the film.

Grade:++

All About My Mother

Todo sobre mi madre; drama, Spain, 1999; D: Pedro Almodóvar, S: Cecilia Roth, Penélope Cruz, Marisa Paredes, Antonia San Juan, Candela Peña, Eloy Azorin

Madrid. The 17-year old Esteban is sad that his single mother Manuela, a nurse, never told him about his father, but still wants to write a novel about her. While waiting outside a theatre during rain to chase after the autograph of actress Huma, Esteban is hit and killed by a car. Manuela thus travels to Barcelona to search for Esteban's father, transvestite Lola. She reunites with transgender prostitute Agrado, becomes friends with nun Rosa who is pregnant with Lola, and becomes an understudy of Huma, even performing in her play "A Streetcar Named Desire". A sick Rosa finds out she is HIV-positive and dies, but gives birth to a baby which she names Esteban, and Manuela adopts him. Manuela encounters Lola again, who is HIV-positive. Two years later, Manuela returns to Barcelona to reunite with Huma and Agrado, and reveals Esteban is HIV-negative.

The director and screenwriter Pedro Almodovar often walks a thin line between soap opera, melodrama and art, but in his earlier films managed to swing towards the latter thanks to his eccentric humor and surreal ideas. "All About My Mother", which he himself considers one of his three best films, is much more quiet, restrained and untypically calm for him, to focus more on honest emotions. As the title implies, it is an ode to women who decided to become mothers. The story is thin and meandering, focusing ostensibly on heroine Manuela (very good Cecilia Roth) in search for her dead son's father, but in reality just spending most of its time on her becoming friends with other women, as Almodovar contemplates what can constitute a family outside the socially acceptable norms: here, even a transgender prostitute and a pregnant nun (wonderful Penelope Cruz) can become part of this group that is more than just friends. Barcelona is, surprisingly, not that featured in the plot: except for one scene where Manuela observes La Sagrada Familia from her car, it deliberately avoids the city's landmarks to focus more on everyday events which could play out anywhere. Little character interactions and interconnected relations build this 'slice-of-life' movie, and Almodovar has an eye for colors (for instance, red is featured prominently in the movie, and Manuela often wears red clothes to symbolize her passion). 

Some dialogue is interesting. For instance, when actress Huma says to Manuela: "Success has got no taste or smell. And when you get use to it, it's as if it didn't exist." Talking about the father of her late son Esteban, the transgender Lola, Manuela cynically comments: "Lola's got the worst of a man and the worst of a woman... The bastard! How could someone act so macho with a pair of tits like that?" Rosa's mother confesses that strange feeling among parents who cannot understand their child: "I don't know what I did wrong with Rosa. Ever since she was born, she's been like an alien." A meditation on trying to understand and connect with parents and children is one of the themes of this film. One genius scenes transition: a bird's-eye view of two tracks, with one train (carrying Manuela inside leaving Barcelona) going from left to right of the frame, a subtitle saying: "Two years later" appears, and then a second train on the second track, going from right to left (carrying Manuela returning to Barcelona) is seen. The most sympathetic humorous moment arrives when the theatre play is cancelled because the two main actresses are unavailable, so the transgender prostitute Agrado decides to entertain the audience with details from her life, including mentioning all the plastic surgeries she underwent, but then this suddenly becomes sincere and reveals her vulnerable side: "Because you are more authentic the more you resemble what you've dreamed of being". "All About My Mother" is very good, but still a bit overrated: film critics often pretend that it's not a soap opera, but it is. And yet, that's not the point. The point is that it somehow manages to enchant the viewers to not care about watching a soap opera, because the emotions and sincerity of its characters somehow makes it better than the sum of its parts. 

Grade:+++

Arrebato

Arrebato; art-film / psychological drama, Spain, 1979; D: Ivan Zulueta, S: Eusebio Poncela, Cecilia Roth, Will More, Marta Fernández Muro

Madrid. Jose is a film director completing the final scene of a horror film in which a vampire woman looks directly into the camera. Jose returns to his apartment, gets high on heroin and spots his girlfriend Ana sleeping in his bed. Jose receives a film reel and an audio cassette of a man he knew, Pedro, a reclusive guy who is making film clips. Jose remembers he met Pedro through Jose's then girlfriend Marta, and showed him how to use time-lapse photography. Pedro is overwhelmed and makes several fast-motion film clips. Pedro films himself sleeping with a camera in time-lapse, but notices a red frame is missing. Pedro goes to sleep again, but the camera moves to the left towards Marta sitting, and then she disappears. Jose goes to Pedro's apartment and develops his film. Jose notices Pedro disappeared and was also "swallowed" by the camera, only a few frames of Pedro's face remaining. Jose goes to the bed, the camera turns towards him, and then Jose also disappears and becomes part of the film reel.

Even though it was voted in a national poll by magazine Caiman Cuadernos de Cine as one of the top 10 best Spanish films of the 20th century, Ivan Zulueta's final feature length film "Arrebato" is a too obscure patchwork to truly work. Overlong and overstretched, without a clear plot, "Arrebato" is fundamentally a movie about making movies, an ode to cinema and people who get so carried away with it that their life practically becomes a movie, which is hinted at in the surreal ending. Zulueta crafts aesthetic images consisting of close-up shots and unusual camera angles to make the viewers "get into" the taste of this cinematic experience. However, he is unable to truly develop a coherent plot which will complete the impression. "Arrebato" reminds of Antonioni's "Blow-Up" insofar that it is nominally an investigative story about someone uncovering a mystery, but it then slowly disintegrates into an abstract art-film which just dwells on art itself. There are several unusual moments (Jose argues with Ana and spills heroin on the ground in the apartment, but then takes a straw and snorts its dust from the carpet; a film reel of a man's penis getting an erection; film reel of a fast-forward time lapse of clouds and shadows "growing" on the ground during the day), and the main actor Eusebio Poncela is effective as the troubled film director, but "Arrebato" becomes too self-referential, to such an extent that it falls into autism, which is why the ending is a welcome conclusion to all this mess. There is a suspensful little moment where Jose watches TV, spots Pedro's reflection on the screen, and as Pedro is standing behind him with a doll, the TV program suddenly starts going in fast-forward. Afterwards, this all returns back to normal. The movie somehow missed an opportunity to take on a horror direction in that scene, because it would have been more interesting than the result we got.

Grade:++

Welcome Mr. Marshall!

¡Bienvenido, Mister Marshall!; satire, Spain, 1953; D: Luis García Berlanga, S: José Isbert, Manolo Morán, Lolita Sevilla, Alberto Romea

The Castillan town Villar del Rio is excited: American diplomats are supposed to visit soon, so the Mayor decides to stage a giant welcoming party for them, hoping to benefit from the funds of the Marshall Plan, intended to help Europe develop and recover. Flamenco impresario Manolo, who claims to know Americans the best since he lived in Boston, persuades the Mayor to re-decorate the town in Andalusian-style, since the Americans are mostly familiar with that side of Spain. One farmer even dreams of the Three Wise Men dropping a tractor attached to a parachute to his farm from a plane. Locals put on fake costumes and fake walls at the town entrance, but on that day the three American cars just pass through their town without stopping. The locals then remove all the pro-American decorations and resume their lives as if nothing happened.

The feature length debut film by Luis Garcia Berlanga shows him as a director who perfectly knows all the little flaws of Spanish mentality which he then ridicules with such intelligent wit and gusto that not even B. Wilder would be ashamed of. "Welcome Mr. Marshall!" is a giant satire on both the illusion that American exceptionalism will bring perfection and salvation to every country in the world they touch as well that local people should invest their energy into improving their life conditions for themselves, without relying on outside forces or hype to solve everything for them. The story about a Mayor who entices the entire town to put on a giant show to host and welcome American diplomats coming for a visit is used to portray all sorts of mentality of pandering, flattery, sycophancy and overall servility towards someone who is promising benefits, and thus some situations reach almost burlesque levels of humor. The opening act is an outstanding example of inventive genius in which Berlanga displays a playful metafilm humor—a vehicle stops at the main square of the town, in a wide shot, and then the narrator starts describing the town, but then stops, the frame is frozen, and suddenly all the people "disappear" from the frame, leaving an empty town: "Excuse me. It is less obstructing this way." 

The narrator then describes how everything is in derelict state there, for instance, the school is so old that it still has a map of Europe featuring Austro-Hungarian Empire, whereas one place is a cafe, a casino, a universal inn and a bus station at the same time. Then the narrator goes: "Now I'd like to introduce you to Jeronimo, the town clerk", but since said man is sleeping in his chair, the narrator accordingly lowers his voice and continues narrating—in a whisper! When the representatives arrive in a fancy car and two motorcycles, a whole row of women stop washing their clothes and unanimously raise their heads and stand up, while a cow and a donkey also raise their heads. The expectations of the locals are so exaggerated that the Mayor sets up a table with all people standing in line, so that each one of them can say one wish they expect from the Americans, almost as if the viewers are witnessing a Santa Claus wish list for grown ups. The middle segment of the movie is lacking since it does not have the same energy and inspiration as the opening act, and could have used more jokes, yet the black-humored ending is such a slap that it gives the characters their soberness back and sends a message: never have idols.

Grade:+++

Plastic Jesus

Plastični Isus; art-film / experimental film, Serbia, 1971; D: Lazar Stojanović, S: Tomislav Gotovac, Svetlana Gligorijević, Vukica Đilas, Ljubiša Ristić, Mida Stevanović

Belgrade. Film student Tomislav Gotovac arrived from Zagreb to make an underground film, and survives by sleeping over at the apartments of local women and filming sex scenes with them. Among them is an American woman. After running naked on the streets, Tomislav is arrested and the authorities shave his beard and head bald. Broke and abandoned, Tomislav goes to a village of his next girlfriend, but when he cheats at her, she takes his pistol and shoots him. 

A patchwork of everything, but overall nothing in particular, Lazar Stojanovic's only feature length film, "Plastic Jesus" is a cult movie whose controversies are inversely proportional to its quality and coherence. The story—that is what little of it is there—revolves around the misadventures of experimental artist Tomislav Gotovac sleeping with Belgrade women while making an underground film, but it could have been told as a 30 minute film, yet for some reason Stojanovic decided to add 40 minutes of historical archive footage, to the point of excess, which comes across as being lazy since they outnumber and overshadow the main plot. Moreover, these archive footages do not seem to play much role in advancing or enriching the thin story, and since they mostly consist out of video footage of dictator Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, Chetniks and Ustashe, it seems more like a desperate attempt at creating some controversy out of nothing as a compensation for the emptiness of the film. The opening scene of Gotovac holding a piece of paper, looking into the camera and reading out loud the entire cast and crew of the movie is sympathetic and funny, and here and there some other amusing bits appear—for instance, when one of his girlfriends tells Gotovac: "I wouldn't want you to go to America, there are too many people like you there." 

But most of the scenes are strained and forced, for instance the one where a little girl is sitting, while Gotovac is playing an erotic movie he made on the screen behind her via his movie projector, until the mother arrives in the room and scolds him. It is peculiar as to why some of the archive footage was included. For instance, audio clips from the opening of Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will" are shown, just intercut with one of Gotovac's girlfriends driving on a motorcycle instead of Hitler, as the camera mimics the angle of said movie by showing her from the back. But what is the point? How does it connect with the rest of the story? It is also interesting to see footage of dictator and Nazi collaborator Ante Pavelić proclaiming the re-emergence of a Croatian parliament during World War II, which ends with all the members raising their hands in a Fascist salute. As well as images of dead people, probably victims of the Jasenovac concentration camp. But this is not a historical lesson, nor does it cover World War II as a topic. So all this is as arbitrary and relevant as inserting random clips of a Bugs Bunny cartoon. By including footage of Josip Broz Tito, and juxtaposing it with footage of '68 student protests, Stojanovic implies that even Tito abandoned his ideals from the youth, which was probably a contributor to the reason why he was sentenced to three years in prison by the Yugoslav authorities. "Plastic Jesus" shows why experimental films age the worst, since it seems like someone wanted to make a short movie, but then just slapped random archive footage to prolong it into a feature, but without a sense for purpose.

Grade:+