REVIEWS
The Dance Of Reality Reviewed by Allan Hunter
Anatomy Of A Paper Clip Reviewed by Mark Adams A wonderfully whimsical, oddball delight, the amusingly titled Anatomy Of A Paper Clip might actually prove too slight and resolutely strange to prosper much beyond the film festival circuit, but its warm-hearted taste for the unusual and the quirky is to be applauded as it leaves its audience with a quizzical smile. While playing knowingly on accepted Japanese traditions of politeness, hierarchy and respect, this engagingly shot film leaps off into the obscure with its fairytale-like story of a mild-mannered paperclip bender whose encounter with a butterfly in his minimalistic flat sees his world change. Writer-director-producer-editor Akira Ikeda has a strong sense of his material, and manages to create a Japanese world that feels vaguely familiar, but at the same time is like nothing close to reality. Neck-brace wearing Kogure (the engagingly stonefaced Sakae Tomomatsu) is one of an unhappy foursome who bends paperclips at a ramshackle factory. He allows himself to be cursed at by his boss, and after dinner at the same restaurant every night he returns to his empty apartment. One day he finds a butterfly in his home and lets it fly away. The next day he finds a woman there — the surreal leap being that she is the butterfly transformed — who speaks nothing but gibberish. He lets her stay, but after a while she curls up in his flat and later becomes covered in a cocoon. Add to the mix a dour-faced love affair between a couple at the paperclip factory; the financial problems of Kogure’s favourite restaurant; the odd woman who sells tofu rolls in the park; and the antics of two bumbling thieves, and you have a surreal film that never shirks from its oddball nature. Clearly much takes place in Kogure’s imagination — especially the giant person-sized cocoon in his flat — but then the whole film is defiantly strange. The mannered movements of the actors, the clothing and the static camera placements combine to deliver something rather tender and odd. It has moments of almost cartoonish comedy but at its tender core is a sense of gentle romance and rebirth.
Carte Blanche Jap. 2013. 99mins Director/screenplay/ producer/editor Akira Ikeda Production company/ contact PIA Film Festival, http://pff.jp/english Cinematography Mizuki Osada Production designer Mamoru Yamauchi Music Koji Numata Main cast Sakae Tomomatsu, Kazutoshi Kato, Yukari Hara, Toshiyuki Takahashi, Akiko An
Everything you wanted to know about Alejandro Jodorowsky but never imagined asking, can be found in The Dance Of Reality (La Danza De La Realidad), a joyously idiosyncratic exercise in imagined autobiography that revisits defining moments from his childhood in 1930s Chile. The first feature in almost a quarter of a century from the veteran director of El Topo and Santa Sangre is a surprisingly witty, accessible magical-mystery tour through his past that has cult potential in every baroque, eye-popping frame. It acts as both a summation of many things that have fascinated him (religion, mysticism, poetry, philosophy) and as a means of explaining their personal roots. Jodorowsky has invented a therapy called psychomagic involving acts to “heal family-related childhood psychological problems”. The Jodorowsky childhood in Tocopilla appears to have been manufactured by a combination of Fellini and Monty Python. A dwarf appears in a succession of lurid costumes trying to drum up business outside his father’s store, limbless drunkards lie around the city centre looking for a fight and circus performers are everywhere. You almost want the Spanish Inquisition to appear but maybe nobody expects them. The Python connection is even more apparent given that Brontis Jodorowsky bears a striking similarity to the young Terry Gilliam as Jaime, a Stalin-loving Communist who measures his son’s masculinity by the amount of pain he can withstand. His mother Sara (Flores) is a large-breasted lady who sings every line of dialogue with the passion of a great opera diva. In life, she dreamed of being a singer but never managed it. In the film, she never stops singing and that is where Jodorowsky has put his imagination into play as he moulds and shapes true events into a more favourable light. The film shifts in the second hour to focus more on the father’s spiritual and political journey towards enlightenment. A kaleidoscopic, sometimes chaotic torrent of striking images, comic exuberance and philosophical musing, The Dance Of Reality is never dull and could attract new converts to Jodorowsky’s world as well as the old faithfuls.
Masters
Fr. 2013. 130mins Director/screenplay Alejandro Jodorowsky Production company Camera One International sales Pathé International, sales@ patheinternational.com Producer Michel Seydoux, Moises Cosio, Alejandro Jodorowsky Cinematography Jean-Marie Dreujou Editor Maryline Montieux Production designer Anne Falgueres Music Adan Jodorowsky, Jonathan Handelsman Main cast Brontis Jodorowsky, Pamela Flores, Jeremias Herskovits
July 10, 2014 Screen International at Jerusalem 13 n