Berlin film review: "Invisible" (Reuters)

BERLIN (Hollywood Reporter) – Two women linked only by being victims of rape by the same man 20 years ago meet by chance and reveal how the trauma continues to affect their lives in Israeli filmmaker Michal Aviad's well-intended but unremarkable drama "Invisible."

The film makes the point that 1-in-5 women around the world will suffer rape or attempted rape in her lifetime. The two women, played with typical assurance by celebrated actresses Ronit Elkabetz and Evgenia Dodina, exemplify the damage done by sexual assault but the director's even-handed approach robs the story of any power.

Instructive for those unaware of the shameful statistics and ramifications of rape, the film's lack of dramatic impact limits box office potential.

Lily (Elkabetz) and Nira (Dodina) meet at a Palestinian protest that activist Lily is involved with and film editor Nira's boss is filming. Recognition sparks Nira's interest in researching the crimes of a man who was labeled the "polite rapist" by newspapers because of his insistence that victims caress him while being violated.

She goes to see the policemen who worked on the case, collects newspaper clippings and interviews others among the rapist's 16 known victims. Gradually Lily becomes interested too, and they reveal what has happened to them as wives and mothers in the two decades since.

Their biggest outrage is that the criminal involved spent just 10 years in jail, small punishment for each violation, and while it's clear they will not act on it, they relish what they would do to the man if they could. It's too bad the passionate and understandable savagery of their imagined revenge did not infuse the film as a whole.

(Editing by Zorianna Kit)

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Berlin movie review: "Turin's Horse" (Reuters)

BERLIN (Hollywood Reporter) – Hungarian director Bela Tarr's somnolent drama "Turin's Horse" tells of an aging father and his grown daughter who lead lives of relentless tedium in a shabby dwelling on a bleak, windswept plain. Toward the end of the film, they appear to lose the will to live. Hey are not alone. Monotonous and repetitive, the black-and-white production runs 146 very long minutes as the two go about their mind-numbing daily routines accompanied by a sonorous musical dirge that is as relentless as the ferocious winds outside.

Fans of Tarr's somber and sedate films will know what they are in for and will no doubt find the time well spent. Others might soon grow weary of measured pace of the characters as they dress in their ragged clothes, eat boiled potatoes with their fingers, fetch water, clean their bowls, chop wood and feed the horse.

The title horse is apparently one mentioned in a brief narration at the start about Friedrich Nietzsche, sobbing over a mistreated equine in the Italian city of the title. So too is the couple's horse prone to stubbornness as she shows a reluctance to move, which will have a severe impact upon the man and woman living in such remote circumstances.

The story, if it can be called that, covers six days in their lives with each one numbered and pretty much the same as the one before. Janos Derzsi, as the rugged old man, has a wonderfully craggy, white-bearded physiognomy that bears up to considerable scrutiny, which is a good thing since he doesn't say much. Nor does Erika Bok as his long-suffering and industrious daughter.

Along about Day 4, the well goes dry and it seems like a good time to find someplace else to live, but then the storm kicks up even more and it's back to the old routine. By this time, cinematographer Fred Kelemen's mostly stationary camera has revealed about all there is to see in a fine array of textures in such things as the wooden table, the rough floors, the walls of stone, the ropes on the horse and the skin on the boiled potatoes. That does not, however, make up for the almost complete lack of information about the two characters, and so it is easy to become indifferent to their fate, whatever it is.

(Editing by Zorianna Kit)

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Berlin film review: "Lost Land" (Reuters)

BERLIN (Hollywood Reporter) – Despite parallels with the Israeli/Palestine situation, the conflict in Western Sahara -- partitioned by 1,500-mile-long wall, and scene of considerable, intermittent strife since the 1970s -- has been little reported outside Africa. As a very high-end kind of personal, artistic documentary, "Lost Land" ("Territoire perdu") is unlikely to bring the area into a significantly brighter international spotlight. Informative and elegant in a rough-edged way, but ruminative to the point of static tedium, it's suitable mainly for non-fiction festivals and events specializing in human-rights themes.

Belgian writer/director Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd shows us only one side of the wall, and only one side of the conflict, which has been under ceasefire since 1991 (giving way to a war of attrition and waiting). Using Super 8 cameras, he presents starkly beautiful images of the Sahrawi nomads -- whose wandering culture has been severely curtailed by the wall's presence -- and their environment. With only very occasional sequences in color, the film mainly consists of long monochrome shots, which have the feel of a sensitive traveler's photo album though some of the very special texture of 8mm has been lost in the transfer to boxy-looking DigiBeta video.

In a film whose carefully composed sound is at least as important as the visuals, the narration mainly consists of often-harrowing testimony from older Sahrawis whose memories of 1970s atrocities -- blamed on Moroccan invaders -- remain powerfully fresh.

Elsewhere Vandeweerd fills his soundtrack with wind noises, radio extracts, rhythmic susurrations and the lowing of camels, the desert conveyances providing him with a baldly metaphorical closing shot as they express their displeasure at being enclosed in a makeshift pen.

Occasional title cards provide definitions for Arabic words and phrases particularly relevant to the history of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, which has only partial international recognition. These include "Ahel L Hala" or "People of the Void," which refers to those "disappeared" or abducted during the conflict's more active phase several decades ago, here accompanying a whispered litany of lost loved ones.

Vandeweerd's empathy with the Sahrawis is evident throughout, and this uncompromising film is evidently his attempt to capture the special rhythms and moods of wind-blown, sparsely populated desert life, as typified by one craggy senior-citizen who recalls that his grandfather "taught me the art of silence ... The circle of words is very narrow." For audiences willing to adapt to "Lost Land's" demands, the rewards do come, but some will perhaps find it all a little too inscrutable to enable proper, sustained engagement.

(Editing by Zorianna Kit)

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