OUR LITTLE SISTER + MUSTANG - Reviews By Greg Klymkiw - Mongrel Media's Must-See Sister Act - The Film Corner's Handy-Dandy *****TIFF 2015 TOP PICKS***** continue.

MONGREL MEDIA'S MUST-SEE SISTER ACT AT TIFF 2015

Our Little Sister (above)
Mustang (below)

Our Little Sister (2015)
Dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda
Starring: Haruka Ayase, Masami Nagasawa, Kaho, Suzu Hirose

Review By Greg Klymkiw

When three sisters attend the funeral of their long-estranged father, they meet his daughter from a second marriage, the little sister they never met. They welcome her with open arms and she decides to live with them. For the first time in her life, she feels what it means to have family you can love and count on.

As far as I'm concerned, director Hirokazu Kore-eda (After Life, Nobody Knows, Still Walking, Like Father Like Son) has no equals in contemporary Japanese Cinema. He seems to be the one true and genuine successor to the legacy of Yasujiro (Tokyo Story) Ozu, the master of the groundbreaking tatami shots, long takes, figures moving in and out of frame, a stately pace allowing for deep contemplation of the dramas unfolding, a deep sense of humanity, a love for the properties of melodrama and an unflagging commitment to examining the intricacies of family. To a certain extent, the aforementioned Ozu grocery list of unbeatable properties seems not dissimilar to the work of Kore-eda.

Kore-eda, however, differs on two fronts. He downplays sentiment almost to the extent of eschewing it completely, but then, when you least expect it, he's not afraid of using melodrama sparingly as a legitimate storytelling tool (usually with a wallop to the solar plexus). Secondly, though Kore-eda is also primarily interested in the dynamics of family, he adds his own special thematic element, dealing heartbreakingly with the theme and dramatic action of abandonment.

Our Little Sister has got "abandonment" almost literally spilling out of its ears and he allows us to be privy to three, then four sisters filling various voids in their hearts with the love they have for each other. At times it feels like nothing much is really happening, but "it" most certainly is - in tiny, delicate and subtle ways. Kore-eda allows us time to luxuriate in each sister's unique qualities and how they play off each other.

He slowly builds to a handful of scenes during the final stretch of the picture that inspire overwhelming emotions in the hearts of its audiences. I bawled like a baby and still can't shake or forget its uplifts which are never machine-tooled, but burst forth naturally from within his film's very big heart.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

Our Little Sister plays in the TIFF Masters program during TIFF 2015. For dates, times and tix, visit the TIFF website HERE.

Mustang (2014)
Dir. Deniz Gamze Ergüven
Starring: Gunes Sensoy, Dogba Doguslu, Tugba Sunguroglu,
Elit Iscan, Ilayda Akdogan, Ayberk Pekcan, Nihal Koldas

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The events depicted in Mustang are so horrific and harrowing, it's sometimes more unbearable to experience an equal number of story beats infused with fun, love, kindness, pleasurable abandon and humour since they're such powerful juxtapositions to the tragedy of the situation presented.

In a small Turkish coastal town on the Black Sea, a repressed, deeply traditional busybody neighbour spies five orphan sisters having fun on the last day of school. The innocent actions are deemed obscene. Their grandmother and stern uncle hit the roof and what should have been a glorious summer vacation turns into a living nightmare. They're immediately locked in the house, stripped of all items which could be considered immoral, informed that their education has come to an end and thrown into a rigorous indoctrination to be loyal, subservient wives. Parades of potential suitors are brought in to inspect their "wares" and the goal is to have all the girls, ranging from 12 to 16, married off by the end of summer.

The youngest sister proves to be the craftiest and most rebellious. She masterminds a brief escape for the girls to watch a soccer match, but the happiness is short lived when they're eventually caught in the act by their guardians. At this point, all bets are off. The home is then transformed into a literal prison replete with iron bars on all the windows, extra locks, barbed wire atop the walls surrounding the house and an intensified chaperoned courting/match-making process. In addition to the threat of physical and even sexual abuse, the girls are treated like so much chattel instead of individuals with minds of their own.

The first two-thirds of Mustang is so superbly directed and acted, it's a shame the screenplay takes a fairly conventional turn in its final act. What transpires comes close to negating the power of the rest of the film. Though some will find the denouement inspiring in all the right ways, it ultimately contradicts the reality of the girls' lives and offers up hope where none, in reality, would ever exist.

During one of the final set-pieces, first-time feature filmmaker Ergüven directs the proceedings with the urgent, nerve-jangling skill of a master. The suspense is virtually unbearable, but it's almost rendered moot when the yellow-brick-road to happiness rears its ugly head. Of course we want the girls to escape, but deep down we know a happy end to their short lives of freedom must surely be an impossibility. When these tables turn, it's not so much a cause for celebration, but a lament for honesty.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

Mustang is a TIFF 2015 Special Presentation. For dates, times and tix, visit the TIFF website HERE.

BORDER - Review By Greg Klymkiw - #TIFF 2013 - The horrors suffered by the innocent are mostly off-screen, but as such, are even more harrowing as we imagine the fate that faces two women fleeing Syria.

TIFF Discovery Series - #TIFF 2013
Programmed By Piers Handling
Border (2013) ***1/2
Dir. Alessio Cremonini
Starring: Dana Keilani, Sara El debuch, Wasim Abo azan

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Of course it's been oft-noted that what we don't see is often more powerful than what we can see, but clearly one cannot exist without the other. What drives a narrative forward is every element used to enhance the journey of the characters and by extension, the audience's participation in said journey. When the issue of self-determination and choice is what drives every element of the story and the narrative itself is set-up in a way where we (both characters and audience) know what conflicts await and furthermore, when the choices, no matter how considered can lead to disaster, we're all the more aware of being in classic storytelling territory. However, what ultimately makes the expected unexpected is the telling of the story from a stylistic standpoint.

Fatima is a new bride. Her husband has gone to war and she lives a quiet life with her sister Aya in the conjugal flat. The sisters are extremely devout and spend a great deal of their time devoted to practising their faith. When news comes that Fatima's husband has left the Syrian Army to join the Free Army of "rebels", they have very little time to react. What they do know is that they will suffer the repercussions of the actions taken by Fatima's husband - actions they are both in concurrence with. Aya is already a survivor of gang rape, torture and incarceration and while she understands what could well await them, she's also wary of the complete stranger sent by Fatima's husband to whisk them out of Syria to safety and freedom in Turkey. Still, there's really no choice for either woman. The actions of a Totalitarian government and, to an extent, by Fatima's husband has petty much removed any vestige of self determination in the matter.

After hurriedly throwing together a few essentials, they are plunged into following a man they do not know through "enemy" territory. The only real choice they make, and it's at great risk to their safety, is that both women refuse to remove their religious headgear which, while on the road, could well give them away. The trip is fraught with several unexpected turns that keep them from moving moving forward as quickly as anyone had hoped. Deception, double-crosses and danger lie around every corner.

When they discover a recently tortured and slaughtered family deep in a Syrian forest, the stark, brutal reality really hits home, but upon finding a lone survivor of the massacre, the women both realize that this might well be the symbolic hope they need to find safety. In so doing, however, they will also have to protect the newly discovered survivor. There are no false notes in Border. The superb performances, the exquisitely structured screenplay (by director Cremonini and Susan Dabbous) and finally, Cremonini's terse helmsmanship of the action creates a tension that, at times, becomes far more unbearable if the story had been presented in some overtly overwrought manner (as might have been the case if directed by an American).

Border is, in its own way, a kind of celebration of self-determination in a world where so much is awry due the war-mongering of men and where every step these women must take might be one step closer to the most unimaginable horrors.

"Border" is part of the TIFF Discovery series at the Toronto International Film Festival 2013. Visit the TIFF website HERE.

RHINO SEASON - TIFF 2012 - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Exiled Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi delivers a heartbreaking love story that engages us in cinema's poetic qualities whilst making a plea for the rights of artists to be honoured and sanctified against the whims of all repressive government policies.

Rhino Season (2012) ****
dir. Bahman Ghobadi

TIFF 2012 - Special Presentation

Starring: Behrouz Vossoughi, Monica Bellucci, Yilmaz Erdogan, Belçim Bilgin

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Artists have always been prime targets in power-hungry repressive regimes. To destroy a nation, then rebuild it in a new image, the first line of attack is to decimate its existing culture. During the 20th Century, the world experienced this again and again in every Totalitarian regime - Nazis, Fascists, Communists, Fake Democracies fuelled by corporate dictatorships and religious fundamentalism are but a few instances of this war on art.

Given that the world is on the precipice of complete collapse, works like Bahman Ghobadi's film Rhino Season are more important and vital than ever. That said, I do wish to temper this statement, since such an assertion can be a dual edged sword - relegating a work's importance to the picture's backdrop and subject matter can also place it in a lofty enough position so as to render its considerable aesthetic gifts as the sum total of its merits. Therefore, in declaring that the film is essential, I wish to also stress that the film's political and thematic necessity is not the only reason it holds a fundamental place in the world.

The picture is, quite simply, dazzling - an original voice that yields a deeply moving, artistically daring and consummate demonstration of how cinema can work at the highest levels of the medium. In the case of Rhino Season, the medium is simply not the message, nor the message it conveys, but how the medium is pushed over the usually accepted boundaries. However, in so doing, the film provides its important political stance and challenging aesthetic framework in a manner that, if properly presented and distributed to wider audiences, has considerable potential to affect cinema-goers the world over.

The tale director Ghobadi relates is as simple and ages-old as time itself - a love story that spans decades - replete with suffering, longing and passion that knows no bounds. Behrouz Vossoughi, a mega-wattage Iranian movie star now exiled to an America that has little to offer a great actor like him from a Hollywood that is so bereft of ideas that the only roles he is asked to play are those of terrorists, is the star of Ghobadi’s film.

Vossoughi plays Sahel, a Kurdish writer who specializes in poetry. In spite of the fact that his writings are not political, he is arrested, tortured and interrogated until he receives an inhuman 30-year-long prison sentence.

Not content to destroy Sahel's life, the authorities do the same to his wife Mina (a heartbreaking performance by Monica Bellucci). She is incarcerated for 10 years and upon her release, she is told that Sahel is dead. He most certainly is not. Ghobadi then delivers the unforgettable scene of Mina making her way through a forlorn graveyard devoted to the burial of "heathen" and finally weeping before the weathered marker of her husband.

Sahel serves all 30 years of his sentence and devotes the rest of his existence to tracking down Mina.

If this tale doesn't move audiences to tears, nothing will. What contributes to rendering this simple, affecting narrative in the richest and most artistically complex mise-en-scène imaginable, is how Ghobadi peppers the tale with voiceovers reciting Sahel's clearly humanist (not politically didactic) poetry which contrast the horrendous words of his torturers. Blended with images of sublime beauty that convey resplendence of the most exquisite kind, they too provide a contrast to the visual realities of the dank, foul prison Sahel spends 30 years in.

Rhino Season accomplishes the extraordinary. It achieves the highest level of cinematic poetry, tells a great story and, by virtue of Ghobadi's approach, it achieves its goal of exposing us to the plight of artists in Iran whilst gently and metaphorically delivering the most powerful plea of all - that artists have no place in prisons for simply expressing themselves (politically or not) and that finally, this should extend to all people, of all walks of life, in all countries.

Expression is who we are. It is what defines our respective cultures and most of all, who we are as a species. Humanity IS expression. What places Ghobadi's great film on a pedestal of truth is that expression includes love.

Love is what drives his picture, his characters and by extension, the human race.

Love must be protected and sanctified at all costs.

When that ceases, so do we.

"Rhino Season" received its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2012). For ticket information, please visit the TIFF website HERE.
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