Zen in the Art of Gambling vs. The Hounds of Despair

Entering the atmosphere of the festival with Uberto Pasolini’s Still Life, the tale of a veteran funeral officer reminiscent of Aki Kaurismäki’s deadpan tone and Roy Andersson’s cartoonishly stylized sets, the next third days turned out to be a competition of eclectic appetizers that would not quite transition into a completely tasteful main course. Then, bit by bit, various spices began to add, some with an exotic touch to them. Guided by no other principle than the films’ divergent themes, styles and genres, we lingered in the lush red seats awaiting the film that would surreptitiously take us in and possess us to the very end. Though this is a generally elusive thing to expect, I remember certain episodes that, despite their relative cogency within the films, felt like fortuitous outbursts of visual mastery. This is an overview of the films seen during the 29^th edition of WFF, with luckily more than a handful of such unexpected moments to talk about.

The second day witnessed an oddball mix of features. The first was the Romanian comedy Love Building (directed by Iulia Rugină), conceived as a graduating project of an acting school held in real life by the main actors, the only professional actors in the film (Dragoș Bucur, Alexandru Papadopol, Dorian Boguță). The film itself plays as a graduation project led by the three, only this time it’s about mending relationships, not acting. Despite being done on a tight budget, with amateur actors and written to fit the characteristics of the available cast (an explanation for the two lesbian couples), Love Building provided just the necessary tone for audiences to unwind and have a couple of laughs before delving further into the unknown. Though the relationships do not undergo deeper examination and the film often resembles a sketchy reality show (the characters’ separate confessions support this), the director herself admits that she never knew what fate Love Building would follow, so it is fair to assume that its undercooked feel is a direct consequence of uncertainty during production. With that in mind, it’s worth mentioning that Love Building was among the fully-booked films of the WFF and one of the easiest ones to emotionally relate to, which for many cinemagoers is reason enough to see it.

Shown in the International Competition, The Gambler (directed by Ignas Jonynas), casting Jonas Mekas’ daughter Oona as Ieva, debuted with one of the most interesting narrative premises, punctuated by stunning wide shots and a menacingly outlandish electronic soundtrack very suitably sounding like the imitation of pulse. The story of Vincentas (Vytautas Kaniusonis), a paramedic who creates a gambling system based on his patients’ chances of survival as a supplementary means of income, slides downhill as soon as Vincentas is forced to choose between gambling – which is shown to expand rapidly online, attracting many users – and the woman he loves. Indeed, The Gambler devolves into a rather cheap ethical inquiry once it opposes the truly lucrative aspect of gambling with Ieva’s obstinate integrity in times of financial hardship. Despite tackling big themes such as revenge, sacrifice and the legitimacy to make money at the expense of other lives without actually making a fresh point, the film will certainly be remembered for some of its isolated episodes, which are outright complete works in themselves. I can recall at least Vincentas’ and Ieva’s story, told sensibly, without embellishments, suspended from the film’s social issues and gorgeously shot and edited as they first make love in the ward. Still, the stressed search for catharsis and the inability to juggle with the many issues at hand can all but prevent The Gambler from sinking under its own burden.

Featuring veteran actor Victor Rebengiuc, who in the last years has made a name out of playing wise and taciturn grandfather figures, and Șerban Pavlu, a new darling of Romanian cinema, The Japanese Dog is Tudor Cristian Jurgiu’s debut feature set in a village close to Giurgiu. Costache Moldu (Victor Rebengiuc) spends his days commuting with his cart between the house he now his lives in (belonging to some deceased neighbours) and his own, which was hardly hit by floods, almost turned to ruin. His wife no longer alive, his son long gone away from home, he collects the objects that have survived the flood. Even though some complain it is too long, the exposition serves the task not only of establishing the film’s serenely sober tone, but also to tune in to the main character’s interior rhythm and perception of life. Jurgiu respectfully reveals Costache a bit at a time, mostly observing, not intruding his daily rituals with the urgency of action. The son’s return together with a Japanese wife and a son, which makes the talk of the village, is an event that, despite being presented without loudness, allows for Costache’s unexteriorized sorrow to creep up on the viewer. Twenty years of unsaid words have to be summed up, and in doing so Jurgiu chooses to let some exquisite shots accomplish this titanic task – the wheat field before the storm, Costache at the bottom of the stairs leading to the church and finally, him sitting silently at his wife’s grave after dusk. As father and son, Rebengiuc and Pavlu fit perfectly as a reflection of each other. The apparently insurmountable differences between them are resolved silently and culminate in the appearance of a talking toy dog, a most intriguing technological presence in the rural setting. Playing as a last ode to rural life, ripe with all the specific silences and sounds of nature, The Japanese Dog is ultimately a tale about acceptance of the other, no matter how alien their appearance might be.

While needing to balance writing, meetings and screenings, the third day was not so rich in revelations, but it marked a slow descent into despair. Screening in the Discoveries section, The Whirlpool (directed by Bojan Vuk Kosovcevic) is from a mile the oeuvre of a TV series writer and director. Bearing a borderline aesthetic sense reminiscent of sitcoms, The Whirlpool parallels three standpoints of the same story through three of its characters. Set in the 1990s in Belgrade, the narrative is a quirky mix of burlesque, bloodbaths, Balkan stereotypes, gangster film tropes and characters (which are apparently rooted in those years’ reality), war-related trauma and the paradox of Nazi Serbians, to which Emir Kusturica’s laughably hovering presence as an authority figure is added. The episodes, all centered on the same events over a span of 48 hours, are shown in succession of each other, very carefully edited and shot so that mirroring points of view can match. While documenting those years’ engulfing national fears is a noble cause in itself, the film’s essence relies too much on the metaphor’s suggestive potential – the impossible to escape whirlpool becomes tiresome at some point, and though it crystallizes into the Count’s luridly all-encompassing painting, this is not enough to keep a feeble comparison steady.