the edge of heaven. head on .district 9 .i cant think straight .fabulous .beau travail .kadachit .8x8 a chess sonata .blind dating. bolt. coraline

accidental deaths that mirror each other across turkey and germany make strangers into friends in fatih akin’s ‘the edge of heaven’. in an earlier film ‘head on’ a jealous rage leads to another killing- this time making a marriage of convenience into something like love. istanbul in both films is a city of labyrinth like streets where some escape from their disjointed existence in germany while others come to die. in ‘the edge of heaven’ a son escapes from the embarrassment of his father’s murder of a prostitute and tries to find salvation through saving his daughter, while she herself in running from the law to germany where she falls in love with a lovely generous white girl. in ‘head on’ a marriage is arranged between a girl trying to get out of her family and a man who cant care less whether he lives and dies.

district 9 blew my mind away. pretending to be pseudo-documentary on the sudden appearance of a wrecked spaceship above johannesburg the film follows a systematic process of cleansing of their colony – district 9- when suddenly he pure white blood is contaminated. more about race relations than a typical alien film it does however end with a great big mash up- shootouts, chase sequences, explosions and a hollywood salvation through self sacrifice- could have done without that- but the first half is just brilliant. the great shock is when we realize that we actually identify with the non-cute et but rather ugly frightening prawn like aliens. it screws with our presumptions.

the tv documentary ‘fabulous’ followed American queer cinema through some iconic films. informative enough, like a chronological check list- from something called fireworks through to brokeback mountain with ‘bound’, gus van sant’ and john waters along the way. the films are naturally the ones most explicitly ‘gay’ . i wonder whether ‘beau travail’ would have made the list. based on a Hermann melville story and a benjamin britten opera ‘billy budd’ the action takes place in french africa in a group of legionnaires. strong young men wrestle with each other in the desolate beauty of the desert as jealousy raises its ugly head. the passions are all very controlled and rarely find any sense of release except in the strenuous physical exercises on the beach and the frenzied dancing that breaks out at certain times.

the more conventional gay love story was ‘i cant think straight’- a coming out inter racial story set in Jordan and London between a Jordanian free spirit who is curiously closeted and a nice Hindu girl who is more at ease with herself. in an otherwise very passable and yet somehow enjoyable film Lisa ray is absolutely stunning. i couldn’t take my eyes off her. didn’t know she could act too.

more difficult love stories in romantic comedies- this one between a blind white boy and a Indian girl- ‘blind dating’. fluffy fun- but does confirm the fact that a nice white boy who grew up to be captain Kirk really needs to be blind to fall in love with a brown girl.

why are Marathi films so moral? and badly made? ‘kadachit’ the story was fine and so was the acting. ashwini bhave plays a gutsy doctor who loses it when she confronts the truth about the dad she put away for murder. she only manages to get her act together again when she is told another lie. to its credit the film did not try to resolve things with a happy ending where everyone lives happily ever after. the father walks away alone into the sunset, but it could have been made less like a tv soap, i think.

not as weird as the nightmare before christmas but coraline’s frighteningly sweet alternative world of a mother and father with buttons for eyes is pretty spooky. an alice in wonderland story with a cat that speaks, fancy french performing mice and couple of british actresses who are terrific at the trapeze. ‘bolt’ was sweeter. a dog lives a truman show existence until one day he is lost and discovers the real him on a road trip from new york to los angeles. his company is a wise cracking cat and a hamster in a globe. the in-jokes are thankfully not too many making it easily less offensive than lets say ‘a sharks tale’. really quite a lot of fun and towards the end i felt really bad about the cats out on the terrace that we have decided not to feed anymore.

i did not particularly care to ‘get’ but still enjoyed the images of hans richters experimental 8x8 a chess sonata’. 8 episode feature different guest artists and some surreal games in streets and in gardens. the sequence in alexander calders studio is beautiful and so is much of the other imagery.