Saturday, March 10, 2007

real life is elsewhere. lovelorn

we were at the mami film festival yesterday- and are going to be there for the next few days and that is going to mean an unending series of film review posts- so, all who get queasy while reading them – please excuse.

two films about chance encounters while traveling, one from switzerland and the other from turkey. in the swiss film different people meet at a railway station and then spend night in one anothers company. there are three of these couples and each of them is going through something or the other that is in sense ‘transformed’ by the chance encounter. its really not as clichéd as i make it sound. the three stories that are independent of each other seem knotty and complex emotionally. i really liked the film.

on the other hand, in the turkish film all clichés of middle eastern sweet cinema were rehashed in the most ham-fisted way. crinkly eyed idealist teacher moves to istanbul after alienating his family because of his idealism. his family hates him and he finds his surrogate family in his group of friends and a beautiful ballad singer and escort girl running away from her abusive husband. she even has a dumb daughter to add to the pathos who starts talking in the end. its like a hindi film but takes itself much too seriously. the saccharine sweetness almost made me ill.

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