Hard Rain
by
Howard Schumann

"In all my films, there are shots where the emotional impact goes beyond direction, triumphing over it, and the emotion becomes more powerful than cinema itself."
-- Abbas Kiarostami

Ten conversations, four passengers, two digital cameras using two camera angles, one angry young boy, one agitated mother, and one great film director. That is the essence of the remarkable new film, Ten, by acclaimed Iranian director, Abbas Kiarostami. Using only two small video cameras strapped to the dashboard of a car to eavesdrop on a series of semi-improvised conversations, Ten is a highly original film that has an experimental feel to it, yet manages to convey a searing emotional honesty.

The opening fifteen-minute exchange, between a divorced mother ((Mania Akbari) and her son Amin (Amin Maher) as she drives him to a swimming pool, is amazing in its intensity. I don't think I've ever seen any sequence in a film quite like it. Amin urges his mother to allow him to live with his father rather than his stepfather. The camera does not leave the boy, who expresses emotions seemingly beyond his age, articulating anger, frustration, and self-pity with sharp intelligence and humor. His mother is deeply unhappy about her relationship with Amin, but stubbornly refuses to bend to his desires.

The opening sequence reaches such an emotional peak that the remaining conversations seem almost anti-climactic. Other conversations examine the emotional lives and attitudes of the driver and her passengers. These include an old woman who visits the local mausoleum three times a day, and tries to persuade Akbari to go there and pray with her. Another depicts Akbari's sister, who discusses the mother's relationship with her son and new husband. In one of the best sequences, a laughing prostitute gets into the car thinking the driver is a man and asserts how women cling to men as their only source of strength. She claims that marriage and prostitution are different facets of the same business - the married woman sells sex wholesale, the prostitute retail.

Indeed, a recurring theme in the film is that, in Iran today, men dominate the society and thwart women's desire for emancipation. All of these conversations expound diverse opinions about women in Iran and look at issues from a woman's point of view. The camera is trained almost exclusively on one of the participants and does not shift back and forth, regardless of whom is talking. The only sound and light emanate from the natural street environment, which can be very dark, as in the nighttime vignette with the prostitute. In the process of these conversations, some new things about Iranian society are revealed - for example, that a woman can get a divorce by falsely accusing her husband of drug abuse. Kiarostami reminds us of the restrictions on wearing the veil, particularly in a scene where the friend removes her veil to expose her shaven head, something that must have caused the censors to scratch theirs.

As the film moves toward its conclusion, Amin's mother seems to acquire an inner strength that allows her to let events unfold more naturally. She offers advice to two other women who have experienced disappointment in their relationships, and acknowledges that winning and losing are but two sides of the same coin. Most importantly, Akbari states many times that “you must love yourself before you can love anyone else.” This leads to another drive with Amin, during which the mother is more able to just be with her son without having to discuss plans or expectations. I found Ten, though not always easy to be with, a deeply humanistic work and an extremely rewarding experience.

"Childhood is greatly sacrificed in the world today. Children are very much the weak link of the chain. If you want to study the world you should study the most vulnerable parts of the world."
- - Lukas Moodysson

According to Swedish director Lukas Moodysson (Show Me Love, Together), heaven is where you jump around with wings on your back and play basketball all day. On earth, however, it's another story. Ask Lilya, the main protagonist in Moodysson's despairing new Russian-language feature, Lilya 4-Ever.

The Lars Von Trier and Dogme 95 influence is quite evident here, in the exaggerated use of the hand-held camera and the film's portrayal of women as victims of abusive men. 16-year old Lilya (Oksana Akinshina) lives in a small, unnamed city in the Soviet Union. When her mother abandons her and moves to the United States, an aunt puts her up in a run-down flat, then refuses to have anything more to do with her. Her only friend is young Volodya (Artyom Bogucharsky) who lives on the streets and attaches himself to Lilya. They hang around together and fantasize about a better life. Her only hope for survival lies in selling her body. Surprisingly, Lilya falls in love with a young good-looking guy named Andrei who appears to be honest and caring. When she follows him to Sweden to start a new life, however, the ugly realities become all too apparent.

The performances by the young actors are outstanding, and Moodysson again displays his talent for depicting teenagers in a very real and natural way. The film is shown from Lilya's point of view, and Oksana's ability to portray a wide range of emotions allows the audience to identify with her plight and ride the waves along with her. Lilya 4-Ever effectively illuminates the worldwide problem of child prostitution, and is not afraid to tackle hard issues without any attempt at sugarcoating. However, it would have been more effective if Moodysson didn't insist on being so relentlessly hopeless and sensational. The film doesn't explore the humanity of the characters enough, but uses them as props to drive home a particular point of view. The characters either are disgusting old men, ruthless exploiters, unfeeling and selfish parents or relatives, or innocent victims.

Moodysson has brought a very real problem to light, but does not show us any way out. Indeed, he seems to be saying that since adults are abusive and God won't listen to our prayers, the only hope left is to sign up to play basketball with our wings on. In spite of a sincere effort, I found Lilya 4-Ever to be predictable, and the ending pretentious and sophomoric.

Video viewing:

"How you fall doesn't matter. It's how you land."

Reminiscent of Costas-Gavras' film Z, with its rapid-fire dialogue and staccato rhythms, La Haine (Hate) directed by 28 year-old Mathieu Kassovitz, is a passionate look at racial tensions in a Paris housing project. Although drug dealing, urban decay, and police brutality have been shown in films before, rarely have they had the sense of vitality and urgency shown in La Haine.

Three friends from different ethnic backgrounds live in the Bluebell projects on the outskirts of Paris. This is not the Paris of travel brochures or films like Amélie, but a desolate urban landscape, harsh and grim, with housing that looks it could be in any big city in the world. Vinz (Vincent Cassel), is a working class Jew; Hubert (Hubert Koundé), the most intelligent and self-reflective of the three, is an African boxer; and Said (Saïd Taghmaoui), an Arab from North Africa, is younger than the others, but just as embittered. The film depicts their rage against the police whom they see as oppressors. Marginalized economically and politically, without jobs, parents who care, or hope for the future, the streets are their home and they are open targets for police who are brutal and racist. In one startling scene, a veteran cop taunts and physically abuses Said and Hubert while training a rookie cop. The rookie can only look on and shake his head in disbelief.

Shot in black and white, La Haine shows a single day in the lives of the three friends. Following a major riot in which a local teenager, Abdel, is critically wounded by the police, Vinz, the most volatile of the group, vows that if Abdel dies he will kill a cop to get even. Hubert wants to restrain him, and Said doesn't seem to care either way, as long as he can get his money from a drug dealer named Snoopy. When Vinz finds a Smith & Wesson 44 lost by the police during the riots, the spiral of violence escalates and builds toward a memorable conclusion.

La Haine doesn't offer any solutions to social problems, but clearly shows the anger and frustration of people who feel trapped by their circumstances. In its depiction of a society in free-fall, it also has immediacy. Three weeks after the film was released, riots broke out in the Brixton section of London, following the death of a young black man in police custody. Though it is a wake-up call for action on society's growing gap between rich and poor, La Haine makes a powerful statement that violence does not solve anything and that hate begets hate. It is one of the best films of the 90s.

©2002 Howard Schumann
CineScene