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 PAUL RANKIN braved Sydney’s bitter cold snap for SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL.
Rarely these days does one see lines for film screenings stretch literally around the block; the line for Sydney Film Festival’s closing night film An Education is not stretched, but rather bunched from the red-carpeted State Theatre entrance to a CBD vanishing point, with filmgoers squeezed behind metal barricades and crowd control officers ushering yet more patrons to the end of the queue, which they’re told is somewhere around the corner in the distance. As it happens, An Education will also open this year’s Brisbane International Film Festival, and our fair city will welcome young star Carey Mulligan.
Earlier that day, without the glitz and glamour, was what the snobbish could call the event film for true cinephiles, Steven Soderbergh’s magnum opus Che, the very serious and very detached biopic of Ernesto Che Guevara. In a bold move (but appropriate for the festival context) SFF choose to screen both feature-length festival prints back-to-back, rather than allow filmgoers a night’s rest to digest the exhaustive and exhausting work. Part One chronicles the Cuban Revolution in ‘70s-style cinemascope vérité, while Part Two, focusing on Che’s failed attempt at revolution in Bolivia, becomes a much colder, and more arduous, documentation of the unceremonious end of a man’s legacy.
While it was violent one-note song prisoner biopic Bronson that snatched the $60,000 official competition prize, critical consensus was unanimous that the gong should have gone to Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience. (Yes, SFF was something of a mini Soderbergh fest.) Like Che, the film is shot on the fabled Red One digital cinema camera with mostly available light, but it is the presence of adult film star Sasha Grey in her first mainstream role that has filmgoers talking. Which is not to say GFE has even a spot of gratuitousness. Much more the “festival film” than expected, GFE presents five days in the life of über high-class NYC call-girl Chelsea, in loose non-chronological stream-of-consciousness. Grey’s attendance at the fest also causes quite a stir, defying all expectations of who a porn-star should be, her knowledge of cinema and the cinematic canon eclipses that of most cinephiles.
It’s time to don the multi-coloured glasses for the 3D screening of Henry Selick’s adaptation of Coraline (which is also screening as part of BIFF). 3D will probably always remain a money-grabbing gimmick, but Selick delivers a children’s nightmare comparable to his much-loved The Nightmare Before Christmas.
The paramount red carpet event of the fest was without a doubt the worldwide premiere of Rachel Ward’s directorial debut Beautiful Kate, where key cast including Bryan Brown, Ben Mendelsohn and the captivating Sophie Lowe all posed with genuine ear-to-ear smiles, Australian acting stalwarts such as Hugo Weaving and Miranda Otto were in tow, and Sasha Grey gave approximately seventeen versions of the head tilt for the benefit of photographers. All this gave others a chance to sneak past the distracted mile-long queue to secure the good seats for a film featuring cinematography inspired by Australia’s premier photographer Bill Henson and career-best performances from Mendelsohn and Brown.
If sell-out times were anything by which to judge a film’s allure, then Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits Of Control was certainly the hottest ticket in town, with both screenings selling out long before the opening night. And with good reason, Jarmusch’s half-joke-half-meditative existential excursion through Spain goes some way to defining 21st century cool. Isaach De Bankolé is the silent, nameless assassin who always orders two espressos in two separate cups, and trades matchboxes with contacts to receive instructions via coded notes; he receives visits from a woman who is always nude, and is told that the universe has no centre and no edges — something to ponder over two espressos?
BRISBANE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL runs from Jul 30 – Aug 9 at The Regent and The Australian Cinématèque. More info at www.stgeorgebiff.com.au
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