THE GERMAN WORD FOR DRECK IS ‘DRECK’
What exactly constitutes a bad film festival? Hundreds of shorts and features typically screen over the course of a week or a week and a half, describing a breadth of global cinema that includes avant- garde curiosities, multimillion- dollar blockbusters, grisly peeled- eyeball documentaries, broad Latin comedies, South Korean cine- memoirs, bold independent relationship dramas, indulgent American period epics, Hasidic-Jewish coming- of- age tales, transparent big- budget vanity projects, even, perhaps, a 478- minute West- German TV miniseries from 1972.
No t wo attendees are l i kely to share i dentical movie- going experiences. The only difference between a good week- and- a- half or a bad week- and- a- half, it can often seem, is luck.
The 67 th Berlin International Film Festival concluded last weekend after 11 brisk winter days, and I am sorry to report that it was bad — or so my luck ordained.
But a certain dissatisfaction did also seem to prevail among my colleagues whenever I happened into one between screenings in the cafés of the Potsdamer Platz: whether a reflection of atypically dismal programming or unusually widespread critical misfortune, the 2017 edition of the Berlinale was commonly agreed to be a disappointment.
Hot- ticket gala spectaculars proved consistently disastrous; much- raved- about Sundance holdovers scarce- ly justified their breathless hype; even the vaunted i nternational auteurs on which one can ordinarily rely at a festival of this calibre either failed to meet expectations or took the year off entirely.
From beginning to end I reckon I saw about three good movies, not counting the afternoon I (wisely) enjoyed a retrospective showing of the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Was I just phenomenally unlucky? Or was the slate abnormally poor?
Probably I should have known better than to waste my time on what the festival confusingly deems its “Out- of- Competition Competition” titles — star- studded, resoundingly vacuous world- première affairs of the kind Toronto shamelessly pr o motes under vague headings like “Special Presentations.” As at TIFF, these tend to be mid- budget middlebrow comedies and dramas of no discernible merit whose only excuse for being at a film festival is their ability to summon a handful of household names to the red carpet on opening night, which is the sort of thing that pleases the investors, corporate sponsors and mainstream entertainment news producers who otherwise couldn’t care less about i nternational arthouse cinema.
But these premières are where the money is, and where there’s money, there’s attention: the people want to hear about Stanley Tucci’s Alberto Giacometti biopic Final Portrait, so to Final Portrait I did unhappily go.
It is, of course, perfectly awful — a flimsy, airless nothing of a movie, wildly inoffensive, forgettable in the extreme, in the grand scheme about as charming as a royal- pine air freshener only with none of the utility or lasting appeal.
As in Tucci’s one beloved directorial effort, the Italian- immigrant restaurant comedy Big Night, the actors — this time Geoffrey Rush and Armie Hammer — command t he screen, either showing off with Mr. Turner- like gruff extravagance (Rush) or self-effacing likability ( Hammer, here as ever), and both at a rhythm t hat you’d have to call hyper-leisurely.
Once again Tucci shows no interest in any aspect of the craft of directing motion pictures except those that directly involve acting, which makes one wonder why he continues to bother with motion pictures at all — the theatre, after all, is right there. And of course the Berlinale acquits itself no better for having programmed a film with no business at a festival. I hope we will hold TIFF accountable if they deign to do the same.
I assumed at first that The Dinner, the new, ostensibly prestigious family drama from director Oren Moverman, had earned its seat at t he Competition table for much the same r eason, namely t hat its first- billed superstars, Richard Gere and Laura Linney, might grace the grand Palast with their glamorous presence.
Turns out I was mistaken. Not only was The Dinner in the Competition lineup proper — meaning it competed for the Golden Bear against new films by Sebastian Lelio, Aki Kaurismaki and Hong Sang-soo — it also starred Steve Coogan, third-billed in all promotional material but unmistakably, if very regrettably, the lead. This is third adaptation of the popular Dutch novel of the same name by Herman Koch.
I do not know how the other two films compare, but, assuming they are not the two worst films ever made, they are almost cert ainly better t han t his. Moverman has done something remarkable: he’s made a movie that will be remembered for generations as one of the great cinematic catastrophes, if indeed it will be remembered or even seen at all.
He’s even managed to ruin Steve Coogan. Poor Coogan: one of England’s great screen comedians, he’s gamely mocked his aspirations toward a career in more serious pictures for years in his recurring role as a mildly fictionalized version of himself in The Trip.
That s uggested selfawareness, maybe even resignation of a respectable kind — but The Dinner suggests otherwise. This is a grim, pensive melodrama, humourless and utterly earnest; it stars Coogan as a middle- aged husband and father suffering from mental illness, and the role’s demands greatly, staggeringly exceed his talent. Worse still, he’s committed to doing it in a cartoonishly thick, Woody Allen- ish American accent, making the whole thing come off — ironically and unignorably — like one of the silly impersonations he’d do over a meal with Rob Brydon. It’s painful to watch. I hope the film never sees the light of day.
Though at least The Dinner afforded festivalgoers an occasion to share a laugh.
The same cannot be said for the Berlin ale’ s more benign disappointments: there wasn’t much worth saying about El Bar, the latest cataclysm of odious dreck from inexplicably well-liked Spanish filmmaker Alex dela Iglesia, other than that it’s as rare to see a film so racist, sexist and classist in equal measure as it is to see a presumptive comedy so resolutely unfunny. ( The chortles from the audience whenever an almost- nude young woman was degraded and humiliated on screen nearly inspired my colleague and I to walk out, but we refused to let Iglesia offend us to the exit — Lord knows he’d consider that a victory of his puerile flair.)
Nor could anyone I spoke to muster enough interest to do more than flatly dismiss Berlin Syndrome, a played- out hostage drama of the Split or 10 Cloverfield Lane variety unaccountable adored just two weeks before when it premièred in Park City. Genre clichés blandly rendered: hardly worth getting upset about. Perhaps we’re harder to please in Germany.
Or perhaps we just got unlucky.
ONCE AGAIN TUCCI SHOWS NO INTEREST IN ANY ASPECT OF THE CRAFT OF DIRECTING.