In Contention

Tag: C’est pas moi je le jure

  • ‘Skin’ takes the Santa Barbara Audience Award…but where are the buyers?

    SkinOne of the films I caught during the recent Santa Barbara International Film Festival but neglected to mention was Anthony Fabian’s “Skin,” the true-life story of Sandra Laing, a black girl born to white parents in Apartheid era South Africa.

    The film has been bouncing around the festival circuit — Toronto, Rio de Janeiro, AFI — but despite landing buyers in a few foreign markets, American distributors have shied away.

    “Skin” boasts solid performances from Sophie Okonedo and Sam Neill.  It’s quite accessible and is the kind of thing you’d expect a dependent to pick up without blinking.  I wasn’t blown away by the film or anything, but it’s certainly marketable.  So what gives?

    Well Fabian’s film somewhat surprisingly took the Audience Award in Santa Barbara over the weekend, it’s first gong so far.  I expected something like “C’est pas moi, je le jurre!” to win the award, or one of the Asian dazzlers, like “Suspect X,” each of them audience favorites during the fest.  But “Skin” made its stand.

    Maybe those domestic buyers will come calling now.

  • SANTA BARBARA: ‘Three Monkeys,’ ‘C’est pas moi, je le jure!,’ ‘War Against the Weak’

    Antoine L\'Écuyer in C\'est pas moi, je le jure!And a few more…

    “THREE MONKEYS” (**1/2)

    I was left scratching my head yesterday afternoon after a screening of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Three Monkeys.”  I can’t for the life of me comprehend what all of the Cannes fuss was about.  It’s a solid exploration of mood and atmosphere, to say the least.  And there are some penetrating performances.  But…?

    The bleakness of the narrative likely appealed to festival jury members looking to reward a filmmaker for “going there,” but there’s a big “So what?” residue to the film and its themes.  The story, in a nutshell, revolves around a family playing blind, deaf and dumb (hence the title) to a time of hardship, and for that, I give it some respect.  There aren’t many films willing to pull back the veil of complacency that settles into families in crisis.

    The cinematography is subdued, and striking as a result.  And like I said, the performances — particularly from Yavuz Bingol and Rifat Sungar — are superlative.  But the whole comes up short of the sum of the film’s parts.  I’ve been impressed by Ceylan’s work so far, but I’m sure he’s got something better, more akin to “Distant” inside him somewhere, so I’ll wait for it.

    (more…)