FILMS WORHT WATCHING by Robert Alstead

Stills from Theodore Braun’s Darfur Now. Courtesy of Warner Independent Pictures © 2007

The Romanian, communist-era drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days (4 Luni, 3 Saptamini Si 2 Zile), like other winners of the Cannes Film Festival’s coveted Palme d’Or, hits you hard and deep with an oppressive reality (opens November 2). The title alludes to the length of a woman’s pregnancy prior to her outlawed, backstreet abortion. No fuss is made over how Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) became pregnant; rather she and her college dorm-mate Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) tacitly understand this is a problem they must deal with in the usual way. We watch them prepare for the operation, forced into making sordid deals, their sense of desperation and futility growing.
The performances are excellent and director Cristian Mungiu expertly captures the grey, utilitarian atmosphere of the time, although some of the product placement – a certain cigarette brand, dried milk and instant coffee brand – earn large amounts of quality screen time. It becomes off-putting and leaves one with a distinct sense that Kent cigarettes and Nescafé were the top, black market goods of the time.
A quick mention of the Coen Brothers latest No Country for Old Men (out on the 9th), which reaped superlatives from an appreciative press corps at Cannes. More Fargo and Miller’s Crossing than The Big Lebowski or O Brother, Where Art Thou? the film is a violent thriller.
Don Cheadle and George Clooney lend their celebrity weight to the crisis-ridden Sudan in the documentary Darfur Now, also out on the 9th. Director Theodore Braun weaves together the stories of six people, including that of Hotel Rwanda’s star Cheadle, who have been actively working to stop the ongoing humanitarian and environmental disaster in Sudan. The documentary also shows how the Iraq war has overshadowed Africa’s plight of genocide, war, drought and poverty in the Sudan.
Look out, too, from the 9th, for the fly-on-the-wall documentary, Jimmy Carter Man From the Plains, which follows the octogenarian former US president and the controversies he gets caught up in as he crosses the US promoting his book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid. The film is directed by Jonathan Demme, who made the top-notch music docs Stop Making Sense and Neil Young: Heart of Gold as well as Hollywood movies The Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia.
Barbet Schroeder’s France-based documentary, Terror’s Advocate (L’Avocat de la Terreur) coolly tackles the spectre of international terrorism in a portrait of Jacques Vergès, an enigmatic French attorney who has made a career out of defending “evil-doers,” including assassin Carlos the Jackal and Nazi “butcher” Klaus Barbie. Through a combination of talking heads and archival footage, Vergès is revealed as a slippery soul who first came to fame in the late 1950s, when he defended Algerian accused bomber Djamila Bouhired, whom he later married. He also disappeared from sight in 1970 and re-emerged in 1978, leading to speculation he was in Cambodia with old school friend Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot. (The film opens November 16.)
Also on the 16th, chanteuse Norah Jones stars alongside English heartthrob Jude Law in the ephemeral and romantic road movie My Blueberry Nights. Expectations are high for visual stylist Kar Wai Wong, but although the film was chosen to open at Cannes, it received only lukewarm praise from those who made it there.
Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) has adapted, in suitably epic style, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ modern classic Love in the Time of Cholera (out on the 16th), about a romantic love affair that never dies. A young man, Florentino, leaves his Columbian hometown to make his fortune after being rejected by his true love Fermina. While she settles for an urbane doctor who has controlled the city’s mysterious cholera outbreak, Florentino goes through a string of affairs with many women only to come back to his burning flame a half-century later.
Disney’s latest comedy Enchantment (out on the 21st) has an amusing premise: it starts off as an animation but switches to live action after the beautiful princess of the fairytale is banished from her magical, musical kingdom to the gritty, real world of modern Manhattan by her Prince Charming’s wicked mother (Susan Sarandon). The distraught princess (played by Amy Adams) meets a bewildered divorce lawyer (Patrick Dempsey) who takes her under his wing. Meanwhile, the sword-wielding prince, who is following in hot pursuit, is facing similar problems of adapting to the real world.
Judging from the trailer, the jokes are a little edgier than typical Disney fare, as fairytale idealism collides with the hard cynicism of modern America. But this is Disney so expect a familiar, fluffy resolution to the proceedings.

Robert Alstead’s eco-documentary You Never Bike Alone about Vancouver’s Critical Masses is out on DVD at www.youneverbikealone.com