FILMS WORHT WATCHING by Robert Alstead

Still from The Band’s Visit (Bikur Ha-Tizmoret)

The Band’s Visit (Bikur Ha-Tizmoret), out on the 8th, is both a touching and a touch absurd comedy that offers a happier than usual take on current Arab-Israeli relations. When an eight-member, touring, Egyptian police orchestra find themselves lost in a dead-end Israeli town – the wrong town – the band leader reluctantly accepts hospitality from the locals. This is a place that, as the husky, divorcee bar owner Dina (Ronit Elkabetz) puts it, has “… no Arab culture, no Israeli culture, no culture at all.” The group are billeted to various homes, where awkward, amusing and sometimes touching scenarios play out between visitors and hosts.
The film maintains a pleasingly sparse and understated quality throughout. Writer-director Eran Kolirin likes his long takes, which both imbue the film with a strong sense of place and are particularly effective in a musical number late in the film. Kolirin studiously avoids venturing into the minefield of political, head-on debate, instead playing on the humorous possibilities of communication problems and how individuals from different cultures break the ice.
The film focuses, in particular, on the difference between two of the band members – the reserved band leader Tawfiq (Sasson Gabai), painfully self-conscious of the ambassadorial role of his small orchestra, and his younger counterpart violinist Haled (Saleh Bakri), a smooth-talking Romeo – and how they respond to the sensual Dina, who they are billeted with. Part of the enjoyment of the film is watching Tawfiq’s buttoned-up formality melt away in her company. There’s also a hilarious scene at a roller-disco where Haled offers instructions to an awkward local lad about how to make advances on a girl. Some of the “second fiddlers” of the cast would have been better painted-in, seeming to serve merely as the butt of various jokes. But this slight film is a memorable one with an enjoyable soundtrack.
Interestingly, The Band’s Visit was initially Israel’s entry into the Oscars this year, until it was deemed ineligible on the grounds that there was too much English spoken in it for it to qualify as a foreign film. English is the one language that both nationals speak, although not always well, so it comprises more than 50 percent of the dialogue. Consequently, Israel entered Beaufort, a tense military drama, instead.
When Did You Last See Your Father, out on the 29th, is a British drama about a son reconciling himself with his dying father. The film moves fluidly between different time frames from a sensitive youth, played by Matthew Beard, whose feelings are crushed when dad tactlessly humiliates him in front of potential girlfriends, to adulthood where, as a successful author, played by Colin Firth, he still finds himself cringing with embarrassment and fuming at his father’s blind bombast and transgressions. The film has a very British sensibility with its stoical family relations and understated emotions. That’s a feeling further enhanced by shots of classic, English countryside settings, such as the scene wherein father and son embark on a doomed camping trip together.
The film is a slow-burner, without the typical, big, emotional confrontation between son and dad over a long-hidden family secret at the end that you might expect from a Hollywood movie. But thanks to some brilliant performances, it’s still one that gently tugs at the heart strings. Jim Broadbent, as the roguish, high-spirited patriarch, and Juliet Stevenson as the forgiving, long-suffering wife, give particularly memorable performances.
Michel Gondry returns to the similar territory of his hit Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with Be Kind, Rewind out on the 22nd, except instead of erasing minds, he’s erasing video tapes. The goofy premise is that Jerry (Jack Black), whose brain has become magnetized, accidentally wipes out all the films in his friend’s (Mos Def) video store. When they decide, as their unlikely solution, to remake the classic Hollywood fare themselves, their roughly hewn DIY versions fool no one, but the tapes become surprise hits in the local community.
The first must-see movie of the year seems to be the teenage pregnancy comedy Juno, with a performance by 20-year-old Nova Scotian Ellen Page in a lead role that has been widely tipped for an Oscar. (The Academy Award nominations haven’t been announced at time of writing.) The film, which is both sweet and sharp-witted, fools around with your expectations of how people would react in what for many would be a traumatic situation, starting with the decision by the wise-cracking 16-year-old Juno to find a couple to adopt her unborn child because she doesn’t feel mature enough to be a parent. The film, shot in Vancouver on a relatively low budget, has become a box office smash hit. One to see if you haven’t already.

Robert Alstead made the Vancouver-set bicycle documentary You Never Bike Alone, available on DVD at www.youneverbikealone.com