Ihaven’t attended the Cannes film festival in five years, but one thing that keeps it fascinating from a distance is the ideological tension that gets exposed there. The Americans display a sense of entitlement, which tends to irritate representatives of other countries. And the conflict is played out in the form of rants from both sides about what’s shown in competition and what wins prizes.
It’s hard to know what mustache- and smoke-filled films Ebert had in mind. To the best of my knowledge, he’s seen only two Kiarostami films, Taste of Cherry and 10, neither of which has a character who smokes (with or without a mustache) and only one of which has a driver who’s middle-aged or male. And Ebert’s Web site contains a review of only one Angelopoulos film, Ulysses’ Gaze, a feature whose clean-shaven hero, Harvey Keitel, travels mainly by taxi and boat. Moreover, many Angelopoulos and Kiarostami films—Days of ’36, The Travelling Players, The Traveler, Close-Up, The Wind Will Carry Us—are packed with events. Yet Ebert clearly sees eventlessness taking over film art like a fungus.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Iosseliani, who was born in the Soviet republic of Georgia, has said, “I made a comedy about the unhappiness of being obligated to obey the rules of this world.” On the subject of smoking he’s more explicit: “In Monday Morning, there is the most elementary prohibition—it is forbidden to smoke everywhere. This prohibition enrages me. The Europeans went to the Americas and brought back tobacco. They made an industry of tobacco. They made an enormous amount of money. The result is that most of the continents began to smoke like locomotives. Then all of a sudden: Stop. Smoking is forbidden. All while continuing to make money. That’s revolting. Especially when you think that it’s the USA that supplies us with different types of Marlboro. It’s the country that has the network of factories that don’t stop supplying us with cigarettes. And it’s the country where it’s forbidden to smoke in restaurants.”
When I first saw Chihwaseon three months ago, the staccato editing, the speed of the narrative, and the fleeting beauty of certain shots persuaded me I was watching a full-blown masterpiece, something roughly comparable to Kenji Mizoguchi’s 1946 Utamaro and His Five Women. I’d been primed for such a conclusion by the pictorial beauty of two of Im’s earlier period features, Fly High Run Far (1991) and Chunhyang (2000), and by his status as the most respected living Korean filmmaker. And the elliptical manner of the storytelling, which invited me to fill in the missing pieces, led me to believe that the film was saying a lot of things about art.
Directed and written by Otar Iosseliani
With Jacques Bidou, Anne Kravz-Tarnavsky, Narda Blanchet, Radslav Kinski, Arrigo Mozzo, and Iosseliani.
Chihwaseon ★★ (Worth seeing)
Directed by Im Kwon-taek
Written by Kim Yong-oak and Im
With Choi Min-sik, Han Myung-goo, Yoo Ho-jung, Ahn Sung-ki, Kim Yeo-jin, and Son Yae-jin.
