30/04/2015 – A market premiere at Cannes for the zany Finnish romantic comedy and the start of pre-sales for My Peaceful Place of Exile

An eclectic line-up packed with European films for the French international sales agentReel Suspects, with four premieres at the Marché du Film of the 68th Cannes Film Festival (13-24 May 2015). Standing out among them is the Finnish film Lovemilla [+] byTeemu Nikki. Starring Milka Suonpää, Joel Hirvonen, Mari Rantasila, Matti Onnismaa, Rami Rusinen and Pyry Laakso, this production staged by It’s Alive Film is an over-the-top romantic comedy blending love, robots and bodybuilding. The plot revolves around Aimo and Milla, who live together at the house of the young woman’s alcoholic and “zombified” parents, and who are saving up in order to gain their independence. But Aimo lacks self-confidence and squanders their savings by trying to find a fast-track way to build up his muscles. As the results do not measure up to his expectations, he even begins to dress up as a robot, which is not to Milla’s liking, and so she leaves him. This break-up has some unexpected consequences…

On the Croisette, Matteo Lovadina’s team will also be able to pin its hopes on the market premieres of Manieggs – Revenge of the Hard Egg [+] by Zoltan Miklosy (read thereview), a Hungarian animated film brimming with scathing humour, the British drama Stillby Simon Blake (toplined by Irish actor Aidan Gillen, who is world famous for playing the character of Littlefinger in Game of Thrones) and the Canadian film Surfacing by Lindsay MacKay.

At Cannes, Reel Suspects will also be launching pre-sales for My Peaceful Place of Exileby Dāvis Sīmanis, a co-production between Latvia and Lithuania (Locomotive Productions and Studio Uljana Kim), starring German actor Ulrich Matthes, Agnese Cīrule, Dmitrijs Javlovs, Leonīds Lencs and Toms Liepājnieks. The plot unfolds during the final year of World War One, and the lead character is a German military surgeon sent to inspect a convalescent home for patients suffering from post-traumatic psychosis and who attempts to restore the unusual facility to good working order.

Lastly of note on the line-up are German Angst by Jörg Buttgereit, Michal Kosakowskiand Andreas Marschall (revealed at Rotterdam – read the review in English), which will be screened at the market, the Indian fantasy film in post-production Ludo by Q and Nikon, and the Berlinale-selected The Blue Hour by Thai director Anucha Boonyawatana and Portrait of the Artist [+] by Antoine Barraud.

(Translated from French)

19/11/2014 – The movie sees Antoniak marry Nothing Personal‘s lyricism with Code Blue‘s potential for controversy; the results are visually stunning, witty and always thought-provoking

Nude Area opened the Focus on Polish Cinema section at this year’s Tallinn Black Nights Festival, and it immediately proved why we need more female directors. Many make films about lesbianism, but few take their discussion of the “L-word” as far as Urszula Antoniak‘s Polish-Dutch co-production does. In short, this film depicts a lesbian love affair that is so intense it cannot be experienced lucidly, in a linear way (and indeed, this movie is certainly not linear).

Instead, Antoniak divides her work into a catalogue of L-words (love, labour, limit, languor…), each acting as a chapter or “fragment” in this complex look at female desire. The result is a discussion that turns out to be universal. It becomes about how all-consuming love can be; how it can transport, overwhelm, fulfil, or even leave us unmoved. But Nude Area‘s tale of interracial love also asks some probing questions; ones that perhaps only a woman could ask aptly.

The film explores the West’s tendency to attach fetish value to Eastern culture, reifying rather than respecting it. But instead of resisting that tendency, this film cuts it open for our consideration. Additionally, Antoniak’s dissection of attitudes towards Islam carries with it a potential feminist critique: if the hijab is meant to keep a woman’s beauty private from men, what is there to stop the lass at the local, women-only swimming baths from falling hopelessly in love with you?

Antoniak really demonstrates how complex feminism amendments can become when a woman is given room to explore them. One such example is feminism’s exposure of art’s tendency to depict men as gazers, whilst women merely appear – as if they were presenting themselves for man’s objectifying looks. But Nude Area asks: what if the gazer and the observed are both women?

On this note of subjectivity and objectivity, the film opens with an epigraph taken from Roland Barthes: “[The lover] speaking within himself, amorously, confront[s] the other (the loved object), who does not speak.” Straight away, the suggestion is that Antoniak wants to take this dynamic beyond feminist territory. What we have instead is a cerebral look at human desire.

Desire proves to be an opportunity for the lover to project their wishes onto the beloved, relegating them to an object. But in this respect, Nude Area shows how little male and female desires differ. All the same, Antoniak never simply defers to Barthes’ idea. The two lead actresses, Sammy Boonstra (Naomi) and Imaan Hammam (Fama), are forever moving between empowered and passive states, subjectivity and objectivity, fragility and strength – roles that these two actresses play perfectly.

Hammam, as the object of desire, has all the annoyance of Bambi being caught in the headlights of somebody else’s passion, whilst Boonstra’s desperately searching eyes flawlessly convey the equally helpless lover, turning this almost speechless film into a revelation. Boonstra often sits before us rather like a Romantic poet: mysteriously hidden behind her fringe, flanked by books, forever elegant.

But Nude Area constantly lulls us into her Romantic states, too. We happily sit in Naomi’s rocking chair of fantasies – perhaps fantasies we all take to dizzying heights when sat on the bus. This movie relentlessly tips us out of our rockers as well, though, as it snaps us in and out of reveries, soundscapes and static images. And as a result, we never remain certain what is fantasy or fully realised fantasy; with the shift between the two sometimes being so bathetic it genuinely makes you smile.

Despite this irony, written words still unfold across the screen and lyrics flow, making poetry part of the film, despite the absence of dialogue. Images also communicate ideas metaphorically (like all the sexually charged, coursing water in this movie, for example). But water imagery coupled with shots of reflections even come to intricately suggest an unattainable, self-projected form of love… Put simply, Nude Area is just the most tantric, televisual foreplay imaginable.