European Films

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival might be happening in the spa town of the same name in the Czech Republic, but the themes of the films presented here so far seem to have a Russian flavour, more particularly a use of themes typical of classical Russian literature. After several films about Fathers and Sons during the opening weekend, the early start of this week spotlighted films that meditate on Crime and Punishment (or Guilt and Redemption as a Christian translation might run): the Swedish Competition entry Mun mot mun (Mouth to Mouth) from Björn Runge, and two films from earlier festivals: Cannes’ L’amico di famiglia (The Family Friend) from Paolo Sorrentino, and Berlinale success Knallhart (Tough Enough) from Detlev Buck. 

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival might be happening in the spa town of the same name in the Czech Republic, but the themes of the films presented here so far seem to have a Russian flavour, more particularly a use of themes typical of classical Russian literature. After several films about Fathers and Sons during the opening weekend, the early start of this week spotlighted films that meditate on Crime and Punishment (or Guilt and Redemption as a Christian translation run): the Swedish Competition entry Mun mot mun (Mouth to Mouth) from Björn Runge, and two films from earlier festivals: Cannes’ L’amico di famiglia (The Family Friend) from Paolo Sorrentino, and Berlinale success Knallhart (Tough Enough) from Detlev Buck. 

Mun mot Mun is Björn Runge’s follow up to his internationally acclaimed Om jag vänder mig um (Daybreak) and is again a careful dissection of an apparently happy family living in the apparently carefree society that is Sweden. Unsurprisingly, such happiness is but an outer veneer thinly laid-on and through the years Scandinavian filmmakers have continued to mine this theme for all it is worth. In Mun mot mun a former alcoholic and consequently violent father has caused his daughter to escape into drugs and bad friends even before her eighteenth birthday. Before the film opens, the father has mended his ways but daughter Vera is still at large. She is in fact living with her boyfriend-come-pimp Morgan, who forces her to have sex for money so that they -- though mainly he -- can buy drugs.

The widescreen film opens with a tight shot of Vera and Morgan’s faces as he tries to force her to go to a client, and this visual motif is repeated several times in the film, most memorably when Vera’s mother Eva and a female stranger of her own age share a bed in hotel room – though not for the reasons you might suspect. Though the focus is clearly on the father-daughter relationship, Runge, who also wrote the screenplay, casts his net wider and offers several subplots that mostly tie neatly into the main story, including those of Vera’s brother Joel and his new crush (who has a few problems in her own family), and Vera and Joel’s grandparents from both sides.

The film has drugs, violence, battery, prostitution, suicide and other assorted ills of society, but credit Runge’s screenplay for making them feel part of a coherent whole rather than a tick-off list of increasing improbabilities. Runge’s deft directorial hand in fact creates a whole universe that is like a Sweden that seems to exist in a parallel dimension: the houses in which the characters live all seem overly luxurious and theatrical (even a step beyond those already improbable in Daybreak), and combined with the way the camera slides through the rooms its good living commercial aspects clash so harshly with its tale of the ugliness of society that the film takes on a sometimes surreal dimension.

Paolo Sorrentino’s follow-up to his critical favourite Le conseguenze dell’amore (The Consequences of Love) suffers equally from a production design and cinematography that at times seems to be in the film for the mere purpose of attracting attention to itself. In one of the film’s early scenes, an undressed woman stand in front of an electric blue wall that looks like something out a cult designer home, but we learn that in fact the wall is one of the backrooms of the shop of tailor and money lender Geremia de Geremei, who is, or so we will learn not much later, such a penny-pincher that it is unlikely that he would have any interest in procuring such a piece of design, even if he could afford it.

Geremia (played to gleeful perfection by Giacomo Rizzo) is a money lender for the poor: he deals only in small amounts, but the interests are nevertheless exorbitant and sometimes literally cutthroat. Though clearly in his sixties, the man blessed with an ungly countenance still lives with his bed-ridden mother, who apparently taught him the trade. He is still looking for a bride, and soon one beautiful example will cross his path, though she is not his; in fact her parents are clients of Geremia’s who need to borrow money to pay for their daughter’s wedding.     
Geremia is a thoroughly unpleasant character, and the film consciously proceeds without paying any attention to getting the audience emotionally invested in even just one of the characters. This evident obstinacy will be hard on many viewers, who will find it difficult to find a reason to sit through the entire film, whose moral philosophy seems to have no place for any form of Dostoyevskian redemption.

Actor-director Detlev Buck’s Knallhart (Tough Enough) is a more classical example of filmmaking in many ways, both in its not unfamiliar story of an adolescent becoming involved in local drugs running, which leads from bad to worse and in its structure that is bookended by the redemptive action of going to the police to confession in order to merit that redemption. 

The 15-year-old Michael Polischka (the severely babyfaced but mostly convincing David Kross) has to follow his mother to a poor immigrant neighbourhood when she is thrown out by her rich boyfriend because she cannot excite him anymore. At a new school he is soon picked upon because he has come from a rich neighbourhood, which leads to extortion and severe beatings by a local gang. When, after the advice of one of her mother’s new boyfriends, he hits the leader of the gang straight in the face, and this is seen by the ringleader of local drug trafficking network, he is hired by them on the spot for his gutsy action. As part of the deal he is granted their protection from his bullies, and quick thinking and a dose of good luck soon get him promoted, with a way out becoming an ever more remote possibility.

Buck’s film is gritty in the right places and plays the story straight while avoiding the overly clichéd. Erhan Emre puts in a neat supporting role as the “Italian” ringleader Hamal, and the film’s slightly hyperrealistic, film-conscious tone will keep the viewer’s attention throughout.