Missing words
20 June 2006. Inspired by playing catch up.
Some filing to catch up on:
* A piece written for the Obituary Writers International Conference that I couldn't make it to this year. The basic structure may be familiar to attentive readers, with lots added/removed to make it relevant to its theme.
* This book comes out in Spain on Monday, and UK-wide a few weeks after that, due to complicated warehousing/quarantine rules on foreign words that might be rabid. It'll have a gold-embossed cloth cover. Even the Sunday Telegraph magazine likes the sound of that.
* I couldn't possibly comment on whether we may or may not have won an inflight magazine until contracts are signed later this week. But let's just say that if you're a freelancer in Brussels/Venice/Rome/Milan/Paris, now wouldn't be too bad a time to get in touch, capisci? Rather a lot more on this very soon, I suspect. Fucking hell.
* I was going to write some kind of vague analysis of the Catalan statute election, but Katya Adler in this week's FOOC (strangely not transcribed yet) says it perfectly. Many Catalans revel in the idea that everyone hates them. Truth from where I'm sitting (which to be fair isn't in one of the right-wing barrios) is that no-one really gives a monkeys. Which winds them up even more.
* And another obscure-films review from Madrid's favourite English language magazine after, as the blogsphoid would have it, the jump.
Speaking in tongues
One of the unwritten rules of Hollywood is that when a group of Nazis/Chinese/Russians/Johnny Foreigners talks in private, they always do so in English.
When it comes to Johnny Foreigner's own films, however, the world is a little more realistic, and so this month we have one film in Turkish, English and German, one in English, Urdu, Pashtun and Bengali, one in French, Creole and English, one in English, French, Turkish, Russian, Hungarian, Spanish, Galician and German... and one that's only in French, which suggests they weren't really trying.
The most multilingual of the mash-ups is Galatasary-Depor, a film that tells four stories in four different countries, all taking place on the same day: that of the UEFA Cup Final a few years ago. The original-language title of this German-Spanish co-production is One Day in Europe, a Europe clearly defined by UEFA rather than politics, as it's partly set in Turkey and Russia. There's probably no-one in the world who could sit through the entire film without reading at least some of the subtitles, but the moral of the piece is clear: Europe is a place of one people, uniquely linked by common values. And those values are football, crap police, and insurance fraud. The latter seems to be the way that every young European makes a living these days, the cheeky scamps.
True or not, it's not the most thrilling of central plot points, and although there's probably a fine film to be made using these linguistic principles, unfortunately, as my Albanian friends would say, kjo nuk gjë.
Silliest film of the month is El Juego de los Idiotas (La Doublure), a fun and frisky French number that, if it were made in Hollywood, would star Jason Biggs. It concerns geeky carpark attendant François Pignon (Gad Elmaleh, who looks like Pee Wee Herman; his character's name has become French movie shorthand for a likeable idiot, trivia fans), and through an unlikely series of events, he is forced to live with a gorgeous "top model" (or "terp modelle", as those Frenchies like to put it), all the while trying to capture the small-town girl of his dreams.
The cast includes the bilingual Kristin Scott Thomas and Caché's Daniel Auteil, and they do the job admirably considering that pretty much no-one gets any character development whatsoever. But it really doesn't matter as the story rattles on quickly enough to its inevitable "hilarious" and romantic conclusion. Perfect Sunday night viewing in fact, with more laughs that you have any right to expect.
If you'd rather not leave your brain cells with the popcorn seller, fictional film of the month is Hacia el Sur (Vers le sud), a French/Canadian adaptation of a trio of novels by Haitian writer Dany Laferrière. The story centres around a gaggle of horny 50-year-old women who head to Haiti for a spot of fiddling with the young male natives. There's an echo of The Beach in these people's desire for paradise, away from both their reality and that of the young men lying next to them. However, when Legba, the most sculpted of the locals, starts to get in a spot of local bother, paradise starts to break down, and not even dollars can help.
Dodging stereotypes as best it can, this is a sensitive piece with a fine cast, and it's hard not to sympathise with both the old waiter who mutters "Dollars have destroyed this place", and the tourist who says "Here I feel like a butterfly, free and without complications." A randy Charlotte Rampling is always worth sitting through, and the rest of the cast don't let her steal the screen - Ménthony César as Legba is a particularly hot tip for the future. Overall, a smart film with a refreshing lack of moralising. And in this weather, anything refreshing is worth seeking out.
On a different note, there's Cruzando El Puente: los sonidos de Estambul (that's Istanbul, not Constantinople), a documentary about the current music scenes in the Turkish megapolis. German bass player Alexander Hacke travels around the city, laptop in tow, trying to record an album of all its different sounds. But it's not so much Buena Ista Social Club, as a mix that makes the word 'eclectic' look beige. From Turkish rap to hard rock to prog rock to lute playing to busking to breakdance to wedding tunes to wailing to whirling... if you're a musician, you'll find more influences here than you can shake a drumstick at.
Most impressively, this film succeeds in telling the story of the city through its music rather than heavy voiceover. I can see for myself that there are no women in the coffee houses, or that the rooftop buskers have the best view of the city, and thankfully the music is the only thing that's overexplained. The gatherings of musicians jamming together may start to tire non-musicos after a while, but spirits rise with the appearance of the crowd's favourite, Bollywood-esque folk hero Orhan Gencebay, followed by a curious Canadian woman who seems to be single-handedly resurrecting classic Dervish melodies.
The documentary is essentially a This Film's Soundtrack: The Making Of, but it's an album worth getting, if only to create a talking point at parties. And there's still plenty in the film for anyone who's interested in what should, if the White Christians Club wants some real colour in its creation, be the EU's next addition. Though they might have to brush up on their insurance fraud first.
Finally, there's Road to Guantánamo, a Channel 4 film co-directed by Michael Winterbottom (24 Hour Party People). Part-documentary, part-dramatisation of events, it focuses on the true story of three young guys from Birmingham who ended up in Guantánamo Bay.
After two years of brutal torture, they were set free without charge. All three came to Madrid to present a preview of this gripping film. "Just before we left, the guy in the cage next to me said 'Tell the world what is happening here.' And that's what we're doing," said Shafiq Rasul. With 500 people still incarcerated, it's a brutal, essential message and this month's must-see film.