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DOCUMENTARY MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES (U) 86min 0000
Beginning with a bravura eight-minute lateral tracking shot through a giant Chinese factory. Canadian director Jennifer Baichwal's thoughtful documentary explores the work of the photographer Edward Burtynsky. whose large-scale colour photos examine the physical and environmental impact of man's industrial processes upon landscapes around the world. Baichwal and her cinematographer Peter Mettler follow Burtynsky on one of his trips to Asia where visits the monumental Three Gorges Dam project in China. the setting for Jia Zhang Ke's Still Life. for which two million people will be relocated in order to form a reservoir some GOO-km long.
He also photographs the mountains of ‘e-waste'. which have been imported from other countries for recycling. and the ship-breaking yards at Chittagong in Bangladesh. where teenagers remove by hand any oil left in the derelict tankers, which are to be dismantled. Manufactured Landscapes offers a wider context to Burtynsky's panoramic phonographs: we watch the artist negotiating with locals and staging his compositions. and Baichwal also attempts to interview workers who would otherwise remain anonymous figures in the frame. And like the recently released Our Daily Bread. this is a film which encourages the viewer to gaze at its images. and feel unsettled by its eerie beauty. (Tom Dawson)
I Cameo, Edinburgh and selected release from Fri 9 May.
DRAMA CARAMEL (PG) 95min 0...
Dedicated ‘to my Beirut’, the charming, bitter-sweet debut feature of writer-director Nadine Labaki centres upon the ‘Si Belle’ beauty parlour in the Lebanese capital. The 30-year-old proprietor Layale (Labaki herself) is guiltin conducting a clandestine affair with a married man, and her colleagues and their customers at the salon also have to deal with emotional difficulties. The Muslim Nisrine (Yasmine Al Masri) is worried that on their wedding night, her husband-to-be will discover that she is not actually a virgin. Rima (Joanna Moukarzel) is strongly attracted towards a beautiful woman, whose hair she washes. And would-be actress Jamale (Gisela Asoud) is desperately attempting to conceal her menopausal state, whilst the elderly seamstress Rosa (Siham Haddad) carries the burden of looking after her senile sister.
Caramel, whose title refers to the candy-coloured leg-wax concoction used in the salon, is a film where plot is very much secondary to the beguiling atmosphere. Although there are no references to the on-going strife in Lebanon, this is still a political film, in the sense that it allows the possibilities of friendships between individuals from different ethnic groups and examines how its characters are torn between their desires and the restrictive values of a patriarchal society: Layale for example cannot even book herself a hotel room because she is unmarried. Bathed in golden light and impressively acted by its almost entirely non- professional cast, this tender tribute to female solidarity ends on a high note by showing that a new haircut can be a joyful act of resistance. (Torn Dawson)
I Selected release from Fri 76 May. See profile, in listings.
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THRILLER/ROMANCE THE AIR l BREATHE (15) 95min 0.
Taking its cue from an old Chinese proverb that says life is composed of four emotions — happiness. pleasure. sorrow and love — this ensemble drama featuring an A-list cast and four intertwined plotlines is reminiscent of such prestige Hollywood dramas as Crash and 27 Grams. But where the quality of those films made their rather self-conscious worthiness bearable. the overly schematic and quite derivative nature of The Air I Breathe results in a film that's predictable. pOrtentous and pretentious.
In each of the four loosely connected stories a character in crisis experiences one of the proverbial emotions. albeit through a complex twist of fate. In the first. Forest Whitaker's accountant gets into financial trouble with Andy Garcia's gangster and attempts to rob a bank to solve the problem. In the second. Brendan Fraser's emotionally tortured thug uses his god-given paranormal ability to predict the future for his boss. Garcia. In the third, her debt- ridden manager sells Sarah Michelle Gellar's pop starlet to Garcia. And in the fourth story. Kevin Bacon's doctor attempts to save the life of his beloved Julie Delpy after she's bitten by a snake.
The performances are as good as you’d expect from this reasonably decent cast. and director Bob DeRosa keeps the quartet of narratives moving along nicely. dressing the whole thing up with plenty of glossy style. But no matter how ridiculous the plot twists that bring the characters into contact with one another and their individual destinies are. the contrivances are obvious a mile off. And the ending is laughable. (Miles Fielder)
I Selected release from Fri 7 6 May.
COMEDY WELCOME TO THE STICKS
(12A) 106min 00 * '-‘
Dany Boon's box-office hit is the most successful French movie of all time. In just seven weeks on release, it broke 1966 comedy La Grande Vadroui/le's record for the highest ever attendance for a French film on home soil with 17 million tickets sold. Given that pedigree it‘s a big surprise how middle-of-the-road this farce is. Essentially it’s the same joke told over and over and over and over again and it's not even a good or original joke. The French make fun of people who live in the far north of the country near Calais because it's cold, the people are basic and the people talk in a hard-to-comprehend dialect (Ch'ti). Philippe Abrams (Kad Merad) works in a post office in the sunny south and when he's caught lying on an application form for a transfer. his punishment is to be sent to the town of Bergues. in the far. far north. Predictably, he finds that the people of the north (former stand-up comedian turned director Boon plays one of the locals) are actually nice and it’s not so cold or bad. Boon thinks it funny to leave the boom in shot all the time. It isn’t. Indeed, little in this drivel is funny. (Kaleem Aftab) I Selected release from Fri 9 May.
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8—22 May 2008 THE LIST 53