The People’s Choice
JAN 26 — Le Havre
If you’ve never heard of Finish writer-director Aki Kaurismäki, LE HAVRE is a great way to get to know him.
Voted by many European critics as the best film of 2011, LE HAVRE is a droll, deadpan comedy about what Europeans call the refugee problem (and North Americans call immigration). In the French port city that gives the movie its name, Marcel Marx, a middle-aged bohemian, shines shoes for a living and worries about his younger wife’s sudden illness.
When a stowaway African lad stumbles into Marcel’s path, with the police hot on his trail, the kindly shoe shiner must make some difficult choices. The result is a charming, and subtly suspenseful, political fairy tale.
Highly regarded in Europe, Kaurismäki is largely unknown in North America, thanks in part to his habit of boycotting US awards ceremonies in protest over that country’s various overseas offenses. It’s exactly the kind of movie your film series was created to bring you.
LE HAVRE plays one show only, 7 p.m., Thursday, January 26, at the Empire Theatres Studio 10, 325 Prince Street, Sydney. Tickets $11, students $7. Our winter-spring season runs every Thursday through April 19. Buy a season pass to all 13 films for $90.
The People’s Choice
Here’s how Cape Breton Island Film Series patrons rated the movies we screened last fall:
SENNA was the surprise winner, followed by WIN WIN and THE INTERRUPTERS. The least popular fall movie was TREE OF LIFE, edging out MEEK’S CUTOFF for the dubious distinction. The average rating for all 14 movies was 3.9 out of 5.0.
Thanks to all who took part in the on-line surveys. My plan is to simplify the surveys for the winter season,and I hope everyone will participate.
Christmas break
Our fall season ended December 1 with our screening of Miranda July’s THE FUTURE. Please take a moment to rate that movie.
We’ll be back this winter with another 13-week season of great independent movies, starting January 26. To view the winter lineup, please click on the Winter Schedule tab above.
Season passes for the winter series will go on sale the week before Christmas, at the Cape Breton Curiosity Shop.
Dec 1 — THE FUTURE
The much-talked-about Miranda July — filmmaker, New Yorker fiction author, performance artist — wrote, directed, and stars in our last feature of 2011: THE FUTURE.
July made a splash with her 2005 directoral debut, ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW, a charmingly offbeat and observant film about people looking for love. It won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and Roger Ebert declared it the fifth best film of the decade.
Reviews for THE FUTURE are all over the map, because the film is much harder to categorize. It’s pushes quirkiness to new heights with magic realist elements some find viewers find endearing, others off-putting.
The plot revolves around a low energy couple who foster a sick cat — hey, is this timely in Cape Breton, or what? — in hopes that it will prepare them for deeper commitments. The results are alternately amusing and heartbreaking. Or as the New York Times called it, “a blend of whimsy and difficult emotion.”
“This is a comedy of inertia, laced with whimsical gestures, but its sense of fun is shadowed by desperation,” writes Anthony Lane in the New Yorker. “The couple plans great things for a month of freedom—after that, the cat will enter and fill their lives—but Sophie seems only to find further loneliness, rather than comfort or thrills, by using the time to start an affair with a man she barely knows.”
Among the smart young women of our era, July is a hugely admired cultural icon. If only to find out what all the fuss is about, you owe it to yourself to see this movie.
THE FUTURE plays one show only, 7 p.m., Thursday, December 1, at the Empire Theatre Studio 10, Sydney. It is the last film of our Fall 2011 season.
