Gelo

Date and Venue 19 Nov | The Cinematheque, 1131 Howe Street

Spanish actress Ivana Baquero plays two roles here: Catarina, born from the DNA of a frozen ice-age corpse, and Joana, a film student. This dystopic film deals with cryogenics and concerns itself with immortality, a topic widely debated especially among Spanish philosophers. The film is good but it needs to be simplified. Why complicate it with the same actress playing another character? This confuses the audience. It's like the adage, "too many cooks spoil the broth". Another flaw in this film is the use of language. Why does Baquero speak Spanish and all the other characters speak Portuguese? There's a somewhat lack of consistency in both character portrayals and use of language.

Irreplaceable

Date and Venue 19 Nov | The Cinematheque, 1131 Howe Street

Excellent film! A prime example of how medical doctors make excellent writers. Case in point: Somerset Maugham. And in this film, filmmaker Lilti who is a country doctor. The French Consul General of Vancouver revealed this to us when he introduced the film saying that the director/filmmaker is a 40=year old country doctor in France. French star François Cluzet (a Dustin Hoffman look-alike) plays an “irreplaceable” country doctor in this film, and I suspect that it's semi-autobiographical, as he closely resembles the description made by the Consul General: a country doctor in his forties. I liked the song that ended the happy ending of this film, "Wild is the Wind" which was popularized by Johnny Mathis around a half century ago. The film got a warm applause at the end.

Image

Date and Venue 18 Nov | The Cinematheque, 1131 Howe Street

This film is quite timely especially after recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels. What is interesting about this film is looking at the Muslim situation from a different angle. The directors are from Muslim descent and they try to show why the Muslims, in this case the Moroccans living in Brussels, are discontented with the treatment they get from the government, thus resulting in crimes and unrest. I didn't quite like the ending, though, because it comes out as though Eva (Laura Verlinden), the young reporter working on a documentary for TV, uses Lahbib (Nabil Mallat), a young Moroccan, to be her scapegoat, even if she doesn't do it on purpose because she sympathizes with Lahbib's plight. I also didn't like us, the viewers, hanging in mid-air wondering what happened to these two. There should have been some kind of a narrative letting us know what happened to them.

Eva Nová

Date and Venue 18 Nov | The Cinematheque, 1131 Howe Street

This psychological melodrama, which won the International Critics Prize at TIFF last year, is due largely to the stellar performance from veteran actress Emília Vášáryová, known as the “First Lady of Slovak Film and Theatre.” It's a somewhat love-hate relationship between mother and son. She plays the role of Eva, a once-famous actress recently released from rehab for alcoholism, and desperate to make amends with her now-adult son whom she abandoned in infancy. Again, I wasn't completely happy with the ending, although I understood the director's intention of reconciliation, but how it was done was quite unsettling.