Berlinale 2013: Day 5

The best day of Berlinale so far - two of wonderful popular films that you will surely see in your local cinema, plus the absolutely brilliant competition film made it a good day in terms of cinematic surprises. The day began with a press screening of the Romanian "Child's Pose" directed by Calin Peter Netzer. This story of a wealthy woman from the upper class of the Romanian society that gets involved with her only son's lethal car accident in which an innocent child dies is practically a story about family relationships, and about who can you trust and on whom can you count in times of trouble. Luminita Gheorghiu as the main protagonist put some question marks as to whether we only have Paulina Garcia for "Gloria" in competition to win Silver Bear. She was extremely good in this.

 Later a much-awaited lovely, wonderful, delightful "Before Midnight", the third child of such a magnificent ensemble including Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy and Richard Linklater. The story is too witty to even begin telling about it, the protagonists are lively, lovely and adorable, but there is the unmistakable spirit of the two previous movies. A joy to watch!
The third film of the day was "Layla Fourie" directed by Pia Marais. And you know, after such a lovely lovely movie as the previous one, nothing could simply match. But "Layla" was actually not that bad. Cliche after cliche, not really understandable plot, but I wouldn't call it a mistake, as some critics did.
To me it was rather original, mostly due to the fact, that the plot took place in South Africa and that's not really a view often to be seen in the cinema.
Later I saw another magnificent film, "Frances Ha" directed by Noah Baumbach with Greta Gerwig! This is incredible that after a couple of so-so days of the festival, there were so many great ones packed in just one day. Frances is adorable, chaotic, ambitious and New York is like a second main hero of the film. Baumbach has decidedly become one of my favorite ditrectors after this!
Last, but not least, another James Franco experiment, called "Interior. Leather Bar". It's been directed with Travis Matthews and is a sort of documentary that reproduced the missing 60 minutes from William Friedkin's "Cruising". The 60 minutes have been cut from the film due to censorship reasons and Franco made it his quest to redo it. Wouldn't be controversial, if it hadn't been the scenes with explicit contents, lots of gay sex, porn and stuff like that. BUT I kind of liked the film and Franco's attitude. He wasn't himself in the controversial scenes, he rather appeared on the set from time to time mentoring, so no nued with Franco, not this time!
My whole report in Polish: here.


Rating:

14. "Child's Pose"

Rating: ****
More

15. "Before Midnight"

Rating: *****
More

16. "Layla Fourie"

Rating: ***
More

17.  "Frances Ha"

Rating: *****
More


18. "Interior. Leather Bar"

Rating:***1/2
More