EDITH KURZWEIL
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society. Although some reviewers have labeled
Shanghai Triad
an old–
fashioned gangster film in Chinese garb, it widely surpasses that genre in
subtlety and magnificent scenery.
French creations were represented three times. The producer of
Cydo
- who states that he "wanted to show violence with great tenderness" -
reveals the hopelessness of a Vietnamese bicycle driver, Cyclo, and of his
older, beautiful sister, who inescapably are dragged into crime and pros–
titution.
Hate
is set in a typical housing project in an industrial suburb of
Paris, where kids have nothing to do. Three sixteen-year-olds who are
angry when, after their friend who has been beaten up by the police ends
up at death's door, get into ever more serious scrapes and run-ins with
the law - until one of them shoots a policeman .
The New York Times
called the third French (and Portuguese) selection,
The Convent,
"an ex–
ceedingly odd morality play, a whimsical blend of theological chess and
erotic cat-and-mouse, larded with readings from Goethe's
Faust."
Whereas the dreamy atmosphere of this outlandish concoction is desper–
ately trying to emulate the films of such virtuosos as Truffaut and Resnais,
this futile search for Satan is not only ludicrous but an utter bore.
Even if we were not told that
Kicking and Screaming
is an American
romantic comedy, only in affluent America could four male college
graduates so intently refuse to make plans for their future, while their
formidable girlfriends are moving ahead full of confidence. The film,
which is as bland and pointless as
Dead Presidents
is brutal and ideological,
is equally naive. But then, this producer too is in his early twenties and
has little understanding of history.
The British production of
Land and Freedom,
on the contrary, explains
history by means of letters written from Spain by an Englishman during
that country's civil war.
It
intelligently portrays the events that led a
working-class man to join the Communist Party in order to help fight the
Fascists and, gradually, to discover how he and his friends were being be–
trayed by the Stalinists. This moving account of youthful enthusiasm and
disappointment, and of human love, is filmed with taste, despite the battle
scenes.
In
L'america,
two Italian entrepreneurs set out to make a fast buck
by creating a bogus shoe factory in impoverished, backward Albania. But
the pathetic, traumatized political prisoner they eventually choose to head
this firm, and who hopes to get back to the Italy he grew up in so long
ago, forces the brash, young Gino to pursue him through all of Albania,
and to barely manage escaping onto a ship overcrowded with emigrants.
L'america
and
Land and Freedom
were almost alone among the festival's
contemporary productions to reveal the humanity that may emerge under
the most dismal conditions of political intrigue and betrayal. Moreover,
