Sult/Hunger

'Sult' ('Hunger'/'La faim') is a film that affect the viewer in many different ways.

First of all one can establish that the sense of hunger and poverty is felt all over the film.
This is to a great extent due to the fantastic acting by Per Oscarsson (recently deceased), who convey the desperation of a person totally hunger-bitten.
The work of the director, Henning Carlsen, is of course very important.
The director has created milieus and an atmosphere that throw the viewer right into the very depths of poverty and starvation with different stratas of society meeting but yet not.
The main character, Pontus (Per Oscarsson) is a writer/journalist trying to get his latest article published.
His hunger makes him creative and the work proceeds at a good pace.
The problem is that the editor always is busy and never seem to have time looking at his oeuvre.
Meanwhile Pontus tries to get along by eating the scrap he can find in his cupboards and elsewhere.
Unfortunately for him, he can't stay in the apartment he's renting as he has no money to pay the rent for.
When evicted from his apartment, he naturally finds himself in a situation where he can't concentrate on writing but is forced to look for a place to live.
Finally the editor decide to publish Pontus' article but first he has to make som changes in the text. Will he be able to do that?

The story circles around this very nightmarish subsistence, back and forth between hope and despair.
On the same time it deals with the question about creativity in connection to poverty and richness.
The author Knut Hamsun, evidently wanted to say that poor circumstances is the mother of all - the best - creativity.
This is of course a truth with modification, as all of us having experienced poverty know.
In this case the creativity might be hightened when Pontus starves but on the same time, he lacks the physical strenght to carry on with his work.

I (Gunnar) haven't read the book but Aurore has and she says that the film in a truthful way follows Hamsun's book and this is of course to a great extent thanks to the director but also to Per Oscarsson in this his magnificent interpretation.

Snabba cash/ Easy Money

'Snabba cash' is a very renowned film, depicting the 'underworld' of Stockholm and how easy one can make money and how easy one can loose them, not least when dealing with persons with a 'spacious conscience'.

Johan JW Westlund - Joel Kinnaman - is a young student at The Stockholm School of Economics who for different reasons (mostly money aiming at giving him prestige among his rich fellow students in their very superficial world), becomes involved in the commerce of drugs.
Not at all unlikely as the moral among economists and economist students (or law students) seldom reach any higher levels.
At first he tries to live a double life, studying during day time and doing business with drug barons abroad the rest of the time.
After having read the book 'Swedish Maffia', I (Gunnar) recognize many of the milieus and the different gangs portrayed in this film.
I haven't read the book written by Jens Lapidus wherefore I don't know if he uses material from the above book or if it's the other way around or maybe a 'cross-fertilization'.

Lapidus 'regular job' is not writing but working as a lawyer, wherefore he probably used some material from the experience of - at a daily basis - meeting different clients within the 'criminal sector' in Sweden.
On the same time one wonder if the experiences of Johan Westlund stems from Lapidus own personal experiences as a law student.
The film is made in, or an attempt to be made in, an 'americanized' way - this in relation to a more Swedish tradition when it comes to thrillers - with rapid action and a straight forward story but it never becomes a nail-biter or even thrilling.
This might be due to the poor acting or dito directing, I don't know.

Joel Kinnaman won the 'Swedish Oscar' - Guldbaggen - for best male leading role, something in our opinion rather surprising as his acting in a stereotypical way.

Let's see how the American version turns out.

En ganske snill man/A Somewhat Gentle Man

'En ganske snill man' is a charming film about who you should be loyal to, reflecting over questions like:
Who your friends really are, who your enemies really are, if you really have any friends - or enemies - who you love, if you really love someone, family relations and whether or not they are all 'screwing' you (I apologize for the less poetic word), one way or another.
The latter not least since you are responsible for your decisions and actions made in the past and also have to pay the prize for those decisions in the future.
Ulrik (Stellan Skarsgård) leaves prison after many years behind bars and his first instinct is to find the one who put him in jail - and kill him.
In order to succeed he uses his old contacts within the criminal world but before the film ends, he has had many opportunities to rethink his decision but if this will lead him to abandon his primary intentions, that is to be seen.
This is a comedy with many good Norwegian actors like Bjørn Floberg and Bjørn Sundquist, two of Aurore's favourite actors.

The light and ambiance is somewhat like a combination between Aki Kaurismäki and Roy Andersson.

Director: Hans Petter Moland.

Nos résistances. Cinéma Lux, La Châtre

This (above) is the director, Romain Cogitore, a 25 year old/young man, creating his first feature film, 'Nos résistances'.

He was invited to Cinéma Lux by the cinéma supervisor, Didier Godet, to introduce his film and speak about the process behind the making of the film. It had started when he - at the age of 19 - found a photo of his grandfather as an equally young man, surrounded by other young men, all of them being armed.
He asked his grandfather who they all were and the latter told him about the resistance movement in France among young men and boys.
As Cogitore points out, one often, in film, depict and tell the story about the resistance movement among adults (heroic men and women), forgetting that there were many young men/boys and some young women - more or less - trained to fight against the Nazi government during the Second World War.
Cogitore found this very interesting, not least as most of the films made about the Second World War and the resistance movement(s) often display these men and women as being fearless and idealistic, knowing exactly what to do in each and every moment, who they fight against and why.

The young men we get to meet in this film - something being confirmed by Cogitore's grandfather - are political virgins, not even knowing who De Gaulle is/was. They are fighting for a small piece of land, or at the most a landscape, but being more of boy scouts than soldiers and very ambivalent about their mission and the goal of their fight.
In this film the story circles around Racine (François Civil) and his 'boyish' innocence when it comes to the war and its atrocities.
Racine has a girl friend he is forced to leave when joining a 'youth resistance group' in the forests. There he tries to help them with rudimentary medical treatment being trained as a 'secourist'/help worker with basic knowledge about health care.
When arriving he is very enthusiastic but confronted with the 'real world' of war, he realizes that this is no game and that he might not be up to the task.
The leaders of the group - two adult soldiers - confiscate his papers and prevent him from returning back to his village.
Being stopped also by the other youth soldiers, not least Le bourreau (Grégoire Colin) - who is one of the toughest young men and at the same time very fond of Zozo (Grégory Gatignol) who is the wounded friend Racine is supposed to help - he stays on but later tries to escape.
When almost succeeding in escaping he has to return to the camp for other reasons.

The title - 'Our Resistances' - is of course very well chosen as it's a story not only about the Resistance Movement but all the 'opposition' Racine is faced with when trying to get back to his girlfriend and a 'normal life'.
It's a question about both physical and mental obstacles.
As a whole this is a very good film, not least taking into consideration that this is Cogitore's first feature film.
A very mature oeuvre, making it obvious that he had a clear idea of what he wanted to create before starting to work on his film.
We will probably hear more from this young director in the future.

Un balcon sur la mer/A View of Love

This is the afternoon film for us at Cinéma Lux in La Châtre, a film directed by Nicole Garcia.

The story circles around two persons mainly, the real estate agent Marc (Jean Dujardin) and one of his clients, Marie-Jeanne/Cathy (Marie-Josée Croze).
Marc is a happily married man with a wife and daughther but the day he meets this very special client, his life turns upside down because he becomes aware of that she is the young girl he was in love as a child in Oran, Algeria, during the last days of the French colonisation.
Or is it actually the same girl, now a woman?
From now on he becomes almost obsessed by this woman and their common experiences during their upbringing in Algeria.
However there seems to be some memories they don't share, although Marie-Jeanne/Cathy assures Marc that they have experienced it together.

Cinematographically this is a very good film, a good mise-en-scène and Garcia is often very good at creating intresting male portraits, so also in this film.
She has not succeeded in creating a more 'mysterious' and complex story though, on the contrary it's extremely predictable and we soon realize who this woman is.
There are - in our opinion - to many blind spots, meaning passages not leading anywhere or having a meaningful place in the story but the acting is good and the ambiance not bad at all.

Other actors: Michel Aumont, Sandrine Kimberlain, Tony Servillo.