Consolation Champs

Waterboys (Japan, 2001, Shinobu Yaguchi, director) was another crowd pleaser. It follows five misfits who start a synchronized swimming team at their all-boys high school. Much hilarity ensues, including a flaming afro, some electrocuted dolphins, and a breathtaking Esther Williams-esque finale. Despite that, there are still some quirks about Japanese culture which elude me, so this rates 8/10.

Elling (Norway, 2001, Petter Næss, director) has me grasping for words and coming up with lame stuff like “triumph” and “joy” and other stuff from the movie ads. Nevertheless, it’s amazing. Two mental patients are released to live semi-independently together in their own apartment. It’s like the Odd Couple in a halfway house, with note-perfect performances from the two leads, especially Per Christian Ellefsen as the title character. This turned around my icky mood from the earlier film with some to spare for tomorrow! Needless to say, it’s a 10/10!!

Models (Austria, 1998, Ulrich Seidl, director) was my first film of the festival. It was a thoroughly unpleasant tale, shot in a documentary style, about coked-up and unhappy models in Vienna. The excruciatingly long scenes alternated between existential longings for love and meaning, whining about physical imperfections, real or imagined, and hedonistic pursuits. It made its points in the first ten minutes, then kept making them over and over and over for the next hundred and ten. Maybe that was the point. Not sure if I’m grading the film only or the whole experience, but I gave it 5/10.

Noted: “You want to know the Christians’ biggest mistake? Not recognizing the neutrality of media. You don’t like the movies they’re showing downtown? Then make some of your own. You spend all your time preaching to the choir, it just gets incestuous. And you know what incest produces? Retards.”
— Christian film producer Matt Crouch (The Omega Code) in the September 10 New Yorker. (via DVD Journal)

Well, that’s a fitting way to begin my film festival experience. I’m off to see “the movies they’re showing downtown.”