MIFF Diary Part the Sixth

LOUISE-MICHEL
(Dir. Gustave de Kervern & Benoit Delepine, 2008)

Screening as part of the festival's 'Vengeance is Mine' stream, a program of films about retribution, is this macabre French-Belgian comedy about a team of female factory workers who hire a hitman to take out their boss when he closes their manufacturing plant down.

September 11 conspiracy theorists, people smuggling, the green movement and rampant capitalism all cop a serve along the way, as a bumbling pair - Louise (Yolande Moreau), an antisocial and illiterate man who is pretending to be a woman in order to find work after serving 15 years in prison; and Michel (Bouli Lanners) a woman living as a man after taking too many hormones as a child in order to become a champion hammer-thrower - try and track down and kill the man responsible for the factory's misfortune.

This comedy is as black as it gets (as evidenced by a scene where the bumbling and slovenly Michel weasels out of shooting the capitalist responsible for the factory's closure by talking his cousin, who is dying of cancer, into doing the job for him) although an all-pervasive melancholy also infuses the story to strong effect.

The film's acerbic tone won't be to everyone's taste, nor will it's occasionally uneven pace, but I was delighted by Louise-Michel, laughing uproariously throughout.

Rating: Three and a half stars


KISSES
(Dir. Lance Daly, 2008)

This simple indie charmer - written, directed and shot by Lance Daly and set a few days before Christmas - is the story of two not-quite-teens, Dylan (Shane Curry, who was 12 at the time of shooting) and Kylie (Kelly O'Neill, 11) who flee their abusive homes in a grim estate where dead dogs and broken bikes lie scattered beside the roads, in order to scour the streets of Dublin in search of Dylan's older brother.

Kylie fights with her sister and lives in fear of her abusive uncle Maurice; Dylan tries to drown out his father and step-mother's fighting by playing computer games. But when he tries to stop his dad from hitting his step-mother, Dylan's father turns on him.

The dramatic and dynamic sequence in which Kylie helps Dylan escape his dad by climbing through the bathroom window and down a ladder is superbly shot, staged and edited; one of several beautiful sequences in the film.

Hitching a lift with a canal bargeman (David Bendito), who introduces them to the music of Bob Dylan along the way, once the pair are in Dublin the film skillfully captures the sheer, unfettered joy of childhood; countered with several scenes of high tension which are made all the more menacing by the protagonists' young ages and their unfettered, innocent performances.

Kisses opens in black and white, but colour starts to slowly leach into the film as the kids make their way towards Dublin. In less competent hands this effect could have been mawkish, or an irritating reference to The Wizard of Oz; but Daly plays it so subtly that it works beautifully - especially in a final, magical moment at the film's end.

While one scene in particular - a chase sequence the likes of which I've never seen before - may strain credibility to a degree, overall I found Kisses to be a charming, touching and near-perfect film despite its slight nature and brief running time. An uncredited cameo by Stephen Rea as Bob Dylan, and a great soundtrack, are also among the highlights.

Without doubt, my favourite film of the festival to date, even though I struggled at times to decipher some of the dialogue due to the heavy Irish accents featured in the film (optional subtitles will probably be added for the local DVD release, I'm told).

Rating: Four and a half stars