Berlinale Dispatch: A Chinese Epic as well as an Indonesian Zoo Tale Vie for that Jury's Favor

Today may be the next-to-last day's competition tests at the Berlinale, meaning individuals are taking a chance in regards to a possible champion towards the extent that forthcoming nexus s ever possible. This year's jury is headed by Mike Leigh, and also at dinner another evening some buddies and that i were playing the WWMLL What's Going To Mike Leigh Like? game. Voting for awards is really a democratic process, however the jury leader can set a dark tone. Nevertheless, its difficult to say, searching around within the Berlinale 2012 bag, what Leigh and co. might choose. The experts faves to date appear to become Christian Petzolds Barbara, a unique, slow-building drama occur seventies East Germany, and Miguel Gomes Tabu, an inventive melodrama that utilizes old-school movie conventions and sensuous black-and-whitened cinematography to weave a tale of affection and loss. But experts faves along with a jurys options dont always align. At this time, the area is rather open. Im wondering exactly what a Mike Leigh-brought jury will consider Postcards in the Zoo, through the youthful Indonesian filmmaker who passes the title Edwin. Postcards is really a gentle story, having a loose-jointed, somewhat impressionistic narrative structure, in regards to a youthful lady, Lana (Ladya Cheryl), who stays her existence inside a Jakarta zoo, though she does not formally work there. She helps bathe the zoos baby tiger she knows many details concerning the zoos tigers, which she shares authoritatively using the zoos site visitors and, eventually, she occupies with another zoo denizen, a magician-cowboy who turns her into his assistant and accomplice. (She dons an Indian-girl outfit and takes her devote his knife-tossing routine.) Throughout this meandering journey of self-discovery, Lana also turns into a massage girl in a health spa, serving males who nonchalantly stay in for full-service satisfaction, including a happy ending (if theyre prepared to pay for this). The image is beautifully shot the first section is indeed a number of postcards, a light meditation around the zoos peaceful, inspiring character, including shots of the mother and baby hippo idling inside a pool, along with a droll little sequence by which Lana muses aloud about why among the tigers wont eat. (She surmises he feels sorry for that chickens that become his dinner.) Postcards, Edwins second feature, is really low-key that it is emotional effects dont really linger the image is irrelevant, nevertheless its also reasonably enjoyable, particularly because of its pensive, low-key aura. Wang Quanans Whitened Deer Plain, however, is not low-key. This nearly-three-hour Chinese epic includes no real fight moments and incredibly little pageantry, however it does something thats possibly harder to drag off: It wrestles using the changes and struggles the country suffered between 1910, the finish of Imperial China, and 1938, time from the Japanese invasion. The storyline, an adaptation of the questionable historic novel by Chen Zhongshi, uses the energy struggle between two village families difficult thats intensified through the lady, performed by an significant actress named Cat Zhang Yugi, who makes its way into their midst as a way of speaking about sweeping or painful alternation in China throughout the very first 1 / 2 of the final century. The image is gorgeous to check out - well, not the famine sections, but virtually otherwise. Wang includes a weakness for showing, again and again again, the twinkling golden wheat fields that play a vital part within the story, and they're beautiful. A persons figures, regrettably, frequently have a back burner towards the scenery. Theyre cogs within the machinery of the nation and for the reason that from the movie, too possibly thats intentional, however it does keep Whitened Deer Plain from being as including as it can be. Who knows, from what weve seen to date, exactly what the Berlinale 2012 jury goes for? (The audience includes Franois Ozon, Mike Gyllenhaal, Anton Corbijn and Charlotte now Gainsbourg, in addition to Asghar Farhadi, the director of last years Golden Bear champion A Separation.) A Hungarian picture that tested today, Bene Fliegaufs Only the Wind, draws its subject material from recent real-existence disasters, by which several Romany families were killed within their houses, the targets of racial hate. The image is harrowing, yet it is also somewhat detached Fliegauf frequently works harder than he needs to, maybe, to underscore the anxiety and stress visited upon the city within the wake of those killings. However the picture is topical, and thats a quality which makes a jury crunches and take serious notice. Well see what goes on on Saturday, through which time Ill have bid the Berlinale adieu for an additional year though before that, Ill be checking in with a glance at Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerods Bel Ami, featuring the Pale One themself, Taylor Lautner. Find out more of Movieline's coverage in the 2012 Berlinale here. Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.