Showings at: The CORE Centre, Belleville Public Library and The Empire Theatre
Festival Pass: $30 for Adult or $15 for Students/Unwaged
On sale at: The Empire, QAC office and numerous other locations

A Festival Pass gives you admission to over 30 films, and includes the Friday and Saturday Galas
Complete details at www.downtowndocfest.ca or call 613-966-5852

A skilful blend of comedy and drama, The Artist relies on film making techniques from a bygone era to tell a charmingly simple love story. Though its silent, black-and-white style hearkens back to the past, the film feels timeless thanks to the romance at its core.

The movie opens in 1927, near the end of the silent film era. Movie star George Valentin (played by Jean Dujardin) meets aspiring actress Peppy Miller (played by Bérénice Bejo) at the premiere of his latest film.

The chemistry between the two is immediate, and soon the fresh-faced Miller is the talk of the town. But as her stardom grows Valentin’s career stalls. Rooted in the past, he sees no future for “talkies” and his dismissive attitude toward them sets him up for a potential disaster.

The central relationship in The Artist is vital to the film’s success, and both actors do a wonderful job conveying the budding romance. Director Michel Hazanavicius wisely chose two people with extraordinarily expressive faces as his leads.

As Valentin, Dujardin is charming and witty – his ear-to-ear grin almost never leaves his face. Bejo’s key feature is her eyes. Whether wide with delight or blinking away tears, they’re impossible to ignore. Both actors earned well-deserved Oscar nominations for their work in The Artist (the film received 10 nominations in all).

It’s also interesting to note that although the two stars of The Artist probably won’t be familiar to North American viewers, the film’s supporting cast is filled with such notable names as John Goodman and James Cromwell. It is fun to see these well-known performers working within the very different style of acting this film requires.

While the story of The Artist is generally a simple one, the movie is not without surprises. For example, while it’s obvious that Hazanavicius has a great love for silent film, he’s not married to the format. He bends his own self-imposed rules to find some clever uses for sound.

Despite having a mostly optimistic tone, The Artist does venture into darker territory at times. A superbly expressive score by Ludovic Bource helps in pulling off some of these tricky tonal shifts. Whether it’s with an upbeat piano-driven tune or a more dramatic violin-heavy number, Bource’s music always finds just the right note.

The film also employs songs from a handful of artists from the period, including Duke Ellington, Rose Murphy and Red Nichols. It all adds to the effect, transporting you back to a different time. At first glance, it might be tempting to dismiss The Artist as a novelty, or an exercise in technique, but to do so would be missing the point. Simply put, The Artist is a love letter to cinema and a reminder that in an age where blockbusters dominate at the box office, movies don’t have to be big and flashy to make an impact.

The Artist screens on March 28, 2012 at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m at the Empire Theatre in downtown Belleville. Tickets are available at The Empire Box Office.

From the opening shot of leaves upturned in the wind and billowing clouds taking on threatening shapes, you sense something is not right.

Curtis LaForche (Michael Shannon) senses it too. Looking anxiously to the sky, he studies the clouds, hears the thunder and rubs drops of dark rain between his fingertips.

LaForche has a good life in the American Midwest. He is the crew chief of a sand mining company and with his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) and daughter Hannah, who is deaf, has an overall happy home.

But something is brewing in Curtis’s consciousness. With a sudden crack of thunder and a white flash of lightning, this sane and stable man slowly begins to unravel.

His dreams start to haunt him – dreams he believes are heralding the actual end of the world. He continues on his daily journey, trying to get help from doctors and answers from his mentally ill mother, but that doesn’t bring him any peace.

Curtis’s unsettling dreams of dark skies and poison rain morph menacingly into nightmares about attacks, violence and horror. Suddenly those he loves – his trusted dog, his beloved wife and best friend/co-worker – all become threats born from his own mind. Curtis becomes more withdrawn and more obsessed and begins building a storm shelter in the backyard.

What is brilliant about this movie is the threat itself. There is no axe-wielding murderer or horrible demon made from special effects. What drives the fear are the thoughts within. This is the horror of real life, not the supernatural world.

Nor is there much violence. The threat always bubbles below the surface and when it does come crashing out it is frothing at the mouth, frightening to the core and filled with hysteria.

The film is drenched in a mounting, excruciating anxiety that something terrible this way comes. Layered on top of all of that is the suspicion that the main character is simply and tragically mentally ill, just another misguided doomsdayer with a sign reading, ‘The End Is Nigh.’

Pacing is everything in this movie. Some will call it plodding, with scene after scene of mundane moments. Nonetheless, the excruciating sameness creates a reality not often achieved in feature films and builds the suspense, because we are lulled into the calm before the storm.

All of the acting is top-notch. Shannon’s measured performance is immediately likeable and relatable and Chastain’s understated grace shines through in every moment, just as it did so beautifully in The Tree of Life.

But the real star here is the Apocalypse itself. That overarching character permeates every scene, even though it is off-screen and out on the horizon, for most of the film.

It might be out of sight, but it is always there.

The End Is Near.

And it’s closer than we think.

In his film The Guard, Irish-born writer-director John Michael McDonagh takes the ‘buddy cop comedy’ formula popularized in Hollywood and infuses it with his own unique sensibilities. The result is a hilarious, foul-mouthed and at times, strangely poignant film.

The central plot begins with Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson), a sergeant with the Irish police, investigating a mysterious murder in a small town. Soon, it becomes apparent the victim is tied in with a ring of drug traffickers and Boyle finds himself paired up with Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle), an FBI agent sent over to track down a large shipment of cocaine.

Everett’s function in the movie is simple enough – he’s the businesslike, by-the-book straight man. As you might expect, it’s the Boyle character that gets the much more complex, layered treatment. The Guard received a nomination for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and Boyle is unquestionably a big part of the film’s appeal.

Right from the film’s opening moments, it’s apparent Boyle doesn’t have a politically-correct bone in his body. He’s the kind of man who knows how to find people’s buttons, and who delights in pushing them as often as possible. Soon enough, Everett learns this firsthand. As he briefs the local cops about the smugglers they’ll be chasing, he shows a series of mug shots. Noticing each suspect is white, Boyle brings the proceedings to a screeching halt. “I thought only black lads were drug dealers?” he remarks with mock confusion, momentarily stunning the African-American FBI man. Furthermore, Boyle has what you might call a questionable moral compass. In other words, he’s not at all averse to breaking the laws he’s supposed to be upholding. If this means stealing drugs from a crime scene or spending a day off cavorting with a pair of hookers, well then, so be it.

But as Boyle and Everett are forced to work together, Everett soon learns his partner’s tactless manner conceals a surprisingly cunning mind. When he’s inclined to be, Boyle can be as principled and honourable as any lawman. A grudging respect grows between the two cops (although Boyle never lets up with his ribbing, seizing any opportunity to take his FBI counterpart down a peg).

Much of Boyle’s humanity comes out in scenes showing his relationship with his terminally-ill mother, Eileen (Fionnula Flanagan). In their early conversations as the two banter back and forth about drug use and sexual escapades, the source of Boyle’s offbeat sense of humour is revealed. Later, these talks take on a more solemn tone, but McDonagh shows a deft touch and smartly avoids letting things get maudlin. Even when The Guard is at its most serious, the uproariously funny dialogue is there to break the tension and keep you laughing.

While Boyle gets many of the best lines in the script and is the film’s most complex character, he’s far from being the only interesting person onscreen. As their investigation heats up, Boyle and Everett interact with a host of fascinating people, including a cowboy hat-wearing IRA member, numerous unhelpful locals and a crew of sociopathic gangsters who quote Nietzsche and debate the merits of Bertrand Russell and Dylan Thomas.

Ultimately, McDonagh seems uninterested in formulating a needlessly intricate procedural about a drug deal. Indeed, much of the story seems to come together almost by happenstance. His film succeeds not because of its plotting, but because of his gift for creating characters, giving them unique voices and personalities, and putting them on a collision course.

In the documentary Project Nim (UK, 2011) Jenny Lee is asked how her mother could have possibly agreed to have a newborn chimpanzee come and live with their family in New York City. Lee’s answer is simple, but it speaks volumes: “It seemed natural. It was the Seventies,” she tells the interviewer.

Lee’s mother, Stephanie LaFarge, was a psychology student at Columbia University in 1973 when Professor Herb Terrace recruited her and her family for an incredible task – have a chimp live with a human family and try to see if it could acquire communication skills through sign language.
The experiment was dubbed Project Nim, named after the baby primate who was taken from his mother at the Oklahoma Institute for Primate Studies and transplanted to live with the LaFarge family of homo sapiens and learn to communicate with them.

Given the decade, with its focus on philosophical and psychological questions, it might have seemed like a natural 1970s thing to do. But was it? Nim may have learned to behave around, communicate with and mimic back to his human hosts, but was he still a wild animal at heart?

It’s not giving too much away to say the project had limited success, but it’s those early moments in the documentary when he is surrounded by his first human family that are perhaps the most telling.
Nim adapts quickly to the LaFarge household. We see him playing, chasing the family dog, running in the backyard, swinging from branches, eating, smiling and embracing his new parents, brothers and sisters. Some of these moments are recreated by the documentary team, but most come from astounding archival footage.
Nim behaves like any small child – angelic one moment and out-of-control the next. Stephanie and her family adapt and take the high-maintenance addition under their wing. To mix metaphors, Nim becomes the ultimate black sheep, who is also the very definition of most loved but problem child.

The documentary takes a sombre turn when Nim is taken away from the LaFarges and is studied more intently at Columbia, while living with a group of academics at an estate outside the city. His various teachers recount the highs and lows of his learning and he eventually learns a vocabulary of over 120 words.
But it’s the third act of this real-life drama that is most heart-wrenching and that asks the most serious ethical and philosophical questions about the project. What is the missing link in the connection between humans and primates and where is that chain broken? Can Nim be nurtured into behaving like a person or is his true nature really that of a beast? And perhaps more importantly, which should have come first…The Nim Project or Nim himself?

This documentary, from the Oscar winning team behind Man on Wire, is rife with deep questions about nature, medical ethics and human treatment of animals. Its effective use of live interviews, video montages, stunning photojournalism and a wonderful musical score heighten the experience.
But it’s looking into Nim’s eyes on the screen that speaks the loudest.
Project Nim screens at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 9, 2011 at the Empire Theatre in downtown Belleville.

Coming Nov. 23 at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
SARAH’S KEY (France, 2011, subtitled)

It is July, 1942 in Paris, and ten-year-old Sarah Starzynski (Mélusine Mayance) knows something is wrong. There is a panic spreading through the city. The French gendarmes, supposedly under order from the Vichy government and Nazi occupiers, are going door-to-door arresting Jewish families and imprisoning them in the Vélodrome d’Hiver. Little does Sarah know that, after the imprisonment, they will be sent to Nazi death camps. In a final attempt to save her family, she locks her four-year-old brother, Michel in a bedroom cupboard—their secret hiding place. She promises to return for him, but she and her parents are dragged from their home forever.
Sixty years later, journalist Julia Jarmond (Kristin Scott Thomas) is assigned to write a cover story on the Vel’d’Hiv roundup of 1942. American by birth, Julia has been living in Paris for more than twenty years, and is married to Bertrand Tézac (Frédéric Pierrot), an unfaithful man from an old French bloodline. What begins as research for her article becomes more personal when Julia discovers that she and Sarah have something in common, prompting her to change her outlook on her husband, her adopted nation and herself. Julia discovers that the apartment owned by Bertrand’s family was acquired when the former Jewish occupants were dispossessed and deported sixty years before.
Based on Tatiana de Rosnay’s bestselling novel.

If you think about world politics at its simplest level, it begins to resemble a schoolyard. There are alliances, conflicts and skirmishes. There are bullies and heroes, terrorists and freedom fighters. The weapons are sticks and stones and bats and balls in the schoolyard. It’s guns, tanks, missiles and ground troops in the international theatre of conflict.

But really, war is war and violence is violence. It bubbles up from hatred and prejudice, anger and revenge and rips apart everything in its path.

The bigger question, of course, is how to stem violence, either on the playground or around the world. Does a “war on terror” really work? Does attacking a violent dictator bring him to his knees or pour gasoline on the flames? Is it really possible to turn the other cheek and not fight back in our desire for peace? Can we lay down our arms and beat our weapons into ploughshares?

It’s those questions and many more that echo through the compelling scenes in the Danish film, In a Better World. From two simple story lines and two powerful dramatic threads, we are lead to ponder the nature of violence and conflict. And more importantly, we start to ponder how we could actually battle those blights on the best of what it is to be human.

Winner of both the Golden Globe and Academy Award for best foreign language film, In a Better World does the seemingly impossible. It poses the big questions about global conflict in a post-9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan world in a beautiful, allegorical way. These are grand themes and the biggest of questions are being posed, but they are rendered in a taut, clearly defined narrative.

The film’s main character, Anton, is a doctor who commutes between his home in an idyllic town in Denmark, and his work at an African refugee camp. In these two very different worlds, he and his family are faced with conflicts that lead them to difficult choices between revenge and forgiveness.

Anton and his wife Marianne’s 10-year-old son Elias is being bullied at school, until he is defended by Christian, a new boy who has just moved from London with his father. Christian’s mother recently lost her battle with cancer, and Christian is greatly troubled by her death.

While the scenery both in Africa and Denmark is pastoral in the background, the human themes and emotions in the foreground are raw and intense. The moment we begin to feel as though the serene, stunning landscapes will return things to a balanced equilibrium, we are thrust back into conflict in a violent, bloody and explosive way.

Much of the power of this tense drama, presented in a soft and dreamy setting, comes from the stunning acting of the ensemble cast. There’s not a sour note at all here and the performances are always truthful and revealing. As the main characters grapple with the ethics of right and wrong and the meaning behind the difficulties of their lives, we are right there with them in spirit.

Director Susanne Bier has constructed a powerful picture of the world we live in. At times, it explodes with violence. At others, human kindness wins the day. It is often both incredibly painful and heart-breakingly beautiful. But the world seeks a balance — equilibrium between the war and the peace, the violence and the silence and the hatred and the love.

The Quinte Film Alternative’s sixteenth season opens with In a Better World on Wednesday, September 14, at the Empire Theatre, with screenings at 2:00 and 7:30 p.m.

QFA patrons can also look forward to:

Submarine on September 28  – starring perennial QFA favourite Sally Hawkins (Made in Dagenham, Happy Go Lucky) and based on Joe Dunthorne’s acclaimed novel, it was a crowd favourite at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival®.

The Trip on October 12 – Reprising their hilarious roles from 2005’s Tristan Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon reunite with hilarious results.

The Tree of Life on October 26 – This visual elegy by Oscar-nominated director Terrence Malick (The Thin Red Line, Days of Heaven) was the recipient of the Palme d’or at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

The Quinte Film Alternative relies on membership support to fulfill its mandate of bringing independent Canadian and foreign films to Belleville audiences. Enjoy substantial savings on the single ticket price with a pass to all 18 films plus the Season Finale film and party. The cost is $110 for the matinee and $130 for evening screenings with the option of paying in two instalments.  Single tickets are $9 for the matinee and $11 in the evening. More information is available at the Quinte Arts Council, the Empire Theatre or by visiting www.quintefilmalternative.ca.

(Denmark, 2011 – Rated 14A – 120 min – subtitled)
Directed by Susanne Bier
Cast: Ulrich Thomsen, Mikael Persbrandt, Trine Dyrholm, Bodil Jørgensen, Camilla Gottlieb

Anton is a doctor who commutes between his home in an idyllic town in Denmark, and his work at an African refugee camp. In these two very different worlds, he and his family are faced with conflicts that lead them to difficult choices between revenge and forgiveness.

Anton and his wife Marianne, who have two young sons, are separated and struggling with the possibility of divorce. Their older, ten-year-old son Elias is being bullied at school, until he is defended by Christian, a new boy who has just moved from London with his father, Claus. Christian’s mother recently lost her battle with cancer, and Christian is greatly troubled by her death.

Elias and Christian quickly form a strong bond, but when Christian involves Elias in a dangerous act of revenge with potentially tragic consequences, their friendship is tested and lives are put in danger. Ultimately, it is their parents who are left to help them come to terms with the complexity of human emotions, pain and empathy.

“Bathed in a golden light that contrasts with the film’s dark emotional currents, IN A BETTER WORLD brilliantly dramatizes the vexing problem of trying to do right in a world of situational ethics” – Peter Howell, The Toronto Star

Based on Joe Dunthorne’s acclaimed novel, Submarine is a captivating coming-of-age story with an offbeat edge. Oliver is a consummate anti-hero, as sardonic and self-obsessed as any postmodern Holden Caulfield, and Roberts plays the role with the necessary cocktail of stubborn egotism and gangly unease. Ayoade is clearly a devotee of Godard, employing snippets of music and riffing on his use of colour-coding. But even with the shades of Godard and Wes Anderson, this vibrant film comes off as a real original and marks the beginning of a career to watch closely.

“The excruciating and the hilari­ous mingle nearly to perfection in this marvelously visualized and deeply felt British film…” – Kyle Smith, New York Post