The film is Beckettian and biblical in its representation of being in the world. It focuses on beauty that is so big and terrifying that we as mere mortals really haven’t the wherewithal to grasp very much of it at all, hungry though we may be, to conquer it all.
The value of this film is more than about unexpected heroes in a world rotten with narcissistic villains who will stop at nothing.
It is also about goats, and how a concrete coastline to a beautiful piece of this world is the fruit of dreams of men who want wealth.
Leni Huyghe’s film ‘Real Faces’ casts a number of imperatives about being human, adult and independent in a social world, into the fabric of its tale, but none of them are offered as two dimensional imperatives. It’s a complex, beautifully edited piece of work, featuring Leonie Buysse and Gorges Ocloo.
It is Emma (Kaya Toft Loholt), the family’s younger daughter, who makes this work sing with a poignancy that hurts, it is so finely tuned. She’s a deadpan youngster, subject to the whims of grown-ups. Her passion lies in kicking the ball; she hates the colour pink and girly frocks.
Oliver Laxe’s film Sirât, could be the defining moment of this year’s European Film Festival in South Africa. It’s a tale in the here and now, conflating a music rave with an aggressive military presence, the fragility of life against the enormity of desert energy. It is magnificent, terrifying: simultaneously.
This beautiful tale of Chopin and Ravel brought to life on an out-of-tune piano features moody silences and devastatingly subtle filmography. It is a work about how one holds the deepest of pains and sharpest of taboos closest to one’s chest. Because words are tools too lumpen to describe them.
In ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’, written by Oscar Wilde in 1899, it is the fresh directness of the set, and the articulate and unequivocal performances of the cast – in their bustles, snakeskin suits and all – that make it sing with a mix of cynicism, middle-finger-to-society chutzpah and sheer joy.
Based on a snippet from the New Testament, involving the relationship between Herod’s step-daughter and the powers that be, Salome features Yochanaan (John the Baptist), played by Peter Mattei in excruciating scenes touching on cruelty and madness, with a touch of necrophilia and nuances of child sexuality in the mix.
It is soprano Lise Davidsen in the double-sided role of Fidelio and Leonore, that holds the moment with such acuity, you cannot take your eyes off her. Her presence raises this opera to a paean of hope in the face of injustice, and absolute excellence in the face of mediocrity.
When Cavaradossi (Freddie de Tommaso), having been tortured emerges full of love for Tosca, his aria ‘E lucevan de stelle’, a declaration of his undying belief in her, will melt you. You know this song even if you don’t. And what De Tommaso does with it, will may you cry.
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