This is my personal choice of the best films I’ve seen this year. They
were all released in cinemas in the
Netherlands. Some films remain to been
seen, like Frantz (François Ozon) , La
La Land, (Damien Chazelle) and A Quiet
Passion (Terence Davies)
The sixties and it’s heritage are
at the heart of Kollektivet and L’Avenir.
In both films the main female character loses everything. The prof de philo
in L’Avenir, set in contemporary France,
in the
end, finds solace in the written word. Anna in Kollektivet, set in 1975 Denmark,
finds it hard to accept her fate, but
she does, when her own experiment, a commune,
turns against her. Both films offer great
performances by the actresses: Trine Dyrholm
and Isabelle Huppert.
Huppert was outstanding in Elle, Paul
Verhoeven’s brilliant return to cinema, ten years after Zwartboek, his view on
the Netherlands during World War II. Elle
is a film that succeeds in rendering a universe, governed by aggression, in
which human beings act out their contradictory drives and desires. A grim
portrait of our times, somewhere between a farce and a romance, with violence
against women as the main theme. 2016, in many ways, was the year of violence against women, see Cologne, see
Trump, see Islamic State.
The neon demon is a fairytale on beauty devouring beauty by a filmmaker
whose visual style is without parallel in contemporary cinema : Nicholas
Winding Refn. Refn is from Copenhagen,
like H.C. Andersen , known for The
Emperor's New Clothes and The Snow
Queen. That last tale is among other
things about a mirror with the power of
causing all that was good and beautiful when it was reflected therein, to look poor
and mean.
Breathtakingly beautiful
is The assassin, the elegant
historical film by master Hou Hsiao-Hsien about a trained female assassin who is assigned to kill a Chinese ruler in
the 18th century. It’s her
cousin to whom she was once engaged to be married. She eventually declines her
duty and chooses her own destiny.
The physical, mind-blowing cinema of The Revenant, with its fierce anti-racist message, is an experience I will never forget. The first twenty minutes of the film, the attack of the Indians on the
frontiersmen, will prove to be textbook cinema. You never saw chaos and instant death like this before. Survival and revenge has always been a part of the
American myth and Alejandro González Iñárritu, a Mexican, gives the Americans a new classic. Just like Sergio
Leone did in 1968 with his Once Upon A Time in the West. A return of Iñárritu to great cinema, a big step away from the corny theatrics of his overrated Birdman. I saw the film in the same week I visited the exhibition Hieronymous
Bosch: Visions of Genius at the
Noordbrabants Museum, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, and somehow the images of both mixed in my mind.
I really love talking pictures, well written lines and sparkling
dialogues. Jane Austen finally meets her
contemporary counterpart Whit Stillman in Love and Friendship. Another jewel in the crown of his small oeuvre, 5 feature
films in 26 years, the film, based on Austens novella "Lady Susan", is
about the wheeling and dealing of a lady to find a suitable husband for her
daughter Frederica and to provide for
herself, financially of course. Kate Beckinsale as Lady Susan and Chloë
Sevigny as her confidente team up brilliantly, many years after their former collaboration
with Stillman in The last days of disco
(1998).
Toni Erdmann is probably one of
the funniest films of recent years. How embarrassing can it be for a daughter,
working as a consultant for a company in Bucharest, when her father, a music
teacher, visits her and starts to meddle with her professional life. He tries
to provoke her into being a 'mensch' again. The film's genius lies in the time
it takes to tell the story, over 2 hours and forty minutes, but it all fits,
and the wonderful performances of Peter Simonischek and Sandra Hüller make it
exciting all the way.
La fille inconnue is an austere
film, almost like a Robert Bresson, about a GP in a poor part of Liège. She is guilt-ridden, because of the death of a young
African woman, who came to her doctor's office after hours and was not
admitted. The day after, her dead body is found in the river Meuse. The GP
starts a search for her identity to put a name on her grave. I don't read the film as
a social pamphlet. The title could also refer to the GP played by Adèle Haenel.
She’s strict, stubborn, isolated. She
has no social life at all.
Arrival is another great film by Denis Villeneuve, who gave us Incendies, Prisoners, Enemy and Sicario. Arrival is not just a film about the landing of aliens on
this planet but an investigation into a language and the way it influences our
way of thinking and our sense of time and place. A reflection on our troubled
times where empathy and insight are qualities that seem to be lost to us. I am all in for Amy Adams, who plays the linguist called in to find a way to
communicate with the aliens, as best actress for an Academy Award. The film has an intelligent structured
storyline, a great score by Jóhann Jóhannsson and an offbeat visualization of
the spacecraft and the aliens.
Fuocoammare, a poetic documentary
by Gianfranco Rosi, is a disquieting
portrait of the island Lampedusa, where the islanders try to make a living from
the sea and the refugees from Africa, having escaped poverty and survived the
crossing, await their destiny.
In Bacalaureat a father, a surgeon, goes against his own morals to ensure his
daughter graduates, a sure ticket out of Roumania. He and his wife went back after the fall of Ceaușescu to witness a
country going into a standstill with a stifling bureaucracy . The film contains one of the saddest scenes
I’ve seen this year in cinema. One night his car probably hits a dog, and a few
days later he stops at the spot where it
happened, steps out of his car and goes into the shrubs, it is night
again, to look for a dead dog?, and weeps.
Les chevaliers blancs is inspired by the story a French NGO, whose
members were arrested in 2007 for illegally trafficking children they claimed to
be orphans from war-torn Darfur for adoption. Belgian director Joachim Lafosse investigates
the moral issues in a compelling suspenseful film, with Vincent Lindon’s
powerful presence as the determined
leader of the rescue and evacuation team.
Evolution is the second feature of Lucile Hadzihalilovic. Her first film
Innocence (2004) was based on a novella
by Frank Wedekind and tells of a boarding school concerned with the education of girls for sexual serfdom. Enter the village near the sea in Evolution, where
boys are brought up by females ( mothers, nurses). A boy revolts and is
punished . Her debut was more straightforward. Evolution is dreamlike, ambiguous and
leaves the viewer with lots of
questions. What is the meaning of these
strange and bizarre rituals? What evolution is the film telling about ? Preparing
boys to be capable of pregnancy?
In Cemetery of splendour Thai soldiers with a mysterious sleeping
sickness are transferred to a temporary clinic in a former school. Is there a
connection between the condition of the soldiers and the mythic ancient site that
lies beneath the clinic. We follow two women into a realm where spirits will appear, and be just
as ordinary as anyone else.
Best films of the year 2016:
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