International Oscar Submissions: Exile '20 and Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time

An hour or so left to rent Exile from The Coolidge, although I wouldn't be surprised if, like a lot of the Goethe-Institut films, it comes back for a second weekend. That's doubly the case since there were some issues with playback on Friday, although you'll at least have plenty of time to watch it after if the window on my screen was typical. So, potentially plenty of time to pair it with Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time, which make a nice bloc as Oscar submissions from central/eastern Europe (Kosovo and Hungary) that have their emigre protagonists up against mostly-unspoken prejudices and end at what can seem like odd places.

I liked them both a lot, though, even if I might have liked Exile a little less if technical issues hadn't broken my viewing up over two nights. Both are movies without a whole lot in the way of trajectory-altering events, but I suspect that one can feel the 30-minute difference in their lengths a bit if it wasn't broken up. It's fun contemplation, with just enough weird stuff going on to grab your attention.

Anyway - it's a good pair, and today I learned that they speak Albanian in Kosovo and that Hungarian puts the family name before the given name, which isn't something I recall any other European languages doing.

Exil (Exile '20)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 29-30 January 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Goethe-Institut/Coolidge Corner Theatre virtual screening room, internet)

It takes Exile quite a while to get around to a question that viewers may be asking from the start, and though the answer is not trivial, the audience has likely been worn down enough by that point to consider it somewhat secondary. That trick is more impressive than it sounds; a film that plays out on as individual a scale as this one can often lose track of the larger point as it focuses on one character, but writer/director Visar Morina mostly avoids that.

Xhafer Kryeziu (Misel Maticevic) is a Kosovar chemical engineer who has lived in Germany long enough to seem more or less completely assimilated; he's got a good job that supports wife Nora (Sandra Hüller) as she works on her PhD and looks after their three children. But there are things that never let him forget that he's an outsider to some, such as how colleagues like Urs (Rainer Bock) always seem to slow-walk his requests and find ways to undermine him... or the rat he finds tied to his front gate when arriving home one afternoon.

Xhafer isn't always easy to like; he's carrying on an affair with an Albanian-speaking cleaning lady (Flonja Kodheli) but bristles at helping to translate things she must write for immigration authorities into German, for instance, and there's something seemingly off about him even in seemingly ordinary situations. Morina and star Misel Maticevic walk a fine line there, careful to let the audience clearly see the uglier side of his personality while not losing sympathy. Maticevic captures how Xhafer often (but not always) handles things badly rather than maliciously, and when the end approaches and he's both feeling more pressure and having more dredged up, it's never anything that hits just one side of the character. There's this continuing, human loop of "yeah, but..." where he's concerned, urging the audience to both understand and hold him accountable.

The same goes with the people around him; as much as Morina more or less acknowledges within the film that Urs is a very familiar sort of antagonist for this sort of story, one has to kind admire how much Rainer Bock seems to make a study of that sort of unctuousness, what sort of miserable creature he is without being a cartoon villain. Between him, Xhafer, and Uwe Preuss as Xhafer's boss Koch, I spent a fair amount of time marveling at how familiarly dysfunctional this organization was in ways that may or may not have much to do with the sort of prejudice Xhafer is keyed to notice. Sandra Hüller is also given license to be prickly and annoyed as Nora, both to show that this isn't anything new with Xhafer and that she's got her own issues to push against. One wonders, at times, whether frustration is about to overwhelm the rest of their bond.

There's not a whole lot of story there, and Morina pointedly denies the audience much resolution, but all of that plays into showing how oppressive living with that sort of prejudice is. Occasionally it's visual, like how Xhafer never quite seems to fit in his brightly-colored suburban neighborhood, or how the camera will seemingly detach from the action and go looking for something, but mostly it's the placing things in slightly higher relief. It's not just the fact of it, but the seeming impossibility of communicating it to those who don't face it and are invested in thinking of themselves as better than that; the closest thing to obvious bigotry is Koch trying to praise the team's differences and having it come off as a tremendously backhanded compliment. There's a steady background hum here that merges with the foreground, so that the fact that Xhafer, Urs, and Nora are all flawed people makes it harder - how do you know where the line is between something one can maybe do better oneself and something you can't fix about the world?

It feels exhausting in ways that movies with more plot-intensive structures more focused on specific goals often don't, and it may be a larger, more intensive dose than some may want. It seems worth disclosing that tech issues forced me to watch it in two hour-long chunks, so I don't know what the intended effect of taking the film in for two hours straight is. Then again, I'm fortunate enough to not know what it's like to live with this for one's entire life, though I suspect that the film has at least given me a somewhat better idea of it.

Also at eFilmCritic

Felkészülés meghatározatlan ideig tartó együttlétre (Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 30 January 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Coolidge Corner Theatre virtual screening room, internet)

The hook for Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time hints at something more broadly paranoid or sinister, and while that would have been an interesting way to go, writer/director Lili Horvát doesn't necessarily see the need to exaggerate what's going on here. It's not the noir-ish thriller it initially looks like, but is in some ways more engaging for it.

Márta Vizy (Natasa Stork) was born in Hungary but has spent most of her adult life in the United States, becoming a top neurosurgeon over the past eighteen or twenty years. A month ago, he clicked with János Drexler at a conference like she had never connected with anyone before, not even realizing he was also from Buda-Pest at first. They made a date to meet on the Pest side of the Liberty bridge a month later, but when Márta arrives, he's not there; she seeks him out, but János (Viktor Bodó) says they've never met. Literally stunned, Márta decides not to return to New Jersey, but instead takes a job at her old teaching hospital and finds an apartment - both of them well below her status - to try and figure out what's going on.

It's hard to blame Márta for being suspicious when someone doesn't remember her - she's striking on top of being at the top of her field to the point where everyone asks her why she would come back - and what makes the film work is that she's also smart enough and familiar enough with how brains work to interrogate this idea. Conversations with a therapist (Péter Tóth) that might otherwise be a framing device or meant to move things along do something else: They get both Márta and the audience thinking in a certain way rather than offering answers. Horvát never offers any sort of conspiracy or hints that János is some sort of supervillain, so instead we've got to figure out what's going on without easy genre solutions.

It's an intriguingly interconnected mess. One thing that's striking, early on, is how Márta defaults to English before Hungarian and is taken for a foreigner, and though this part of her identity is never addressed directly, one wonders how much it is motivating her actions. Did she read more into János's words because she never truly felt at home in America and wanted an excuse to come back? Does she choose a crappy apartment because it has an obstructed view of her favorite spot rather than a far nicer one despite being able to afford the latter? The way her old professors and friends question her desire to return has some logic to it, especially when one takes the more rampant sexism of the place into account. Preparations often seems like it's a movie about a woman being gaslit because men are intimidated by her being so formidable, but I wonder to what extent the latter is a screen for the first, a way to tell that story without it being over-sentimental, and to what extent they're the two opposing influences Márta must wrestle with.

Either way, it's a real pleasure to watch Natasa Stork work the contrast; she and Horvát never seem to use Márta's confidence as a cover for her uncertainty, or as things that easily fit into different categories of her life. Her certainty in her own capability lets her charge headlong into areas where she is otherwise confused in some spots and tempers that impulse in others, and it's tremendously fun to watch her be so self-possessed in her probing in spots where other characters often seem helpless. She's got nice chemistry with Viktor Bodó in the moments when the story lets Márta and János get close, and Bodó himself has the sort of charisma that can override the way János can often seem like the sort of puffed-up fellow who's not really in Márta's league on more than just her say-so, when the need arises. It's useful (and fun) to have Benett Vilmányi there as a contrast - Horvát is well-aware that his med student eventually pursuing Márta is a flip on convention, and they make sure that there's a little bit of him knowing it and maybe thinking she should be grateful under his mostly-earnest admiration.

Preparations doesn't quite make it all the way through without stopping to hash things out, but the filmmakers are good enough at doing so in a way that still lets the audience play with it on their own and plays up that these are smart people who like to figure things out. It exists in an intriguing place between a mystery and a conventional romance, and makes it work without abandoning either.

Also at eFilmCritic

Short Stuff: The 2015 Oscar-Nominated Live-Action Shorts

Around this time of year, you'll hear from plenty of people wearing their apathy for the Oscars and other award ceremonies as a badge of honor, focusing on what they appear to do (anointing one thing as the objective best in a given category despite not appearing to even consider less-mainstream but worthy choices) rather than how they focus attention on quality work. One of the best ways it does that is the theatrical (and, now, digital) release of a feature-length presentation of the five nominees for best live-action short film. This year's group is particularly strong, so even if you don't much care about awards, there's no bad reason to take in fine storytelling that might otherwise escape your notice.

Quick links:
"Ave Maria"
"Friend"
"Everything Will Be Okay"
"Stutterer"
"Day One"

<"Ave Maria"

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 2 February 2016 in Landmark Kendall Square #6 (Oscar Shorts, DCP)

The first presented, "Ave Maria", is the only comedy of the group, and it's one with a little bite. In it, an Israeli family traveling through the West Bank has their car break down, although not quite in the middle of nowhere - they actually crash into a statue of the Virgin Mary outside a small Catholic convent. Getting them on their way this Friday evening will be tricky, though - the nuns have taken a vow of silence and the husband, at least, is Orthodox enough not to do any work (or use machinery that causes others to work, like a telephone) on the Sabbath. And judging from how the group, especially the wife and her mother-in-law, bicker, having them hang around for a day isn't the best option even if the sisters were inclined to host guests.

On the surface, this is just a funny little story; it's a minor problem that challenges the characters in ways that are never truly dangerous and gives them room to make things worse by not being as clever as they perhaps should. Huda Al Imam is especially enjoyable as the novice who between wanting to help, not being a disciplined as the more experienced nuns, and actually having some unexpected skills, gets to be active and very likable in nearly every scene, but everybody has a chance to be funny, and the effort of the nuns to remain silent leads to some entertaining physical bits.

The really clever thing, though, is that without much mocking the idea of faith, writer/director Basil Khalil sets things up so that nearly every impediment in the story comes from adhering to some form of demonstrative ritual that hinders one's ability to communicate and thus actually be a good neighbor. As the characters attempt absurd solutions to work around self-imposed restraints which would cause disaster if everybody practiced them, it's easy to see the metaphor for larger issues without the filmmakers ever speaking down to the audience. It's gentle but effective satire, even if "gentle" isn't the usual way that style of comedy goes.

"Shok" ("Friend")

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 2 February 2016 in Landmark Kendall Square #6 (Oscar Shorts, DCP)

The second nominee in the presentation, "Friend", also starts out with a car stopping unexpectedly, in this case for a bicycle abandoned in the middle of the road; the passenger (Kushtrim Sheremeti) stands it up and rides into the next town, saying he'll meet his friend later. This triggers a memory from about twenty years early, during the civil war in Kosovo, when Albanian boy Oki (Andi Bajgora) had just bought a new bike, and his best friend Petrit (Lum Veseli) convinces him to help sell things to the Serbian soldiers - a dangerous gambit.

Most people watching this short likely can't fathom what it's like to grow up in a war zone, and between writer/director Jamie Donoughue and young actors Lum Veseli and Andi Bajgora, we see an impressive balance of kids being kids and them knowing that they're potentially facing more trouble than their parents being upset. Donoughue does an impressive job of making sure that Petrit & Oki don't seem to be constantly wallowing in misery while still making sure that there is a constant reminder that this is worse than a bad neighborhood.

The framing sequence is a bit unnecessary (it reminds me of the time a friend arrived five minutes into Black Book and figured it must have been more tense for him than those of us who knew someone survived). It plays into just how utterly arbitrary war can be and how casually people can do their worst in those situations, hitting the right note without overselling it.

"Alles Wird Gut" ("Everythinig Will Be Okay")

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 2 February 2016 in Landmark Kendall Square #6 (Oscar Shorts, DCP)

There was a great entry in this category a couple of years ago, "Just Before Losing Everything", presented itself as a near-real-time look at a woman escaping an abusive relationship, and it's one of the most concentrated doses of tension one can see. In "Everything Will Be Okay", filmmaker Patrick Vollrath flips the script, starting with divorced father Michae Baumgartner (Simon Schwarz) picking up his daughter Lea (Julia Pointner) for his monthly weekend. He indulges her, buying a giant Lego set in part because Lea says her mother would never do so, but an unusual stop hints at what is really going on.

Vollrath doesn't spring anything on the audience unexpectedly; Michael's early twitchiness indicates that something is up. Instead, he presents Michael's attempts to spirit his daughter away in a methodical manner, revealing details of just how someone might go about doing this without stopping for visible outrage or making how it could fail at any time enough to gain sympathy. It's an excitingly inverted tension, with every moment containing the potential for desired failure and ever bit of the protagonist's success creating more unease rather than less.

Simon Schwarz is terrific as Michael; if asked about his character and performance, he'd probably give the familiar but nevertheless truthful answer that everybody is the hero of their own story, and he does play Michael as overwhelmed, fighting a system that seems unjustly set against him. He's not heroic, though; not only doesn't Vollrath have him verbalize any particular reason why he has been treated unfairly, but there's just enough anger and impatience in some of his interactions with Lea to make sure we see this is about hurt pride as much as what he feels are his daughter's best interests. Julia Pointner, meanwhile, is impressively on-note as Lea, capturing the vagueness of the girl's suspicions: What's going on is something she has not been warned about and can't really conceive of, and it's a challenge for her to not trust her father. On top of that, she's a kid, and Pointner does very well not to lose that she gets tired and cranky while playing the confusion, and vice versa. They both step up their game at the climax, as does Vollrath, not stumbling at all when the need for an ending dictates a shift in tone.

"Stutterer"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 2 February 2016 in Landmark Kendall Square #6 (Oscar Shorts, DCP)

There's a conscious cruelty to how "Stutterer" begins, depicting Greenwood, a man with an extremely debilitating speech impediment (Matthew Needham), on the phone to his internet service provider, pushing what is kind of a miserable experience for anyone into a mortifying bit of torture. It's not just that the lady on the other end of the line treats him like he's deliberately being difficult until his father (Eric Richard) lends a hand, it's that for someone in his position, online communication is critical. He's been messaging a girl for six months, for instance, and he's not sure what to do when Ellie (Chloe Pirrie) mentions that she'll actually be in London next week.

Filmmaker Benjamin Cleary tips his hand a bit when he has Ellie mention online that she wouldn't use text-speak because she loves language so much; as much as the call with customer service is awful, Greenwood's environment constantly reinforces how much he likes words and communication, making his living as a typographer and filling every corner with books. Many films of this type will find a way to present this sort of disorder as having some sort of hidden benefit, but Cleary seldom seems to be going there; this hurts, and by playing up just how much Greenwood in particular finds himself barred from something important to him, it keeps the audience from suggesting ways to make the best of it.

That makes for a somewhat gloomy movie, but it also gives the cast a reason to use its entire skillset. Needham is crucial and terrific as Greenwood; a stutter this severe means that he can't use it the same way as an accent or tone of voice, but we can see his frustration, especially compared to how capable he seems in scenes where speech doesn't enter into it. The ones with Eric Richard as his father are brief but kind of beautiful; the frequent trope of a father and son not saying much take on an added poignance here, especially since Richard makes the father look drained by other things in his life, allowing them to support each other without much need for words. And while Chloe Pirrie only appears on-screen as something other than a photographic avatar for a few moments, they change everything, letting Cleary put booster rockets on the tonal swing the audience was hoping for and make it seem honest and earned.

"Day One"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 2 February 2016 in Landmark Kendall Square #6 (Oscar Shorts, DCP)

In some ways, Henry Hughes's "Day One" seems more obviously primed for an uplifiting-despite-everything ending, putting its main character Feda (Layla Alizada) into a combat zone as a translator and mentioning that despite growing up in America, she had a very traditional life beforehand and that this was her first job of any kind. It is going to be a hell of a first day, as she's barely got her uniform on before being called to help translate as the unit she is attached to looks to capture a bomb-maker (Alain Washnevsky), only to find his very pregnant wife Naheed (Alexia Pearl) having complications.

It's a thrillingly tense little movie that picks up more toward the end, to the point where one might forget something potentially traumatic that happened halfway through its 25 minutes because after what comes later, it was arguably just setting a baseline for how messed up war can be. In some ways, that's a canny bit of work on Hughes's part - the film's last act will present circumstances that will probably make even the most jaded in the audience cringe, and that's sort of the point, putting the audience in the position of this very sheltered woman even if they've seen some stuff at the theater.

Layla Alizada is great; she projects a great nervousness that is tempered somewhat by the fact that she must have had some training and came in knowing some of what she was getting into. She quickly develops a nice rapport with Bill Zasadil as the soldier she works most closely with, and the later scenes with Alexia Pearl and Navid Negahban are suitably tense. Indeed, it's the sort of thing where one relaxes one's grip on the armrest as the credits roll, not quite realizing how hard a grip it was encouraging.

Indeed, after that one ended, one of my fellow attendees turned to say that this was a pretty great collection, and I saw no reason to disagree or temper that assessment. These shorts are individually impressive, and the overriding themes of difficulty in communication and surviving conflicts not of one's own making make them hang together as a group well. It's as good an evening watching movies as you'll find right now, and you've got to admit that this makes the Oscars good for something.