Wrapping Berlinale 09.

By David Hudson on 02/15/2009

Introducing his Berlinale roundup for the Observer, Sight & Sound editor Nick James notes that "more film buyers than ever turned up and talked shop, and the film programme itself was better than usual. But the sense of financial peril remained." His own favorite: the "brilliantly atmospheric" "Katalin Varga."

Neil Young presents his terrific festival scorecard in the Auteurs' Notebook. One category: "Celebrities glimpsed." He spotted two, while I spotted only one this year, Anamaria Marinca, lost in thought as she made her way down the stairs of the Berlinale Palast. The sighting put a full stop to my conversation with Andrew Grant that morning while I wondered what the lead actress of my favorite film of 2007, who portrays a victim of serial rape in "Storm" (which came away empty-handed, awards-wise), might have thought of "The Milk of Sorrow's" unusual method of rape prevention or Katalin Varga's revenge against her rapist.

Updated through 2/17.

Also in the Notebook: Daniel Kasman on Catherine Breillat's "Bluebeard" and: "Adapted from a short story by Eça de Queirós... [Manoel de] Oliveira's ['Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl'] is a simple and precise 64 minutes, as pure as rain water and just as lacking in pretension."

IndieWIRE's Brian Brooks has heard "reports that Berlinale director Dieter Kosslick had... declared himself 'infuriated' by the general negativity of the press this year... and wondered why these pesky critics bothered to come, if only to make the same carping complaints every February? For the record, we were mostly asking ourselves much the same question.... The fact is, those criticisms remain the same each year because they're valid each year. The Competition is too big. It does lack a sense of direction or purpose. The solution is not simple, but some steps can certainly be taken: were Kosslick to cut the number of films in contention for the Golden Bear - to, say, sixteen - and make more of the 'Berlinale Special' section (or alternatively, devise another, altogether new strand), he'd be doing much to counter the most persistent complaints."

"Films made by actors and directors working outside of their national borders and mother tongues are, of course, as old as the cinema itself," notes Scott Foundas. "What's different about the crop of English-language international productions at this year's Berlinale is that they largely take matters of language and nationality as their very subjects." Also: "If 'In the Electric Mist' is finally less than completely satisfying as a murder mystery, as a piece of cultural anthropology it is never less than deeply absorbing."

For those in Berlin at any time during the next two weeks, the Forum will be showing eight of its selections again.

Rounding up auf Deutsch: Ekkehard Knörer, and in that right-hand column, you'll see the archive of Perlentaucher's first impressions and reviews from its tireless band of contributors, broken down by each day of the festival; Markus Zinsmaier (Zeit); the papers' special sections: Berliner Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Tagesspiegel and taz; Film-Zeit has done an outstanding job covering the coverage and breaking it down film by film, whereas angelaufen.de has stuck with its day by day format; and more: critic.de, Festivalblog, Film und Kritik, From Beyond, Thorsten Funke, Thomas Groh and Michael Sennhauser.

Online browsing tips. Kristin Hoell's pix for Cargo; Spiegel Online collects snaps of the Bear-winners; photos and more at the Seven Film Gallery.

Again, more quick reviews are forthcoming and I'm sure there'll be more roundups to round up as well in the coming days.

Updates, 2/16: "Why is it I have to find artistic hunger and cinematic verve in a film festival's retrospective and not its main program?" asks Daniel Kasman in the Auteurs' Notebook. "Grzegorz Królikiewicz's 'Tanczacy jastrzab' ('The Dancing Hawk,' 1977), playing in the 'Winter Adé' retrospective, has the energy and invention of a hundred Berlinale films."

At GreenCine Daily, Andrew Grant recommends two Austrian films, should you ever get the chance to see them: Michael Glawogger's "Das Vaterspiel" ("Kill Daddy Good Night"), "both a thriller and a tripartite, psychological family drama wrapped around a treatise on Germany and Austria's inability and/or unwillingness to deal with events that took place during the Nazi regime," and "Der Knochenmann" ("The Bone Man"), "a brilliantly acted and directed über-black comedy cum mystery-thriller set in a sleepy Austrian mountain village. Oh yes, it's a romance as well. Who knew Austria produced such films?"

Damon Smith on "Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl": "Working from an Industrial Age precept that infused the literature of the late 19th century, [Manoel de] Oliveira's superbly restrained and formally elegant film ultimately posits the idea that commerce does not reckon with sentiment; in the world of exchange value and commercial transaction, the purity of one's product is of the utmost importance."

"This year's Competition field was cluttered with global issues movies whose collective overreaching far exceeded their grasp," writes Kevin Lee at the SpoutBlog. "'The Milk of Sorrow' deserves its prize, because its ideas are not an end in themselves, but a starting point for a lucid image stream full of both the grit of poverty and the poetry of personal perception. Think Carlos Reygadas with more historical grounding and a distinctly feminine subjectivity (the title references the psychological effects of war crimes inflicted on Peruvian women during the Shining Path campaigns). Even better, and possibly the best film I saw at the festival, was, like [Claudia] Llosa's, a female director's second feature: Maren Ade's 'Everyone Else.'"

And Kevin Lee has another roundup in the Auteurs' Notebook: Nine capsule reviews and a list of his top five of the fest.

Derek Malcolm covered the Competition for the Evening Standard.

Peter Knegt rounds up more news and views at indieWIRE.

Earlier: "The Bears."

Update, 2/17: Two more from Daniel Kasman in the Auteurs' Notebook: "Johan Grimonprez's 'Double Take,' playing in the Berlinale's Forum Expanded section, is one long montage connecting personal love for Hitchcock with political, technological, and cultural evolutions in the 1950s and 60s. It is energetic and compelling as it swerves from one historical and cultural milestone to another, but... the thoughts are fraudulent, the connections vague and tangential, perhaps even pompous." And: "Though destined to be set aside and shrugged off because of [the] unusual and very fine sense of puzzlement it creates, 'Kill Daddy Good Night' also remains the most interesting movie of the 2009 Berlinale."

Also, with "Zum Vergleich" ("By Comparison"), Harun Farocki "modestly, pointedly collects, observes, and offers for thought, creating an open-ended treatise on work around the world."

Tags: Berlinale 2009