European Union Festival

From Fri 7 through April 3, the Gene Siskel Film Center will present the 11th Annual European Union Film Festival. The following is a partial preview. Recommended titles are noted with a ✽.

Estrellita
Dir. Metod Pevec. 2007. N/R. 97mins. In Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian with subtitles. Silva Cusin, Tadej Troha, Karin Komljanec.
When her husband dies, a music teacher (Cusin) finds out he was having an affair. She impulsively gives his prize violin to a young Bosnian prodigy, but her generosity—more personal than political—reverberates in unexpected ways. This Slovenian opening-night entry seems evenly split between Eastern European miserablism and Miramaxian cloy.

✽ Battle for Haditha
Dir. Nick Broomfield. 2007. N/R. 93mins. Elliot Ruiz, Yasmine Hanani, Andrew McLaren.
Keeping his tabloid obnoxiousness on the sidelines (and making a rare venture into nondocumentary filmmaking), Broomfield mounts a reenactment of a 2005 incident in which marines retaliated for a roadside explosion by slaughtering two-dozen Iraqi civilians. This is the educational version of Redacted—it re-creates an incident not only to express outrage (though it certainly does that), but to illustrate how the battlefield mentality enables such atrocities to occur.

The Way I Spent the End of the World
Dir. Catalin Mitulescu. 2006. N/R. 106mins. In Romanian with subtitles. Dorotheea Petre, Timotei Duma.
Shot in the same grim palette as 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, this engaging look at the end of the Ceausescu regime adopts a more sentimental approach. It follows two siblings: a teenage girl (Petre) thrown into reform school for accidentally breaking a bust of the dictator and her impish younger brother (Duma).

✽ Boarding Gate
Dir. Olivier Assayas. 2007. R. 106mins. In English and French and Cantonese with subtitles. Asia Argento, Michael Madsen, Kelly Lin, Kim Gordon.
Returning to the slick thriller trappings of demonlover (but minus the pretensions), Assayas delivers an apparently straightforward, possibly facetious drugs, sex ’n’ gangsters flick—to the extent that any movie featuring Sonic Youth’s Gordon speaking Cantonese as a Hong Kong kingpin and Argento alternating between wounded doe and full-tilt action vamp can be called “straightforward.”

Priceless
Dir. Pierre Salvadori. 2006. N/R. 104mins. In French with subtitles. Audrey Tautou, Gad Elmaleh.
A hot-to-trot gold digger (Tautou) on the French Riviera mistakenly seduces a resort waiter (Elmaleh); the usual misunderstandings ensue. Sprightly and saccharine, the movie is pretty much what you’d expect, with übercutesy Tautou in Hepburn-lite mode and Elmaleh all wide-eyed earnestness as the dapper schlemiel she’s meant for.

For showtimes, see Indie & revival, Gene Siskel Film Center.

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