San Sebastian review

Chris Tilly reports from the influential film festival.

Oct  4 2006

Nestled in the green mountains of the Basque country, on the shores of the Cantabrian Sea, the San Sebastian Film Festival is one of Europe's most popular movie Meccas – a place where journalists from all over the world descend to enjoy the best in film – and The TOMB was in attendance this year to soak up the sun, sand and the best in international cinema.

Our arrival on Wednesday night coincided with a screening of Agnieszka Holland's 'Copying Beethoven', an overlong account of Ludwig van's final few years, during which time he wrote his dazzling ninth symphony. Diane Kruger is fine, if forgettable, as Anna Holtz, a 23-year-old aspiring composer charged with the task of working as the cranky composer's copyist. Ed Harris delivers a more spirited performance as Beethoven, though why he affects an English accent for the role remains a mystery throughout. And while there's no denying the power of the lengthy scene in which he premieres the symphony, the rest of the film left me distinctly unmoved.

Another film that revolves around a cantankerous old composer is 'Half Moon', though the subject matter could not have been more different to 'Beethoven'. Written and directed by 'Turtles Must Fly' helmer Bahman Ghobadi, the story follows the efforts of renowned Iranian musician Mamo to perform the first concert in Iraqi Kurdistan following the fall of Saddam. Gathering together his ten musician sons from all over Iranian Kurdistan, the film plays as a kind of comedic road movie – an Iranian 'Blues Brothers' if you will – and is a thoughtful, funny and moving account of a country and a people trying to regain their voice, though I have to admit to being lost during some of the film's more mystical flights of fancy.

A very different film that also deals with a country in transition is 'Border Patrol', a powerful examination of the futility of war set on the Yugoslav-Albanian border in the spring of 1987. Mixing the absurd with the tragic, the film is hugely entertaining, yet thanks to a combination of fine performances and a heartbreaking coda, it stays with the viewer long after the credits have rolled. The fact that it's a Bosnian/Croatian/Macedonian/Slovenian/Serbian co-production (amongst others) underlines the fact that much has changed in the intervening 20 years.

My favourite film of the festival was probably 'The Art of Crying', a Danish coming-of-age tale that follows 11-year-old Allan's efforts to hold his family together in the face of crisis after crisis. A dark (practically pitch black) comedy that owes an obvious debt to Lasse Hallström's marvellous 'My Life as a Dog', the film is anchored by powerhouse performances from Jesper Asholt and Jannik Lorenzen as father and son, and deserves to find an audience outside of Denmark.

'Fuera del Cielo' was another fine effort, a Mexican thriller that impressed in the Horizontes Latinos' section of the festival. Set during ex-con Marlboro's first day out of prison, the film follows his efforts to avoid immediate arrest, to re-connect with his girlfriend and to set his livewire brother on the straight and narrow. The story and themes are hardly original, but the energy that first-time director Javier Patrón brings to the project is electric, and his efforts are reinforced by note-perfect performances from all the cast, most notably the hugely talented youngsters Armando Hernández and Martha Higareda.

Such quality meant that the festival's finale was a bit of an anticlimax, with Todd Robinson's 'Lonely Hearts' making so little impact that I can barely remember it now. Based on the true story of America's infamous 'lonely hearts killers', John Travolta and James Gandolfini are fine as two cops on the case, but Jared Leto is woefully miscast as serial killer Raymond Fernandez, while Salma Hayek is far too pretty to play his psychotic partner in crime Martha.

Mercifully, the film failed to walk away with any prizes at the end of the festival. Instead, 'Half Moon' shared the best film award with the universally derided 'Mon Fils a Moi' (not sure what happened there). 'The Art of Crying' deservedly won the Volkswagen Youth Award for Peter Schønau Fog's subtle, understated direction, while Barbet Schroeder and Matt Dillon walked away with questionable lifetime achievement awards.

If we were handing out gongs however, my hotel room would win the award for most mothballs, the 'Fuero del Cuelo' team would win the 'Time Out Tequila' prize for best drinkers at the fest and former Aston Villa striker Savo Milosevic would win the golden boot for most unexpected attendee.

• 
•