Berlin Film Festival part three

Heath Ledger is impressive in 'Candy', while Isabelle Huppert brings 'A Comedy of Power' to life.

Feb 17 2006

Though this writer's final few films in Berlin offered nothing to match either Robert Altman's 'A Prairie Home Companion' or Valeska Grisebach's 'Longing', there was still good stuff to enjoy in terms of rock-solid acting.

Those recently converted to the cause of Heath Ledger by 'Brokeback Mountain' will do well to search out 'Candy' when it goes on release, since his playing of an Australian heroin addict in Neil Armfield's film transforms a basically none too sympathetic character into someone who deserves our attention and concern despite his manifest flaws.

The story itself is hardly original – when Ledger's occasional poet falls for fresh-faced young painter Abbie Cornish, he unwittingly turns her on to a lifestyle so nightmarish it will threaten to destroy not only their relationship but her sanity – and Armfield's use of music is not exactly averse to cliché, but somehow the performances pull things through; Noni Hazlehurst and Tony Martin are also good as the girl's parents. In the end, however, it's Ledger who steals the show as the well-meaning, smart but sadly somewhat feckless junkie.

Brazil's 'The House of Sand' is pretty much a family affair, with Andrucha Waddington (who made the very impressive 'You Me Them' a few years back) directing both wife Fernanda Torres and mother-in-law Fernanda Montenegro in a generational fable that begins in 1910 with a pregnant woman and her ailing mother being dragged into a remote desert region by the former's husband (director Ruy Guerra), a man apparently unhinged in his desire to start a new life.

After he dies, the women are left alone to fend for themselves, miles from civilisation, and tensions soon develop in their dealings with each other and with the few former black slaves working nearby as fishermen.

Strikingly shot in 'Scope, the film is perhaps a little too long, but still manages to pack quite a punch in the closing moments. And much of the credit must go to the two Fernandas, each playing, as the film proceeds through the decades, more than one character; they prevent the film from sliding into schematism by fleshing out their roles with sensitivity, skill and considerable charisma.

All those qualities are to be found, too, in Isabelle Huppert's characteristically expert playing of a prosecuting judge in Claude Chabrol's 'A Comedy of Power'.

As she takes on the various members of a company being investigated for the abuse of public funds (the film was partly inspired by a scandal involving French petroleum giant Elf Aquitaine), we can see her character savouring her new-found powers while remaining true to her initial ideals and seeing her marriage begin to crack under the stress.

The movie is a touch too talky for its own good, and succeeds neither as comedy nor as suspenseful drama; it does, however, remain unexpectedly watchable for its moments of sly, dry satirising of corporate and political manners and for Huppert, who presents us with a professional woman far more rounded and credible than the two-dimensional stereotypes usually delivered by cinema.

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