mikeburdick

Don't be fooled by the brilliant colours, 'Le Bonheur' ('Happiness') is a dark, dark film. Few films fill you with a sense of dread and unease like this counter-culture feminist skewering of conventional ideals. It's a horror film disguised as a romantic drama.

Jean Claude Drouot stars as François, a cheerful joiner in a happy marriage with a happy wife and happy kids. It's all pretty perfect until he starts up an affair with a postal clerk...and François becomes even happier.

In case you needed more anxiety and discomfort, Varda had Drouot's real-life wife and kids star in the roles of François' wife, Thérèse, and their kids.

As François and Émilie fall more in love, we realise that, as happens in most affairs, it can't be kept a secret forever. But don't worry, a film titled 'Happiness' has to have a happy ending. Right?

Well, you'll have to watch it to find out. Let's just say, Agnes Varda is a genius. 'Le Bonheur' gets under your skin in the worst possible way and will leave you thinking about it for days.

'A Brighter Summer Day' is one of those films that's come up in a lot of favourite film lists, so I had to give it a go. Sadly, I can't report that it was worth the watch, and certainly not worth the four-hour running time. While the production values and acting are all quite admirable, the sprawling story and the way it's told leaves you unsatisfied in the end.

The film's major flaw is its ambition, trying to paint a ceiling fresco in all its intricate details of the time and place, but losing the forest for the trees. There are characters who are fairly well drawn that play virtually no role in the story; we follow a little drama then they disappear, never to be seen again. The cumulative effect of this overkill is, we get lost in the meandering and lost track of the central plot.

In some ways, this film reminds me of one of my favourite directors, Yasujiro Ozu-the nicely observed moments, the languid pace and the mundane everyday dramas. However, with Ozu, there's nothing wasted; every moment, every line, every look has meaning and is essential to the story.

While the acting, casting and nostalgic art direction are pitch perfect, you can't help but wonder if it would be a far better film with trimmed down to 2 hours or so, without the some of subplots and dead-end characters, a more focussed piece.

Unfortunately, we're stuck with a relatively small story that is epic in length. For all its really wonderful moments, it's a bit of a chore to make it through, and quite a nasty little story as well.

If you want the quick blurb, 'Once Upon A Time in Anatolia' is the Turkish 'Fargo'. It's filled with human characters, hilarious dialogue, crushing moments and pointless tragedy. But this film is so much deeper and more complex than that other film, which I also love, by the way.

Look, I'm not one of these people who give out 10 stars lightly. 'Once Upon A Time in Anatolia' is an unqualified masterpiece. I honestly don't think I've ever seen another film with more credible dialogue and more considered character development. It's that good.

Without giving too much away, the story follows several police and a prosecutor over the course of an evening as they attempt to get a suspected murderer to show them where he buried the body. However, the suspect has a difficult time remembering where he put the guy. Along the way, there are both hilarious and harrowing moments.

But what makes this film special, to me, is the way it not only unravels the mystery of what happened to the victim, but it also unravels mysteries contained within the other characters, each who carries his own secret and bears his own guilt.

If you love stories that aren't laid out on a platter for you (like most Hollywood films), stories that dig a bit deeper into the human mystery, that leave you asking questions and thinking about them for days, you should really watch this one.