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Iván Mora's ensemble character study, Sin otoño, sin primavera (No Autumn, No Spring) is set in one of Ecuador's largest and most densely populated cities, Guayaquil, which seams together the story of ten middle class lives, some directly connected, others only by proximity. The film is a comment on love, life, sex, and drugs, all within the confines of Guayaquil's diverse borders.

One of the most endearing aspects of the film comes from Mora's choice to place the focus not on a single character but on a group. By doing so, Mora shifts the focus from a singular experience to something more universal. This also allows for Guayaquil itself to become a character in the film, arguably the film's most important. The city takes on a visual vitality, while simultaneously being undermined by the characters' reactions to it. Mora, along with cinematographer Olivier Auverlau, allows the colorful nature of the city to both harbor feelings of vibrancy as well as oppression. There is a palpable sense of alienation, desperation. Mora is adept at presenting this duality, neither completely condemning or praising the city for the actions of its citizens.

Mora's style is impressive but he often flaunts his prowess through a series of unnecessary camera movements and angles that do little more than call attention to the cinematography. In one shot the camera flips with a box, as it is positioned 'right side up.' The purpose of this shot, which is included during a trivial montage, is completely unnecessary, coming off as nothing more than a gimmick. The film is littered with such directorial decisions. Beyond the often- jarring cinematography, the real heart of the film seems to lie in Mora's concepts of sexuality. Almost all of the film's most moving scenes include some kind of sexual component. While most of the actors put forward strong performances, they, with a single exception, tend to blend with each other and fail to transcend their place within the film. The exception is Paulina Obrist, who plays the terminally ill Antonia. Secluded within her lavish home, Obrist's natural performance imbues Antonia with a realistic sense of pathos, sensuality, and vulnerability, she is stunning.

By and large, the biggest obstacle of the film is finding a way to compartmentalize its many characters, story lines, and plot points. Mora's spastic visual style — jump cuts, non- chronological editing, etc — and an ambiguous temporality combine to create something of a jarring experience for viewers. While this is also instrumental in the delivering the film's overall message, which aims at presenting a snapshot of experiences taken from the diverse city of Guayaquil, it ultimately creates a disconnect between the audience and the characters. Identification is limited to mere fleeting moments. The hodgepodge of disordered stories leaves the viewer in a state of constant flux, working towards pieces together the puzzle. In spite of the small failure by Mora to never completely allow viewers to recover from a sense of disassociation, Sin otoño, sin primavera is still a challenging a worthwhile experience.

(Originally reviewed on Stage Buddy)

With the release of his eighth feature film, I think it is now safer than ever to say that Wes Anderson has reached a point of cinematic perfection. His most ambitious work yet, "The Grand Budapest Hotel" is Anderson's magnum opus. At its core, "The Grand Budapest Hotel" is the story of M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes), famed concierge to the Grand Budapest. Anderson wastes no time in alerting the audience that while this is a story about M. Gustave, it is in no means his story. Leaping from the present, to 1985, then abruptly to 1968, and finally resting in 1932 the film is more than your typical frame story; rather a frame story contained within a frame story. So while M. Gustave remains the central figure throughout the bulk of the narrative, the film is equally Zero (Tony Revolori and F. Murray Abraham) and the unnamed author's (Jude Law and Tom Wilkinson) story as well.

The film chronicles the unlikely friendship of M. Gustave and Zero, as the two are bonded through the theft of a painting of immeasurable value. In usual Anderson flare, the duo's chronicle is envisioned with whimsical color and framing, tracking cameras, lavish sets, quirky caricatures and stop motion animation. "The Grand Budapest Hotel" exhibits Anderson's vision at its utmost capacity. The real emotional strength of the film lies in the performances. Fiennes' captivating character both pretentious and endearing, Revolori's innocence, and Abraham's subtle charm; the range of emotions contained within the film are almost incalculable. Anderson's attention to detail, matched with the multitude of stars, grants even the smallest of roles the ability to transcend. Bill Murray, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jason Schwartzman and even the brief inclusion of Owen Wilson, deliver some of the grandest moments within the film. Special praise must be given to Dafoe, who has created one of the most horrifying cinematic monsters to appear outside of the horror genre. His character is somewhere between Max Schreck's Nosferatu and Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter.

While the exceptional performances drive the narrative, it is in Anderson's brave formal experimentations that the film should be highest praised. For many, Anderson's decision to frame the majority of the film in 4:3 ratio (also known as the Academy Ratio) may have seemed arbitrary; even detrimental to the viewing experience. The apparent loss in width does cause a claustrophobic sensation. When further assessed, it becomes clear that the ratios throughout the film change in correspondence to historical accuracy. So we experience the Academy Ratio during the 1932 sequences, Cinemascope (2.35:1) for 1968 and the current industry standard 1.85:1 for the remaining periods. This subliminal instruction of cinematic history may be lost on certain viewers, but it is in Anderson's willingness to defy cinematic conventions for ideological ends that I find "The Grand Budapest Hotel" to be most engaging. A must-see for cinephiles and Anderson fanatics alike

Taking a break from the world of drama, and coming fresh off a 16th century period piece, Bertrand Tavernier tests his hand in the world of comedy. "The French Minister", adapted from the comic book "Quai d'Orsay", is a whimsical political satire, which never loses sight of its realist tendencies. A transparent parody of the US-Iraq conflict, substituting Iraq for the fictional country of Lousdemistan, "The French Minister" depicts the life of Arthur Vlaminck, the freshly hired speech writer for the French minister Alexandre Taillard de Worms. Throughout the film Arthur is consistently hurled through a sea of endless rewrites and bureaucratic minutia, all the while, balancing the verbose personalities of the diplomats with whom he is forced to work with.

The film is an absolute pleasurable viewing experience that places the viewer in rapid succession of loosely connected vignettes. Lacking the typical story structure, the film rather invites the viewer into the world of diplomacy and bureaucracy, in a fashion that seems more circular than linear. One of Tavernier's strengths throughout the film is his ability to match the spaces in which the characters reside to the signification of their position in the bureaucratic machine. The circular nature of the narrative, and the spatial and temporal order Tavernier utilizes, comments of the ineffective, even comic, nature of bureaucracy.

Contradiction and repetition form the basis for the film's humor, as Arthur is continually shuffled from room to room; failing to be able to distinguish advice from deception. Despite the clear notion that Arthur represents the film's main character, he remains vacant for large sequences. Further, in many of the scenes where Arthur and Alexendre appear together, Arthur's presence is completely dominated by the aura of Alexandre, allowing the viewer to disregard Arthur altogether. Similar to style of the great French filmmaker Jean Renoir, the film's absence of a strong central figure allows for the stronger analysis of a series of characters, each representing a larger part of society. In this manner, the audience is not forced into the psychology of any one character, but allowed to view all of the characters from a distanced space.

Thierry Lhermitte's portrayal of Alexandre, paired with Tavernier's visual treatment, fashions a dynamic and dominating character. His narcissistic and pretentious attributes are equally matched by charisma and charm. Lhermitte's performance performs a similar overwhelming task on the audience, as his character does on Arthur. Likewise, through Tavernier's added elements of comic heightening, while farcical, remain grounded at all times in realism. Depicted as moving with such intensity that his entrances consistently cause stacks of paper to explode into a whirlwind of chaos, obsessing over highlighters to a point of absolute comic absurdity, and neurotically referring to his texts, Llhermitte's character is rife with humor.

As a testament to the writing, the film requires no deep knowledge of the political workings of government, nor does it fail to seem applicable to US notions of government. Despite its intimate relation to French culture and politics, the film's comedy is universal. Requiring from the viewer only their attention span, "The French Minister" performs the rest of the work. Travernier's film is a humorous and imaginative romp just waiting to be discovered.

Originally published via StageBuddy by Joe Yanick http://stagebuddy.com/film-TV/review-french-minister/