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Sylvie Testud, an axiom of contemporary French cinema, a waif of steel, has made her bold mark in movies like “La France” (Serge Bozon’s lovely, bizarre musical, soon on DVD). In one of this week’s highlights from Siskel’s European Union Film Festival, “Lourdes” (Sat, Thu), she plays a paraplegic in a wheelchair who travels to the city of miracles; in Austrian director Jessica Hausner’s small film, Testud conveys grace in even her most reserved expressions. French writer-director Jacques Doillon’s (“Ponette”) first film in five years, “Just Anybody” (Fri, Wed), posits a messy ménage-a-trois that involves a young woman, a deadbeat dad-cum-drifter and a policeman in a seaside setting who takes note of them. Shooting digitally, Doillon is able to accentuate the fervor of his dialogue-heavy, actor-attentive style. The intimacy of the long takes impresses. Film critic and historian Peter von Bagh’s “Helsinki Forever” (Wed), presented by freelance critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, is a poetic city symphony and cinema-essay, drawing on archival and fictional footage, with twinned male and female narration, in a league with Terence Davies’ Liverpool lullaby, “Of Time And The City.” The cumulative impact is ravishing. The true treasure is Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Dogtooth” (Fri, Mon; pictured), an unexpected gem of Greek black comedy, made with an uncommonly assured hand. A wealthy industrialist and his wife keep their grown children in a compound away from the outside world; things have odd names and superstition abounds. Lanthimos’ work harks back to classics of cinematic surrealism, but never becomes pastiche: its oddities are earned, touching and shocking at once.  (Ray Pride)

For complete listings, go to the Siskel website.

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“The Men Who Hate Women” is the blunt original title of the late Swedish writer Stieg Larsson’s worldwide bestseller; its harsh portrait of that country’s industry and welfare state earns it. But can a story about misogyny inadvertently traffic in it? As “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo,” it’s a barn-burner of a page-turner, the first of three novels Larsson left behind (films have been made of all three; the other two will be released this summer). The adaptation by director Niels Arden Oplev (“Portland”) is an adroit compression of its angry themes and doesn’t stint on the graphic material. (Its distributor is Chicago-based Music Box Films; see related story.) Financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvis) has been convicted of libel and will be going to prison, which allows an aging industrialist from the fractious Vanger clan to hire him to investigate a forty-year-old mystery about a missing girl. Before he’s hired, Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), a young investigator with epic hacker skills, investigates him. Their paths cross, and soon they are in league together in an increasingly epic search for a serial killer. The two-and-a-half-hour running time never feels leisurely, although three scenes involving rape and retribution involving Salander and an advocate assigned to her by the state go well into NC-17-level cruelty. (It’s one of the key differences between page and screen, especially involving violence: you imagine only as much as you need to while reading.) While made for television, Oplev’s visual style, from design to lighting to framing, has cinematic sweep (and the men’s cardigan budget must have been daunting). While several plot strands are swept away, there are lingering glances and hints toward them which suggest the filmmakers thought most of their audience would be familiar with the novels. One bit of compression that takes the place of pages of exposition suggests “Blow-Up” mingled with the brief clip that exists of Anne Frank turning her head as seen in a window: it’s the sort of creative solution that lands its own punch. 151m. (Ray Pride)

“The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” opens Friday at Landmark Century and Landmark Renaissance in Highland Park.

Brian Andreotti and Bill Schopf/Photo: Alyssa Miserendino

By Tom Lynch

You’re probably sick of hearing it by now, but “The Hurt Locker” is the least-seen of all Best Picture Oscar winners in history. In an age when funding for modest pictures is scarce, and studios are less interested in taking risks with films lacking marquee names, an art-house action drama (of considerable caliber, of course) bested the highest-grossing movie of all time. This was no small upset: On a Wednesday a full month after its release, “Avatar” took in more money than “The Hurt Locker” did during its entire theatrical run.

With cash tight all over, movie studios have been limiting their independent-film divisions. In 2008, despite co-producing high-quality pictures like “No Country for Old Men” and “There Will Be Blood,” most of Paramount Vantage was consolidated into its parent studio. (Paramount retained the brand name, however.) But when most film studios were sprinting as fast as they could away from art-house fare, Music Box Theatre owner Bill Schopf saw an opportunity.

The Music Box Theatre, on Southport Avenue in the Lakeview neighborhood, has maintained a solid reputation as both a high-class art-film exhibitor and midnight-movie cult-film destination. Built in 1929 and barely changed since, the theater’s overwhelming old-time movie-house atmosphere is as much a part of the experience as the actual film you’re there to see—whether it be a midnight screening of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” a weekend matinee of some Hitchcock, or the new Terry Gilliam film. And, of course, there’s the live organist.

In 2007, Schopf, a high-profile attorney and real estate developer, who took control of the Music Box in 2003, began considering an expansion, first horizontally. His team began searching for other theater possibilities in Chicago, but the realities of actually finding a good venue set in quickly, and distribution entered the conversation. The vertical leap of a movie theater venturing into film distribution is a substantial move, and a risky one at that, given the financial climate. At first, everyone tried to talk Schopf out of it. Read the rest of this entry »

David Peace’s “Red Riding” books, drawing on the real-life “Yorkshire Ripper” cases, are a marvel of surrealism and despair, finding language both vernacular and incantatory to capture the failed attempts of investigators and journalists to solve brutal serial killings in Leeds, Yorkshire, across two decades. The quartet of novels is pared to a trilogy, rich, compelling noir movies that were produced for British television: “Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1974″ (directed by Julian Jarrold, “Kinky Boots,” shooting in Super 16; “Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1980″ (James Marsh, “Man on Wire,” shooting in 35mm widescreen); “In the Year of Our Lord 1983″ (Anadd Tucker, “Shopgirl,” shooting with the Red One camera). The visual style in all three is as dark as the crimes on show, unafraid of the possibility of the perfume of pretension and the funk of sadism: think “Se3en” instead of “Se7en.” “1974″ may be the most successful, following Eddie Dunford (Andrew Garfield, “Boy A”), a young reporter for the Yorkshire Post who’s returned after time spent “down South.” (The invocation of “The North”—”The North, we do what we want”—and its ways so often would be comical if not consistently menacing.) Referring to a recently disappeared peer, Peace’s novels open, “All we ever get is Lord fucking Lucan and wingless bloody crows,’ smiled Gilman, like this way the best day of our lives… Waiting for my first Front Page, the Byline Boy at last.” Young spunk meets cloacal immersion: confronting a local real estate entrepreneur John Dawson (Sean Bean) is the first instance of Eddie’s putting of many of a foot wrong. Prolific expert David Thomson has overreached in asserting these films as the equal of “The Godfather” and “The Godfather II,” but despite their gloom, violence and despair, they’re roundly thrilling: the parochial cruelty—do the police use the crimes as cover for avenging their own enemies?—is unrelenting and the depths of viciousness can hardly be guessed. Each director finds their own style, but the unity comes from screenwriter Tony Grisoni’s proficient distillation of the material and themes. In Marsh’s “1980,” Paddy Considine may give the series’ best performance as a police investigator running an internal affairs investigation of the 1974 events.) In the best possible way, “The Red Riding Trilogy” harks back to U. S. and British thrillers of the 1970s: deeply skeptical and bold in accepting that compromise and failure are an ineffable part of the human condition, or at the very least, of the genre of thrillers pitting authority against avarice. With Rebecca Hall, Peter Mullan and Eddie Marsan. 105m; 96m; 104m, respectively. (Ray Pride)

“The Red Riding Trilogy” opens Friday at the Music Box, with viewing options including a Roadshow-style marathon sit. The Channel 4 website has trailers and more.

RECOMMENDED

The highlights of the second week of the Siskel Film Center’s marvelous March EU Film Festival include “Let It Rain,” (Fri, Mon) the latest from the writing-acting-directing team of Agnes Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri (whose credits include writing for Alain Resnais and the splendid “The Taste of Others” and “Look at Me”). It’s a comedic ensemble piece about a famous feminist writer who decides to run for office. Catherine Breillat’s latest bent-gender tale, “Bluebeard” (Sat, Thu) is another entry featured from France this week. Spain’s “Cell 211,” a prison drama that swept that country’s Goya Awards, plays Saturday and Thursday. The sweetly sweeping gem of the week, however, is from Italy, Luca Guadagnino’s “I Am Love,” (Io sono l’amore), with Tilda Swinton (acting in Italian) at the center of generational rumbles in a wealthy Milan family. Mad, fabulous melodrama ensues, accompanied by a fine, first score by composer John Adams. Guadagnino is an inspired director of all kinds of rhapsodic moments, and his passion extends to a feast of food imagery. (Ray Pride)

The 13th Annual European Union Film Festival continues through March at Siskel.

By Ray Pride

Filmmakers, publicists and early reviewers have all made the point that Jacques Audiard’s “A Prophet” (Un prophete), France’s nominee for the Best Foreign Language Oscar, is an anti-”Scarface,” an anti-”Godfather.” What it is, mostly, is a self-made creature, much like its compelling main character.

Audiard is a painstaking filmmaker, with only five features as director to his credit at the age of 57. While his father, Michel, was a successful screenwriter, Audiard began his career as an editor. That experience is apparent in his movies, including 1996’s “A Self-Made Hero,” 2001’s “Read My Lips” and 2004’s “The Beat That My Heart Skipped.” “Self-Made” has an unreliable narrator as its central character; “Read My Lips” is an uncommonly uneasy, witty Hitchcock-Chabrol-style thriller that turns on what the characters hear; and “Beat,” a remake of James Toback’s fierce testosterone opera, “Fingers,” brings grace to the crude shape of a gangster film. Audiard’s notions in how to depict his characters, their surroundings and their fated choices all sing with a film editor’s ruthless insistence on speed and specificity. Read the rest of this entry »

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The 13th Annual European Union Film Festival occupies most of the month of March at the Siskel Film Center, which notes that it’s the largest showcase in North America for cinema from the EU. Fifty-nine Chicago feature premieres, from all twenty-seven EU nations: that’s a lot. The past couple of years, it’s been a refrain of mine, which bears repeating: it may be the best film festival in Chicago in terms of curatorial focus, concentrated scale, quality of attractions and ease of attendance, all in two of the best theaters in the city. Some of the movies are set for release, but it may be the only chance anytime soon to see the bulk of them. Spain currently holds the presidency of the European Union, so the fest opens with Fernando Trueba’s “The Dancer and the Thief,” that country’s Academy Award submission, and the first narrative feature from the director of “Belle Époque” in eight years. The big winner at Spain’s Goya Awards, “Cell 211,” a hit prison thriller, also plays this week. Other attractions: a preview of Niels Arden Oplev’s “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” (pictured) a 152-minute Swedish adaptation of the first of Stieg Larsson’s worldwide bestselling “Millennium Trilogy,” well-reviewed in its Scandinavian release, which Music Box Films will release nationwide in the coming weeks (with the two other adaptations coming late this summer).  From Italy, there’s “Mid-August Lunch,” a comedy of manners in old age, produced by the director of “Gomorrah” and directed by one of its co-writers. (It opens at the Music Box in April.) There’s also the latest from writer-director Neil Jordan, “Ondine,”‘ which matches a mermaid and Colin Farrell. All three are captivating characteristics, at least from reports from Toronto 2009. Previews of other features will appear in coming weeks. (Ray Pride)

The full schedule is at the Siskel website.

Argentine director Gabriel Medina’s “The Paranoids” (Los paranoicos, 2008) has sidelong graces more successful than a storyline with its romantic-comedy trappings, notably a pervasive mood of uneasiness and urban discontent. Luciano (Daniel Hendler in a sly, ticklish performance) is a paranoid thirtysomething surviving as an awkward performer at children’s birthday parties dressed as a purple furball from a local TV show; the discovery that he’s attracted to Sofia (Jazmin Stuart), his friend Manuel’s  (Walter Jakob) girlfriend comes around the time he discovers that his every fumble is translated by Manuel into the stuff of a Spanish telenovela about a complete loser. Many of the turns of the tale are gratifyingly witty. There are echoes of Daniel Burman’s neurotic comedies like “Family Law” (2006) and “Lost Embrace” (2004) and not only because Hendler has been his alter ego in them, but because of a pervasively glum mood in the striking Buenos Aires locations. The casting of characteristic Porteño faces and spaces is another satisfaction. The city’s bright and grubby glories come out to play. Lucio Bonelli’s cinematography in both interiors and location exteriors has a bruised beauty and uneasy intimacy that elevates Read the rest of this entry »

(Frygtelig lykkelig) Two childhood pals tell a nasty tale set in a Danish village near a bog with many uses. Director Henrik Ruben Genz and novelist Erling Jepsen grew up in Gram, and shot their first collaboration nearby. Three characters are based on people they knew in Gram who share their names on screen: a wife-beating drunk; his seductive, bruised spouse; and their little daughter, whose paternity is a matter of whispers. This screwed-up family makes work and life really messy for the new marshal. Sent from Copenhagen, Robert (Jakob Cedergren) misses his daughter but not his wife. His troubled past got him this posting—the last marshal’s stint seemed oddly short-lived—and he will get into more trouble. The stranger with a badge is constantly told how things are done around these parts: from saying both “hello” and “goodbye” with the same word, to hanging his towels on his clothesline. “Terribly Happy” opens with a legend about a cow that sank in the bog, only to surface a half year later and give birth to a freak calf with a cow head and a woman’s head. An outbreak of insanity struck livestock and locals. Menfolk dispatched the creature to the municipal bog: “Since then, there hasn’t been any fuss with neither cattle nor women.” Fuss-control is what locals do best. No badges needed, but three cardplayers need to fill a vacant seat at their table. This dour noir deals bitter comic pokes. Rural surreal bits include a cat with a meow sounding just like a peculiar local phrase. With Lene Maria Christensen, Kim Bodnia, Lars Brygmann, Anders Hove, ens Jørn Spottag. 102m. (Bill Stamets)

RECOMMENDED

Karin Albou’s “The Wedding Song” (Le chant des marieés) is a demandingly poetic story set in 1942 Tunis about the lives of two 16-year-old girls who are neighbors, Myriam (Lizzie Brocheré), a worldly Jew and Nour (Olympe Borval), an observant Muslim. The strength of the film lies in the community of women that surrounds them as the demands of family and of Nazi occupation of Northern Africa encroach. Going behind the walls of a woman’s Hamam (bath), Albou’s view of the female body is at a great remove from the way male directors might photograph the rituals, sensual. As dispassionate arranged weddings approach, the politics of the larger world and of smaller rooms converge. There is much that is bluntly painful. Albou’s accomplishment is weaving her brimful tapestry into  a sweeping parable as well as a song of female intimacy. 100m. (Ray Pride)

“The Wedding Song” opens Friday at Siskel.