Top 5 Domestic Films

“The Dark Knight,” Christopher Nolan

“Che,” Steven Soderbergh

“Paranoid Park,” Gus Van Sant

“Rachel Getting Married,” Jonathan Demme

“Ballast,” Lance Hammer

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Foreign Films

“Man on Wire,” James Marsh

“Reprise,” Joachim Trier

“Happy-Go-Lucky,” Mike Leigh

“Slumdog Millionaire,” Danny Boyle

“A Christmas Tale,” Arnaud Desplechin

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Films

“Slumdog Millionaire,” Danny Boyle

“Ballast,” Lance Hammer

“Hunger,” Steve McQueen

“The Dark Knight,” Christopher Nolan

“In The City of Sylvia,” Jose Luis Guerin

—Bill Stamets

Top 5 Films

“Milk,” Gus Vant Sant

“The Dark Knight,” Christopher Nolan

“Man on Wire,” James Marsh

“Let the Right One In,” Tomas Alfredson

“Rachel Getting Married,” Jonathan Demme

—Tom Lynch

Top 5 Performances – Female

Sally Hawkins, “Happy-Go-Lucky”

Melissa Leo, “Frozen River”

Kristin Scott Thomas, “I’ve Loved You So Long”

Kate Winslet, “Revolutionary Road”

Kat Dennings, “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist”

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Performances – Male

Benicio Del Toro, “Che”

Sean Penn, “Milk”

Mathieu Amalric, “A Christmas Tale”

Michel Blanc, “The Witnesses”

Ben Kingsley, “Elegy”

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Supporting Performances – Female

Ann Savage, “My Winnipeg”

Nurgul Yesilcay, “The Edge of Heaven”

Viola Davis, “Doubt”

Penelope Cruz, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”

Zoe Kazan, “Revolutionary Road”

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Supporting Performances – Male

Michael Shannon, “Revolutionary Road,” “Shotgun Stories”

Danny McBride, “Pineapple Express”

Richard Dreyfuss, “W.”

Toby Jones, “W.”

Anil Kapoor, “Slumdog Millionaire”

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Directors

Mike Leigh, “Happy-Go-Lucky”

Joachim Trier, “Reprise”

Danny Boyle, “Slumdog Millionaire”

Tomas Alfredson, “Let the Right One In”

James Marsh, “Man on Wire”

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Screenplays

Fatih Akin, “The Edge Of Heaven”

Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt, “Reprise”

Simon Beaufoy, “Slumdog Millionaire”

Charlie Kaufman, “Synecdoche, New York”

Martin McDonagh, “In Bruges”

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Domestic Documentaries

“Encounters at the End of the World,” Werner Herzog

“The Order of Myths,” Margaret Brown

“At The Death House Door,” Steve James, Peter Gilbert

“The Unforeseen,” Laura Dunn

“Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father,” Kurt Kuenne

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Foreign Documentaries

“Man On Wire,” James Marsh

“Of Time and the City,” Terence Davies

“Waltz With Bashir,” Ari Folman

“Up the Yangtze,” Yung Chang

“Young@Heart,” Stephen Walker

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Follies

“Speed Racer,” The Wachowski brothers

“The Fall,” Tarsem

“Adam Resurrected,” Paul Schrader

“Australia,” Baz Luhrmann

“My Blueberry Nights,” Wong Kar-wai

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Films You Can’t See Yet

“24 City,” Jia Zhang-Ke

“35 Shots Of Rum,” Claire Denis

“The English Surgeon,” Geoffrey Smith

“Liverpool,” Lisandro Alonso

“Voy a Explotar (I’m Going to Explode),” Gerardo Naranjo

—Ray Pride

 

By Ray Pride

French novelist Philippe Claudel’s first feature as director, “I’ve Loved You So Long,” is a quiet, layered narrative with a remarkable central performance by Kristin Scott-Thomas as a woman, Juliette, closed-off for reasons we slowly discover, who keeps to herself.

The plot is simple: it is her return to society on parole and how each relationship is fraught and new, whether with family, neighbors, interesting strangers. Elsa Zylberstein plays counterpoint to Scott-Thomas, capturing the more open, thoughtful potential the two siblings once shared. The way Claudel uses décor, costume and sound are among his subtle knacks: always commenting, but hardly shouting.

His characters read books. Visit favored paintings in a local museum. They make cultural references offhandedly. A dinner party and conversations in cafes do not seem strained. Late in the movie, Juliette sits alone on a park bench. In her hands, a paperback with the uniform design, black and red type on matte cream, of Gallimard’s NRF series. A small smile flickers across her lips as she finishes the last page, closes the book. It’s a look of civilized contentment. It’s an eminently readerly glimpse. As it turns out, the book she finishes is one with a figure that another character had compared her to. “She is reading the last page of the book,” Claudel tells me in his heavily accented English. “I asked her, I want you to really read the last passage of this novel. She doesn’t know this novel. It was a real discovery and I wanted to catch that. It is a very special novel, the end, a beautiful page. Love between a man and a woman, totally mute. It was like in code because with the story of Juliette, during all the story, she is totally mute. I like this possible connection between different arts. Maybe it’s because I’m a writer, I don’t know exactly. But I’m not just a writer. Since my childhood I’m fascinated by the possibilities of the arts. I tried to play guitar, I tried to paint, I tried to write, to make photos. I like exploration in different ways.”

But you return to the page. “Yes, because I think it is more simple attitude. I like that. I like to be in the world and at the same time, in the world I am a simple person around simple people. I am a seismograph, and I try to record all the vibration of how the world, and society [moves]. After the moment, I have to translate these impressions with the writing process, which is very easy and very cheap. We don’t need producers or money! It’s more simple. When I have a laptop with me, which is constantly the case, I can write everywhere.”

We speak of very specific details. “I wanted to show pieces of real life, to use an instrument of moviemaking like a little microscope,” he says of his gentle approach. “I wanted to examine very closely moments of our life. It was without big effects, without [spectacle], without too much. But just a sense of reality, the sense of modesty. I wanted to put together different pieces like when you make a puzzle, a patchwork. I think since two, three, four years there are many, many movies, how you say in English, where you put together different stories and destiny and characters. Like ‘Babel.’ Innaritu’s ‘21 Grams,’ Paul Haggis’ ‘Crash.’ I think it’s very interesting, but sometimes artificial. Except for maybe a masterpiece like, in my opinion, ‘21 Grams.’ There is perfect balance, it turns out, in the connections to the different destinies of their lives. But it’s not the case with this movie, but maybe a little bit. We don’t have very many destinies and very many stories connected but at the same time, we have a principal character, Juliette, and around her, there are many, many characters, each with possible stories. Like underground stories. The policeman; the Iraqi doctor; Grandpa, totally mute, et cetera, et cetera.”

We could walk out the door with any of them. “It was very important for me to write with a great precision, all of this destiny. I think one movie is not just one story. It’s not just one topic and one theme. I prefer to work with a lot of topics and themes. Maybe it’s too rich? Maybe it’s too much for the audience. But I prefer to put too much topic than less, you know? I prefer more than less. After, the audience chooses between these topics. Maybe some people will be more interested by the theme of the secret… other people by the theme of the rebirth of a woman… other people by the theme of the life together. I propose these things and after, the audience chooses. I wanted to work with very simple and basic material. I refuse the movie effects; I wanted a very basic style to shoot this story. It was very important to use economy of camera movement and I prefer to take my time and to give the time to the audience to enter into the story. My goal, it was to disappear. My hope is that the audience will be totally attracted by the story of Juliette, but at the same time I hope the audience forgot that the author of this universe, or this screening, the audience will be this close to this character. Like when you are with a friend. I try to give a seat to the audience. To be beside the character.”

 ”I’ve Loved You So Long” opens Friday at Landmark Century.

 

By Ray Pride

Of all the things you could possibly say about the potential of this year’s installment of the Chicago International Film Festival, I’ll start with two: most of the attractions are at two theaters within walking distance of each other, the River East and 600 North Michigan, and of a claimed 175 movies, I’ve seen or can easily recommend a fine total of thirty-eight.

Some will open during the run-up to the year-end awards gauntlet, while others have less chance of being seen elsewhere. Chinese director Jia Zhang-ke continues his explorations with documentary-fiction hybrids in “24 City,” a fascinating critique of socialism in contemporary China. Veit Helmer’s German-Azerbaijani spaghetti-sex-comedy “Absurdistan” posits the world as an eternal backwater ruled by, well, water and women, an equally intriguing perspective. Then again, your life could be a series of repeated gestures year after year and song after song like in the passion of the metal-comic doc, “Anvil! The Story of Anvil.”

Lance Hammer’s “Ballast” is spare American regional filmmaking of uncommon delicacy, while Mike Leigh’s latest, “Happy-Go-Lucky,” partakes equally deeply of the concerns of compassion and empathy. French novelist Philippe Claudel’s “I’ve Loved You So Long” is reed-delicate and wire-taut, as rich as the kind of prose that mirrors life, with a bold central performance by Kristin Scott Thomas as a haunted middle-aged woman. Utterly evanescent but also lived-in is “Nights and Weekends,” by Greta Gerwig and Joe Swanberg as a long-distance couple in New York and Chicago, more long distance than couple. The glimpse we have of their lives is only the moments of incomprehension, only disconnect. The characters are ill matched and ill starred; the filmmaker-leads palpably suggest the failure of modern romance. A different take on the world today: Danny Boyle’s latest, “Slumdog Millionaire,” about an 18-year-old Mumbai orphan who competes on India’s version of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” Streets teem, lives dance. And, reflecting a pornography-filled culture, there’s the casual obscenity of Kevin Smith’s “Zack and Miri Make A Porno,” which, in a matter of speaking, starts at snowball and snowballs from there.

Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York” is a world within worlds within the veteran screenwriter’s head, to drenching, wrenching result. (I’m moderating Sunday night’s Q&A with Kaufman.) More drama: Darren Aronofsky’s spare “The Wrestler” boasts a painfully physicalized performance by Mickey Rourke as a man whose body is his life, to the threat of both; thematically and acting-wise, Marisa Tomei is his equal as a stripper he knows not well enough. Chicago-set torment is on-screen in “Wesley Willis Joyrides,” an assembly of material about the late, troubled Chicago musician.

Terence Davis, who hasn’t made a movie since 2000’s “The House of Mirth,” returns in smashing form with the “Of Times And The City,” an elegy to his Liverpool hometown that is both comic and heartfelt, sardonic and emotional. American sense of place: Kelly Reichardt (“Old Joy”) returns with more Pacific Northwest minimalism with “Wendy and Lucy,” with a radiant Michelle Williams center screen as a needy woman whose life revolves on her car and her dog. That’s not to overlook special screenings at the Music Box of a restored print of Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time In the West,” as well as John Cassavetes’ “Faces.”

Films from other cultures are always important for an idea of lives lived, sidewalks walked. Jerzy Skolimowski (“Moonlighting,” “Deep End”) reportedly returns to Polish-absurdist form with his “Four Nights With Anna.” The great Arnaud Desplechin (“Kings and Queen,” “My Sex Life, Or, How I Got Into An Argument”) returns with “A Christmas Tale” (pictured), a two-and-a-half-hour family comedy-drama that attains as many mysterious heights as his earlier work. Ace Icelandic editor Valdis Oskarsdottir (“Julien Donkey-Boy,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”) debuts with “Country Wedding,” a road movie about two busloads of Icelanders heading off from Reykjavik to a wedding in the countryside with the expected perplexing comic result amid the grand volcanic landscape. “Be Like Others” is a documentary about the Iranian perplex where homosexuality is punishable by death, but sex-reassignment surgery is encouraged: the concept is mind-boggling, and Tanaz Eshaghian does a fair job balancing the personalities of her subjects.

Other notables: Abdel Kechiche’s “The Secret of The Grain,” an explosive admixture of family and food with rich, unpredictable outcomes. Cai Shangjun’s “The Red Awn” is a diverting family drama on a distant Chinese wheat farm. Nina Paley’s “Sita Sings The Blues” is an animated adaptation of the Hindu epic “Ramayana,” mingled with the story of a modern divorce, combining music and images to captivating effect. Nacho Vigalondo’s “Timecrimes” is bright modern sci-fi; Kiyoshi Kurosawa, known for his eerie tales of the otherworldly, works in the genre of family drama, reportedly with the same impact; and James Gray’s “Two Lovers,” which debuted at Cannes to decidedly mixed reviews, transposes bits of Dostoevsky to a somber, contemporary New York romance. Sincere or overstated? Like many of the sweet surprises to be found at any good film festival, it might be a little of both.

Visit chicagofilmfestival.com for a full schedule.

RECOMMENDED

(Ne Le Dis À Personne, 2006) The world of grown-ups, those not beleaguered by the pressures of fate-versus-choice in life-challenging, life-affirming journeys of superheroic stature, has almost vanished in U.S. movies. Lives that have been lived a little are relegated to cable, it seems, with David Simon’s “The Wire” being the most notable example of adult stuff that once would have been part of the challenging fare on movie screens. Guillaume Canet’s haunting chiller “Tell No One,” based on a novel by American writer Harlan Coben, is a whip-smart, neck-snapping thriller where the faces of actors like Francois Cluzet (with expressive features strikingly like Dustin Hoffman’s), as Alex, a pediatrician whose wife (Marie-Josee Croze) was murdered eight years earlier, and Kristin Scott-Thomas (in fluent French), as his closest confidant, look like real people: or at least like fine, fine-featured actors who bear age with grace and whose characters are plausibly challenged by the heightening obstacles of the canny plotting. He’s almost put his life together when hints come, from the police and via successive emails, that all is not resolved. A remarkable thriller the virtues of which include terrific foot-chase, “Tell No One” is jam-packed with surprise and satisfying frissons, and its look into dark nights of the soul are easily the equal of those in the newest Batman saga, and it moves with the verve of a 1970s thriller like “Marathon Man.” More, please. 125m. Anamorphic 2.40 widescreen. (Ray Pride)