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Paul is a sweet man-child, raised — and smothered — by his two eccentric aunts in Paris since the death of his parents when he was a toddler. Now thirty-three, he still does not speak. (He does express himself through colourful suits that would challenge any Wes Anderson character in nerd chic.) Paul’s aunts have only one dream for him: to win piano competitions. Although Paul practices dutifully, he remains unfulfilled until he submits to the interventions of his upstairs neighbour. Suitably named after the novelist, Madame Proust offers Paul a concoction that unlocks repressed memories from his childhood and awakens the most delightful of fantasies.
The ostensibly simple story of a sympathetic veteran teacher giving Italian lessons to a weekly class of diverse immigrants is given infinitely more depth and complexity by the manner in which director Daniele Gaglianone renders his story. Blurring the lines between fact and fiction, truth and artifice, and between documentary and drama, Gaglianone has created a film within a film. You see the apparent artifice of Gaglianone’s crew using professionals, including the noted film actor Valerio Mastandrea as the teacher, interlinked with ‘real’ immigrant protagonists, studying the language to improve their chances of employment and of gaining a permanent residence permit. Thus in the course of the lessons there is simultaneously the painful and upsetting relation of the students’ personal stories but also humour, as they interact and share their humanity, bridging cultural differences, united in their striving to make a better life for themselves. (Source: LFF programme)
A young woman moves into a new apartment that she inherited from her grandmother, who had died there in a bizarre accident. She is immediately confronted by totally bizarre neighbors and someone is obviously out to get her as rats and flies engulf her apartment. But with the array of weirdos around her, who might it be? Everyone warns her to stay away from her upstairs neighbor, but he is the only one who shows any kindness. Supposedly the neighbor below her is an 80 year old woman, but she hammers the floor so hard when the young woman moves furniture that she breaks tiles. Another neighbor seems kind enough to begin with, but later seems more interfering and threatening. Also her weatherman boyfriend can’t be ruled out. Contrary to his desire for her to move in with him, she moved into their apartment.
This Italian-Turkish co-production helmed by genre veteran Antonio Margheriti (using the pseudonym “Anthony M. Dawson”) was cobbled together from a four-part science-fiction miniseries shown on Italian television. In prehistoric times, the muscular Yor (Reb Brown in a loincloth) saves his cave-babe (Corinne Clery) from a dinosaur just before they get zapped into the future to battle bad guys in the familiar desolate wasteland. Genre stalwart John Steiner (Caligole) and the ubiquitous Luciano Pigozzi co-star with Carol Andre.
When an undersea volcano sends tremors throughout the Atlantic, aquatic creatures come out of hiding. Merchant seamen Joe Ryan and partner Sam Slade harness the most unusual of the lot, a massive beast that looks like a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The enterprising sailors deliver their quarry to a British circus, but it turns out that the animal is a newborn. And, when his much larger mother arrives in London to rescue her son, the city feels her wrath.
Set in Mexico under the rule of Emperor Maximilian I, Sabata is hired by the guerrilla leader Señor Ocaño to steal a wagonload of gold from the Austrian army. However, when Sabata and his partners Escudo and Ballantine obtain the wagon, they find it is not full of gold but of sand, and that the gold was taken by Austrian Colonel Skimmel. So Sabata plans to steal back the gold.
Deceived by the scruffy ginger counselor who’s the only boy near her emotional age at Emily Dickinson Writing Camp, Marion ditches lunch duty and jumps the next bus out of town. Alone and friendless, she holes up in a nowhere motel, ignoring the nagging calls from her sister and indulging in utter anonymity. There Marion meets Norman, and each is haunted by the feeling that they’ve met the other before. Like a garage band covering a string quartet, freshman director Jesse Robinson rebuilds Psycho from a looser, warmer material. Young and Innocent throws a haze across Hitchcock’s spartan menace, replacing autumnal chill with summer swelter, and adult frailty with the languageless longings of adolescence.
