European Film

Best European Films

From Alfred Hitchcock to Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman to Jean-Luc Godard, Europe has birthed many of film’s greatest innovators. And that’s just to name a few. The more you dig into the world of European film, the more and more gems you find. Scroll down to find the best European films currently reviewed on FilmRoot, or pick a country if you know what you’re after:

Albania, Andorra, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Kosovo, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, North Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom

116

La Chimera (Italy) – Combining Time-Travel with Classic Cinema

La Chimera Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

Time-travel is a key ingredient of some of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters. It holds an unnatural power to change the future and the past, adding the driving plot behind the Back to the Future and Terminator series from the 1980s and a few modern Christopher Nolan films. Over in Italy, Alice Rohrwacher has mastered the ability to use time-travel naturally. Instead of using it as the driving force of the plot and drama, it is the icing on the cake. She has combined time-travel with wholly Italian influences; De Sica’s Neo-realism and Fellini’s Surrealism, to make her own fantastic style.

From: Italy, Europe
Watch: Trailer, JustWatch
Next: Happy as Lazzaro, First Cow, Caro Diario

La Chimera – The Breakdown

La Chimera starts with a dream. Sepia-tinted snippets of a woman in a garden evokes the feeling of warm nostalgia. The dream is interrupted by a train conductor asking for tickets, which introduces us to our dreamer: Arthur, played by Josh O’Connor. He picks out a very old looking train ticket the size of a postcard and his train-cabin-mates pick up on his unusual accent and ask where he comes from. “Far,” is his one-worded answer, coding the mystery of his character.

So who is Arthur, and has he come from another era? He doesn’t reveal anything obvious on the train. It’s not clear where he’s going or coming from, and as per his one-worded answer in the paragraph above, we don’t know who he is or where he is from either. A few puzzle pieces are inferred from the following scenes, but these do not give us a complete picture. We find out that:

He’s English
He’s been in jail – likely as the fall guy for a troubadour group of associates
He’s looking for a woman
He has a special skill at finding treasures from the past

Whilst these attributes build his character, they also all add to his mysteriousness by leading to new questions:

Why is an Englishman in rural Italy with a group of grave-robbers?
What led to his capture and was he turned in?
Who is he looking for and what happened to them?
How did he get his supernatural skill?

This mystery makes him appear like he’s been picked up from another world and time and plonked into rural Italy.

Time-travel has popped up before in Alice Rohrwacher’s films. In her previous feature, Happy as Lazzaro, the titular character falls from a great height, blacks out, and reappears in a modern era, portaling from his previous life in feudal Italy. Whilst the time-travel is more metaphorical than literal, Rohrwacher makes the jump more believable by situating Lazzaro (the lead character) in a location stuck in the past; a small rural Italian town with old, decaying houses, no modern infrastructure, and no signs of modern technology, before transporting him to the modern city. The town that Arthur finds himself in is exactly the same setting as Lazzaro’s decaying town. His house is a DIY shack on the outside of the town wall, he visits the crumbling house of his lost lover, and electronic screens and electricity itself are practically non-existent. This setting, combined with Arthur’s mystery makes viewers accustomed to Rohrwacher’s films feel like Arthur is from another era and place, and has got lost in old-town Italy whilst searching for his lost love.

Conclusion

If the time-travel and mystery haven’t already sold you on watching La Chimera, know that watching La Chimera is like watching a bubbling pot of Italian Cinema influences whilst witnessing a new talent find their stylistic voice. There’s pieces of De Sica’s neo-realism in the poverty-stricken characters and tough world they exist in, fragments of Antonioni’s mood-driven mystery in their vague backgrounds and existence, and a large chunk of Fellini’s surrealism and panache in the bombastic scenes and cinematic magic. Rohrwacher in La Chimera manages to bring together all these influences whilst building on the natural time-travel of Happy as Lazzaro, forming her own style from the embers of the Italian classics.

117

Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World

Do Not Expect Too Much for the End of the World

Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World film difficulty Ranking: 4

Radu Jude is no stranger to controversy or satirizing contemporary society. His previous feature, the Golden Bear winning Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, took aim at sexism, nationalism, and consumerism with COVID-19 and sex as a backdrop. Before that, he highlighted his country’s hidden involvement in the holocaust in I Do Not Care if we Go Down in History as Barbarians. Both of these films packed a strong punch of humor and cynicism, but Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World is his most potent critique of the world today and a movie that will define the 2020s for later generations.

From: Romania, Europe
Watch: IMDb, Just Watch
Next: Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, No Bears, Sorry to Bother You

The Breakdown

Don’t expect Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World to be an easy watch. Unless you’re familiar with Radu Jude’s recent films, you might be confused why this film keeps cutting to an old communist-era Romanian film about a female taxi driver or why we spend the majority of the central narrative literally stuck in traffic. Don’t expect a resolution from the side-narratives either. All of the threads might seem random but they all contribute to the bleak and cynical tapestry of the modern world that Radu Jude creates.

You might be thinking; “why would I want to watch a cynical tapestry of the modern world? The world is bleak enough right now.” To which we say; “fear not, you will have a guide in the madness.” Ilinca Manolache’s Angela is like Virgil in Dante’s Inferno. She’ll show us the hellish signs of late-stage capitalism – wealth inequality, corporate indifference, virtue signalling – and fiercely confront them with her dark humor. She’s integral to Jude’s critique of modern life as her humor makes it digestible and more like a bad dream than a shameful reality.

You might also be thinking; “why does Jude keep cutting to an old Community-era Romanian film?” The film in question is Angela merge mai departe, shot during Nicolae Ceaușescu’s authoritarian rule. It follows a female taxi driver as she ferries a range of male passengers around the city. The film highlights the danger of being a woman – she’s caught eyeing a wrench to use as a potential defense against one passenger – and is on the receiving end of leering eyes of men on the street, which Jude intentionally shows in slow motion. But her experiences are not significantly different to that which modern Angela faces. By including this communist-era film within Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, Jude forces us to compare the two eras. Ultimately, and depressingly, life under the dictatorship appears no worse than today. You might even interpret the 80s as better. For one, it’s shot in color vs. the monochrome of modernity so it looks warmer, and secondly 80s Angela is free from corporate exploitation.

Conclusion

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World is an era defining film. It’s bleak tapestry of the modern world marks a new low-point in Romanian (and modern capitalist) society. Just like Dante’s Inferno, we’re guided with dark humor through the hell of modernity and left to ponder how we got here.

118

Holy Emy – AFI Fest 2021

Emy and her older sister Teresa live alone in Pireaus, the port City within greater Athens, after their mother is forced to return to the Philippines. They survive by avoiding the locals, attending church, and working at the local fish market. However, as their jobs fall through and Teresa grows more heavily pregnant, Emy seeks out Mrs. Christina to put her magical abilities to work. However, in coming out of hiding, Emy risks exposing her talents to the wrong people.

In Holy Emy, Emy and Teresa barely look old enough to care for themselves. They both look like teenagers but neither are in school – Teresa works at the local fish market, whilst Emy avoids most human contact now that her Mum has returned to the Philippines. It’s not clear why Emy didn’t return with her Mum. Perhaps her Mum thought she had enough support in Piraeus to stay whilst she returned home. She has her older sister, a neighbor that looks out for her (often condescendingly), and the support of the Filipino community at the local church.

The Filipino community is ‘othered’ in Holy Emy. All the Filipino characters are either overly devoted to Catholicism or have ancient powers which mimic Catholic Saints (hence the title). They’re also fetishized by the white characters in the movie. Teresa’s boyfriend keeps pointing out her Asian features when they’re making out, making it seem like he’s only into her because she looks exotic, whilst Mrs. Christina uses Emy, her mother, and other Filipinos for their magical abilities to heal people. There isn’t a reason why just the Filipinos have these old-world powers, which makes them appear even more exotic to the white characters. These defining characteristics fetishize the Filipinos in Holy Emy build up their ‘otherness’ vs. the white Greeks and Greek society.

Emy’s character in particular feels problematic. Her character, even more so than the rest of the Filipino community in this film, is made to seem unusual. She hardly speaks throughout the movie and is often pictured giving people creepy horror-film stares. Without a voice, she’s defined by her magical abilities: her ability to cry blood, heal, and control people through her touch and thoughts. Her silence and unusual abilities turn her into an old-world exotic fetish. Her character is just used as a tool to shock the audience and demonstrate her otherness. She, like the Filipino community in Holy Emy, are made to appear from another world – their magical powers and religious fervor don’t fit within modern Greek society. They’re fetishized for the sake of the quirkiness of this art-house body-horror.

Head to our AFI Fest 2021 Hub for more reviews and short films from AFI Fest 2021.

119

Taming the Garden – Sundance Film Festival 2021

Taming the Garden is a slow documentary about a billionaire’s project to create a garden of the grandest trees in his country. Bidzina Ivanishvili, the billionaire, and former Prime Minister of Georgia, is the invisible villain of this film, as we follow the construction teams that uproot trees around the country and transport them across seas to his home.

As you’d expect from the poster, the visuals in Taming the Garden are almost unbelievable. It’s not often that you see huge old trees floating on the sea or driven down country roads. These images are more than enough to keep you engaged with the slow pace of the rest of the film. However, it’s a shame most viewers weren’t able to see it on the big screen.

The slow pace of the film shows no sign of a director. Instead, the focus is on the people on the construction team and the local people affected by their project. In between the shots of the trees we hear the conversations and opinions of the locals. It exposes us to a bit of the Georgian psyche – that what’s happening is just another cruel fate that they can’t avoid. Their complaints sound like a group of neighbors gossiping about their hated neighbor.

You can understand why they’re complaining. This invisible billionaire is buying and disappearing the most beautiful trees from their neighborhoods. They’re all trees that have taken centuries to grow, trees with sentimental value, that hold memories from their childhood. Whether it’s taken for granted or not prior to their removal, they give some sort of happiness to the local communities. Their removal therefore uproots some of the memories and happiness it holds, leaving an empty feeling in it’s place. In contrast to the time it takes for these huge trees to grow, Ivanishvili shows that money can quickly take them away.

The kicker of this movie comes in the final scene, when we finally get to see Ivanishvili’s garden. Ivanishvili is still nowhere to be seen. The only people we can see are gardeners patrolling the humongous property in golf carts. They’re the only people that see the beauty of the trees now, and now that they’re placed by so many other beautiful trees, they hardly stand out.

That’s not to say the garden isn’t beautiful. It is. The place, shrouded in mist, appears like a tree heaven that these trees have been transported to in their old age. The immense wealth of Ivanishvili has given him the power to create a garden of Eden. He’s created a garden in a few years which should have taken centuries to create. That it exists, demonstrates the power of a billionaires impatience. And that it exists alongside the rural poverty he’s taken them from highlights the inequality in the country.

120

Sirocco and the Kingdom of the Winds (France)

By Sebastian Torrelio

In the sparsest year for animation in some time, France has quietly put out what has been highlighted by the press as an “oddity.” Sirocco and the Kingdom of the Winds sports Juliette & Carmen, two young sisters staying with their neighbor Agnés for a spontaneous sleepover. Upon the first recess of supervision, they stumble into one of Agnés’ authored children’s books, are re-imagined as human-sized cats and seized by fantastically unevolved creatures. Within the book’s confinement they are assisted by Selma, an avian opera singer, who has connections to both the author’s past and to the most powerful figure in the land, the air-bound and unpredictable magician Sirocco.

Chieux’s Annecy Audience Award-winning feature is as simple as the art-house form ever presents itself, a fairy tale guided by so many instantaneous decisions the room to breathe compresses just short of heart-stopping. As Juliette and Carmen stumble into their neighbor’s tales, so does curiosity bite their new cat-like instincts near immediately, finding them in various states of ownership, imprisonment, freedom, and heroic resplendence within as little as 30 minutes of runtime. Nothing about Sirocco is hard to follow, a credit to Chieux’s knack for embedding a child’s perspective into his wonderland of immense proportions, yet the story’s constant moving target of new objectives does hinder its otherwise easygoing nature. Even in the opening minutes, the rug is pulled out by a change of perspective, the protagonist quickly redirected from a sleepy Agnés to the children’s hurricane of energy.

For what may prove more divisive in the Kingdom of Winds is Chieux’s choice of art-style. Sirocco is not crude-looking, per se, but intentionally rough and sparse in between the lines. Layers of atmosphere and Earthly settings in Selma’s world are rendered in light, ambient colors, near nothing to saturation, over layers of even further comparable color swatches. The character designs, aside from Selma herself, are rather spare – crowds of minions, flying beasts and assistants all with a bulb-like rounded figure, clone-like blobs fighting frenetic stick-limbed beings. Even the first fantastical character Juliette and Carmen encounter, a small wooden toy, humorously reminded me of a cheap Adult Swim character. Still, many will find the minimalism of anything presented at two dimensional-face value as charming these days.

Far and away, Sirroco’s biggest asset is its score – classical and orchestral, booming in its symphony, particularly in the theatrical setting it will get minimal playtime for in the United States. For all its public anime comparisons, the music of Sirocco is what ties it closest to recent Studio Ghibli efforts, a bountiful mixture of adventure and climactic overture to soundtrack the sights of Selma’s overhead journey. French vocalist Célia Kameni provides Selma’s singing voice, a baroque operatic performance that stuns in its un-poplike nature, her gorgeous, sustained notes an instrument in their own right.

If this review did not imply otherwise, Selma’s very existence is the only thing that holds Sirocco together as a story. Strong and goodhearted, but not without emotion, she keeps the value of a more considered, budgetary (real world) animation intact while engaging with naivete at every plot turn. Her most sagely words of wisdom echo what Chieux may have thought bringing her into this world: “Such a shame. The audience gets to see what artists they want. But the artists do not get to choose their audience.” With its bounty of unrestrained whimsy, Sirocco will be buried under other European efforts into the second half of this year, where it will advocate on its own modern merits for adolescent viewing attention. It should nevertheless not go unnoticed – many of life’s most pleasant joys are better stumbled upon, or into, anyway.

Seen at Laemmle Royal, Los Angeles