This film won the Golden Leopard (Best Film award) at the 2015 Locarno Film Festival. By mistake, a film director arrives in a town a day early to attend a screening of one of his films. With time to kill, he strikes up a conversation with an aspiring painter who he meets in a temple and they spend the rest of the day together. Although he finds her attractive, she is considerably younger than him and neither of them are particularly outgoing. A bit like Sliding Doors or Kieslowski's Blind Chance, the film splits into two different versions of what happens over the next 24 hours but, unlike those two films, the outcome depends not so much on chance but on how the main character chooses to behave. Any further info would inevitably contain spoilers so let's just say that it reminded me of some of Erich Roemer's films and is a sort of moral tale. Whether or not you will like Right Now, Wrong Then will probably depend on what you think of the dialogue, which pretty much dominates (there is not much action and little in the way of visuals or soundtrack). In my view, it is almost a really good film but the script needed sharpening up, as my attention started wandering off more than once. Perhaps a bit more humour and a slightly faster pace would have helped, However, it is a thought-provoking film and I found it ultimately satisfying when it ended, which is why I give it 7/10.
Reviews
7 Reviews
Subway
(1985)
Going nowhere slowly
12 February 2003
There are a lot of people who rate this film so perhaps I just didn't understand it but I suspect that there wasn't much that needed understanding. I am a great fan of French films but this one seemed pretty pointless to me and there is little to say about it. It didn't satisfy either as an "entertaining" film (it has no real plot) or as a "thought-provoking" film (no character development, no analysis of human relations, etc). It also seemed to me to be very self-consciously American in style, if not a rather crude attempt to make a French film more palatable to the US market. There's nothing wrong with imitating the style of a country whose movies have conquered the world but I didn't think the director achieved it with any subtlety. Even the title of the film is a US English word. I guess it's just not my kind of film.
The Dreamlife of Angels
(1998)
French do it better
4 February 2003
This film confirms my long-held suspicion that their films are the best. They may not make as much money as US films but at least they offer something of substance. Clearly, this is not a feel-good movie. And no, it's not about beautiful people living ostentatiously in palatial houses and wearing designer colthes. It's about the real life of two normal people and, although that might not appear to be a recipe for a particularly fascinating film, I was enthralled. It is so rare nowadays to see a films that conveys emotions and human relationships so powerfully and I have no hesitation in putting this film in my short list of the best I've seen in recent years.
In detail, two girls whose lives are drifting nowhere are staying rent-free in the flat of a family all but one of whom have been killed in a car accident. One of the girls has a family background that we never learn more about but which is clearly unhappy. She pins her hopes on a rich boyfriend whose father owns the nightclub they frequent. The other girl is more of a thoughtful type and becomes obsessed with the only survivor from the car accident whom she regularly visits in hospital, where she is lying in a deep coma. The girls' lives start to take different directions, their relationship breaks down and one of them starts to lose her mind. Any further detail would spoil the plot but the final scene shows one of the girls working in a clean and efficient-looking factory which is in marked contrast to the tacky sweat shop where the girls were working at the beginning of the film. For all the tragedy, the film's message is ultimately one of hope: however hard life is, don't give up.
In detail, two girls whose lives are drifting nowhere are staying rent-free in the flat of a family all but one of whom have been killed in a car accident. One of the girls has a family background that we never learn more about but which is clearly unhappy. She pins her hopes on a rich boyfriend whose father owns the nightclub they frequent. The other girl is more of a thoughtful type and becomes obsessed with the only survivor from the car accident whom she regularly visits in hospital, where she is lying in a deep coma. The girls' lives start to take different directions, their relationship breaks down and one of them starts to lose her mind. Any further detail would spoil the plot but the final scene shows one of the girls working in a clean and efficient-looking factory which is in marked contrast to the tacky sweat shop where the girls were working at the beginning of the film. For all the tragedy, the film's message is ultimately one of hope: however hard life is, don't give up.
Golden Balls
(1993)
A satire
1 February 2003
This is a generally enjoyable send-up of the excesses of the 1980's:- the get-rich quick, looking after no. 1 culture which prevailed for a mercifully brief period. The anti-hero is a cynical building contractor who will do anything to achieve his aim of making a fortune out of nothing, regardless of the law or of any loyalty to those closest to him. Needless to say, he gets his come-uppance and the final scene in which he smashes a lavatory to pieces is vintage Bigas Luna.
Unfortunately, it doesn't quite manage to keep up the same pace as "Jamon Jamon" and, particularly after about half way through, it starts to lose its momentum and the viewer starts to lose interest. But there are one or two scenes which are so funny that they alone make the film worth seeing, e.g. the three-in-a-bed scene in which he suddenly realises that he is not the fantastic lover he had always imagined he was.
Unfortunately, it doesn't quite manage to keep up the same pace as "Jamon Jamon" and, particularly after about half way through, it starts to lose its momentum and the viewer starts to lose interest. But there are one or two scenes which are so funny that they alone make the film worth seeing, e.g. the three-in-a-bed scene in which he suddenly realises that he is not the fantastic lover he had always imagined he was.
Jamón, Jamón
(1992)
Brilliantly funny but not to everyone's taste
1 February 2003
I wouldn't recommend Jamon Jamon to everyone I know, because the humour and the plot are idiosyncratic, to say the least. I regarded this films as a massive, but not at all serious, send-up of machismo and how it interacts with greed and lust. Above all, it is meant to make you laugh, rather than portray some profound message about the human condition. For example, although I can't speak for the Director, I suspect that the naked bullfight scene was simply meant to be absurd and make you laugh. Anyone who thinks it is pretentious has simply missed the point and is pretentious himself because he is reading things into the scene which are non-existent. Not everyone will find a scene like that funny but I personally was in stitches, as I was during the parrot scene, the ham fight scene and many other eminently unforgettable scenes. What I can't say in all honesty is that everybody else in the auditorium found it quite as funny as I did.
The Dream
(1985)
Well worth seeing
30 January 2003
It's not often that Dutch films get seen outside of the Netherlands and this one certainly deserved to be. The plot is based on a true story from the turn of the 20th century, in which three brothers, all of them left-wing activists, were imprisoned for a crime they did not commit, partly assisted by false evidence given by the victims, one of whom is the embittered ex-lover of one of the brothers.
In the hands of a mainstream Hollywood director, the film would no doubt have been given the sledge-hammer treatment, i.e. everything in "black and white", goody-goody socialists and workers and baddie authorities. Instead, it is shown as life is, with its varying shades of grey. The hero (one of the brothers, played by Peter Tuinman) is a slightly annoying character: he is bombastic and loves nothing more than delivering long speeches in the best Fidel Castro tradition. The real perpetrators of the crime are fellow socialists and are only too happy to see their comrades falling victim to a miscarriage of justice. A local socialist hero turns out to be a coward: too frightened to get involved, he disappears abroad, despite having crucial evidence that could have proved the brothers' innocence. And, on the other side, the investigator is not a wicked man: he wants the real perpetrators to be punished but ultimately lacks the courage to take a stand. All this is portrayed with a lightness of touch that makes this a great film.
In the hands of a mainstream Hollywood director, the film would no doubt have been given the sledge-hammer treatment, i.e. everything in "black and white", goody-goody socialists and workers and baddie authorities. Instead, it is shown as life is, with its varying shades of grey. The hero (one of the brothers, played by Peter Tuinman) is a slightly annoying character: he is bombastic and loves nothing more than delivering long speeches in the best Fidel Castro tradition. The real perpetrators of the crime are fellow socialists and are only too happy to see their comrades falling victim to a miscarriage of justice. A local socialist hero turns out to be a coward: too frightened to get involved, he disappears abroad, despite having crucial evidence that could have proved the brothers' innocence. And, on the other side, the investigator is not a wicked man: he wants the real perpetrators to be punished but ultimately lacks the courage to take a stand. All this is portrayed with a lightness of touch that makes this a great film.
L'aria serena dell'Ovest
(1990)
Happiness can be elusive
25 January 2003
In my view, one of the best films to come out of Italy in the last 20 years (although, strictly speaking, the director is Swiss Italian). Set in Milan in the summer of 1989 against the background of the fall of communism, the film examines the lives of four frustrated individuals whose lives intertwine:- a market researcher whose great ambition is to be an anthropologist and write about an unknown tribe in some remote island (but is it a real ambition or just a conveniently unrealisable dream?); a nurse who does not want emotional ties but meets two men, neither of whom are what they seem; a freelance translator unable to adapt to a big city when her husband is transferred to Milan; and a scientist who in his spare time watches videos of tennis matches from the Borg/MacEnroe era (although even he is beginning to find it a bit of a bore). Only one of them ultimately has the courage to make anything like a radical break with the past.
It is difficult to say exactly why I thought this film was so good. It's not rip-roaringly funny nor tear-jerkingly sad and I wouldn't say it is particularly deep. The fact that I live in Milan may have influenced me. Nevertheless, it is well-acted, moves at a fast pace (bearing in mind that it's not a car-chase type movie) and is ultimately thought-provoking. The characters are ordinary people with normal 3-D personalities, i.e. no one is jet-set, no one is exceedingly rich. The characters are neither irredeemably wicked nor goodie-goodies, and I personally had mixed feelings about all of them.
The title is intended to be ironic: despite the triumph of the West and of capitalism in 1989, life in the affluent West is not automatically a bed of roses and happines can be as elusive as anywhere else. Those who lived through communism in eastern Europe and elsewhere may take issue.
It is difficult to say exactly why I thought this film was so good. It's not rip-roaringly funny nor tear-jerkingly sad and I wouldn't say it is particularly deep. The fact that I live in Milan may have influenced me. Nevertheless, it is well-acted, moves at a fast pace (bearing in mind that it's not a car-chase type movie) and is ultimately thought-provoking. The characters are ordinary people with normal 3-D personalities, i.e. no one is jet-set, no one is exceedingly rich. The characters are neither irredeemably wicked nor goodie-goodies, and I personally had mixed feelings about all of them.
The title is intended to be ironic: despite the triumph of the West and of capitalism in 1989, life in the affluent West is not automatically a bed of roses and happines can be as elusive as anywhere else. Those who lived through communism in eastern Europe and elsewhere may take issue.
Tell Your Friends