ShareThe Berlin film festival has delivered on a promise of “crazy, intoxicating” love stories at its 72nd edition, with diverse movies exploring infatuation and loss around the pandemic-racked world. In time for Valentine’s Day, Europe’s first major cinema showcase of the year has rolled out a program telling the kind of intimate tales perfectly suited to lockdown-era filmmaking. Acclaimed French director Claire Denis unveiled “Both Sides of the Blade”, a powerful drama about mature romance and sudden betrayal starring Juliette Binoche and Vincent Lindon of last year’s Cannes winner “Titane”. The two play Sara and Jean, a Parisian couple who become ensnared in a love triangle when her former boyfriend resurfaces as Jean’s new business partner.
Although Sara and Jean still share deep love and an active life, she starts to find his presence suffocating-not least while cooped up due to COVID-and begins meeting her ex for secret trysts. “When you are yourself torn between a past and a present or between two loves, this impossibility to go back once desire is set in motion-that’s a complex situation,” Binoche told AFP. “There is no right or wrong solution... you just have to get through it as dignified and honestly as possible.”
French actor Vincent Lindon (left), French actress Juliette Binoche (center) and French director and screenwriter Claire Denis pose during the photo call for the film ‘Avec amour et acharnement’ (Both Sides of the Blade) by French director Claire Denis shown in competition during the 72nd Berlinale Film Festival in Berlin.Shedding ‘shame’
Younger men awakening passion in older women takes centre stage in “A E I O U - A Quick Alphabet of Love”, starring Austrian theatre star Sophie Rois, and “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” with Emma Thompson. While Rois tutors a purse snatcher who ends up seducing her during diction lessons in her flat, Thompson’s widow character seeks instruction from a charming sex worker. The British actress said the comedy, which was rapturously received at its live premiere after screening online at Sundance last month, felt radical because it showed an ageing woman shedding “shame” about her body.
In one of the festival’s highlight performances, French actor Denis Menochet in “Peter von Kant” plays a successful director waylaid by his passion for a capricious young actor. Director Francois Ozon said the performance worked because Menochet showed the humbling nature of love. “I was trying to bring out the suffering of Peter von Kant-he’s not very lovable until you see him suffering.”
British actress Emma Thompson (right) and Irish actor Daryl McCormack pose during the photo call for the film ‘Good Luck to You, Leo Grande’ by Australian director Sophie Hyde, presented in the Berlinale Special Gala section, during the 72nd Berlinale Film Festival in Berlin.‘Against the odds’
Tragic loss has also preoccupied many of the world’s directors during the pandemic, with the tender Chinese drama “Return to Dust” and “A Piece of Sky”, set in majestic Alpine vistas, moving Berlin audiences to tears. Chinese director Li Ruijun, 39, tells the tale of Cao, the timid fourth son of a rural family, and the disabled Ma, who are cast off by their clans and pushed into an arranged marriage. Despite their isolation and grinding poverty in remote Gansu Province, an unexpected love blossoms between them.
Li, unable to attend the festival due to coronavirus restrictions, wrote that he wanted to tell a story of “eternal love, against the odds”. “A Piece of Sky” shows a young waitress and a farmhand who stay devoted to each other even as his personality changes drastically due to a brain tumor. Their battle with illness plays out against the backdrop of stunning mountain landscapes, something Swiss director Michael Koch said reminded people that much in life is beyond their control. “From time to time nature reveals its destructive potential and anyone who grows up in the mountains has an awareness that in the end nature is always stronger than you,” Koch, also 39, told AFP. He said love, too, had a way of reminding people of their powerlessness. “Love is bigger than you and if you have it, it’s so strong that doesn’t matter what happens, it will remain.” — AFP
