Day Nine - Saturday, September 1

The Interior Monologue of Gill the Goldfish (short film). Director: Jim Goodall. Canada (2007) 7 min, English.
A goldfish with a very bitter existence and a very foul mouth tries to end it all...and discovers his desire to live too late. Nothing outstanding to say about the animation or the story.

Noodle. Director: Ayelet Menahemi. Israel (2007). 95 min, Hebrew and Mandarin with English subtitles.
www.imdb.com/title/tt0892332/
I won’t be surprised if this one wins the popular vote, if not some other prize. Menahemi’s seamlessly directed story of a twice-widowed 38 yr-old Israeli flight attendant Mili, still grieving and bitter, who discovers that her cleaning lady was an illegal Chinese immigrant who’s been deported by the authorities. Only problem? Her six year old son, who can only say “I am a Chinese boy” in Hebrew, is sitting in Mili’s apartment. Mili’s sarcastic and ironic sister Gila, who has the most hilarious lines in the film with her sharp tongue, but warm heart, is hardly hiding her own hurt, going through the breakup of her marriage to Mili’s co-worker Izzy. Mili’s good friends with her brother-in-law and doesn’t see the attraction Izzy has for her. Told by a friend that their “Noodle”, as the boy’s nicknamed, is stateless, with no papers and born in Israel, and that it would take years to have him repatriated to China, Mili, who is childless herself, surprises everyone, herself most of all, with a dangerous plan to get the boy back to his mother in Beijing. The back story with Mati, a former childhood neighbour, now well-known author, who happens to speak Chinese, completes the attraction-confusion requirement for the plot. Films about abandonment, especially of children or pets, play right to the heart. Noodle delivers, with the requisite happy ending.

L’Oro rosso (short film). Director: Cesare Fragnelli. Italy (2007). 13 min, Italian with English subtitles.
A little girl’s bedtime story about the farmer and the tomatoes haunts the mother with her memories of forced sexual favours in return for getting her husband a job with the local farmer. No rotten tomatoes in this one.

53 días de invierno (53 Winter Days). Director: Judith Colell. Spain (2006). 91min, Spanish with English subtitles.
www.imdb.com/title/tt0778596/
The long, dark night of the soul. three people at a bus shelter, when a man abandons a dog in front of them. Winter in Madrid with three very different stories. A single middle-aged teacher, just returning to work after being attacked by students in the high school where she teaches, tries to deal with her panic attacks. She helps out an old woman in her building when the abandoned dogs that the lady cares for are taken away from her. A young woman, a celloist just selected for a quartet, is in a relationship with her teacher, who, unbeknownst to her is married. She lives with her mother, who is still inconsolable after her husband left her for a younger woman. And a poor man, the one who took home the dog for his son, has a wife expecting twins. His job as a security guard in a store barely covers what he needs. When he loses his job (over a stupid act that he tried in order to give his wife something as a gesture of love), he’s unable to overcome his shame and takes to living on the street, while secretly watching his family. Another film themed on learning to look outside of one’s grief and see another’s, and forgiveness. Very dark, very depressing, but after the long, dark night of the soul, as spring comes around, there is hope. Jonathan found this one very difficult to take, but I found it meaty...satisfying in its range of emotional tension, but perhaps with a slightly overly facile resolution. Still, in all, very good.