Limited movie runs: 'Nobody Knows' and 'A Talking Picture'

Friday, March 11, 2005

NOBODY KNOWS

In 1988, four children were found abandoned for months by their mother in a Tokyo apartment building. Hirokazu Kore-Eda's delicate drama is inspired by the scandalous headlines, but his story is fiction. A bubbly, chirpy single mom and her 12-year-old son (Yuya Yagira, who won the best actor award at Cannes) sneak his three younger siblings past their new landlords. She tells them to "hold on just a little longer" and periodically drops in like an affectionate older sister, then simply drops out of their lives, leaving the eldest to shoulder her responsibility. Kore-Eda's eye for poetic imagery and telling detail is astounding, from the body language of a frustrated child's sneakered feet to the passage of time measured in the wear of nail polish on the daughter's fingers, and inertia oozes from the screen as the children becomes lethargic and torpid hiding out in the sweltering summer. But he applies a realist's eye to the dreamer's direction and a compassion to his understanding of sibling dynamics through times of strength and disillusionment. Beautiful, elevating and achingly sad. (Sean Axmaker)

GRADE: A

At Varsity today through Thursday. 141 minutes. No rating. In Japanese with English subtitles.

A TALKING PICTURE

The title of "A Talking Picture" gives you a good idea of what you're in for. Set on a Mediterranean cruise with stops in the various cradles of civilization, this is full of talk in the European art cinema tradition: intellectual conversations (often in multiple languages at once), gentile dinner conversation with an international all-star guest list (Catherine Deneuve, Stefania Sandrelli and Irene Papas, hosted by captain John Malkovich), and pointed history lessons given a curious 8-year-old girl by her professor mother (Leonor Silveira). Writer/director Manoel de Oliviera meanders through the story of Western civilization in a few easy chapters that inevitably end in war, and then watches history repeat itself with muted anger and disappointment. The title is also a reminder of its creator's legacy: Portuguese master de Oliviera is the only practitioner of the cinematic art who began in the silent years. "A Talking Picture" may not be his last word, but his lesson feels like cinema's grand old man is leaving us a legacy with grace and compassion. (Sean Axmaker)

GRADE: B

At Grand Illusion today through Thursday. 96 minutes. No rating. In Portuguese, Italian, English, French and Greek with English subtitles.