MIFF Final Days

by Rebecca Butterworth 09 August 2011 21:30 Filmink Festival Coverage

So it's all over for another year! But before it all came to an end, the festival shifted into high gear one final time for the closing night film 'Drive'...

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MIFF closing night was held on the night before the last day of screenings, supposedly to soften the last day blow to cinephiles. Kind of like the methadone program for fully strapped-in cinema junkies. And just like methadone, closing night turned out to be even more addictive than the real thing. Nicolas Winding Refn's (Bronson, Pusher Trilogy) moody, gorgeous Drive replaced Red Dog as the movie to end (almost) all movies at MIFF 2011, and there could hardly have been a better choice.

A loner stunt car driver, part time getaway driver and mechanic (Ryan Gosling) meets Irene (Carey Mulligan) and her young son when they move into the same apartment block; similarly quiet souls, the two connect. When Irene's husband returns from prison and brings trouble with him, the honourable driver lends a hand. Things go very wrong. People get smashed up.

Mulligan is certainly well into her swift ascendance as a leading lady with depth, and Drive is simply more of the same. Ron Perlman is so perfect for his role that he got a kudos laugh upon appearance. Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) does the slightly seedy talent manager like I don't remember seeing it done before.

And hey: I'm not alone in my appreciation - purely cinematic - of blonde hunk of fleshy awesome, Ryan Gosling. Ducking into the ladies room at a neighbouring bar to avoid the crowds at Greater Union, I overheard two fellow ladies discussing the film. 'He was good, wasn't he?' said one. 'Yeah, but I hope he doesn't get typecast in that looking dreamily at the camera kind of role.' Point taken - but apart from the fact that I don't care for how long, or in how many different ways, Ryan Gosling stares dreamily in my general direction, I don't think he has that issue in Drive.

MIFF Artistic Director, Michelle Carey, noted before the film that people who aren't much used to stylised violence might want to cover their eyes. My favourite example was a love scene that, in beautiful slow motion, doubled as a blind for the driver stomping a head into the floor. Violent? Yes. Overdone? Perhaps I've seen too many Asian mafia movies - but no.

The soundtrack, by Cliff Martinez (Traffic, The Lincoln Lawyer) is without doubt one of the stand out elements of Drive, and many people have said it. It's true. But equally as enveloping is the cinematography by Newton Thomas Sigel (The Usual Suspects, X-Men), that can make a violent, dangerous city look like a dream. This film is smooth.

As a big fan of Everybody Loves Raymond (the only one among my circle of friends), I could not help but leave Exporting Raymond as my last film of the Melbourne International Film Festival. It was not a bad call to make. Exporting Raymond is the documentary that follows creator and producer of Raymond in the U.S., Philip Rosenthal, as he takes the series to Russia. And while you can kind of predict what might happen, actually seeing it unfold is ten times better.

The set-up and introduction is by far the worst element of the film, when all we have are the tentative first steps of a very American, if very talented, sitcom writer into an unknown country. He notices the things you would expect him to, just for the camera. Things start to heat up, however, as soon as Rosenthal learns that he might need 'K&R' insurance - Kidnap and Ransom - which they assure him is not very common. 'It's common enough to have an abbreviation,' says Rosenthal. It is then that we meet the film crew - a costume designer who wants to make everyday characters dress like film stars; the scriptwriters, who feel that the characters should be more vaudeville than down-to-earth; the network head of comedy with a fascination for lasers, and the actor who treats an argument over juice like it's a shakedown from the KGB. Which, of course, all goes down in another language. A fledgling country in terms of television production, in Russia, more is more. This is a story about cross-cultural non-communication - and that's always funny.

Minor characters were used to good effect, including Rosenthal's translator, and the mystery of Rosenthal's driver, a former Russian soldier with a penchant for shell collecting, who knew the guy in that case of the radiation-poisoned Russian spy. The guy who did the poisoning, that is.

In an interesting verification of one of the ideas put forward in the film - that some of what is funny in one culture is not necessarily funny in another - no one in the Melbourne audience thought there was anything weird about having a restaurant on a moving tram. That's totally normal, right?

This is a documentary that will probably only be worth seeing for fans of Everybody Loves Raymond, but does offer an explanation of the goods and evils of producing a sitcom. Exporting Raymond uncovered the idea that when it comes to showbiz, things are the same all over the world, and was therefore a fitting show to end the Festival.

Thanks MIFF.