2009 BigPond Adelaide Film Festival

The 2009 BigPond Adelaide Film Festival has been judged a huge success with twenty two world premieres, including nine features and three documentary features, 62 Australian premieres and 143 films from 49 different countries screened over just 11 days.

The Film Festival has been visited and enjoyed by numerous well known players in the Australian film industry including Hugo Weaving, Natalie Imbruglia, Rolf de Heer, Scott Hicks, Bruce Beresford, Matt Day, Sarah Watt, William McInnes, Warwick Thornton, and Aden Young – to name just a few.

Attendances across the main screening program grew by 30% from 2007, with 18% of sessions SOLD OUT.

I myself managed to see 13 film out of a planned 15. In the end, for a variety or reasons, I was too exhausted to even consider attending my two scheduled screenings last Saturday. One was the free screening of Bruce Beresford’s Black Robe, which was to be followed immediately by a new documentary on the Senegalese singer, Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love.

I’m really glad I was able to immerse myself in the Film Festival to the extent I could. Technically it would have been possible to see up to five movies a day for 11 days straight, but that would have taken a Herculean effort on my part, and quite frankly I wasn’t up to it.

Considering I didn’t attend even one screening last year, I think I did very well this time around.
I’m still in the process of writing reviews for a bunch of films, which I will eventually add here, but overall the highlights for me were Steven Soderberg’s, Che (parts 1 & 2); the Korean film, Treeless Mountain, and the Turkish film, Three Monkeys. I was also very impressed with JCVD starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, and the new Australian film, Van Diemen’s Land.

Image courtesy of 2009 BigPond Adelaide Film Festival

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In Review: JCVD

Australian Premiere screening at the 2009 BigPond Adelaide Film Festival

Look at the face in the image above. You’ve seen it before of course, but not like this. This time it looks older, more haggard, more real.

Yes, it is the face of Jean-Claude Van Damme, the legendary ‘Muscles from Brussels’, B-grade movie star in any number of second rate, straight to video, action flicks. And here he is in a ‘real’ movie, showing us his human side. Showing us he can act and emote, and that he has a sense of humour as well.

I loved the premise of this film.

Going on 50, JCVD is a washed-out action star with a troubled life: sued by his wife for custody of his only child, barely able to pay his lawyers, and, to add insult to injury, losing parts to Steven Seagal! And now, here he is, caught up in a real-life hostage situation. Suddenly, when the gun pointed at his head is filled with real bullets, we see that he is just an ordinary guy, filled with fears, contradictions and hopes like the rest of us. It’s just that some people, hostage takers included, have trouble telling where the difference between real life and the life of an actor begins and ends, and when that happens it can lead to disastrous (and humorous) results.

It would be nice to think that JCVD could lead to bigger and better things for Van Damme. That it could do for Van Damme what Pulp Fiction did for John Travolta. That is, turn him into a bankable actor again, with a real career in movies he is proud to be involved in.

Then again, that may be asking too much of the film, although French director, Mabrouk El Mechri should be thanked for trying. Hopefully though, people will recognise and understand the hole Van Damme he has dug himself into by essentially playing the same character in variations of the same movie he has ever made.

Van Damme may never fully dig himself out of that hole, but at least we have seen a glimpse of what he could have been, and may still become if his fans would allow him to. And not just his fans of course, but his writers, producers and directors.

JCVD created a small sensation at Cannes with its wildly innovative combination of humour, pathos, remarkable cinematography (and a little action thrown in) to create a portrait of the action star as aging prisoner of his own legend and his all-too-human frailties. Who would have thought the ‘Muscles From Brussels’ was capable of such a reflection on the vicissitudes of celebrity?

Three and a half stars
Image curtesy of 2009 BigPond Adelaide Film Festival

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