Random Gatherings

NOTHING PERSONAL (B) - Put any two lonely people together and leave them absolutely along together, and if enough time passes they can form a bond. That, at least, is what I got out of the tone poem "Nothing Personal," a lovely but mostly inert film from the Polish director Urszula Antoniak (working here in English). I suppose that, in a different setting, two people who stumble upon each other could grow to despise each other, and one could simply smite the other.

Here,  young Anne (fiery redhead Lotte Verbeek) is first seen removing a ring from her finger and discarding her possessions before setting off from Holland to the Irish countryside. She eventually meanders to the spawling seaside estate of Martin (a haggard Stephen Rea), a sad widower. Anne at first is like a feral cat, refusing to enter the house for food or to engage in meaningful conversation. Slowly, she warms to the idea of a warm bed and a hot meal, and Antoniak lovingly films Anne diving into a bed and swimming naked in the lush white sheets. (That image will be echoed later in the film's bittersweet climactic scene.)

Martin is nearly twice her age, but Anne slowly comes around to his charms (the comfy, well-stocked house doesn't hurt). Like a hotelier, he leaves her breakfast on a tray outside her door. She  samples his music collection, and he gifts her with an old-fashioned cassette tape featuring her favorite music to play on her Walkman while she toils in the garden. Antoniak likes repetition ((Patsy Cline's version of "Crazy" gets played twice here; we get frequent close-ups of hands luxuriating in seaweed). Occasionally it works, but often it's a bit baffling. The movie's shtick is that the two agree early on to not ask each other personal questions; if one of them breaks the deal, he or she has to sing a song. It's cute the first time, but not so much the third time.

Time passes. It's clear that Martin is either ill or suicidal. He invites her to sleep with him one night because he's afraid of dying in his sleep. Their tenderness grows. Antoniak manages to create an atmosphere that is both despairing and loving. This is a movie that is at times both quite deep but seemingly shallow. Antoniak punctuates the five major stages of the movie with title cards announcing the stages before, during and after a relationship, though they run in reverse order. She also pauses at times to allow her camera to linger, giving us lovely still-lifes and time lapses. At times it borders on experimental narrative.

But Antoniak can frustrate at times, such as when Rea mumbles beyond comprehension or when a key shot of an object is hard to decipher. Overall, this is a wonderful, concise mood piece; but when you want it to exhibit a little heft, it lets you down.

4 (2005) (B+) - A piano tuner, a meat inspector and an escort walk into a bar ... and they bond over some tall tales in the presence of a sleepy bartender. That's the key foursome that kicks off this dark, unsettling tale from first-time director Ilya Khrzhanovskiy, which takes place in what looks like post-apocalyptic Russia but really was just post-millennial Russia.

The bar talk involves tall tales.  The escort, Marina, says she's in marketing, the meat inspector, Oleg, is a member of the president's staff, and the piano tuner, Volodya, styles himself  as a member of a team of genetic adventurers involved in a human cloning experiment that dates back to WWII. The best results, apparently, involve groups of four, and thus our title and theme.

The centerpiece of the film is a trip Marina takes (by train, as an unwilling neighbor of three gluttonous seatmates, and then by foot, her orange jacket a beacon in the bleakness) to the funeral of one of her three friends. The surreal scenes that follow involve doll-making old crones who get drunk and raunchy and exhibit more gluttony. The three young women resemble each other; the old women could very well be the discards of some cloning project.

Much drinking ensues. Sometimes this world is populated by as many stray dogs as humans. Oleg trafficks in perfectly round, genetically modified pigs. He lives with a doting father. Much of this seems random, but the stylized camerawork and the doomsday dialogue (I thought of Tarkovsky and Jarmusch throughout) hold your attention.