Movie reviews

ARTEKINO FESTIVAL ONLINE

LOVE ME TENDER

Watchable. The Swiss offering goes to great lengths to present agoraphobia and some other mental disturbances but with no rhyme or reason to it. You never learn what condition(s) she actually has or why, since when, what really happened with her mother and it leads virtually nowhere. A fleeting touching moment is the reconciliation attempt by her father. The little girl, most likely representing her younger, courageous self, only adds to the disarray. It starts and ends with kind-of-dancing but it's so odd it's unattractive. The movie's just weird. 

LOVE ME TENDER DIRECTOR Q&A

Klaudia Reynicke has been into antiheroes since childhood. Apparently she finds her protagonist to be an antihero too and thinks Seconda is funny. The writer-director is Peruvian but has been living in Switzerland for years. The film's set in Ticino, where she lives. Seconda was initially written as a middle-aged woman. And yes, the little girl is a part of the protagonist.

ZENTRAL FLUGHAFEN THF (THF: CENTRAL AIRPORT)

Watchable. Yet another documentary about refugees, this one about a refugee centre based in the disused Tempelhof airport, curiously originally conceived by Hitler, now housing asylum seekers. They are safe, receive excellent medical care, even flu vaccinations. At the same time, with no work permits, they are served by Germans. Even the cleaning and cooking is done for them. Jobless, they often get lazy. The system serves no-one. The film is protracted. Just like the asylum procedure, taking more than a year. There's little voice over, a number of lengthy walking through the square sequences feel empty. But I guess that's how the protagonists feel too.

ZENTRAL FLUGHAFEN THF (THF: CENTRAL AIRPORT) DIRECTOR Q&A

Brazil- born Germany-based director didn't say anything worth citing.