REVIEW: DVD Release: Cave Of The Yellow Dog

Film: Cave Of The Yellow Dog
Release date: 5th July 2010
Certificate: U
Running time: 93 mins
Director: Byambasuren Davaa
Starring: Batchuluun Urjindorj, Buyandulam Daramdadi, Nansal Batchuluun, Nansalmaa Batchuluun, Babbayar Batchuluun
Genre: Drama
Studio: Palisades Tartan
Format: DVD
Country: Germany/Mongolia

The director of The Story Of The Weeping Camel takes a different look at life in the Mongolian wilderness, having previously followed a family of nomadic shepherds and their camels to award-winning success.

Meet the Batchuluuns. They’re outdoor types - which is just as well, as they lead a nomadic existence as livestock farmers in the mountains of western Mongolia. There’s father and mother and their three young children – and, yes, there will soon be a dog.

The eldest daughter, Nansal, returns to the family yurt, from her urban boarding school, to much parental anguish. Wolves have killed two of their precious sheep and, from talking to other farmers in the area, it’s clear to the family this is an ongoing threat. With an increasing number of farmers moving to the towns in search of a ‘better’ life, there are fewer and fewer people to keep watch over any sheep. Suffice to say that Mr and Mrs Batchuluun are concerned about the future.

So, father is not best pleased when Nansal returns from a fuel-gathering trip one day with a small white dog in tow. She names him Zochor (Spot) – how comforting that dogs’ names, at least, cross cultural boundaries. “It has probably lived with wolves and will either kill our sheep or lead the wolves right to them,” says father. Heading off to town on his motorbike, to sell the skins of the two sheep, he makes it clear to Nansal he wants the dog gone by the time he returns.

Nansal, however, is not so easily persuaded – already it’s clear she’s a tough, smart, determined kid, growing up with an insatiable curiosity about the world around her. Out tending the herd one day on horseback – just one of many ‘adult’ responsibilities she must undertake from an early age – she is distracted, loses Zochor and gets lost herself searching for him. Finding Zochor just as its getting dark, with a storm breaking, she takes refuge with her grandmother in her yurt.

Her grandmother tells Nansal about the legend of the Cave Of The Yellow Dog. Suitably impressed, Nansal is finally reunited with her anxious mother who has come out looking for her in the darkness. Along with relief, we’re left with the feeling that it can’t be easy keeping your eye on your children in a playground that extends hundreds of miles into the wilderness…


What follows these early scenes is an extraordinary insight into the lives of this resourceful, loving family. Their very existence brings new meaning to the phrase ‘sustainable living’. Every day they must battle the elements, gather fuel, guard the sheep and themselves from wolves and vultures, create food from what they have around them (there’s an impressive lesson in cheese making from mother) and knock up the odd dress from scratch on the sewing machine. And then, of course, there’s the changing seasons – which means moving to new grazing areas. The dismantling of the yurt is a fascinating process – as is the packing of all their worldly goods onto oxen carts (and with three children, a house and a herd to take with them, they don’t travel light), and the heading off, literally, to pastures new.

But life’s not all uphill – there are many heartwarming moments between parents and offspring. Mother in particular seems keen on bestowing some philosophical wisdom on her eldest. “Stretch out your palm tight in front of you and try and bite it,” is one bit of curious advice she gives the child while slicing cheese one day. “I can’t!” protests Nansal. “There you are, then,” replies her mother. “Even when things are right in front of us, we can’t always have them.” With her grandmother, Nansal is curious about reincarnation. “Could I come back as a child?” she asks her. “See those grains of rice falling into the pot?” comes the reply, “try and land one on the tip of that needle.” Failing the impossible task, Nansal is advised “And that’s how hard it is to come back as a child.” Between her mother and her grandmother, young Nansal has a lot of wisdom to digest.

Whether or not you’ve seen Weeping Camel, this story stands proudly as a parable of life’s possibilities and limitations, and how we must all come to terms with them – wherever we live. Yes, the plot is fictional but the family – and their environment – is real. Nansal’s natural performance is particularly impressive at such a young age – her resourcefulness and charm bestow an irresistible screen presence. And, for their part, the parents contribute a nicely judged supporting role, revealing just what it takes to bring up a family in the wilderness. And the dog? Oh, yes, he’s cute. You can see why Nansal wants to keep him.


A delightful, fascinating and thoughtful docu-drama that will stay with you long after those dramatic mountain scenes have faded from view. CS

REVIEW: DVD Release: Lola

Film: Lola
Release date: 6th September 2010
Certificate: PG
Running time: 90 mins
Director: Jacques Demy
Starring: Anouk Aimée, Marc Michel, Jacques Harden, Alan Scott, Elina Labourdette
Genre: Drama/Romance
Studio: Mr Bongo
Format: DVD
Country: Italy/France

Lovingly restored under the supervision of his widow Agnes Varda, Jacques Demy’s debut feature interweaves the lives and loves of its characters in beguiling fashion in this early New Wave classic.

Fifteen years after the Second World War, Lola (Anouk Aimee) works as a dancer at L’Eldorado Cabaret in Nantes, entertaining an enthusiastic clientele largely comprising American sailors on shore leave. She has a fling with Frankie (Alan Scott), one such sailor who reminds her of her lost love Michel, who left Lola and their young son seven years ago to seek his fortune abroad, promising to return when wealthy. But a chance encounter between Lola and the romantic Roland (Marc Michel) reignites a flame the young man has held for her since childhood. And just who is the white-suited stranger cruising the seafront in his white limousine?

Over the next three days, the lives of the three protagonists – and the memory of Michel – are choreographed masterfully in a routine worthy of the Moulin Rouge. Lives overlap with more chance encounters and missed opportunities as Lola capriciously entertains the advances of Frankie and Roland, while pining for Michel. To add further intrigue, enter the lonely, frustrated widow Madame Desnoyers, and her adolescent daughter Cecile. While Roland befriends the pair in a bookshop, Frankie rather unwisely accompanies 14-year-old Cecile to the fairground.

It seems the characters are destined to play out an endless cycle of uncertain emotions, but time is against them. Amid the social whirl and romance, financial realities kick in for the jobless daydreamer Roland who agrees to a diamond smuggling trip to South Africa for a local barber. Lola is tiring of a life as a low-grade cabaret artiste and, looking for a way to force the issue of her undecided future perhaps, accepts a job in Marseille. Frankie is due to sail back to his homeland shortly, while Madame Desnoyers plans to pursue her disaffected daughter Cecile, who has run away to her uncle in Cherbourg.

And so Demy has designed an enticing dénouement. All the main characters look set to leave the scene, while Michel may return at any time. Will they all go their separate ways? If not, who will leave – or stay – and with whom?


In the hands of a less gifted director, Lola may have become a contrived rom com, but Demy’s delicately balanced piece of theatre is anything but. So confident is his handling of the plot, which he also wrote, that he adds many more carefully woven coincidences than most would dare to conceive, as if deliberately emphasising that this is just a wonderful piece of fantasy within its very real setting. All his characters are likeable, too – Demy realises there is no need for a clichéd bad guy, even within the diamond-smuggling sub-plot, since the inner torments of the characters create sufficient tension on their own.

The multi-layered structure is a fine tribute to the techniques of Demy’s hero, the German actor and filmmaker Max Ophüls, to whom Lola is dedicated on the title screen. And, of course, the choice of name for his lead character pays more than a passing nod to those other feisty femmes of the big screen, Ophüls’s Lola Montes and Lola-Lola from von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel.

A big responsibility for Anouk Aimee in the lead role, then, but she carries it admirably, as she did her roles in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita the year before, 81/2 the year after, and around seventy films since. In Lola, she creates a complex emotional character, bringing real psychological depth to a role that would otherwise have been ripe for a miscue as some kind of hackneyed ‘tart with a heart’.

What’s perhaps even more remarkable is that this film is about as far away from Demy’s original vision as possible. A great lover of musicals, he originally conceived it as a Technicolor extravaganza, like his 1964 ‘pop opera’ Umbrellas Of Cherbourg which followed it. But when advised that if he wanted to make Lola “any time soon” he’d have to seriously scale back his production ideas, Demy turned to New Wave cinematographer Raoul Coutard, lauded for his work on Goddard’s A Bout De Soufflé in 1959.

Coutard’s trademark technique employed hand-held camera work and natural lighting, creating the sense of fast-paced realism that so defines the New Wave genre. In Lola, the expansive backgrounds, coupled with subdued foreground lighting, enhances the claustrophobic atmosphere of the characters’ lives, not least because we’re often unable to see facial expressions in the shadows.

Michael Legrand’s score is wonderfully atmospheric, too – perhaps only the French can mix Beethoven, Bach and Bebop – complementing Demy’s direction and Coutard’s camera work perfectly. Not surprisingly, the budget-minded result was a blessing in disguise, producing two BAFTA nominations.

The success of Lola also inspired two semi-sequels – Umbrellas Of Cherbourg, reprising Roland’s role, and The Model Shop in which Lola has moved to Los Angeles. In the hands of Demy, it’s certainly a story worth telling.


Instantly likeable, with a considerable performance from Anouk Aimee, Lola is another standout work in the careers of Raoul Coutard and Jacques Demy. CS

REVIEW: DVD Release: Give Me Your Hand

Film: Give Me Your Hand
Release date: 7th June 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 80 mins
Director: Pascal Alex-Vincent
Starring: Victor Carril, Alexandre Carril, Samir Harrag
Genre: Drama
Studio: Peccadillo
Format: DVD
Country: France

Previously a winner of the Palme d’Or Short Film at the Cannes Film Festival, Pascal-Alex Vincent’s debut feature film looks at brotherly love and independence.

Billed as a “sensitively told love story”, the film follows the coming-of-age experiences of 18-year old twins Quentin and Antoine (played by identical twins Victor and Alexandre Carril) as they journey from their rural French home to their estranged mother’s funeral in Barcelona. A charming animé-style animation (echoing one of the twin’s illustrative talents in the film) prologues the action, from where we join the twins on their journey.

What follows is an understated road trip, reminiscent of a Gus Van Sant offering perhaps, where dialogue is minimal, actions impulsive and motives unexplained...


As they make their way to Spain, the brothers strive to establish their individual identities, through the people they meet and the experiences they have. Sexual encounters are free and easy and seemingly without consequence, from a bored female petrol station employee who tags along for a while, to two girls who offer them a lift. But the opposing forces of brotherly love and fierce sibling rivalry conspire to obstruct the very individuality the identical brothers yearn for.

A dysfunctional family life is hinted at early in the film, suggesting it is this, as much as genetic similarity, that keeps bringing the brothers back together, with both torn between the quest for independence and the security of a family tie.

A stint as farm labourers en route changes the dynamic of the relationship – and in turn of the film itself. In an apparent gesture of defiance towards his domineering twin, one brother enjoys a poignant sexual encounter with another male labourer. But his new-found sexual freedom is short-lived. Clearly shocked by his twin’s escapade, but lacking the means to express his feelings, the other brother re-asserts his dominance by demanding they leave the farm immediately. Later on, a contemptuous remark to predatory stranger about his brother’s farmyard encounter not only reminds us of the resentment he still harbours, but unwittingly places his beloved twin in great danger.

As rising tensions threaten to tear the twins apart for good, they cool off by splitting up for a while as they approach Spain. We stay with one twin – who has an unexpected sexual encounter with a Good Samaritan – before the brothers re-unite, in a somewhat contrived and sentimental fashion, in Barcelona.

Inspired by many a ‘70s road movie, this is an admirable attempt at the genre but ultimately lacks enough meaningful content to go the distance. Once the common road trip themes – bonding, rivalry, the journey into adulthood – are established early on, there is little else on offer here, except the enticing French countryside. This is a shame because the twins carry their characters very well, with a sympathetic supporting cast. It’s just that they’re not given much to work with, leaving the impression that the brothers’ obvious ability and natural chemistry have been rather wasted.

The director may well have intended a subtle study of teenage personas and sibling relationships. But the characters, within a minimal plot, are not developed anywhere near fully enough to provide a detailed study of anything much, let alone illicit an empathetic response from the viewer. An interesting premise never realises its full potential, and as the credits roll, there’s a distinct air of disappointment.

Vincent’s first offering, Baby Shark, won a Palme d’Or at Cannes for Best Short Film and you can’t help wondering if a revised Give Me Your Hand would have been better in that category, too. Viewers can make up their own minds, as Baby Shark (along with another Vincent short, Final Exams) is a bonus feature on the DVD.


On this evidence, Vincent’s work certainly shows promise. But despite some beautiful camera work and thoughtful portrayals by the leads and supporting cast, this rural road trip doesn’t quite reach its destination. CS

REVIEW: DVD Release: M

Film: M
Release date: 22nd February 2010
Certificate: PG
Running time: 110 mins
Director: Fritz Lang
Starring: Peter Lorre, Ellen Widmann
Genre: Thriller
Studio: Eureka
Format: DVD & Blu-ray
Country: Germany

The Masters of Cinema series delivers the restored director’s cut of Fritz Lang’s much acclaimed monochrome thriller.

The story centres on a series of child murders in a German city that are terrifying the residents and confounding the police.

We join the action after eight children have died. Little Elsie Beckmann, unwittingly accompanying the killer on her way home from school, becomes his ninth victim. The scene of Elsie’s desperate mother calling for her as an empty place at the dinner table comes into view, is truly harrowing.

Lang then opens things out to show how these events are preying on the city. Fear and paranoia grip the general population, as every mother fears her child will be next, neighbour turns on neighbour, and men are attacked for just being near a child in the street. An exhaustive round-the-clock police search of every bush, flophouse and underworld joint in town turns up little except some cigarette butts and a used sweet bag. ‘The people just don’t understand they have a collective responsibility in this,’ says an exasperated police chief.

That collective responsibility arrives from an unexpected source. The underworld bosses, alarmed at the attention the intense police effort is bringing their own activities, determine to catch the killer themselves. In a wry swipe at authority, Lang alternates scenes depicting the meeting of the gangland chiefs, with similar scenes of a police meeting, so that it becomes hard to tell which group are the criminals. At one point, a gesture begun by a gangland boss is completed by the police chief.

Ultimately, it is the collective action of two outcast elements of society – the underworld and the beggars – that will decide whether the killer can be brought to justice…


Lang deftly takes a step back to examine the very notion of justice, of crime and punishment, of collective and individual responsibility for our actions. Since the killer admits he is compelled to act the way he does by his mental state and not out of choice, is this all the more reason to execute him, as the only certain way to prevent him killing again in the future? Or does his compulsion to kill mean he is not responsible for his actions, and therefore should not be punished? ‘Does a man who is sick need a court of law or a doctor?’ as one character puts it. And are all these questions just moot points, when any form of justice will not bring the children back to their mothers, nor make the city feel any more secure that another killer could not do the same again?

The rise of National Socialism provides obvious real-life parallels to the themes Lang employs in the film. The Jewish actor Peter Lorre, who brilliantly portrays the frighteningly ordinary killer Beckert, was to flee Germany soon after filming, while half-Jewish Lang would follow suit two years later, after a somewhat frank meeting with Nazi propaganda chief Goebbels. Yet the popular myth that Lang changed the name of the film (from The Murderers Are Among Us to M) in fear of Nazi reprisals, is untrue. Inspired by the ‘M’ that one of the characters chalks on his hand, Lang altered the name during filming because he thought it would be a more interesting title. In any event, the Nazis banned the film in 1934.

Lang’s inspiration for such groundbreaking work is uncertain. Some claim the story is based on the crimes of serial killer Peter Kürten in the 1920s, but Lang denied this. His interest in police forensics is apparent, however – the intense search for clues and examination of fingerprints and handwriting are amazingly detailed for a science in its infancy at the time.

Whatever his inspiration, Lang produced a true masterpiece with M, ahead of its time. Voted the most important German film of all time by the German Cinema Association, it was not only the nation’s first talkie, but the first about a serial killer, pre-empting the film noir genre to follow. His use of real criminals for the underworld gangs (twenty-four were jailed after filming), and his insistence at throwing the long-suffering Lorre down the cellar steps over a dozen times to get the right shot, are measures few, if any, of Lang’s contemporaries would have taken in pursuit of authenticity. The subject matter was shocking for a 1930s audience and MGM studio boss Irving Thalberg, while declaring its greatness, admitted he would have run a mile from such material.

The black-and-white photography, gloriously restored here in high definition, is the perfect vehicle for Lang’s use of light and shade and lurking shadows, while his sparse use of sound (some scenes are intentionally silent) merely enhances the atmosphere.

You might think you’ve seen this film before. What you’ve probably seen is the heavily edited 1960s release, which not only cut twelve precious minutes, but clumsily patched in additional sound to make, well, rather a mess of things. This ‘Ultimate Edition’ puts all this right, with sharp, high definition transfer of the full 110 minutes, cleaned up digital mono sound and the deliberately unsettling 1:19:1 aspect ratio of the original.


Of all the films he directed, M remained Lang’s favourite. What seems hard to believe now is that he only made it to regain his reputation after the failure of his two previous efforts. One of those was Metropolis. Time has judged Fritz Lang rather more favourably. CS

REVIEW: DVD Release: The Night Of The Sunflowers

Film: The Night Of The Sunflowers
Release date: 27th August 2007
Certificate: 15
Running time: 123 mins
Director: Jorge Sanchez-Cabezudo
Starring: Carmelo Gomez, Celso Bugallo, Judith Diakhate, Manuel Moron, Mariano Alameda
Genre: Crime/Drama/Thriller
Studio: Yume
Format: DVD
Country: Spain/France/Portugal

Drawing on the finest traditions of Spanish cinema, writer-director Jorgé Sanchez-Cabezudo’s award-winning debut uses six overlapping scenarios to play out the events of a single day in rural Spain – and entangle the lives of his characters in a web of violence, betrayal, greed, revenge and injustice.

“Is justice really necessary if no one demands it?” asks the jaded deputy police chief as events unfold unpleasantly in a secluded Spanish village. Events that begin with the discovery of the body of a teenage girl in a field of sunflowers. As a travelling salesman watches news of the death on TV, a potholer, his wife and his assistant are attracted to a remote mountain village to check out a prehistoric cave. The local police chief looks forward to his impending retirement, his son-in-law deputy dreams of a life away from the force and his wife – and unnoticed by anyone, two embittered locals play out a private war of attrition…


With a technique admirably reminiscent of Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Cabezudo weaves the lives of this disparate set of characters together masterfully, through six distinct chapters, playing with the chronology and varied viewpoints of the protagonists to give a shifting version of events. There are echoes of French film noir in the sinister, brooding atmosphere, too (Tell No One springs to mind) while the non-linear, sectioned structure also gives a nod to Hollywood offerings such as Memento, Crash and Babel.

What sets it apart from such influences is Cabezudo’s perceptive view of Spanish society. Had this film been French, we’d have had a decidedly urban setting, somewhere like the murky backstreets of Marseille. A Hollywood alternative, blandly focus-grouped before release, would surely have lacked the courage to pursue its central theme to such a brave and unsettling conclusion. “The film is about the isolation of those living in the Spanish countryside, and the loneliness and violence that city dwellers take with them when they go there,” explains the charismatic director in a Q&A bonus feature on the DVD. “It also reminds us that our actions have consequences – the lives of the characters will never be the same again. And of course that, unlike the movies, real life does not always deliver justice.”

Such a real-life rural setting follows the great tradition of Spanish directors such as Buñuel (Sunflowers is set in the same Las Hurdes region of western Spain that gave its name to his 1932 documentary) or Almodovar, for example, with Penelope Cruz’s character returning to her parent’s village in Volver. It reminds us that, for all the bright city lights and the costa del tourist traps, Spain is still essentially a rural country often at odds with urbanisation.

Sunflowers also continues Spanish cinema’s great theme of complex personal relationships, the simultaneous charm and menace of an environment, and the way these all combine to throw up unexpected, sometimes shocking, outcomes.

It’s these personal relationships that are delivered so magnificently by the cast. Viewers may recognise Celso Bugallo from The Sea Inside, and here he gives a wonderfully understated (and Goya-nominated) performance as the wily police chief uncovering his deputy’s rather unorthodox approach to police work. Vincente Romero’s hapless deputy slides superbly from the quiet confidence of a man with a plan to a haunted, desperate figure watching his ill-gotten gains go up in smoke (literally). The scene of Manuel Moron’s unassuming vacuum cleaner salesman meeting the potholer’s wife transforms the viewer into terrified bystander, due largely to Moron’s masterful calm-before-the-storm approach. And our embittered locals, duelling for supremacy in a private world that others have long since forgotten, give one of the finest portrayals of poignant isolation you’re likely to see on screen.

So what to make of Sunflowers as a whole? It is certainly greater than the sum of its six parts, but Cabezudo is not just to be congratulated for the structure of the film, beautifully balanced as it is with the same character beginning and ending proceedings. It is more the director’s ability to portray such uncomfortable truths about ourselves that most impresses. He deftly steers us from the moral high ground to the swamping thought, in such trying circumstances, that could be us leaving our moral compass in the long grass instead.

Ultimately, this is a beautifully realised morality tale. Every character ends up worse off, yet all have achieved self-preservation by acting immorally. They have kept their own acts hidden by letting the worst act go unpunished – a decision which will haunt them for the rest of their lives. Cabezudo’s courageous decision to resist a Hollywood ending, in favour of such realism, is both unnerving and commendable.


This would be an impressive piece of work for an experienced director. For a debutante, it’s downright magnificent. CS