Confessions and Certified Copy

A few words on a couple of films Unseen has already encountered but whiich are just hitting theaters.

I’m getting lots of questions about the Japanese film Confessions which is playing in the UK. The film screened last year as part of the New York Asian Film Festival, which is where I caught up with it. (I'm still not sure what the US release situation is)

At the time I first saw it I thought it was very good but overly slick feel bad film about a teacher who’s efforts to get revenge on the students who killed her baby and how that lays waste to everyone and everything around her and the students responsible. Since the release on DVD in Asia in January I’ve seen it two more times and all I can say is that my opinion had grown better. The film is mean, nasty and ugly, not in gory way but in the way the psychic violence radiates out.(It makes my skin crawl) Right now Mondocurry is working on a review, and we’ll be bringing it to you at a later date, but for now, just know that if you like your films filled with, dread, uneasiness and poison see this film. (And to those comparing it Battle Royale: you’re dead wrong. That film is about kids trying to be the last kid standing on an island, and is not a revenge drama. The films aren't alike- and Confessions is so much better...)

In other news Certified Copy begins its march through theaters and on pay per view thanks to IFC. I saw the film last year at the New York Film Festival but I wasn’t sure what all the shouting was about. The film stars Juliette Bin0che as a woman who travels with a man into the Italian country side. What transpires over the course of the film is that the one long conversation is actually several at the beginning and the end of the relationship. It’s the sort of thing that would work beautifully on stage but in the harsh reality of film it kind of falls apart. It’s good (but not great) film with two incredible performances undone by the need to disjoint the time frame to make things more mysterious. Currently out on DVD elsewhere in the world, the film is in theaters here in the US and is due to be popping up on one of the IFC/Sundance pay per view services. It’s definitely worth a look see, but not much more of my time on a write up.