|
 |
|
| |
"Noir and White", a report on the festival by Maxim Jakubowski |
|
|
| |
|
| 05/03/2011 |
|
|
|
Noir in Fest, the Italian-based international film and literary mystery festival, has now been going for 20 years. Initially based in Cattolica on the Adriatic and then making a brief sojourn in Viareggio on the Mediterranean (before most of the town hall dignitaries were impeached for fraud, thus cutting off one of the festival’s principal sponsorship strands…this is Italy after all…), the festival moved from summer to winter and to the picturesque ski resort of Courmayeur, in Val d’Aosta in the shadow of Mont Blanc, and has thrived here ever since. Run by Giorgio Gosetti and Marina Fabbri, the festival is both an exciting event and a most convivial place where filmmakers and writers over the past two decades have met, become friends, and enjoyed not just films and conversation but an ever-flowing series of gourmet meals and latter night bar marathons. Without being elitist about it, it’s the equivalent to a certain extent of Bouchercon but without the fans, an occasion for professionals to meet and light a much creative spark.
I have attended all the years of the festival since being invited at the outset as the then British publisher of Jim Thompson, on whom the event focused that initial year, and was thereafter made the British delegate of the festival and supplied films, authors, and recommendations ever since, in addition to using the event as a platform for the launch of my own books when translated into Italian. I was even parachuted onto the film jury in 2002, whereby my fellow jurors elected me to the presidency of said jury in my absence one morning when I was late for breakfast. So consider me rather prejudiced when it comes to singing the praises of Noir in Fest.
The networking and opportunities for lasting friendships have proven invaluable, as all the delegates spend much time together between screenings and panels. A veritable who’s who of the genre has passed through the Courmayeur bars and cafés: Quentin Tarantino, Peter Weller, Val Kilmer, Mike Hodges, Abbas Kiarostami, Lucas Belvaux, James B. Harris all spring to mind as memorable presences here, and on the writing front everyone from John Grisham and Elmore Leonard to George Pelecanos, Ian Rankin, Ellroy, John Le Carré, etc, as well as every single Italian crime writer in our genre and countless major European writers.
On the literary front, the festival presents the Raymond Chandler award for life achievement, and this year’s worthy recipient is Michael Connelly, who arrives later today.
Participants so far have included Iain Pears, here for the Italian release of STONE’S FALL, revealing all about his own history with Italy, where he once worked as a metal worker for Fiat when young before becoming the Vatican correspondent for Reuters, and whose books are often set in Rome and Venice. A tall, avuncular, and laconic and professorial presence, Pears’ quiet Britishness was in stark contrast with the ebullience of bestselling Italian thriller author Giorgio Faletti, whose books sell in hundreds of thousands in Italy and Europe. Also a comic actor and a singer with a handful of albums to his credit, Faletti is something of a national celebrity and until recently was famous for the fact that his blockbusters were all set outside his homeland, I KILL being a serial killer novel that takes places in Monte Carlo, and later novels were situated in Arizona and New York. His visit to Courmayeur was for the launch of his new novel, APPUNTI DI UN VENDITORE DI DONNE (The Stories of a Seller of Women), which is his first actually set in Italy, in his native Milan in the ’60s. The book, published just a few weeks ago, is already at number one and sales have reached 300,000 copies. New to me was the Danish author Christian Mork, who was here for his novel DARLING JIM. Mork, who lives in Brooklyn and has worked for many years in film and journalism in America, actually now writes in English and translates his books back into Danish. Also in town for Noir in Fest so far are French veteran crime writer and illustrator Tito Topin, who is also on this year’s film jury, and German author Wulf Dorn.
One of the highlights of the bookish side of Noir in Fest is the annual Giorgio Scerbanenco award, given every year to the best Italian crime novel of the year. It was presented to the young Milanese author Elisabetta Bucciarelli for her fifth novel, TI VOGLIO CREDERE (I Want to Believe in You). Also on the shortlist were novels by Gian Maura Costa, Maurizio de Giovanni, Gianluca Morozzi (who has had one book previously translated into English on the Bitter Lemon Press list), and Marilu Oliva. Bucciarelli’s win, announced on the main cinema stage prior to the 10 p.m. festival screening, proved a highly popular choice, and her acceptance of the trophy (from the theatrical Giorgio Faletti) most humble (she had been shortlisted on a previous occasion but not won). Her reputation has been growing fast here and in Europe, and maybe this will be the book that sees her translated and made available to a larger audience. With her leonine mane of dark hair, slim figure, and glasses, she is also ready-made for the promotional circuit!
On the film front, the official competition selection has so far had its ups and downs. I flew in too late to catch A SOMEWHAT GENTLE MAN by Norwegian director Hans Peter Moland, but it generated a god buzz and features a great performance by Stellan Skarsgard as a criminal whose ordinary appearance belies a somewhat different temperament. The definitions of “noir” are often intriguingly challenged here, and the next film was actually a vampire thriller: WE ARE THE NIGHT, from German Helmet Dennis Gansel, in which three female vampires create havoc in Berlin when their immortal leader falls in love with a local punkette and determines to convert her both physically and romantically. The film is joyously over the top if never quite believable, but the female quartet is a wonderful blend of horror and humor in equal parts. The opening nighty’s midnight film was the Italian premiere of the new controversial version of Jim Thompson’s THE KILLER INSIDE ME, with British director Michael Winterbottom in attendance.
At the press conference the following day, Michael emphasized how much he tried not just to retain the book’s atmosphere but transferred whole chunks of the novel’s dialogues into the film and explained how the film came about as a result of an abortive project based on a David Goodis novel. The Turkish film KOSMOS and the French film SIMON WERNER HAS DISAPPEARED, a debut by Fabrice Gobert, also found fans and supporters.
Every child in Courmayeur was queuing in the snow outside for eons for the European premiere screening of the new Narnia movie, Michael Apted’s adaptation of THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER on Wednesday, with standing room only and dirty looks from the kids in our direction, as we privileged delegates were ushered in ahead of them and handed our 3-D glasses! Again not quite a noir movie, but if any of us happy few had been found stabbed and buried under 12 feet of snow the next day, all the suspects would have been underage!
I was much taken by the stylized and creepy Korean film, THE HOUSEMAID, by Im Sang-soo, a clichéd melodrama which transcended its subject with taste and a measured crescendo of violence until the blazing and swinging finale (no spoilers here). And the third day of the festival ended formally—that is, until the obligator meals and unending conversations at the bars and cafés—with the Swedish terrorist comedy SOUND OF NOISE by Ola Simonsson and Johannes Stjarne Nilsson, a tale of six drummers and urban anarchy which would have been hilarious for 15 minutes but could not sustain any thread of interest over nearly two hours. And if I told you more here about the actual plot, you just wouldn’t understand, but then one day later even I don’t quite fathom what the film was about, even if the occasional animation was indeed very funny. Some things you just have to experience!
Halfway through the festival, there is still much to look forward to, and next time around I will also write about the TV and documentary strands in addition to the movies and writers on display, and the final awards. For now, another local restaurant beckons; it’s a hard life, the life of crime!
Throughout the opening three days of the Courmayeur Noir in Fest, snow plows were busy clearing the streets of the picture postcard ski resort, creating mini mountains and snow walls of up to 10 ft high on either side of the narrow roads, which the delegates had to maneuver their way through between visits to the Palanoir complex where the films were shown and the rustic, wooden Jardin de l’Ange which served as a showcase for the literary events and press conferences. The icy roads occasioned many a spectacular slip and fall, and also a broken wrist for Stefania, the head of the Hospitality service. A heavy price to pay for the spectacular beauty of the festival’s Alpine landscapes…
The Jardin de l’Ange was packed for the lengthy conversation between Michael Connelly, this year’s winner of the Raymond Chandler Award, and leading Italian crime writer Carlo Lucarelli. It turned out to be a fascinating encounter in which the dialogue flowed, despite the inevitable simultaneous translation delays. Many of Mike’s fascinating answers to the obligatory questions were of course no surprise for English-speakers in the audience but Lucarelli did manage to extract some great nuggets, such as the admission that the character of Harry Bosch was in fact inspired by a combination of the real life story of James Ellroy and Sjowall & Wahloo’s Martin Beck. Not coincidentally, Maj Sjowall was also in town, hearty despite her age and here for the reissue of THE LOCKED ROOM in Italy. Sadly, she no longer writes these says, but was accessible, puckish and most alert to recent developments in crime fiction (she is definitely not a fan of the Stieg Larsson books, for example…). One of the curious highlights of the Connelly event was a bizarre intervention from the floor from the irrepressible Italian author Andrea G. Pinketts, one of the more colorful (for want of another word…) personalities of the local crime scene, who insisted on thanking Michael for having assisted him in once seducing a young woman on a beach, as she had observed him reading THE POET, and, from the title of Mike’s novel, had assumed Andrea was a particularly sensitive man as a result! We also learned that Mike had recently been able to view a rough cut of the forthcoming movie of THE LINCOLN LAWYER, with Matthew McConnaughey as Mickey Haller, and is genuinely proud of the adaptation; the film will be released in spring 2011. On the Friday evening, Connelly was presented with the award, a replica of the legendary Brasher Doubloon, prior to the evening’s screening of the film adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s NEVER LET ME GO, directed by Mark Romanek and featuring Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley and Andrew Garfield. Although barely on the borderlines of noir, this is a measured and moving film with a quiet beauty and sadness (and which I’d seen at the opening of the London Film Festival in October) and I was shocked later in the week to see it ignored by the jury.
Other new authors to make the Courmayeur pilgrimage during the second half of the festival included fellow Mulholland blogger Roger Ellory (who confessed to a criminal record, for poaching when he was only seventeen amongst other fascinating disclosures about his writing), Norwegian ex-Justice Minister Anne Holt, French author Gerard de Cortanze, Italian duo Paolo di Reda and Flavia Ermetes who appear to offer an Italian equivalent to the Dan Brown mega-conspiracy blockbusters and Andrea Villani, and British film expert Alex Ballinger, author of THE ROUGH GUIDE TO FILM NOIR. In the spirit of Courmayeur, many new friendships and invaluable contacts were carved between the vino, the pasta and the Xmas bedecked restaurants and bars. Most of the newcomers took the time off for the traditional three cable car trek to the very top of Mont Blanc, which I passed on this time around, having done it some years back with Icelandic author Arnaldur Indridason and Italian movie directors the Manetti Bros; an unforgettable experience, which Roger Ellory has already documented in an expansive photo album on his Facebook page, for those of you on his friends list!
The film competition continued, with screenings of J. Blakeson’s gripping three-hander THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ALICE CREED, which won the festival’s audience award. The young English director was present (with wife and 4 month-old baby…) and was genuinely delighted at the reception of his debut movie. Daniel Leconte, the producer of the controversial CARLOS, a six hour saga of the Carlos the Jackal story, directed by Olivier Assayas, was also on hand to introduce the screenings over three separate days. Italian thriller AT THE END OF THE DAY by Cosimo Alemà only got a tepid response, and Spanish psycho-shocker JULIA’S EYES by Guillem Morales, produced by Guillermo del Toro, got a mixed response, a variation on the blind woman in peril which, for me, accumulated too many clichés, evil looks and reds herrings along the way, but was a definite crowd pleaser. The surprise winner of the Leone Nero turned out to be the Argentinian film CARANCHO, by Paolo Trapero, featuring his wife Martina Gusman. The tale of a crooked insurance adjuster who is involved in fixing bogus car accidents and personal injuries and falls in love with a nurse, this is a good, and somewhat depressing film, with much power, but I found its relentless miserabilism a tad manipulative. Stellan Skarsgard won the best actor award for his part in the opening day film I’d missed.
Noir in Fest is not just the main film competition and the literary events and encounters. In addition to these, there were a series of documentaries on a variety of criminal subjects, retrospectives including a new print of Hitchcock’s PSYCHO and a screening of the festival’s first ever winner 20 years ago, Stephen Gyllenhal’s PARIS TROUT, a photography exhibition at the local museum of portraits of the many crime writers who have been to Courmayeur over the years as well as an important TV strand, which featured two Patricia Cornwell adaptations, THE FRONT and AT RISK, both directed by Tom McLoughlin, the BBC’ s LUTHER, with Idris Elba as the unorthodox London cop created by Neil Cross and many Italian super-hero shows of the 1960s and beyond.
One particularly enterprising screening was of I NOIR D’ARTISTA, a series of six short films, most no longer than 5 minutes each, produced for Italian TV, looking at the dark side of famous creators (Bacon, Modigliani, Chet Baker, William Burroughs, Verlaine, Rimbaud, etc…) each one written by a leading Italian crime author, including Simona Vinci, Giancarlo de Cataldo, this year’s Scerbanenco winner Elisabeta Bucciarelli, Alessandro Perissinotto and Marcello Fois. And, last but not least, the Mini Noir festival, with a whole week of screenings, workshops, previews and events for a younger audience.
I keep on coming back to Courmayeur year after year and intend to continue doing so. Not only is it one of the friendliest festivals around, but it somehow always manages to get the balance right between formal events and fostering a continuous dialogue between writers, critics, film makers and fans of the noir genre. I hope many of you will consider coming in future years. After all, not only are all events free, but you get much wine, gourmet food, laughter and a week in the mountains just a couple of weeks before Xmas in magical surroundings. Come on, you know it makes sense…
(from www.mulhollandbooks.com)
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
