Festival pickings for the discerning

Telecom 30th Hamilton International Film Festival, August 16 to September 2, at Rialto.

Thirty years is a long time. When this festival first arrived in Hamilton, it consisted of just over half a dozen titles, mostly European, some genuinely good, a couple of what we used to call mackintosh movies - the restricted censorship ones for men in raincoats and a sense of seeing the forbidden - and some simply odd. None were likely to see general release, and the early festivals really were our first opportunities to experience film outside the Hollywood monopoly.

After a few years, the festival became more commercial, and a favourite game was to guess what titles would return to our screens. During the long and fruitful reign of Bill Gosden as festival director, some wonderfully original cinema appeared on our screens, first-rate films from almost every film making country on the globe.

Gosden is on sabbatical this year, and it shows. There are some great titles, but there is also a sense of films being chosen because they are trendy, rather than for their excellence as cinema.

There are 30 non-documentary features. Of the 30, 18 are rated for offensive language, 15 for violence, nine for sex, and four for drugs, while only eight have had appearances at other festivals. There are no New Zealand features in the fiction section. Seven are from the Commonwealth, six from Europe, three from Asia and five from the US, and the remainder are co-productions.

There are 18 documentaries, some of which, like the unauthorised doco on Michael Moore, look very entertaining. Others, like the two dealing with corrupt priests, one a Californian paedophile in Deliver Us From Evil and the other a defrocked evangelistic pastor in Jesus Camp, are very current explorations. There is a four-hour homage to Andy Warhol, a delightful exploration of the Helvetica type face, a superb New Zealand entry on Wanganui painter Edith Collier, and what promises to be a fascinating piece by New Zealand film maker Helen Smyth on Cuban activist Nestor Baguet.

But it is the features which matter most, and they are a mixed bag.– The Russian vampire movie Day Watch looks great, as does Hong Kong Johnny To's thriller Exiled. There is the inevitable nod towards the music industry, with Control, about Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, looking the most interesting.

But the real stuff, the highlights for cinemagoers who like originality and wit, must be in the French film Dialogue avec mon Jardinier/Conversations with my Gardener, and the British film Venus, which opens the festival.

Conversations features the great Daniel Auteuil as a landscape painter who goes back to the house of his childhood and hires a gardener to restore the magnificent kitchen garden. The gardener turns out to be an old school friend, and the film is an ongoing, witty, funny, sometimes poignant reflection on life and age.

Venus is a vehicle for one of British cinema's immortals, the rakish, lined and everlasting Peter O'Toole. He plays an actor in his 70s, still working, but in need of emotional energy. It arrives in the form of his best friend's young and beautiful grand-niece, and their commentary on the world is as funny as it is generous.

Then there is the original and entertaining Romulus, My Father, one of the new breed of accomplished Australian films. It entertains with the story of a European immigrant who takes up residence in the outback and has to look after his son, through whose eyes the story is told.

There is wit, and humour, a goldmine of perceptive observation, and some great entertainment.

The titles one remembers for years, and sees again when they return, are not so apparent this year, an odd omission for the 30th anniversary, but it still offers real rewards for the selective festival addict.

- © Fairfax NZ News