|
|
The Piazza Grande/courtesy of Locarno Film Festival |
Monday August 7, 2005, the Piazza Grande ( Big Square--see photos www.pardo.ch) of
Locarno was filled with over 6,000 people. Not an unusual crowd
since
all open air screenings at the 58 years old Locarno International Film Festival
set along the shores of Lago Maggiore (Major Lake), in the Italian corner of
Switzerland, are regularly appealing from 5,000 to over 8,000 people every single night,
rain or shine. (If it's raining people can choose to walk to the big Fevi Theatre, but many
other stay there sitting under umbrellas or under the archs covering the square's right
side and full of restaurants' tables seeing the screen.) Its
26 x 14 meters
large screen is one of the biggest in the world, and its Dolby
sound system for sure
the best you can get in any 'alfresco' show. Every spectator
gets two gifts at the
entrance, the Festival's Newsletter informing in various languages about next day's programs (12,000 copies in print) and a ballot paper with a pen; at the exit they have
to vote the "Audience Award", which will include 30,000 Swiss Francs for the winner
movie.
|
The show starts exactly when the nearby belltower's clock--a Swiss "invention", as
Orson Welles said in The Third Man--sounds 9:30 as a videocamera projects its hands
on the screen. A usually blonde and unexperienced showgirl welcomes the large audience and introduces the evening's filmmakers. For Mah Nakorn-Citizen Dog, the director Wisit Sasanatieng, and his two stars, Mahasmut Bunyaraksh and
Sanftong
Ket-u-Tong. The presenter fondly remembers that the audience |
already know Wisit since they have enjoyed his former Fah Talai Jone (aka Tears of the Black Tiger), which had been widely distributed around Europe. Then Wisit himself says hello in Thai language asking his actor Mahasmut, who's also a well known singer, to sing something for the audience. So Mahasmut gets a guitar and for a few minutes enchants us with an old, romantic Beatles' tune. The audience gives him an enthusiastic ovation. The movie starts. |
|
Its continuous flow of bizarre images, unusual angles, surreal situations makes us flying.
Time almost stops since boredom--an illness so common at festivals, Locarno included--is totally unallowed by Citizen Dog's unexpected turns and delightfully jolly characters, plus teddybears too. Moreover, I was well aware like most journalists
there that the movie had been shot digitally but its gorgeous look and glamourous
colours made us totally forget that technical solution which still is a handicap even
for much bigger-budget dv movies. The humanist message transmitted by Wisit in
such an understated way seems also far away from most of the hopeless movies
made nowadays. For these and many other reasons too long to explain here, Citizen Dog's uplifting ending deserved one of the longest and most cheerful
applauses in my memory at Locarno. Flowing out of Piazza Grande at 11:30 our
hearts felt warmer and better than two hours before.
Lorenzo Codelli is an Italy-based critic, and a regular contributor to Positif and other periodicals including Variety.
All rights reserved
|