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Europe on Screen ends with delightful treats

Love is All You NeedToday marks the end of the Europe on Screen film festival’s 2014 edition, a festival that strived to introduce European films to nine cities in Indonesia

Makbul Mubarak (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Sun, May 11, 2014

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Europe on Screen ends with delightful treats

Love is All You Need

Today marks the end of the Europe on Screen film festival'€™s 2014 edition, a festival that strived to introduce European films to nine cities in Indonesia.

The last day sees the screening of several films for the Jakarta public, including two films that provide a wide range of cinematic tastes '€” The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas, a film festival dear since its premier in 2013 and Swedish auteur Susanne Bier'€™s Love is All You Need. Bier is known for her Oscar-winning film In a Better World (2010), which featured a strong emotional bond between a father and his child.

Hailing from Greece, The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas is a dark satire on the nation'€™s financial and mental collapse after the 2008 global economic crisis. The film plays is a subtle allegory of the actual situation and uncertain future.

Not as arty as its title suggests, this engagingly offbeat Eurodrama introduces a famous Greek TV anchorman who fakes his own kidnapping in a desperate bid to salvage his ailing career.

The opening sequences shows Antonis (Christos Stergioglou) arriving at a remote resort hotel on the Greek coast stowed in the trunk of his boss'€™s car. It soon transpires that he has faked his own abduction in a bid to boost his falling ratings and depleted finances.

Closed for the winter, the remote resort hotel becomes his fortress of solitude while his boss and colleagues frame his sensational abduction into a nationwide news story.

The film echoes Stanley Kubrick'€™s The Shining in the sense that both have winter of solitude happenings in far-flung uninhabited chambers. But stronger than that, The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas steps one of its feet on the playground of the internationally famous Greek Weird Waves of the recent years.

The Greek Weird Waves is a term that refers to a bundle of films made to portray Greece'€™s current situation in weird cinematic gestures and deadpan humor. Yorghos Lantimos'€™s Oscar-nomiated Dogtooth (2009) is a famous example.

These films indicate the deadlock in portraying the current condition in a conventionally straightforward way for the problems might be too complex to be told in such a way. Instead, a meandering, weird and highly allegorical approach is chosen.

The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas is the promising debut feature by 35-year-old Elina Psykou, which has been proved by the film'€™s numerous inclusion in film festival worldwide.

The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas.
The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas.
The other notable film at the festival today is Love is All You Need, a Scandinavian rom-com starring Pierce Brosnan, who plays Philip, a lemon-seller who has ascended into the upper echelons of the Copenhagen fruit and vegetable wholesale racket. Philip is a widower and a workaholic.

The film opens with the hairdresser Ida, who recently finished breast cancer treatment, returning home to find her husband cheating on her. At the same time, her daughter is getting married in an Italian villa with a lemon orchard and on the way there she runs into Philip, the groom'€™s father.

The first cliché that the film plays on is a classic for romantic comedies: The strong intuition, if not faith, that '€œit is love'€. Susanne Bier is taking a high risk with his conspicuous detour into romantic comedy in Love is All You need, letting her usual-meticulously detailed drama be washed away by the camera lingersing on sunsets, full moons and misty coves.

The film'€™s main power lies on the character Ida, performed outstandingly believable and nuanced by Bier'€™s routine collaborator Trine Dyrholm. Watch, for example, for her almost imperceptible '€” but wonderfully telling '€” recoil when her cheating husband tries to explain away his infidelity by telling her how hard her illness has been on him. In her hands, Ida is one of those stoic, relentlessly hopeful characters you just want to hug.

Brosnan'€™s character '€” the wealthy single father of the groom '€” appears to be a likely candidate to deliver that hug. Unfortunately for Ida, he'€™s too caught up in the lingering grief of the death of his wife to allow himself any real happiness.

While in itself a delightful play on rom-com cliché, Love is All You Need shows the creative mind of the director Susanne Bier restrained by the tight convention of the romantic comedy genre.

Love is all you Need is a treat for those looking for a nostalgic meeting-on-screen with Brosnan, and of course of the fans of romantic comedy.

'€” Photos courtesy of Europe on Screen

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