The International Film Festival FEST 2013 in Belgrade has offered the greatest and most awarded films to Belgrade audience, from Hollywood productions, European productions and Serbian productions delivered to the audience at the very same level. However I may say this FEST is the saddest festival for us journalists, since we have lost our colleague and friend Dinko Tucaković (R.I.P) Serbian film director and film critic, who died just a day before FEST 2013 actually started.

But in a good spirit, among few most brilliant films from the Hollywood production, as a member of FIPRESCI Association of Serbia and one of the FIPRESCI Jurists at FEST 2013 in Belgrade I would like to mention two European filmmakers from the program, yet not big but enough budget productions that we have truly enjoyed.

Bertolucci in our Hearts 30 Years After

By many film critics one of the less engaged films, directed by well known film director Bernando Bertolucci has finally landed on Italian language, after 30 years. And as we all admitted that Bertolucci is in our hearts, however, it is very hard to translate adolescent problems on screen without being naive or tedious, especially after so long period of absence from the filming. Bertolucci’s film may not be that impressive but it is intriguing enough, engaging popular  icons and music to illustrate the story, even though on the other hand it lacks engagement on other things. Bertolucci in his latest Me and You/Lo e Te focuses on Lorenzo (Jacopo Olmo Antinori), a lonesome teenager who spends time on its own with his half sister Olivia (Tea Falco), while Olivia struggles horror of drug abuse. Bertolucci here wanted to depict dark compulsions via Olivia’s drug abuse ordeal and social awkwardness via Lorenzo’s relationship with his mother, but sends a pretty vague message to the audience. The film has a certain style and no matter of clever use of music classics such as The Cure (Boys Don’t Cry) from 80s or D. Bowie from the 70s (Space Oddity) and especially the use of a reworded Italian version of ‘Space Oddity’ (sung by Bowie) that keeps the dynamics of  the fragile hopes of a teenage boy and his sister’s ordeal with drugs,  the story seems to be undone.

This is certainly different from the director’s earlier heavy-weight works, but yet worth mentioning and seeing.

François Ozon: Dans la maison

Unlike Bertolucci’s lightness, the French film In the House/ Dans la Maison by Francois Ozon makes a  seductive new film, and a strongest work ever since the 2003: but careful in here, you may also enjoy a bit of the Pazzolini in Ozon’s carefully and playfully composed nudity. Another story about teenagers this time delivers  psychologically intriguing drama about the school teacher tangled with suspense full twisted semi/fiction written by a school boy. The fiction and reality are cleverly intermittent the whole time, and it never bores, keeping us under suspense until the twist in the tail seriously untangles out of control scenario.

The screenplay was adapted by Ozon from Spanish playwright  The Boy in the Last Row, written by Juan Mayorga’s  and reveals a wonderful  and delicious teasing reflection on the creative process of writers and nature of fiction. It is the time where the good writer manages to stay in the saddle with its ability to conjure fiction lives by satisfying identities of author and reader at the same time. The film is filled with intense sensuality and subversive humor that is wonderful and shapes Ozon in all his brilliance and creativity that he expressed in this film.

So a literature teacher Gustave Germain (Fabrice Luchini) is mentoring his over imagined student Claude (Ernst Umhauer) in his school work. But the only way to get to the point of Claude is to sneak into the other people’s houses and watch. And even though psychologically intriguing the story developing into an ethical troubling  idea. Germain likes what Claude does, which is what gets Claude over the limit, pushing the boy into an infatuation with the mother of his schoolmate. Claude’s scenario develops into a suburban actual soap opera and revolves around the middle-class family of his school friend Rapha (Bastien Ughetto), who is also a source of envy for Claude. The frame for a suburban fairy tale is built and all the Claude needs is a juicy meat to fill the picture with. But imagination gets out of control for both mentor  and a student, and this naughty and brave insight- provocation „never takes its seriousness too seriously“.  

Ernest Umhauer and Bastien Ughetto are two young French actors who successfully brought up very difficult roles to a light in latest Ozon’s film In the House/ Dans la Maison and that is why they were guests of the International Film Festival FEST 2013. So we asked young Bastien where is the line where reality and fiction begins, "In the house"? „I do not know: the film intertwines reality and fiction. In the scenario, there is a clear distinction what is fiction and what is not in the film, I believe that it is difficult to distinguish it. I'll take one of the examples of fiction: when you kiss your friend, for me, it's fiction. He is the one who writes for a professor, and is therefore in a position to invent things. It is true that in the beginning he knows very well what is going on, but as the film progresses, he described a family in which, even though it is in a certain way is ridiculed, because this is the way he writes. But, little by little, reality fades,“ explained young Bastien Ughetto.

More about European films and Greek film coming soon