60th Melbourne International Film Festival

Venues: Various cinemas around Melbourne
Dates: 21 July – 7 August 2011
Website: miff.com.au

There’s already a buzz of excitement in the coffee lounges and other haunts of enthusiastic film lovers, as the program has been released for the 2011 Melbourne International Film Festival. Marking its sixtieth year, and now under the helm of new Artistic Director Michelle Carey, MIFF has earned its place as one of the major cultural events in Melbourne, going from strength to strength. And there’s much to be enthused about as this year’s bumper crop of films have even more scope than usual, with 26 titles directly from Cannes 2011.

Eleven features could be regarded as fairytales; indeed on the opening night we have from Belgium The Fairy (directed by Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy) which also opened the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. Dom (Dominique Abel), a night clerk, has his evening interrupted by the arrival of a woman (Fiona Gordon) claiming to be fairy who will grant three wishes. Paying homage to Chaplin, Keaton and Jacques Tati with a few contemporary twists.

Closing the festival is Nicholas Winding Refn’s Drive, which promises a fast-paced thrill-packed story of a stunt driver (Ryan Gosling) who doubles as a getaway driver by night, involved through his girlfriend (Carey Mulligan) in a final desperate heist.

In Australian Showcase, Fred Schepisi’s The Eye of the Storm makes its world premiere. Having been able to preview this luminous adaption of Patrick White’s novel, I regard it as the best Australian film this year. It’s the story of a dying matriarch (Charlotte Rampling) of a mildly dysfunction family, which includes son Sir Basil (Geoffrey Rush) a foppish actor resting on his laurels, and daughter Dorothy (Judy Davis) an impecunious French Princess, both rushing to her bedside in the hope of being restored to favour. With intelligent direction, witty script, and a superb cast, this is outstanding cinema. A must for fans of Downton Abbey.

Another excellent local production I can highly recommend is Red Dog by director Kriv Stenders (Boxing Day), a heartwarming family movie which should have wide appeal. The story is set in the outback town of Dampier and tells of its beloved dog, who has amazing adventures. Beautifully portrayed and superbly filmed, it surely will be one of the hits of MIFF this year.

Then there’s Jon Hewitt’s X, about two call girls thrown together in a job that goes horribly wrong, and Face to Face, Michael Rymer’s adaption of David Williamson's play, with Vince Colosimo, Sigrid Thornton and Matthew Newton. It’s pleasing one of our pioneer independent filmmakers from the sixties, Giorgio Mangiamele is being celebrated in the festival, with screenings of his work including the award winning Clay, its dreamy quality enhanced by filming at Montsalvat, the picturesque artists’ colony in Eltham.

In the International Panorama, straight from Cannes after winning the Grand Prix (shared with Once Upon A Time In Anatolia) comes The Kid with a Bike, a moving drama by the Dardenne brothers (Lorna's Silence). This Belgian feature tells of a boy determined to contact with his absentee father and recover his bicycle, ignoring signs his dad has deliberately abandoned him.

The Turin Horse, from noted Hungarian director Béla Tarr, is a tragic tale which covers six days in the life of the old horse famously saved from a whipping by Friedrich Nietzsche in 1889. Perhaps in a similar vein to Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar, it gained the Silver Bear for Best Director at this year’s Berlin Film Festival.

High on my wish list is Melancholia, the latest from the unbridled talent of Lars von Trier, about two sisters (Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg) facing a possible Apocalypse. Dunst gained Best Actress at Cannes for her performance. Also in the strong cast are Charlotte Rampling, Kiefer Sutherland and Stellan Skarsgård. No doubt it will be full of dark surprises.

Joshua Marston, director of Maria Full of Grace that tense film about Colombian drug running, gives us The Forgiveness of Blood, which also gained a Silver Bear at Berlin for best script. An Albanian teenager finds himself in the middle of a blood feud between his father and another local, which threatens his life, in this dramatic portrait of longstanding menace in a distant land.

Completely off the wall is Finisterrae, debut director Sergio Caballero’s bizarre spectacle of two Russian ghosts taking a spiritual journey through Spain hunting a great oracle who will offer them the chance of rebirth. From UK we have British comedian Richard Ayoade in his directional debut, with a charming coming-of-age escapade Submarine.

Prime Time, a new segment of MIFF, takes a conciliatory approach to look at works made for television by noted film directors. While at one time TV may have been the poor relation to cinema, but important film makers have turned their attention to that medium including Martin Scorsese, Lars von Trier and David Lynch. So we have the world premiere for the first two episodes of The Slap, an ABC TV production based on Christos Tsiolkas’ novel. Also in this section there’s Raul Ruiz’s sumptuous Mysteries of Lisbon, and Shane Meadow’s This is England ‘86.

Accent on Asia includes Tran Anh Hung’s (the acclaimed director of The Scent of Green Papaya) Norwegian Wood, a haunting tale of love and loss, adapted from the novel by Huruki Murakami. This Sporting life offers Senna, with all the thrills of the Grand Prix Circuit, and Knuckle from Ireland, with all the visceral thrills of bare knuckle boxing.

Documentaries presents a large pool of recent productions, including El Velador, an intriguing study of the rapidly expanding cemetery at the centre of Mexico’s drug wars. Page One: Inside The New York Times, is Andrew Rossi’s timely look over twelve months at the inner workings of one of the world’s leading newspapers, when readership is in decline. On the local front, The Triangle Wars covers the epic battle of residents against large scale development of the St. Kilda foreshore in Melbourne.

Crime Scene highlights films exploring the world’s underbelly - of drugs, murders, kidnappings and robberies. Breaking box office records in Brazil the gutsy thriller Elite Squad: The Enemy Within tells the story of a a prison riot which goes pear shaped as a tough-as-nails militia squad attempts to quells it, with serious consequences. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, from the accomplished Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Three Monkeys), sees a group of men set out to search for a dead body in Anatolia, then find themselves involved in a greater mystery.

I must mention the MIFF 60th Retrospective which features ten significant films from the past six decades. The earliest of these, and a favourite of mine, is cinema poet Jean Cocteau’s superbly imagined fairytale Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bête 1946), one of the most beautiful B&W films ever made.

This is only a tiny sampling of the plethora of films on offer this year in our most prestigious festival. Good luck, enjoy making your selection over a latte (or two) from the 329 titles, representing 52 countries, and including 21 world premieres.

John Bale