Berlinale Special 2006 - Reviews and reports.

Berlin International Film Festival 2006

Quick Time Video Downloads of presentations from Richard Rorty, Richard Goldstone, Quentin Skinner, Wim Wenders, Will Hutton, Tariq Ramadan, Amos Elon and many others...
OPENING FILM
SNOW CAKE

Dir: Marc Evans
Snow cake is an excellent film and made a refreshing choice as opening film for the Berlinale, which in recent years has provided a showcase for Hollywoood product. Angela Pell's screenplay, like the proverbial well made play, gives the three leading actors, Alan Rickman, Sigourney Weaver and Carrie-Anne Moss clear and witty dialogue, that pleasureably disconcerts the viewer, principally because the storyline is fairly simple, but the context isn't. Reticent Alex (Rickman) arrives at the home of an autistic woman , Linda, (Weaver) with very bad news, her daughter has been killed when his car crashed and flirts with one of the neighbours, Maggie (Moss), before going on his way. The context is quite extraordinary, since the bereaved mother is autistic and her reactions are bemusing and pragmatic, her dialogue terse and her behaviour obsessive.

Sigourney Weaver plays the autist with great skill, adopting poorly co-ordinated, yet very precise movements and using facial expressions that completely mask any signs of emotional response to the death, yet spring from exuberant happyness and delight at the world to contemplative withdrawal in an immediate display of the woman's moods. Rickman's character Alex is also withdrawn, but for different reasons, he is traumatised as a result of the crash and events from his past. This contrast is the key to the drama, as one figure has no use for sentiment and the other is trapped by his emotions.

The Canadian setting, a village in late winter, somewhere in the middle of nowhere provides Welsh director Marc Evans with a sense of physical isolation in a beautiful, but unforgiving landscape, which enhances what is effectively a 'kammerspiel' for the three main characters. It was something of a relief to discover that Snow cake is a moving and intelligent drama and not an Alien meets Matrix makeover.