IFFK 2008 – Day 1 –Afternoon

I watched Flower in the Pocket, a Malaysian film directed by Liew Tat. The film is a decent appetizer. Initially, I had planned to watch Girl Cut in Two by Claude Chabrol. But a couple of scathing reviews about the film on Rotten Tomatoes made me rethink. But it turned out to be a good decision.

Flower in the Pocket portrays the life of two motherless kids, negligently brought up by a workaholic father. It is not a laugh riot as some of the reviews indicated. It is a kind of an informal and ultra-realistic movie. It indeed has some funny and utterly humorous sequences. One can surely call it Chaplinesque. Particularly a sequence towards the end, where the father learns swimming on the floor and later teaching the children how to swim on the playground, is a classic example of tragic-comedy.

Also, there are other scenes that are genuinely comic, especially the mischief of the children. But amidst all this, the film conveys an underlining sorrow of the motherless children, their wayward life, and their strange relationship with the father. Another feature of the film is the sparingly used background music, which sounds like computer generated. The camera functions more like a television camera. There are no spectacular long shots and stunning close-ups. But the whole film is more than the sum of its parts. Not a great movie. But a nice one.

And the signature film was not booed at. I think it is unlikely to be. But you never know. It went in a jiffy. It is almost in the tradition of the good old signature films. Perhaps those who clapped for the signature film last year may boo at this one.

On the aside, there was some off-screen comedy as well. Two people who sat nearby actually slept midway through the film. After some time one of them suddenly started to snore loudly – perhaps to make up for the lack of background music in the movie. The other sleeping person, who had comfortably rested his head on my shoulder, suddenly woke up by the loud snoring.

Next I am going to watch Juju Factory, in Kairali. From the reviews on the Internet, it looks like a good movie.