Movie Review: PIFF Watch: Made in Hungaria

Made in Hungaria is just the kind of upbeat, feel-good, rock and roll filled musical comedy that you would love to watch at nine on a Sunday morning. Hail the festival's selection committee for that.

Inspired by the early life of Hungarian rocker Miklos Fenyo, peppered with dance numbers from the sixties, and set to the background of repressive communist Hungary, the movie relies on the liveliness of its lead cast, the resplendent, sugar-coated comedy - reality has no place in this bright, sunny song and dance genre.

The good thing is, you will not complain, for Made in Hungaria is a roller-coaster ride from start to finish. There is hardly a dull moment and if you love rock and roll, you are welcome to the party. Highly recommended.

PIFF watch: A Police Romance (French)

Un roman policier or A Police Romance has sexual tension, drama and humour flow between its two main tales - one of a senior lady police officer been sexually attracted to a rookie and another of the same police team trying to bring down a mysterious drug dealer. The lady officer's search for love and lust almost threatens to mar the investigation, as her frustration and despair grows.

Saved by its unexpected humour, the film doesn't go deep enough for us to 'be' with the characters. We do get glimpses of their lives, the routine and loneliness that members of the police force have to face, but only on the surface. For Indian audiences, unaccustomed to such kind of cinema, such films are an refreshing experience, as was apparent at the screening. Perspective, as they say, may differ from person to person. Certainly worth a watch for cinema lovers.

PIFF 2010: ID cards, schedule and samosas....

The Pune International Film Festival is back again. Hurrah.
So if you love cinema, or believed until now that there were only Hindi and Hollywood movies movies been made, you were wrong. There are films from Hungary, France, Britain, Poland, Slovenia and from other countries all over the world. Countries, whose names you probably couldn't spell but their directors and actors still come together to make movies that they want to make and not what the market demands. Hail freedom. Art is individual and impartial, hence proved...

This time they have a web cam for the photographs, so the 'Delegate ID Card' is made with much less fuss. Rs 500 is cheap if you can camp at the theatres screening the movies over the coming week (The festival ends on January 14), its Rs 300 for those who can prove they are students.
The same bulk of literature is provided along with the ID card - one with the synopsis of every movie to be shown at the festival, a daily newsletter - this one carrying the inauguration pictures, and the schedule, that is sure to change by the first evening of the festival and it does - almost by tradition.

No complaints about the movies though or the experience - soft comfortable seats you can fall asleep in if you want, nice but expensive food (samosas at INOX are grand, even without sauce or chutney; and the volunteers who bluntly recite the movie synopsis (word-to-word from the same literature we carry) before each screening are forgiven that they do so. Another year, same festival.
As long as the movies are engrossing, and they allow cine buffs like us to view it from opening credits to end credits in peace (including uncensored sex scenes and a new vocabulary of swear words), and let us fulfil the inclination of reading the subtitles aloud sometimes, who's saying anything?
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More about the movies watched in subsequent posts....