So recently I saw this film, Universalove, at CIMMfest. Here’s the promo:
In Marseille, Julie’s heart beats wildly when thinking of Rashid. In Tokyo, Satoshi dreams about his adored one who works in a soup restaurant but who doesn’t even know who he is. In Rio de Janeiro, Maria falls for a Telenovela star. In Belgrade, a couple fight for their very existence. In Brooklyn, the thoughts of a black taxi driver lead him into the emotional abyss of jealous love. In Luxembourg, a well-settled gentleman finally comes around to showing his true feelings for a young man…
Love happens. Love takes place. Strange love. True love. Crazy love. Desperate love. Everywhere. Every moment.
Screened with a live band, Naked Lunch, instead of a soundtrack, the film gets two thumbs up.
First thumb. The filmmakers set aside traditional linear, narrative film with an unfolding plot, developing characters, a rise in action to climax and resolution in favor of intertwining several unrelated stories of love. Each story is poetic more than expository. We get little history, little dialogue, and little insight into the psychology of the characters. The narrative thread is carried by sequences of richly evocative moments and scenes that stir our own emotions and experience. The narrative ambiguity is engaging. As you begin to resonate with the emotions in the film, you begin to make sense of the narrative gaps and contextual blanks with your own life experience, and as the characters creep into you, you creep into the film. Even the most sophisticated films are 100 minute slices of life offered on a silver-screen platter, tied up more or less neatly with some bow of an ending. First and foremost, narrative imposes order. Films spin life. This film, in contrast, provokes, prods and arouses emotions leaving you at its end none the wiser but acutely and beautifully aware; it leaves you as director to project your own story, rife with ambiguity and uncertainty, rich with feeling. I want more of this. I’m tired of seeing the world endlessly reconstructed under a filmmaker’s totalitarian artistic direction. Give me the pieces. Let me put it together for myself.
Thumb two. The live band is not as gimmicky as it might seem. We have become so accustomed to music enhancing and conveying emotion in film that we see it as integral and natural. But our lives are not accompanied by a soundtrack. And in some ways music in film is a cheap contrivance, a sort of cloying, multi-media tug at our heartstrings, regardless of how good the music may be. By removing it from the film and placing it live on a stage, the relationship between the music and the movie changes. When the band begins performing, roles reverse and the images are now accompanying the music rather than the other way around. There’s something more honest about this as we as viewers become conscious of two overlapping art forms and how each affect our emotions and shape our experience of the other. Again, this allows us to actively construct an experience from the elements of the performance rather than passively observe the unified vision of the filmmaker.
Really. I want more of this.
