The ninth European Union Film Festival continues Friday, March 17, through Thursday, March 30, at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, 312-846-2800. Tickets are $9, $7 for students, and $5 for Film Center members. Following are films screening through Thursday, March 23; for a full festival schedule visit www.chicagoreader.com.
This quirky, ambling 2004 comedy–the feature debut of writer-director Borkur Gunnarsson–examines the shifting relationships among two young Prague couples and the people they encounter on a rocky vacation in the country. Caught in the romantic confusion are an ironic filmmaker, his increasingly dissatisfied girlfriend, her Icelandic ex-boyfriend (who also happens to be the filmmaker’s producer), and the ex’s naive, philosophically inclined teenage brother. Nothing new here, but the intelligently understated acting and the drily humorous contrast between the beautiful rural landscape and the characters’ petty yet intense squabbles make the film fresh. In Czech with subtitles. (Albert Williams) a Sat 3/18, 7:15 PM, and Tue 3/21, 8 PM
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After a fading rock star dies of a drug overdose in Canada, his strung-out widow (Maggie Cheung) leaves their little boy with his paternal grandfather (Nick Nolte), cleans up during a six-month prison term, then tries to reassemble her life in Paris. Cheung and director Olivier Assayas previously collaborated on Irma Vep (before they married and divorced); this 2004 French feature marks their creative reunion, but it’s a disappointment. Weak, self-absorbed, ill-tempered, and devoid of glamour even in her casual bisexuality, the protagonist is a systematic inversion of the hot star Cheung played in the earlier movie, and despite her skilled acting (which was honored at Cannes), she can’t make the woman very interesting in her own right–the most compelling performance here is Nolte’s. With Jeanne Balibar, Don McKellar, and Beatrice Dalle. In English and subtitled French. 111 min. (JR) a Sat 3/18, 7 PM
Fallen
A huge hit in its native Germany, Dani Levy’s 2004 screwball comedy owes a clear debt to manic charades like Some Like It Hot and The Producers that pushed the limits of political correctness. Henry Hubchen is dynamic as the title character, a secular Jew whose glory days as an East German sportscaster ended with reunification; now a pool shark, he’s estranged from his gentile wife and in hock to his banker son. His mother dies, leaving her fortune to him and his remote Orthodox brother on the condition that they reconcile during the mourning period of shivah, so Zucker and his wife scramble to pass themselves off as devout. In German with subtitles. 90 min. (AG) a Sun 3/19, 3 PM
Like Chef, Like God
A theater director unearths a play by an obscure Icelandic author and begins rehearsals in Janez Burger’s 2004 Slovenian film. Searching for his own style, he’s an emotional manipulator onstage and off, and as the lives of the troupe devolve into a loopy Balkan chaos of allegations and betrayals, he’s also revealed to be a liar–he wrote the play. Some comic moments skewer literary pretentiousness, but then the play’s staged, and the brief section that ends the film is spectacularly stylized, reminding us that art can be salvaged from life’s wreckage. In Slovenian with subtitles. 100 min. (FC) a Fri 3/17, 7:45 PM, and Mon 3/20, 6:15 PM
