The seventh annual European Union Film Festival continues Friday through Thursday, March 19 through 25, at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State. Tickets are $9, $5 for Film Center members; for more information call 312-846-2800. All films will be screened in 35-millimeter, and films marked with an * are highly recommended.
- Presence
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Hoping for one last score, a world-weary criminal (Yannis Angelakas) enlists three women–a hooker, a drunk, and a hostile ex-lover–to defraud a violent drug gang in this sluggish 2002 Greek noir by Nikos Nikolaidis. Unfortunately, any momentum generated as the morose antihero navigates an underworld of strip clubs and shady characters is vitiated by dreary folk-pop interludes that sound like Leonard Cohen on lithium. References to other movies, like a prominently displayed poster for White Heat, telegraph the climax of this nihilistic exercise, and the misogyny endemic to noir is particularly nasty here, which makes the leading man’s inexplicable gallantry at the end ring hollow. In Greek with subtitles. 120 min. (Andrea Gronvall) (8:15)
Dogville
Aidan Quinn is duly pensive and charismatic as a veteran of the Spanish civil war who’s hired to teach at one of Ireland’s notorious reform schools and finds it nearly as violent, thanks to its sadistic prefect (Iain Glen). Except for the outbursts of graphic violence and sexual molestation, this 2003 Irish feature is muted by Aisling Walsh’s bland direction; only Quinn’s bonding with the wayward boys, which leads to terrible consequences, accounts for the sense of tragedy and uplift. 93 min. (Joshua Katzman) (6:15)
Twentynine Palms
- I Always Wanted to Be a Saint
