The last of the Torchwood radio plays leading up to the tv miniseries first. Written by Phil Ford, this was one to make the shippers of two different relationships happy.

( Torchwood: The Dead Line )

Now, on to more films I've watched at the festival:

Chéri is Stephen Frears' newest movie. Given that this one has a script by Christopher Hampton and also stars Michelle Pfeiffer, the location is France and it's based on a famous French novel, the comparison to their earlier team-up, Dangerous Liasons is inevitable. Though not very illuminating, given that the types of stories the films tell are so very different, as are the sources they're based on. I will say that Michelle Pfeiffer is one of these enviable people who do not only age beautifully but do so in a fashion that makes them look more interesting than they did in their youth. Back in her very young Scarface days, I found her bland. In Dangerous Liasons, as the virtuous Madame Tourvel, she's good but inevitably overshadowed by Glenn Close's magnificent turn as the Marquise de Meurteil, both for acting and role reasons (besieged innocence just isn't as compelling as smart villainy in most cases). Now, though, as Léa, middle-aged courtesan, with the film making a point of exploring those inevitable marks of time in great detail? She's drop-dead gorgeous, immensely compelling, and as the script also gives her wit and versatility, with Michelle Pfeiffer delivering Hampton's one liners in a a thoaty, lazily amused voice, one absolutely believes that this is the most irresistable woman of France in her day. She gets to spar with another former courtesan, Madame Poulecet, played by Kathy Bates, quite a lot, and they make great foils for each other.

The problem of the film, in as much as it has one, is that the title character (Bates' son and Pfeiffer's boytoy, whom she developes genuine feelings for) is the type of self-indulgent sulking adolescent who really needs a trauma to justify the attitude; in lack of same, one feels like yelling "get a job, young man!" quite a lot. Mind you, the film never pretends that he's anything he's not, because the irony of genuine emotion developing between a professional and a thoroughly shallow young man is crucial to the story, but I still couldn't help thinking that most of everyone's problems would be solved immediately if he were forced to actually work for a living instead of sponging of his mother and Léa. (Not that anyone in Dangerous Liasons is working for a living, either, but there is the historical awareness the guillotine is waiting for the lot of them...)

La Nana, directed by Sebastián Silva, is a fabulous Chilean movie somewhere between character study and comedy. The maid of the title is Raquel, who has lived with and worked for the family Valdes for 23 years, and is not keen on them hiring another maid at all, frightening them all of until she meets her match with Lucy who is just too sunny-natured to be intimidated and is the first to see Raquel as her own person. Catalina Saavedra in the title role is terrific; when Raquel's usuall sullen and suspicious expression gives way to a smile, this is a revelation each time. The script also conveys a lot of social background without being sledgehammery about it; Raquel basically has no life beyond the family she works for, and this is partly due to the demanding nature of her job and partly due to her own choices. The Valdes' aren't cruel capitalist exploiters and are clearly fond of her, but it's also undeniable that the "almost one of the family" description will always include the "almost", and that they never question why Raquel does the things she does because they never think of her in a context outside her role in their household. It needs Lucy as an agent of change. A very enjoyable film which makes you curious to see more of everyone involved in its production.

There is always a retrospective for one specific director at the Munich Film Festival, along with the new program. This year, it's for Stephen Frears. Considering that I've seen My Beautiful Laundrette, Dangerous Liasons and even The Queen repeatedly, I went for films of his I hadn't known, which so far meant:

Gumshoe: Frears' first feature film from 1971. Homage/Parody of a film noir with the action set in Liverpool, starring Albert Finney, Frank Finlay, Billie Whitelaw and Carolyn Seymour. (As I had just recently seen the later as a Romulan commander when I rewatched the TNG episode Face of the Enemy, it was a bit eerie to see her as a naive young thing.) It's enjoyable enough, though nothing outstanding; what struck me most was the music because I went from thinking "hang on, this is a clever parody of 1940s Hollywood music" to "wait a minute, I know that theme; that's from Andrew Llyod Webber's musical version of Sunset Boulevard, the title melody, no less. ZOMG, does that mean ALW stole it from this movie?" Then, after the film ended, I saw the credits. One young turk named Andrew Llyod Webber was responsible for the score. (Stealing from yourself is okay.)

High Fidelity: based on a Nick Hornby novel though set in the US, this one proves the role that you can't go wrong if you employ the Cusack siblings in the same movie and give Joan Cusack one scene where she gets to chew John Cusack out in a sisterly fashion. Fun movie, if you're in the mood for one about fanboys and their dating problems, which I luckily was.

The High-Lo Country: Western which was supposed to be Sam Peckinpah's last project and which Stephen Frears took over at Martin Scorsese's request. He got a silver bear at the Berlinale 1999 out of it, and it's very well directed, but unfortunately, enjoying it depends on you finding Woody Harrelson's character, Big Boy, a charming force of nature, whereas I felt he was a smug bully. Seriously, between the constant verbal humiliations and the physical bullying, I was only surprised his brother waited so long, not that what happened did happen, and I all but cheered. (Similarly, my sympathies were with Mona's husband, the much put-upon Les, and when Big Boy started with the boasting about comparing dicks, I had the killing urge myself.) I appreciated Mona wasn't demonized to make the ode to the unbreakable male bond between our narrator Pete (Billy Crudup) and Big Boy stronger, which was tricky to do given the narrative, but Frears pulled it off (not least with some close-ups to Mona's face at crucial moments which gave her more ambiguity than the story did), but as I said - enjoying the film really depends on you liking Big Boy, and I loathed him.

Not from Stephen Frears but an European premiere:

The Bomber, by Paul Cotter. A small road movie about an old Englishman who returns to the German village he had bombed as a pilot during WWII, together with his wife and son. The first feature-length film of this director who was there (together with his proud family), shot with a crew of seven, only three professional actors (and a lot of German extras), and the results are very watchable. The family locked in a car together/ tourists abroad comedy is never cheap, and scenes like the stoic old Alistair finally talking about the night of the bombing, or his wife talking to their son about finally having enough are genuinenly touching.

Last night, the Short Film Festival in Bamberg came to a close. As a member of the jury, I had to watch every single one of the 52 movies presented, which was deeply exhausting but for the most part both fascinating and fun. Until now, I had watched the occasional short movie, of course, mostly before a long one, and never more than one or two in a row. Seeing so many together showed the amazing variety of what was possible to do with this form. Mind you, there was a slight downside to this, because while we had three awards to give, they were for best, silver and bronze, so to speak, not for categories. And comparing a comedic short film to a drama or tragedy is as difficult as in the long forms.

The length varied between three or four minutes to thirty. Mind you, none of us went for the 30-minutes contributions. They felt like missing the point of the genre, and like they would have been better off being developed into a feature length movie. On the other hand, there were contributions between eight or 14 minutes which managed to tell a complex story far better than many a feature has done. There was a lot of animation, comparatively speaking, and one of my favourites was a satire on the Deutsche Bahn, our railway system, presenting three conductors who were fired and tried to stage a train roberry in revenge, only to be foiled by their inability to not behave like conductors once they were on the train (for example, one of them saw a passenger putting his bare feet on the seat opposite him and just had to act). Two thirds were not animated films, though, and the acting was by and large excellent, with only a very few films betraying the fact their directors had to use buddies instead of "real" actors. Stylistically, they moved between bare minimalism - for example, two films showed nothing but a single actor in front of a white background - to incredibly elaborate and detailed settings. The film which won second place and is in fact on the short list for the Oscars (we'll find out next week whether it gets nominated), Spielzeugland, by contrast, is set during the Third Reich and everything from the hair style of the women to the type of suitcases used fits; it easily is up to comparison with big budget costume epics in this regard. And, incidentally, in fourteen minutes pulls off a complex story that works with two different timelines being intercut. It also takes on different types of lies, responsibilities and trusts its actors to sell the crucial moments of decision, which have almost no dialogue, just one very short sentence spoken.

The short film crowned as best, though, was another one: Dunkelrot, which in twelve minutes tells the story of a couple at the start of their 60s. The wife, Hannah, has Alzheimer, and her husband, Erich, then finds out something about their past he hadn't been aware of. What made this outstanding was both the sensitive acting and the script, which never made Hannah just into the object, the victim, but got across a sense of her strong personality even while she was falling apart, and managed to give us an impression of all the history of this couple, the complexity of their marriage, and made us believe in the decision Erich makes at the end. The sense of love and hope there doesn't feel fake or sentimental but earned.

A film I wish we'd been able to give an extra award: Sommersonntag, ten minutes long, which was the one that made me cry. About a father and son, with the father having to make a horrible choice between saving his son or saving 232 passengers on a train; the moment of decision, the actor's face - Axel Prahl delivering a fantastic performance - was incredibly intense and still haunts me. The only reason why after much discussion this one wasn't among the final three was that there was a final monologue which we felt was somewhat unnecessary; Dunkelrot and Spielzeugland didn't make that mistake and as I said trusted their actors and the power of the visuals more.

There were also several interesting documentaries, especially one about a Polish workers living near an old mine which has been closed years ago, who still illegaly scrape off what coal is left because of poverty and cold. There are no safety measures, nothing, and it was depressing but real, especially since there was the awareness it wouldn't change any time soon. On the lighter side, there was a documentary about a shephard which was fun to watch but a bit pointless, with an hilarious animated credit sequence.

Oddest occurance during the festival: when a Russian-German co production was presented, and the German producer, invited to talk about the film afterwards, used the opportunity to say he hates it now that that his romantic professional relationship with the director had fallen apart and how thoroughly disappointing he found the film now. What a jerk, thought we, and if the film had been better we'd have been tempted to give it an award just because, but alas, it was not.

Weirdest reality disconnect: when one of the journalists present wondered why there were no music vids, and whether the art died out. I said they were alive and well on YouTube but restrained myself from saying something about articles in the New Yorker about Luminosity's vids and the whole fannish art form. Clearly, he was not a geek. (Though many of the other people present were; also, the festival-visiting audience was mostly young, between 20 and 30, with only about 20% older than 40 or 50.)

My two fellow jurors never had been in Bamberg before - one was from Berlin, and as opposed to most people who moved there really from Berlin, he was born there, and became a film critic and radio moderator, and the other originally hailed from East Germany as well but like myself lives in Munich now - so I gave them a tour. Now, my hometown isn't called the "Franconian Rome" for nothing; we have seven hills, and you bet we climbed several of them in pursuit of beautiful churches and great views. The guys were somewhat exhausted after that, for some reason... Seriously, though, that was necessary because otherwise we were locked in a cinema for at least six hours in a row every day.