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Like last year, my report on Fantasia comes at the heels of the new installment, with a full year to create more distance than is critically necessary, and more than enough to challenge my long-term memory. Given the interminable distance between this writing and my viewing of the films, I will keep to a minimum the usual token plot-synopsis accompaniment. Not only because I deplore that aspect of film writing, but because it is so damn hard to remember plots while immersed in the thick of a film festival; and the plot is usually the first thing I forget in a film anyway, especially the mediocre variety.
Fantasia 2000 kicked off its fifth year with the Montreal premiere of Canadian pseudo arthouse Between the Moon and Montevideo (2000), directed by Attila Bertalan. Bertalan also stars as Tobi, the laconic anti-hero scrap dealer stranded on a purgatorial planet between the Moon and the Earth. Granted Canadian cinema does not have a rich science fiction tradition, but Bertalan’s intentions are not to honor to the conventions of the genre. His relation to the genre is akin to Andrei Tarkovsky’s with Solaris, Stalker and parts of Nostalghia and The Sacrifice. In other words, the genre trappings are used as a template to explore emotional and metaphysical territory. Not that I am placing Bertalan anywhere near Tarkovsky, but there are sporadic moments where it is apparent that Bertalan saw Stalker, and may have been influenced by its sensibility. Though it is fair to say (to Tarkovsky) that Bertalan didn’t get much except some surface similarities: Bertalan’s Stalker-esque concentration camp style cropped hair; his weakness and fragility; the scenes of surveillance trucks chasing him through deserted streets; the derelict art direction. From what I gathered at the post-film opening night party, the film had its vocal detractors: too long (111 minutes), boring, bad acting, bad characterisation, and bad action choreography. Although I could see some of the points, my critical sense is to be more kind and give the film points for at least attempting to do something with the future other than the typical post-apocalyptic, post-Bladerunner aesthetic.
The plot consists of Tobi attempting to escape his depressed planet existence. And I liked the way the...