Offering what looks like its most attractive programme in years, the Murphys 42nd Cork Film Festival opens on a feel-good note on Sunday week, October 12th, with Shall We Dance?, a Japanese comedy which has been one of the arthouse hits of the year in the US. Directed by Masayuki Suo, it features Koji Yakusho as a married man whose life is transformed when he impulsively joins a ballroom dancing class.
It is showing at Cork Opera House, as are three of the best American movies I've seen this year. John Woo's spectacular, adrenalin-pumping action movie, Face/Off, operates from the clever, brilliantly sustained proposition of a psychotic bomber (Nicolas Cage) and an FBI agent (John Travolta) exchanging faces. The relentless excitement of the movie had me reeling from the cinema.
Set over four months, beginning at Christmas 1952, Curtis Hanson's complex, intelligent and dynamic thriller based on James Ellroy's novel, LA Confidential, is a taut saga of duplicity, criminal ambitions and multiple murders. Directed with vibrant panache, it features a fine, astutely chosen cast: Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, James Cromwell, Danny DeVito, Kim Basinger and David Strathairn.
And the closing film on October 19th, Ang Lee's The Ice Storm, is already shaping up as a strong contender for next spring's Oscars. Set in New Canaan, Connecticut over Thanksgiving weekend in November 1973, Ang Lee's adult drama is a thoughtful and sensitive exploration of disillusionment dawning on post-1960s suburban liberals at the time of the Watergate crisis. Heading an excellent cast are Kevin Kline, Joan Allen and Sigourney Weaver, while writer James Schamus won the best screenplay award at Cannes for the film.
Another highly commendable movie I've already seen is writer-director Richard Kwietniowski's impeccable screen treatment of Gilbert Adair's post-modern novel, Love And Death On Long Island. Smart, sophisticated and seductive cinema, it features John Hurt in a sublime performance as a reclusive English writer who becomes utterly besotted by an American teen heart-throb played by Jason Priestley.
Among the most enticing new American movies on the Opera House programme is In The Company Of Men, Neil Labute's highly praised directing debut and reputedly a revealing reflection on masculinity as it deals with two twenty-something businessmen disenchanted with their progress at work and in personal realtionships. The US line-up at Cork also will include James Mangold's Copland with Sylvester Stallone, Robert De Niro and Ray Liotta; the new Richard Linklater movie, SubUrbia, based on Eric Bogosian's play; and Kevin Smith's picture of a man falling in love with a lesbian in Chasing Amy.
From France comes a trio of promising propositions: Un Air De Famille, a family drama from Cedric Klapisch, director of the delightful When The Cat's Away; Gilles Mimouni's comedy-thriller, L'Appartement, a major arthouse hit in London at present; and Alain Berliner's Ma Vie En Rose, in which a small boy dreams of being a girl.
The international programme in the Opera House also features Brian Gilbert's Wilde, starring Stephen Fry as Oscar; Bille August's movie of Smilla's Feeling For Snow, with Gabriel Byrne and Julia Ormond; Bill Bennett's well-regarded Australian thriller, Kiss Or Kill; Carine Adler's British drama, Under The Skin; and at 6 p.m. on closing day, a surprise movie. Some Opera House presentations which I have seen and would not recommend include Sally Potter's disappointingly self-indulgent The Tango Lesson, Wim Wenders's handsome but pretentious The End Of Violence, and Jim McBride's shallow and simplistic The Informant, set around the time of the supergrass trials of the mid-1980s in Northern Ireland.
New Irish cinema features prominently on the programme at the Kino in Cork, including Tom Collins's Bogwoman and Graham Jones's How To Cheat In The Leaving Certificate, both of which I reported on from Galway Film Fleadh. Having its world premiere in Cork is All Souls' Day, the first feature film from award-winning Irish documentarist Alan Gilsenan. Inspired by The Ballad Of Reading Gaol, it deals with the murder of a young woman and her mother's visit to her imprisoned boyfriend to find out exactly what happened. The cast features Declan Conlon, Eva Birtwistle, Jayne Snow, Tom Hickey and Michael McElhatton.
Mark Staunton follows his witty short film, The End, with another picture of the complicated relationships of Irish twenty somethings in Separation Anxiety. Four new films in the RTE/Irish Film Board initiative, Short Cuts, will be unveiled at Cork: David Caffrey's Bolt, Peter McKenna's Racing Homer, Paul Duane's My Dinner With Oswald and Declan Recks's Quando. And four further programmes of new and recent Irish short films will be shown at Kino and Triskel Arts Centre during the festival.
Notable international productions on the Kino programme include David Cronenberg's controversial Crash (Canada), Alexandr Sokurov's Mother And Son (Russia), Pretty Village Pretty Flame (Serbia), Between Marx And A Naked Woman (Ecuador), The Girl With Brains In Her Feet (Britain), and the documentary, Wild Bill: Hollywood Maverick, on William Wellman.
Another formidable American film-maker is the subject of the documentary, Howard Hawks: American Pioneer, one of the highlights of the Triskel programme during the festival, as is the world premiere of the documentary, The McCourts Of Limerick, directed by Conor McCourt, whose uncle, Frank, wrote the award-winning Angela's Ashes. It deals with the four surviving children of Angela and Malachy McCourt - Frank, Malachy, Alphie and Michael - and features footage of Angela herself, smiling and singing with her sons.
The substantial documentary line-up will include the German-US production, Blue-Eyed in which Bertram Verhaag confronts unconscious behaviour of racism and prejudice; Mac Liammoir's Children, in which Gary Sheehan deals with the experiences of immigrants in Ireland; and John O'Hagan's affectionate picture of small-town suburban America in Wonderland. The subject of Cork's Focus On programme at Triskel this year is the truly radical avant-garde Canadian film-maker, Mike Hoolboom, who will be attending the festival. Special events will include seminars, workshops, book launches, silent movies with piano accompaniment, a tribute programme to Orson Welles, a cinema and dance celebration, and an expanded education programme.
Advance booking and full programme information for the Cork Film Festival is now available at 9 Half Moon Street, Cork. Tel: (021) 279266.
