France’s A Prophet: Kicks off the EH!U fest

See, now this is nice. Barely two months since the end of TIFF, and some of that and other festivals’ most-lauded entries are already available for free. This is no delete bin, however: the European Film Festival — Eh!U as it somewhat shamelessly nicknames itself — selected a layer of cinematic cream and presents it at a per-film ticket cost of €0. (That’s $0 for those mathematicians keeping track.) All you have to do is line up to get a seat — though, given that the Cannes Palme d’Or winner, Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon (Austria), Cannes Grand Prix winner, A Prophet (France), and Cannes Un Certain Regard winner, Police, Adjective (Romania), are among the screenings, you might want to get there early. (Tickets are given away at the box office or, in case of lineups, handed out directly to those in line.)

Eh!U’s total of 23 movies covers pretty much every nook of the continent — from Latvia (Little Robbers) to Cyprus (The Last Homecoming) to Slovenia (Rooster’s  Breakfast) to Portugal (The Lovebirds) to Ireland (A Film With Me In It) — except, sadly, the Faroe Islands. Other titles include opening selection The Karamazovs, the Dostoevsky update by Czech director Petr Zelenka, Italian crowd-pleaser A Whole Life Ahead, and the rather anticipated (by us) hipster-terrorist history The Baader Meinhof Complex.

Prost/santé/sláinte/cin cin/skål/terviseks... etc:

A Prophet ****
Dir Jacques Audiard w/ Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup. 150 min. Nov 20, 8:30pm, Royal.

This taut prison drama certainly proves that few filmmakers can match Jacques Audiard’s mastery of the crime flick. Though the more mystical elements of this tale — about a young prison inmate who invites the ire of his fellow French Arabs when he aligns with the Corsican gangsters who run the joint — are better suited to artier Audiard efforts such as The Beat That My Heart Skipped, A Prophet is admirably ruthless about achieving its own ends.


The White Ribbon ****
Dir Michael Haneke w/ Christian Friedel, Leonie Benesch. 144 min. Dec 2, 6pm, Royal.

Everybody’s favourite Austrian misanthrope finally landed a Palme d’Or for this period drama about a German town on the eve of WWI that is plagued by dark portents of the cruelties to come. A nagging air of familiarity informs the proceedings — what’s left for Haneke to tell us about the evils men do? — but the impeccable quality of the performances and stern beauty of the cinematography point to the director’s mastery of his medium. He also allows for some wry humour and even (shock!) a note of humanity.


Police, Adjective *****
Dir Corneliu Porumboiu w/ Dragos Bucur, Vlad Ivanov. 113 min. Nov 28, 8:30pm, Royal.

Pretty much the only film at Cannes that everyone loved (give it up for Romania once again!), Corneliu Porumboiu’s masterly follow-up to 12:08 East of Bucharest may also be the most riveting movie to ever hinge on matters of semantics. The dry and meticulous depiction of a young cop’s investigation of a small-time pot dealer (complete with a rendering of police bureaucracy and drudgery that betters even The Wire) leads to a climactic discussion that is frequently hilarious yet ultimately as serious as cancer. You’ll never look at a dictionary the same way again.