American Translation (2010/TLA DVD)/The Hidden Face (2011)/Miss Bala (2011)/The Yellow Sea (2010/Fox World DVDs)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C-/C+/C+/C+     Extras: C-/C/C/C     Films: C+/C/C/C+

 

 

Here are four ambitious foreign film thrillers that ay least tired to succeed, even if they did not pull off what they intended.

 

 

First we have the French co-directed thriller American Translation (2010) from Pascal Arnold and Jean-Marc Barr.  I am not a fan of co-directing except in rare cases (like The Coen Brothers) as it usually does not work and this is no exception.  Aside from the point that the intent and title may or may not be bashing the U.S., the story about a young lady named Aurore (Lizzie Brocheré) who has one French parent and the other American, meets Chris (Pierre Perrier) and they quickly become involved.  He starts talking about love at first site and she is not initially as interested, but likes him and is attracted enough to get involved.  However, he has a secret… he has homosexual/bisexual attractions and they make him want to kill young guys he is attracted too.

 

She is not aware of this at first, but soon finds out, then starts to enable him as they get involved more sexually and emotionally.  The film does not shy away from the murder, nudity or sexuality of the matter, though there is more male nudity here than not.  It becomes an uneven film that could have worked with a more singular vision and with less clichés.  The actors are good and talented, but the script is lacking and does not know what it is saying.  This should have been either shorter than its 109 minutes or longer and with more exposition.  Even with a text director’s statement as the only extra, the final cut should speak for itself and does not work out.

 

 

Andi Baiz’s The Hidden Face (2011) is a similarly erotic thriller with another male killer (this time from Spain) who happens to be an orchestra conductor (Quim Gutiérrez) that loves to have sex with various women, so much so that he will kill some of them to continue his ways.  He has a girlfriend (Clara Lago) who starts to suspect and is jealous, but she never suspects how far he will go to keep his lifestyle going, which includes a bizarre secret within his own home.

 

This had possibilities and also does not shy away from sexuality or nudity, but it does not know what to do with the genre it attempts and the ending was also weak.  I liked the actors, but some of the ideas seem tired despite a few twists that work.  If the makers were trying to do some kind of “upscale” thriller, it backfired.  Too bad, because they were onto something.

 

 

Gerardo Naranjo’s Miss Bala (2011) has some of the same issues and a storyline that eventually ruins any possibility of suspension of disbelief as a beautiful mother (Stephanie Sigman) of limited means in Spain who wants to enter a beauty contest and lands up getting kidnapped and caught in a drug, money and power war between the government, corrupt men, the U.S. DEA and drug dealers.  She enters the contest, only to witness armed gunmen invading the rehearsal area, which leads to her kidnapping and bizarre ordeal.

 

Though some aspects are funny and some odd, this eventually does not add up and the conclusion does not make the big statement it might think it is making.  The acting was good here, but about halfway through, this jumps the shark, loses track of itself and never recovers.  Too bad, because I like Sigman and some of this definitely works, including some of the directing.

 

 

That leaves us with Na Hong-Jin’s The Yellow Sea (2010) from Korea, split into sections that tell the story of a man who drives a cab in gambling debt and other trouble who is asked to carry out an assassination to pay off what he owes.  This results in his traveling to several countries, almost getting killed a few times, being chased often, nearly being killed a few times and more.  This has a dark humor to it as well and I liked the look of the film, but the ending and sense of having seen some of this before offsets the film taking us to locales we don’t see much.

 

The production and acting is good and again reinforces my feeling that Korea is one of the world’s hotspots for filmmaking, but it does not all add up despite being as ambitious as any film on this list.  In fairness to the film, this is the shorter 137 minutes version and a 157 version exists that might work better, but as it stands, this cut has mixed results but is still worth a look.  Nice stunt work too.

Note that all three Fox DVDs have the same trailers as extras.

 

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on Translation and 2.35 X 1 image on the Fox DVDs are equally lite in color and definition.  All three Fox releases were shot on 35mm film with Sea in Super 35mm and Bala in the underrated Hawk Scope with Arricam cameras.  I would like to see all on film or Blu-ray, so well see how they compare if and when that comes to pass.  The lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on Translation is a mess with its dialogue and some sound mis-encoded in its left front channel on our copy, but the Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo version is better and does not have that issue.  The three Fox DVDs also have lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes, but they all tend to have weak soundfields wither because of budget issues, because they are dialogue-based or just on the quiet side.  Some surrounds do break out nicely at times, but not often.  Bet all four would sound better in lossless mixes.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo