There were twenty three films in all with many more shorts, all of which are probably worthy of mention, But as I did not see all of these films I have decided to concentrate on nine of the more significant ones.

Next week I will look at Test Pictures the New Zealand feature film which appeared at the festival

Love—Karoly Makk

Hungary

Although this is a tragic film, with a very simple plot and theme, the style of presentation is very refreshing and very original. The film was very realistic in its character portrayal and there was no soul searching or over-dramatised scenes of tragedy. Instead the sorrow was revealed as it often is in real life, by carefully concealing it under the cloak of a sentimental mood along with a kind of forced cheerfulness brilliantly portrayed by the leading actress.

The film was set in Hungary just after the

An old woman is dying in her bed and her daughter-in-law visits her everyday. She feeds the old lady stories about how her son is a famous film director in the United States although he is actually a political prisoner in Hungary. The lies become harder and harder to keep up however and [unclear: eventually] the old lady dies just before her son is released from prison. He comes home and finds that they must share their house with another family. The reunification is a tremendous relief although somehow tragic.

Summer wishes, Winter dreams—Gilbert Cates

USA

The title is an accurate summary of the film. There is a subtle conflict between wishing for a rosy life and dreaming of an unhappy one. The film achieves this by showing the main characters' links with the past.

Rita (Joanne Woodward) wishes her life would be like it was as a child. But her wishes are haunted by dreams of a broken relationship she had with a boy when she was twelve and other unhappy events from her past. The dreams become very depressing and she is unable to accept the fact that she is now middle-aged. She also refuses to accept the fact that her son has left her for good and that he is a homosexual.

Scene from "The Wanderers".

Boesman and Lena

It is only after seeing her husbands reaction to his own past, when the visit is a battleground on which he once lived, fought and killed three men that she is able to see the senselessness of her own anxiety.

Like Love this film was a pleasant reversal of the normal film of this type where the characters dream of happiness but get a rough deal. Rita gets a good deal although she still sees that her summer wishes were not fulfilled but only replaced by winter dreams.

I thoroughly enjoyed this especially well directed and acted film.

Images Robert Altman

Ireland

The director, Robert Altman, said that he hoped the audience would not see this film as a clinical documentary about insanity but rather as a fairytale like all his films including M* A* S* H*, McCabe and Mrs Miller, and Brewster McCloud.

Altman described the ethos behind the film thus:—"The idea is that we are dealing within the framework of someone's imagination' And when you have a dream, arid you walk into a room, the only thing that's happening in that room is what's important to your dream. There are no rubber bands on the floor, no cigarette butts; there's just a gun in the corner or a milk bottle on the table".

Images, in my opinion, was the number one film of the festival. Roughly, it was about a psychotic woman (played by Susannah York) whose imagination was haunted by two old lovers. She had real difficulty in knowing who was real and who wasn't. She would see her husband as someone else. She would see herself in place of husband and so on.

Altman's presentation was far from typical of this type of film. I am usually disgusted with the over-dramatisation of such a film but this one like Love maintained a tremendous control. Also, as in Love, the main character is portrayed as deeply troubled yet the actresses performance is extremely realistic and unpretehtious.

Catherine (the main character) tries to rid herself of the horrible images by killing the people of her dreams. She does this in three classical murder [unclear: scene] [gap — reason: illegible] stabs one man in the neck while he [unclear: is] [gap — reason: illegible]essing; another is shot with a shotgun [unclear: from] within touching distance and another [gap — reason: illegible]cked off the road by a car and [unclear: falls] [gap — reason: illegible] a waterfall. Catherine however, [gap — reason: illegible]ences considerable [unclear: confusion] who she had actually killed. She [unclear: th][gap — reason: illegible] that the person that she was [gap — reason: illegible] over the waterfall was a ghost [unclear: of herself] but it turns out that it was really [unclear: her] husband.

This scene led [unclear: into] appearance of the other ghostly [unclear: ima][gap — reason: illegible] in a pool of blood in the lounge [unclear: a][gap — reason: illegible] end of the film.

Belle—Andre [unclear: Delvau]

Belgium/France

Another intriguing [gap — ]ction from the director of [unclear: Rendevous at[gap — reason: illegible]ay]. Mathieu Gregare is a writer in [unclear: a] German town surrounded by [unclear: marshl] While the tensions at home [unclear: become] increasingly frustrating he finds [unclear: re[gap — reason: illegible] th]regular visits to a beautiful [unclear: young] woman in an isolated house on the [gap — reason: illegible]. Unfortunately she turns out to be [unclear: having an] affair with another man. An [unclear: intri] tragedy follows.

Mathieu gets a large amount of money for himself and Bella [gap — reason: illegible]e the district.

Belle kills the other [unclear: m[gap — reason: illegible]ney]throw him into a water hole. [unclear: Mathieu] confesses to the police but they [unclear: fir [gap — reason: illegible]]ead dog which Belle shot earlier in [unclear: th] and they accept that Mathieu was [unclear: cont] Belle disappears with the money, and [unclear: Mathieu] goes back searching for the right[gap — reason: illegible]hole . He sees a hand under the ice on [gap — reason: illegible]ond and confirms his belief [unclear: that] she really had killed the young man.

This is a film in [unclear: whi][gap — reason: illegible]antasy and reality merge. The [unclear: view] not expected to know one from the [unclear: ot][gap — reason: illegible] Belle is the personification of an [unclear: i] [gap — reason: illegible] the mind of Mathieu Gregoine". [unclear: S.][gap — reason: illegible] how much of the film is fantasy is [unclear: not clear.] This film is an excellent addition [unclear: Rendevous] at Bray and I would [unclear: rate] seconf behind Images at this festival.

The Wanderers—[unclear: Konawa]

Japan

The film had been [unclear: a] [unclear: oed] as a samurai 'Easy Rider'. It centres [unclear: three] wanderers in 19th Century [unclear: Japan]

"The three youths [unclear: t] actually samurai but a special [gap — reason: illegible] known as [unclear: a] toseinin, sons of [unclear: farmers] [unclear: merchants] who could not find [unclear: w] [unclear: d] so roamed from village to village [unclear: a] special code of honour, living by [unclear: g] and petty crime and working for [unclear: ons'] where possible." The patron [unclear: eople] (masters) who put them up for [unclear: e] but during their their stay they are [unclear: ex] to defend the master's interests [unclear: with] [unclear: lives].

Ichikawa managed very well to show the meaninglessness of the 'honour' and heroism in what was a very interesting comedy, drama and documentary all in one.

It showed life amongst these people as a kind of a game. For example, when two groups engaged in a sword fight they would pick an isolated spot, carefully confront each each other and begin. But they would avoid one to one combat because that inevitably led to death so they would turn and run from each other and then turn around and run back into the bunch with swords flying.

Well worth seeing for its educational, artistic and entertainment value.

Love in the Afternoon—Eric Rohmer

France

Sixth in a series of moral tales by Eric Rohmer in which the heroes are always portrayed as chaste and obstinate, moving in a circle through their own smug world from order and stability through passion and chaos, finally returning to their original commitments. In this case the hero is a contented married man ultimately attached to his wife whom he loves He is distracted by the fascinating Chloe. He is given the illusion of choice between her and his wife but he knows in advance, as does the viewer that his first committment will be his final one.

Rohmer's women in contrast are predatory, demanding characters, upsetting the ordered and balanced lives of his heroes. It is significant that the women in this film are all two dimensional characters—due partly to the position they hold in the story and partly to the direction and acting of the female actors. Rohmer's attitude to women has seriously harmed the film. The scripting for the female parts and the directing of the female characters has badly affected all of the female actors' performances.

I came out of this film feeling that it had said nothing and didn't even look good.

Boesman and Lena—Ross Devenish

South Africa

This was one of the most moving films at the festival. It was adapted from a stage play written by the leading actor and most of the story takes place over one night-time, to a certain extent betraying its theatre origins.

It is set in South Africa and while it contains a strong indictment of Apartheid, the main characters, a coloured couple, are more concerned with the day-to-day struggle for existence than with the basic causes of their plight.

The film is virtually a monologue for Lena who is attempting to find some kind of of stability and meaning in her life while at the same time bearing Boesman's anger and pain when he lashes out at her as the only living thing which reacts to him.

Scene from "Love".

Lena spends much of her time trying to reconstruct their past in a recitation of the various places she and Boesman have lived in, always getting the sequence wrong. These placenames assume the importance of a genealogy to her and her attempt to remember them is a search for her identity. When she is confronted with a black man whose position is even worse than theirs he forms the focus of the search in the course of the night. When he dies she and Boesman are forced to move again. However, this time the experience they have been through has subtly changed them. The whole futility of their lives is summed up at the end when Boesman tells Lena the names of the places they have been in chronological order and she says "it doesn't explain anything, does it?"

Celine and Julie go Boating—Jacques Rivette

France

This was the marathon event of the festival—three hours and thirteen minutes long and this was one of my major criticisms: it took too long to say very little.

It has been described as a kind of Alice in Wonderland fantasy and it has undertones of magic and the occult—Julie reads Tarot cards and Celine is a magician. The story concerns two girls who visit an old house on alternate days, emerging several hours after they entered, dazed, with no memory of what has happened to them until they suck a sweet which they have received in the house. The jumbled story Hashes before them of an old fashioned melodrama—each day a different part of the same story. Finally the girls decided to change the ending of the story, escaping from from the house with the victim. The whole film is a kind of wispy nonsensical fairy tale yet it somehow managed to hold its audience right until the end even though someone saw fit to have no intermission.

The Cars that ate Paris—Peter Weir

Australia

By far the best Australian film I have seen. The film started off to boos and hisses from the audience at what looked distinctly like a commercial—sports car, attractive young couple, the flash of a cigarette packet and can of coke on the screen—but then something strange happened—the car crashed over a cliff and lay mangled at the bottom. The hisses quickly turned to admiration as the film got under way. Paris is a dusty little town somewhere in Australia where the inhabitants make their living by causing stray visitors to have stray fatal car accidents and then stripping them and their vehicle of anything of value. Any survivors are turned into "veggies" by the local doctor. The town is run by the Mayor, whose adopted children were saved from a "Tragic car accident" in which their parents were killed. Paris is controlled by "the cars"—the young men of the town in their hotted up cars which seem almost to have personalities of their own. "The cars" get a bit out of hand so the Mayor orders one of the cars to be burnt as a lesson. The whole town then erupts into violence as the cars have their revenge. The young men, although driving the cars seem to lose control and the cars take over destroying everything.

As well as being a strong attack on our automobile society the film displayed a strong sense of ironic comedy. A film well worth seeing.