V –0 08 - Rehoboth Beach Film Society

A Secret is a well-crafted film involving illicit passion,
jealousy, and the loss of loved ones to the scourge of the
Holocaust. As a child in the ‘50s, François could never live up
to the expectations of his robust, gymnast father. Frail and
sickly, he was sure that somehow he didn’t belong, that there
was something amiss with his otherwise picture-perfect
family. To confound him even more, he has an imaginary
brother who shares his world. Imaginary, yes, but seemingly
real and alive. When a neighbor tells François the secret
behind his family, the film transports us back to months right
before the outbreak of the war. It was a moment in which
France’s Jewish community was divided between those who
believed that a German invasion would spell disaster and
those who believed their “Frenchness” would protect them.
Veit Helmer’s inventive, allegorical comedy introduces us to
Absurdistan, a once-beautiful, now utterly desolate, land. In
a water-starved village, two childhood sweethearts, Aya and
Temelko, await the date (foretold by Aya’s grandmother) that
a perfect celestial alignment will bless their first night of love.
An intrepid inventor, Temelko plans to repair the aging water
pipe, but the apathetic older men scoff at his designs. The
women, fed up with the men’s inaction, take matters into their
own hands and declare a strike. No water, no sex. The gender
lines are drawn, reinforced with barbed wire, and our young
lovers find themselves on opposite sides of a fast-escalating
feud. The imprint of Helmer’s imagination is ubiquitous. He
directs like a kid tearing through his toy chest. Mechanically
obsessed, Helmer filters life through outlandish, homespun
a secret
(un secret)
Grand Prix of the Americas Prize at the Montréal
World Film Festival
WED NOV 5 7:40 PM-9:25 PM
THuRS NOV 6 5:25 PM-7:20 PM
FRI NOV 7 3:45 PM-5:40 PM
SuN NOV 9 12:40 PM-2:30 PM
*This film is part of the War sidebar
Adapting Philippe Grimbert’s autobiographical novel (soon to
be published in the u.S.), Claude Miller employs a complex,
yet easily followed flashback structure that also features
sequences set in 1985 to show how the tides of history and
family memory continue to affect the present. A Secret is
Claude Miller’s 13th feature and caps a career that began in
the 1970’s with such milestone films as The Best Way to Walk
and This Sweet Sickness.
[Dir. claude Miller, 2007, France, 35mm, 105 mins.
in French with English subtitles]
Website: www.unsecret-lefilm.com/
absurdIstan
Best Film Bavarian Film Awards
THuRS NOV 6 2:25 PM- 4:00 PM
SPONSORED BY: NANCY LEGGOE
FRI NOV 7 1:50 PM-3:25 PM
SAT NOV 8 10:15 AM-11:50 AM
contraptions. If Aya’s first night of love is to elevate her soul, in
Helmer’s world, the flight comes courtesy of a rickety scrapheap
rocket atop rusty barrels of kerosene. Brilliantly satirical
(here are villagers who build an elaborate aqueduct, and
then collectively forget how it works), ever witty, and dipping
self-reflexively into a myriad of cinematic styles, Absurdistan
contains the signature theatricality of Helmer’s many shorts
and earlier feature, Tuvalu. It’s a philosophic parable that
glides weightlessly along (no doubt suspended by pulleys and
ropes hooked to a donkey). Welcome to Absurdistan.
[Dir. Viet helmer, Azerbaijan, 2007, 35mm, 88 mins.
in Russian with English subtitles]
25
feaTure films