The first full week of the 2018 AFI EU Film Showcase featured some frothier confections than the opening weekend, which I covered previously. More comedies and romances took center stage, but if some hit a little less hard than the selections from the opening weekend, many were no less interesting to watch.

Love Revisited (Oude Liefde) – by Nicole van Kilsdonk (Netherlands)

Van Kilsdonk’s gentle romantic comedy rides primarily on the charm of its two leads, Beppie Melisson and Gene Bervoets. They play Fransje and Fer, a divorced couple who are brought back together by the sudden death of their adult son. Both actors do a good job of playing the tug of war between some surface hatred and some inner attraction that continually places them in awkward situations. The movie is very knowing about the dynamics of a broken home, and where it comes closest to flirting with something really special is when Fransje and Fer’s two disparate daughters are onscreen, working out the issues they had growing up in a home of bickering parents. Tess (Halina Reijn), the bitter, cynical divorcee, and Hilde (Eva van der Gucht), the promiscuous glass-is-half-full plus-sized sprite, provide the movie with many of its funniest and most poignant moments. But they are not in enough of it, and no other characters beyond the two leads really register. Spending time with Fransje and Fer is engaging enough, but there have been stronger comedies about romance past 60.

I Do Not Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians – by Radu Jude (Romania)

One of the more divisive titles in this year’s festival, Jude’s movie is getting great praise from critics and a lot of bewildered grimaces from moviegoers. It is a play within a film which opens with a very long piece of archival television news about Romanian liberation, and then introduces the actress Ioana Iacob, who will be playing the heroine in the ensuing movie. Her character, Mariana Marin (not the poet, she tells us several times), is tasked with staging a tribute to Romanian soldiers and their role in the early days of WWII. Mariana, who has done extensive research on the topic, intends to present the brutal facts about Romania’s eagerness to exterminate Jews, but she is pressured by Movila (Alexandru Dabija), a local official to tone down her vision. Iacob is excellent as the high-strung passionate Mariana, and the movie builds to an undeniable potent climax, which ever so slightly recalls the burning of Perekhody in the great Come and See (albeit with a far more comic overlay.) But this is not a user-friendly movie, containing very long passages of argument over historical complexities which constantly interrupt any sense of narrative momentum. Very little happens during its 140 minute runtime, and much of the imagery is flat, cramped and confusing. This was a choice on Jude’s part. His cinematographer, Marius Panduru, revealed his artistic eye in the beautiful Aferim for the same director. Here, despite the occasional magically executed tracking shot, there just isn’t very much to look at. A lot to hear, especially if you like debating recent Romanian history, but until the climax, not very much to see.

The Waldheim Waltz by Ruth Beckerman (Austria)

It is rare that a country selects a documentary as its entry in the Foreign Language Oscar race, but that is what Austria did. It isn’t hard to see why. Beckerman has been making documentaries for 40 years, many of them focused on contemporary issues. In The Waldheim Waltz she looks back to Austria’s controversial presidential election of 1986, when it seemed like each day brought new evidence of the presumptive winner Kurt Waldheim’s shady past as a soldier in the German army during WWII. Beckerman takes what might have been an interesting historical footnote and gives it great immediacy by gradually broadening the story of what Waldheim may or may not have known about the deportation of Jews from Salonika into a discussion of war, guilt, and the very nature of history. She clearly documents the strain of virulent antisemitism that seemed quite strong some 40 years after the end of the war. And she does it all with historical clarity and wry wit, relying on archival footage and her own firsthand accounts of the protests and counter-protests that surrounded the election. Beckerman at times uses footage she shot, and at other times uses footage in which she appears, and that sense of really “being there” is crucial to the movie’s energy. American filmgoers might gaze longingly at the scenes featuring former US congressmen Stephen Solarz and Tom Lantos who demonstrate passion, intelligence, and a belief in truth during their brief appearances hearing the testimony of Waldheim’s son before their congressional committee. It is one of the many ways Beckerman’s story from decades ago speaks to the world of 2018.

Distances (Las Distancias) by Elena Trape (Spain)

Trape’s second feature seems inspired by Asghar Farhadi’s About Elly, or if you prefer an American antecedent, Lawrence Kasdan’s The Big Chill. A group of university friends from Barcelona pay a surprise visit to one of their group who has relocated to Berlin. But Comas (Miki Esparbe) does not appear at all happy to see them, and he promptly vanishes. This turns the weekend dark, as secrets are revealed and friendships unravel. Were it not for movies like About Elly, Distances might come off better, but as it is, Trape sheds less insight on fewer characters with less humor or drama. It is by no means a total failure, and Alexandra Jimenez in the central role of Olivia, the leader of the friends’ group, does quite well. But those powerful moments of insight or humor come too infrequently and by the end, it is surprising how little we actually learn about the relatively small cast of characters. Linguistic sociologists may have fun hearing the interplay of Spanish, Catalan, German, and English which the characters use to try to communicate. But that communication is often stifled, leaving a vaguely unsatisfying taste.

Take It or Leave It (Vota Voi Jata) by Liina Trishkina (Estonia)

Estonia has put forth a small but impressive series of films in the past decade. Last year’s Oscar submission, November, shared the surrealistic aesthetic of art house darling Veiko Ounpuu. But this year’s Oscar submission is very much grounded in reality. Reimo Sagor plays Erik, an on-again, off-again construction worker who spends most of his free time drinking and getting into fights. That all changes when a former girlfriend tells him he has a baby daughter. Director Liina Trishkina traces Erik’s journey in adult responsibility through a series of low-key sequences, and she scores points by not softening Erik’s rough-hewn character. But the movie suffers from a serious narrative ellipsis at the midpoint, which essentially undercuts the slow build of the initial premise and turns the entire thing into a different movie – one that has been already seen by anyone with access to the Lifetime Channel. Had November’s director Rainer Sarnet been in charge of Take It or Leave It, I could have believed that odd leap forward at the midpoint serves as a sly homage to Monty Python’s brilliant “Cycling Tour” episode, in which a cleverly placed “scene missing” card papers over the expected climax. But I’m pretty sure that wasn’t intended here.

Homo Novus by Anna Viduleja (Latvia)

Viduleja’s feature debut is a charming lightweight romp through the 1930’s Riga art scene, when Latvia was experiencing its brief flirtation with freedom. Igors Selegovskis is Juris, an eager young painter from the provinces who arrives by train carrying his easel and his clothes and a boatload of ambitious dreams. He encounters every manner of artist – the rich dilletante, the popular brute, the performance artist who speaks in a language that only she can seem to understand. Then there are the dealers, and the promoters, and the patrons. And of course, the beautiful love interest. The story is negligible, but Viduleja throws a lot of cinematic tricks at the audience, including song and dance and slapstick and plenty of music. Then end result isn’t terribly memorable, but it makes for a nice diversion. And as you might expect in a movie centered on the art world, Janis Eglitis’ cinematography is beautiful to behold.

A Faithful Man by Louis Garrel (France)

Louis Garrel, the son of French director Phillipe Garrel, has been acting since he was a teenager. He began his directing career a few years back with Two Friends. His sophomore effort is a wry, witty romantic comedy about a man who loses love and then regains it. Garrel plays Abel, a good looking and mostly clueless young man whose romantic life is turned upside down at the outset when his lover Marianne (Played by Garrel’s real life wife Laetitia Casta) chooses his best friend over him. We jump ahead ten years when Abel gets another chance. Complicating things are the presences of Marianne’s young son Joseph, a clever boy who sees the entire world as one enormous true crime story, and Marianne’s sister-in-law Eve, who has always had a huge crush on Abel. Lily-Rose Depp plays Eve, and it is easy to predict stardom for Johnny’s daughter. Abel’s deadpan running commentary gives way to the other characters, who also get to narrate their own portions of the story, and Garrel as director, shows enough restraint to keep the whole thing from becoming overly precious. Much like Homo Novus, this is slight comedy, but one which pays off on its relatively short runtime.

Dogman by Matteo Garrone (Italy)

Marcello Fonte took home an acting award at Cannes for his portrayal of Marcello, a small, friendly man who runs a dog-grooming business in his Italian town, and takes his daughter on diving adventures whenever he saves up enough money for the trip. But his simple life is forever being upended by local bully Simone, who terrorizes the town when he is not snorting coke and roaring up and down the roads on his motorcycle. It is easy to get sucked into Marcello’s gentle good nature and the series of cute dogs that come and go throughout his day. But this is by no means a lightweight comedy. It grows darker and darker as the story progresses and Simone’s hold on Marcello becomes more and more deadly. By the climax, we are bordering on surreal horror as Marcello is forced to fight back against the unfair oppression that threatens his peaceful life. Fonte walks a very fine line with Marcello, who could have been too precious a character. He combines naivete and toughness, ingenuity and stupidity, and a poignant love for anything entrusted into his care that makes him one of the year’s more unforgettable characters.

The coming week features Oscar submissions from Finland (Euthanizer) and Croatia (The Eighth Commissioner) as well as Portugal’s Diamantino, which won the Critics Week Grand Prize at Cannes this year. Check back next week for more.

Check out the rest of our series on the 2018 AFI EU Film Showcase:

• AFI 2018 European Union Film Showcase: Part One
• AFI 2018 European Union Film Showcase: Part Three
• AFI 2018 European Union Film Showcase: Part Four