Boulghourjian’s ‘Tramontane’ an echt-Lebanese drama – Director at Cannes urges Duterte to ‘change’ Philippines

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LOS ANGELES, May 19, (Agencies): A young blind musician in Lebanon learns hard truths about his origins in Vatche Boulghourjian’s respectable, at times moving feature debut, “Tramontane”. Though not without first film flaws, this echt-Lebanese drama intriguingly delves into the innumerable layers of deceit and willful amnesia that originated in the civil war but continue to straightjacket the nation’s psyche. The protagonist’s literal journey of discovery through Lebanon’s rural areas becomes a quest for an unattainable truth, with the director-writer ultimately leaning towards the pragmatic “we must move on” form of resolution. Visuals are too dark, and there’s an over-reliance on shooting scenes through metal grates and doorways, but the lead actor holds attention and the film will make a solid festival selection.

His band will be playing in Europe, so Rabih (Barakat Jabbour) needs to get a passport. At the passport office he’s told his i.d. card is fake, and since his birth certificate was lost during the war (he’s born in 1989, one year before the conflict’s official end), he needs to get one from the hospital where he was born. His mother Samar (Julia Kassar) doesn’t like that idea and tells Rabih to let her brother Hisham (Toufic Barakat) sort it out.

Delivers

It’s already clear there’s something shady about Uncle Hisham (rather too obviously so), which even blind Rabih recognizes, so he tries to get the document at the hospital. But they don’t have a copy either, and tell him to get a blood test. That’s when his mother delivers the bombshell: she’s not his mother. Hisham brought him to her during the war, rescuing the infant from a war zone after his family was killed.

Understandably Rabih wants to know who his real parents were, so he begins looking for answers. What he finds instead is a web of misinformation, as each person manufactures a different story to protect themselves and cover up war atrocities. Although episodic in the time-honored tradition of all road movies, these are the scenes that work best, offering encapsulated personalities along with a deeper sense of the trauma caused by the civil war.

They’re also non-metaphorical, even if they are designed to represent collective stories of atrocity and loss. Rabih’s blindness unfortunately is supposed to carry an extra weight of meaning, conveying the sense of Lebanon made sightless by the war and blinded by continuous lies that prevent national healing. That kind of push for inter-textuality threatens to turn Rabih into symbol rather than a flesh and blood figure, though thankfully Jabbour (who really is a blind singer-musician) makes Rabih real, and his music, as so often is the case, promises to bring factions together and move beyond the deceits.

Regarding metaphor, the camera relies too heavily on shooting through iron work and portals, creating an unnecessary (and in some cases irrelevant) interplay at once voyeuristic and distancing. The visuals are also too dark, though exteriors in and around the villages offer some respite with brightness and color. Location work is well-chosen and attractive, as are the songs.

Also:

Cannes, France: Philippine president-elect Rodrigo Duterte was challenged Wednesday to stick to his promises to tackle corruption as a powerful movie exposing police graft there premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

“Ma’ Rosa” — by the country’s most renowned director Brillante Mendoza — tells how police extort money from a sweetshop owner in a Manila slum after they bust her for dealing drugs, forcing her family to sell everything they have to buy her freedom.

Starring one of the country’s biggest stars Jaclyn Jose as the matriarch Ma’ Rosa struggling to keep their heads above water, the film was inspired by a friend who also fell foul of corrupt officers, Mendoza told AFP.

“It is based on a real story that happened four years ago, and this was not the first time it has happened,” he said.

With the controversial Duterte — who won a landslide election victory this month on a populist platform to crack down on crime and reintroduce the death penalty — to be sworn in on June 30, Mendoza said, “The Philippines must change.

“I am hopeful things will change for the better. That’s my goal, that’s why I do these kinds of films,” he added.

“He (Duterte) will do whatever he has to do as the new president and I will do what I do as an artist,” he said.

Asked whether he was worried by the incoming president, who has been accused by rights groups of running vigilante death squads in his home city of Davao, Mendoza said, “I try to stay away from political issues … I am giving them the benefit of the doubt. Like everyone I am hopeful for the future. We want change.

“Honestly he doesn’t really worry me. It is political”.

Mendoza said he hoped the film would have a strong impact abroad as well as at home.

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