Part of The Oregonian's team coverage of Week 1 of the Portland International Film Festival:
"Snows of Kilimanjaro"
Cowriter/director Robert Guédiguian's modest social drama is inspired, the credits tell us, by Victor Hugo's poem "How Good Are The Poor" -- and the movie grabs your attention by suddenly shifting its own.
It starts out sweetly melancholic, as an aging Marseilles dockworker and union organizer (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) loses his job and tries to settle into semi-retirement with his wife (Ariane Ascaride), surrounded by friends and loved ones. There's a lurch into menace as the couple is robbed at gunpoint of their anniversary-party gifts. But then Guédiguian makes a fascinating choice to stay with one of the robbers as he uses stolen money to desperately pay rent and provide for his younger brothers. Soon the film has Darroussin and Ascaride worrying they've become compromised old lefties who didn't show enough compassion to their downtrodden assailant.
"Kilimanjaro"'s soulful performances lend a gentle humanity to Guédiguian's earnest, politically charged exploration of the limits of charity -- though it's a mild shame Guédiguian does a bit too much thematic deck-stacking by having the young robber speak to Darroussin in perfectly phrased Voice of the Underclass rejoinders.
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B-minus; France; 107 minutes. Plays at PIFF at:
- 6 p.m. Saturday 2/11, Cinemagic
- 8:45 p.m. Monday 2/13, Lloyd Mall
- 8:30 p.m. Thursday 2/16, Lake Twin Cinema
Portland International Film Festival reviews: Week 1 (The Oregonian, Friday, Feb. 10, 2011)
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