Zazie D'Or 2009

Forget about Golden Globes, Oscars, BAFTA awards, Golden Lions, Golden Palms and Golden Bears, it is now the moment of the most prestigious cinema award EVER, the one of your favourite cinema blogger: the ZAZIE D’OR!!!
Zazie has been 60 times at the movies last year (yes, she took her task pretty seriously) and now she is ready to let you know the very best in cinema for 2009.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the winner is....

The Zazie d’Or for BEST PICTURE est attribué to the French movie UN PROPHETE by Jacques Audiard
Why: Because this is an outstanding picture, that you won't forget for ages. The story is great, the actors are to die for, the dialogues are perfect, the atmosphere is fascinating. In a word: a masterpiece.
And the Zazie d'Or for BEST DIRECTOR est attribué à JACQUES AUDIARD for Un Prophète
Why: Because Audiard is able to film like anybody else. The new Martin Scorsese? C'est lui!


The Zazie d’Or for BEST ACTOR est attribué à TAHAR RAHIMI for Un Prophète by Jacques Audiard
Why: Because even if this would be a silent movie, Rahimi's eyes will tell you the whole story. He is simply perfect.

The Zazie d’Or for BEST ACTRESS est attribué à KATIE JARVIS for Fish Tank by Andrea Arnold Why: Because she's a force of nature and you can't resist to her mix of strenght, fragility, despair and hope. A star is born.

The Little Zazie D’or (BEST FIRST FEATURE FILM) est attribué to the Australian movie SAMSON AND DELILAH by Warwick Thornton

Why: Because it is rare to see such a powerful first movie. This is the 400 Blows of the modern era.

The Zazie d'Or for the BEST SCREENPLAY est attribué à LOS ABROZOS ROTOS by Pedro Almodóvar  Why: Because this is one of the most beautiful and moving declaration of love ever seen. 

  

The Zazie d'Or for the BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY est attribué à CHRISTOPHER DOYLE for The Limits of Control by Jim Jarmusch.

Why: Because Doyle's images are the most beautiful thing in the worst and most useless movie of the year. This guy is a genius.

The Zazie d'Or for the BEST EDITING est attribué à SARAH FLACK for Away We Go by Sam Mendes  Why: Well, because Sarah is a friend of mine, and she is a fantastic editor as well as a fantastic human being. Brava Sarah!!!   
 The JEREMY IRONS PRIZE (MAN OF MY LIFE AWARD) est attribué for this year to the German-Irish actor MICHAEL FASSBENDER Why: C’mon, guys...

This is a personal message for the winner: the only way to receive this prize, Michael, actually is to knock at the door of my apartment... looking forward to hearing from you!!! Yours, Zazie

Very important p.s.The prestigious award Zazie d'Or has been designed by artist Sergio "Saccingo" Tanara, best known as ALKY. Grazie Sacc!

The cinema of Andrea Arnold

How many special movies do you have the chance to see, every year?

I mean, very special ones, movies able to change your perspective on something, able to move something deep inside you, to leave you breathless and speechless? Not many, as far as I’m concerned.

In these last years, I’ve seen two movies by the same film maker that had such a big impact on me and I’m very happy to write that the man behind the camera is… well, a woman.

Her name is Andrea Arnold.

Born in England in 1961, Arnold won an Oscar in 2003 for her short movie Wasp. She wrote and directed her first feature film, Red Road, in 2006 (winner of the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and part of the Advance Party project created by Lars Von Trier) and this year she’s been back with Fish Tank (winning again the same prize at the same Film Festival).

Arnold’s stories are very bleak. They are set in bleak places around UK and they talk about bleak people: not happy, not rich, not particularly beautiful and very often traumatised by some not-very-funny event.

So, I know what you’re thinking right now: why on earth Zazie is telling us to go and see such depressing movies? Well, it is because these movies are not depressing, are just great.

Red Road tells the story of Jackie, a Glaswegian CCTV operator, a lonely and sad woman in her 30s who spends her life watching other people’s lives through the monitors, until the day she catches a glimpse of a man and this seems, somehow, to change her life dramatically. I’m not going to tell you who this man is or why he is so important for Jackie: if this movie’s atmosphere is so fascinating, it is mainly due to this mystery. You don’t know anything about it, you desperately try to understand why she is doing what she is doing, and you’ll be aware of that just towards the end. Red Road is a very dark and very slow movie but there is a fire burning inside it, and you can feel it since the beginning. This woman seems dead, inside, but she is not. You are touched by her fragility, fascinated by her willing to pursue her idea (wherever this will lead her) and when you finally find out what’s going on, you just want to cry for the rest of the movie. In Red Road there is one of the strongest and most beautiful sex scenes I’ve ever seen on screen and, I know half of the population will disagree with me, but I think this is because there’s a woman behind the camera. Ok, I wrote it. And I take full responsibility for that.

 The main character of Fish Tank is, once again, a woman: Mia is a teenager living with her single mother and a younger sister in a dingy housing estate somewhere in the south of England. The only thing she really enjoys in life is to dance all alone on hip-hop tunes. At school she is a disaster and her relationship with the rest of the world is quite dramatic: no friends (her bad temper and bad manners don’t help) and no chances to be supported by her mum (kind of an alcoholic). Something changes with the arrival, in their apartment, of Connor, her mum’s new boyfriend (played by Irish-German actor Michael Fassbender, whose arrival would change any woman’s life on planet earth).

Mia, who spends her time defending herself against other people and the world outside, by meeting Connor (probably the first adult who seems genuinely interested in her as a human being), opens up to new feelings and new hopes. Things won’t turn very well with him, in the end, but the process has started, and a new phase of her life is spreading in front of her.  

Supported by an outstanding cast (newcomer Katie Jarvis, found by Arnold while furiously fighting with her boyfriend on a station’s platform, English actress Kierston Wareing, already appreciated in It’s a Free World by Ken Loach, as Mia’s mum, and the above mentioned Michael Fassbender, by far the best actor of his generation), Fish Tank is a vibrant, emotional story.

There are at least a couple of perfect moments: every time Mia finds herself close to Connor and this simple contact produces in her a physical upsetting (like a crack in the fish tank she constantly feels trapped in) and the dancing scene between Mia, her mum and her (irresistible) little sister.

Maybe they’re desperate, maybe this world is a shitty place to live in, but everybody has the right to hope and to look for bliss.