Euro ’24 Filmfest: Group F

In June, I challenged myself to watch at least one movie from each nation participating in the periodic regional soccer tournament. There are no rules for this challenge regarding genre or era; the only requirement is that the audio or subtitles be in English or German.

Georgia: The Trader (2018)

Netflix, original Georgian with German subtitles
Short films feel like cheating, but this was the only film from the country of Georgia that I was able to find that met my requirement. The filmmakers follow around a man who buys used clothes and goods in Tblisi, then drives them out to rural villages to trade with desperately poor people for potatoes, which he then sells for profit.

This film is bleak and exploitative, which may be why it won a “Best Short Documentary” award at Sundance. Bleh.

Portugal: O Lobo Solitário (The Lone Wolf) (2021)

arte Mediathek, original Portuguese with English subtitles
Another short film, but this one is fictional (I hope) and won a “Best Short Film–Live Action” award from the Portuguese Film Academy. “Live Action”? The whole thing was filmed in one shot. That’s enough to impress me right there, but it was also well-written and performed. Vitor Lobo is an overnight radio call-in show host, and his regular listeners/callers and online chat-room are a sort of family/fan club. An old, forgotten friend calls in on an important anniversary date, and (spoiler?) makes a horrifying accusation live on the air.

Czech Republic: Prípad mrtvého neboztíka (The Case of the Dead Deadman) (2020)

Netflix, original Czech with English subtitles
Netflix used to offer a larger selection of Czech movies, somehow all about the Third Reich. The current solitary offering is a murder-mystery parody, and a welcome change. The head detective, who looks a bit like Uncle Fester, can’t remember his own wife’s name; he has an assistant who can’t touch electrical outlets, a hard-drinking deputy with a crush on him, and a boss who is going to fire him if he doesn’t get immediate results. The “plot” revolves around serial killing and blackmail within his own police department.

It was very Naked Gun, even had some of the same gags. For example, they found a DVD clearly labeled “Blackmail”. The translations probably missed some context, and I might have found it funnier if I knew any of the principle actors’ other work. But it was silly in a good way, and much of the comedy was physical.

Curiously, the subtitles were American English (I had expected British), with American cultural references. There’s a bit in “hick” where the voiceover actress did a passable Southern US accent. I would love to be able to understand whatever was going on there in the original.

Turkey: Ask Taktikleri (Love Tactics) (2022)

Netflix, English
I kept putting this one off, because the team and their fans are actual fucking genocidal fascists, but eventually I had to eat the frog. I chose the first English-dubbed “Turkish movie” in the Netflix search (no time for subtitles; I had to make a cherry cobbler for Sunday afternoon coffee and Scrabble). It’s a chick flick; the leads (I cannot call them romantic leads because there was no romance) are a single woman who runs an Insta giving dating advice and a womanizing man she singles out to test her own advice.

I had expected current events to color my opinion, but this picture was too internationally generic for any reaction. Netflix has English-dubbed versions of this exact same film–same stale contrived plot, same shallow characters, same ultra-modern luxury housing, same Ariana Grande too-tight ponytails and cartoonish ballooned-out lip filler, same ugly “luxury brand” bling–produced in Brazil, Nigeria, India, and South Korea. Other than the characters’ names and some establishing shots of the Bosporus and Cappadocia, every shot and conversation of this movie could have taken place in any urban area on the planet. I was looking for hijabs, since that’s a hot topic in German media, and didn’t see a single one in any scene. Not in the restaurants, not in the workplaces, not even in the airport. Any flight from Turkey gathered around the baggage claim in Munich Airport demonstrates how hard the director and editors had to work to achieve that! All the young women were scantily-clad, and the very few older ones were mostly dyed blonde. And they all seemed to be cloned from the same sexy boss-girl Instagram account.

This is 21st-century entertainment at its worst, although I did have a good laugh during a pottery-wheel scene plagiarized from Ghost: When they zoomed out, the female lead was working the pedal with 4″ spiked-heel rhinestoned sandals.

TL;DR: I will not watch the sequel and humanity is doomed.