The tenth European Union Film Festival continues through Thursday, March 29, at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, 312-846-2800. Tickets are $9, $7 for students, and $5 for Film Center members. Following are selected films screening through Thursday, March 16; for a full festival schedule visit chicagoreader.com.
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Every Other Week A prime example of European movies being Americanized, this 2006 romantic comedy about Stockholm yuppies could easily be set in New York or LA. A doctor with marital problems (Mans Herngren) moves in with his brother, a neurotic and divorced director of TV commercials (Felix Herngren); first the siblings can’t decide who they really love, then their women can’t, and meanwhile their kids get bounced around the households. Meant to be sophisticated and charming, this ends up labored and not very sexy, with gags like a Matrix parody falling flat as a lingonberry pancake. Hannes Holm and Hans Ingemansson penned the rapid-fire but shallow screenplay and also directed with the Herngren brothers. In Swedish with subtitles. 95 min. (AG) a Sat 3/10, 8:15 PM, and Mon 3/12, 6 PM.
Flies on the Wall In this engaging but ultimately unconvincing Danish thriller (2005), a respected documentary filmmaker (Trine Dyrholm) is hired by a national political party to profile one of its rising stars, a powerful and charismatic mayor (Lars Brygmann). Though promised unfettered access to the mayor’s activities, she finds herself stymied and resorts to unorthodox filming methods that uncover a possible criminal conspiracy. Writer-director Ake Sandgren uses the filmmaker’s raw footage to tell a significant chunk of the story, a gimmicky conceit that serves largely to paper over the more predictable and implausible elements. In Danish with subtitles. 92 min. (Reece Pendleton) a Fri 3/9, 6:15 PM, and Tue 3/13, 7:45 PM.
The Iceberg After a traumatic experience inside a frozen locker, the manager of a fast-food outlet leaves her family and heads north on a sailboat with a mute companion. Written and directed by three of the main performers (Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon, and Bruno Romy) and working with a minimum of dialogue, this 2005 Belgian comedy wears its strangeness on its sleeve. I found it striking but often strident, and neither funny nor edifying. In French and Inuktitut with subtitles. 84 min. (JR) a Sat 3/10, 6:15 PM.
Red Road If we agree that Rear Window, Blowup, The Conversation, and A Short Film About Love belong to the same erotic-thriller subgenre, then this adroit, sexually explicit Glasgow-based tale (2006) of an obsessive surveillance guard (Kate Dickie) tracking and stalking a locksmith and former convict (Tony Curran) qualifies as a minor entry, at least until it becomes an elusive psychological study. Despite the thick Scottish accents, filmmaker Andrea Arnold kept me intrigued, but beyond a certain point the movie’s ambiguity fades into indifference. 113 min. (JR) a Fri 3/9, 6 PM, and Sat 3/10, 8 PM.
