The 15th European Union Film Festival continues Friday through Thursday, March 23 through 29, at Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, 312-846-2800. Tickets are $11, $7 for students, and $6 for Film Center members. Following are reviews of selected films; for a full schedule see siskelfilmcenter.com.
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The Fairy Physical comedy is so rare in movies now that a team like Bruno Romy, Fiona Gordon, and Dominique Abel is something to be treasured—their Belgian features (L’Iceberg, Rumba) teem with deft slapstick and clever sight gags, skillfully directed and often gut-laugh funny. This 2011 fantasy stars Abel as a put-upon hotel clerk and Gordon as the title sprite, who offers to grant him three wishes (when he asks for a scooter and a lifetime supply of gas, she delivers the motorbike and the key to a gigantic petroleum silo). Largely free of dialogue, the movie meanders from one comic idea to the next, which makes you appreciate how carefully silent clowns like Chaplin and Keaton constructed their stories. But there are some great set pieces here, like the sequence in which Gordon, preparing for a date, trades clothes with a mannequin in a store window and puts on her makeup as security guards chase her through the streets. In French with subtitles. —J.R. Jones 90 min. Fri 3/23 and Tue 3/27, 6 PM
Good Night, Missy Polona Juh, one of Slovenia’s most respected actresses, stars as a bitter working mother whose upper-class marriage is coming apart. Her character registers as a real person, aware of her flaws yet not always capable of overcoming them. None of the other roles is imagined this fully, however, and some are stale archetypes (particularly the woman’s boorish, lying husband, who seems to have been flown in from Diary of a Mad Housewife). Writer-director Metod Pevec keeps the story rolling and refreshingly free of bathos; this may be familiar, but it’s rarely dull. In Slovenian with subtitles. —Ben Sachs 93 min. Sat 3/24, 9:30 PM, and Thu 3/29, 8:15 PM
