Left Field Cinema

Overlooking a series of high-rise towers. Blocks of flats stretch out for as far as the eye can see. Little boxes of people who can not be seen, except one man who stands on his balcony in the cold Baltic autumn breeze, his suit jacket and hair are blasted by the wind. Birds fly past dark and light clouds and menacing strings dominate the score. The man is called inside by a woman, he returns to his flat, a sparsely decorated room with a library worth of literature padding out ceiling to floor bookcases. He lights a cigarette, pauses, then violently attempts to kiss the woman (his ex who’s now leaving him) she resists and pushes him away, he wrestles her to the ground and with his hands around her throat he pleads “stop it”, she responds: “you stop it” whilst trying to breath. He attempts to rape her, all the while she violently struggles; he comes to his senses and releases her. The cold howl of wind can be heard bombarding the flat, eking its way through cracks in windows and bouncing off the walls. Despairing, the man searches for a bottle of pills; he washes them down with a healthy portion of vodka before breaking dishes in his kitchen. The title card raises: this is Autumn Ball.

Estonian cinema has yet to have a break through international hit, The Class directed by Ilmar Raag in 2007 has been the most successful to date, gaining a straight to DVD release in the UK earlier this year and examining with some pertinence the nature of school shootings across the globe – but Autumn Ball might just be the break through that the Estonain film making community has been craving. Previous attempts have been made with Elmo Nuganen’s war movie Names in Marble from 2002 (the most expensive Estonian film ever made) but focusing on a particular part of Estonian history – namely the War of Independence in 1918 against the Soviet Union – it is unfortunately too specific a conflict to appeal to wider audiences. Much like the Finnish war movie Pakka Parikka’s The Winter War from 1989, the films appeal primarily to domestic audiences (although the intent may have differed) and as a result they’ve lacked appeal for the international film festival circuit and beyond.

Autumn Ball however has all the hall marks of a festival success story and succeed it has at several festivals so far. It is the debut feature film of Veilko Ounpuu, who’d previously released a medium length film entitled Empty in 2006, which followed a young intellectual manoeuvring himself to spend a weekend with his wife and her lover. At just forty minutes in length, the film boasts a mature eye for detail and a somewhat obscure sense of humour which infuses the proceedings a particular charm. The photography was impressive but so to was the casting, a set of talented actors help raise this above the usual low budget film festival entries, Ounpuu is obviously aware of how talented his cast was and so used the three main performers again, Rain Tolk stars as a sudo intellectual named Mati in both Empty and Autumn Ball, it is Mati who we’re introduced to at the start of the film and his is one of the main narrative strands of the film. Taavi Eelmaa plays Theo an aspiring writer who works as a cloak room attendant at a local night club, and Maarja Jakobson plays Laura, a mother who is divorced and struggling to make ends meet for her young daughter and herself. Another plot strands follows a Finnish hair dresser, Kaski, played by the remarkable Sulevi Peltola (of Frozen Land fame) who attempts to quench his loneliness by befriending Laura’s daughter, an act which solicits verbal attacks from those who assume his actions are paedophilic in nature. The final plot strand centres around an architect Maurer played by Julhan Ulfsak whose wife Ulvi played by Tiina Tauraite is desperately unhappy living in a tower block when they could easily afford a place closer to town.

The multiple narrative structure allows Autumn Ball to change focus to people from every level of the social ladder, doormen, architects, intellectuals, barbers, immigrants, single parents etc. They’re all connected by this single location, an endless series of tower blocks built by the Soviets when Estonia was annexed at the end of World War II. Most of Eastern Europe was littered with these monstrosities, indeed if the design looks familiar it might be because the very same tower blocks appear in the Poland set Dekalog series. Soviet Russia built these towers to move massive numbers of Russians into Estonia as part of their “integration” with the union; post the collapse of the Berlin Wall and these buildings are now used to house many Estonian nationals and in reality they are a stunningly cinematic sight; you won’t find a housing area like it anywhere in the UK for example, it would take over an hour to walk between the furthest tower blocks. Behind every block lies another and another – they seem endless.

There are a number of themes at play within Autumn Ball; chief amongst them is the Search for Love. What connects all of the characters of Autumn Ball is a desire for love, be it platonic or romantic, be it a wife who is in an unhappy marriage or an old man hoping for a human connection with a small child – love is the primary goal. But love is fleeting for the men and women of this world and loneliness is more prevalent; the obstacles between human connections are intrusive and always present. There is a risk for films like Autumn Ball to descend to a miserablist portraits of human suffering, so-called “emotional porn” where a writer and director create a group of characters and then see how much pain and turmoil they can subject them to (and the audience to by proxy). However as with Aku Louhimies’ Frozen Land from 2006, what elevates Autumn Ball to a level of cinematic genius is its deep and purposeful sense of humour. Autumn Ball actually pushes the comedy further many respects, in the case of Frozen Land, the comedy is (for most part) restricted to one plot strand, in the case of Autumn Ball, the humour is spread more equally across all the plot strands, more notably in the second half of the film as some of the storylines converge. Ounpuu values humour in his films, in his interview with Left Field Cinema he states (with a smile) that humour is “inevitable, inescapable, omnipresent and absolute”. Autumn Ball can effortlessly switch from hilarious laugh-out-loud comedy to brutal violence; these transitions never feel out of place or forced. A good example of comedy is after Mati is dumped by his girlfriend he goes to her flat secretly, he stands on a dumpster to see through the living room window of her flat, there he sees her copulating with an unknown man, they begin to undress each other and move through to the bedroom which is out of sight for Mati. Mati gets off the dumpster and pushes it across the floor so that it now rests under the window of the bedroom, he gets onto the dumpster again but this time as he prepares to look through the window he finds his ex and her new lover standing watching him from behind the window. Mati quickly jumps to the ground, runs and hides behind a car, he looks back from behind the car wondering if they’ve gone away – they’re still watching him. The punchline of the scene comes as the car alarm goes off for the car Mati is hiding behind and he is again forced to run away into the night.

Not all of the comedy is situational, in one brief instance: Laura walks past a man whose car was full of salt. Now the salt lies on the floor and the driver looks at in disbelief as if wondering how he will get it back into the car. Moments of random absurdity like this one remind us of the work of Roy Anderson, Songs From the Second Floor or You, The Living for example, both films that were riddled with humorous moments like this one which require no set up or punch line – yet solicit laughter through their sheer randomness. Some of the comedy comes from contrasts, at key intervals an American drama plays on television sets in the background, the bitter coldness of life is contrasted by the heightened and opulent love story being played out with no subtly and entirely obvious characterisation.

Another comedic scene exposes the other prevailing theme within Autumn Ball - pretence and definition. Mati awakens after a night of heavy drinking, he lights a cigarette and walks around his flat, whilst doing so he attempts to construct meaningful prose out loud, repeating variations on the same derivative dribble, flowery, nonsensical philosophical posturing. Classical music plays in the background, Mati sits down, he rests the cigarette on the sofa and allows it to burn a hole into the surface fabric. The next edit is telling of Ounpuu’s playful sense of humour: we cut to a supermarket, Mati stands in line waiting as a checkout lady runs his items through, she gets to a porn magazine and can’t read the price on the label and so calls out for assistance from the girl on the next counter: “the porn magazine doesn’t have a price on it!” The cue of women behind Mati appear to be less than impressed as the till lady continues to draw attention to the particular magazine he’s wanting to read. Mati’s basic instincts are exposed with hilarious results – he may listen to classical music, he may pose as an intellectual, he makes non-statements like burning a hole in his own sofa - but when it comes down to it he’s nothing more than a lonely bachelor who wants to masturbate over a porno magazine.

The examination of pretence is not limited to Mati. The architect Maurer insists on living in a run down area of town because it helps him with his work, he worries about others in his profession thinking that he’s insincere – when he himself knows deep down that it is all pretence. When his wife Uliv asks him for honesty, the best he can muster is a quote from Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light. Uliv recognises this as the diffusion it is and describes him not as a human being but more like a character from a Bergman film. Maurer responds by theatrically throwing a bottle across the room into some glass shelving – it is a performer’s reaction to the situation, it is the movie reaction to the situation, and Ounpuu is aware of this. To give a separate example: when men or women are shot by a gun, the reality is that most of the time they do not need to fall to the ground, most bullet injuries can be sustained standing up (except in the heart, head or leg areas of course) it has been noted in recent years that most people fall down when they’ve been shot because they assume that falling down is what people supposed to do in this situation (of course this is largely based on television and film portrayals of the action). Maurer’s theatrical reactions are in part due to his own belief that this is how he’s expected to behave.

The writer Theo is less pretentious and can see through the superficial nature of others around him. He works as a cloakroom attendant by day and is forced to wear a hideous bright red jacket and top hat – he and his colleague stand in silence waiting for a customer to arrive, his colleague takes the opportunity to impersonate Michael Jackson. Theo is less than impressed and so heads into the function they’re serving (A meeting of the “Baltic Consciousness”) he poses as one of the writers involved and steals some food from the buffet, whilst there he is accosted by one of the delegates who berates the Latvian contingent for trying to construct their own identity: “Naming things is violence” she states “there is no such thing as ‘Baltic’”. Theo’s silence is misinterpreted as profound understanding of the nature of the situation but it is she who is actually attempting definition; she is the one who makes presumptions based on Theo’s attitude. Theo maybe a writer in his spare time, but to this woman the image of Theo as a writer is more important than anything he may have actually written. The films epigraph is a quote from Fernando Passoa (a Portuguese poet, author, and philosopher): “I was like the grass and I was not torn out”. Passoa is frequently referenced within the film. Theo quotes him to a pair of prostitutes he’s just slept with: “I made of myself something beyond my knowledge and what I could make of myself I failed to do.” The women mock Theo for his word-for-word quotation. Theo doesn’t understand Passoa, but he desires to understand so that he may better himself, Passoa’s transcendental prose’s are arguably mystism for mystism sake, obscurity for obscurity’s sake as Edgar Allen Poe might suggest. The possibility of Theo taking meaning from Passoa’s words is unlikely – but he continues to try. All of the central characters of Autumn Ball are rounded human beings, three-dimensional individuals with flaws and weakness’ as well as strengths and virtues. All exhibit detestable as well as admirable traits.

Autumn Ball boasts some incredible photography, mercilessly cold, the pallet is awash of blues, dark yellows and greens. Skin is pale, the floor is icy, the skies are frozen white. In places it reminds of Michael Mann photography, but never to the point of pastiche or theft. There is a combination of long takes, wide empty establishing shots and occasional hand held photography. People are often deliberately obscured by objects in the rooms; the composition is original and distinct. The production uses 8mm footage at time - shaky images of autumn leaves. The images of the towers are stunning; birds fly through the sky as a snowstorm approaches the residential area. A drunken Mati stumbles home in the night, passing car lights and overhead road lights bathe him in a dark yellow hue. One shot comes from the back of a city bus as it rides through the city at night with its internal lights off – one of many memorable images. This location looks as vivid at night as it does in daylight.

The music is also deserving of praise, Ulo Krigul composes a dark ambient score using music from German band: Der Bohren und der Club of Gore, which helps maintain menace throughout the proceedings, often Ounpuu allows the music to take over a scene, drowning out the diegetic noise and leaving the music to play without the intrusion of natural sounds. A great example of photography and music combining in another of Autumn Ball’s stand out scenes as the architect Maurer and his wife Ulvi are at a night club, Ulvi leaves him to go home with another man, Maurer stands staring into middle distance as the band continues to play a lively song, behind him couples dance in traditional ways, but Maurer takes the occasion to dance violently to the song being played, red light coats him from top to toe, the camera remains on a close-up tracking with him around the dance floor as the diegetic music fades out and Der Bohren und der Club of Gore and Krigul’s meancing score comes to the fore; Maurer contorts his body and spins around and around, he moves in and out of focus through the shallow depth of field – his face is filled with anguish and heartbreak.

Both Der Bohren und der Club of Gore and Krigul’s music and Mart Taniel’s photography enhance the world Ounpuu is creating, a world of cigarettes, run down buildings, tacky furniture and dated wallpaper. A world of human frailty where people come together and then rip themselves a part again.

For a feature film debut it is a very impressive piece of work one which the cast and crew can remain proud of, and I eagerly await Ounpuu’s next film (The Temptation of St. Tony) which is currently in production for a 2009 Estonian release.

M.Dawson

Unfortunately Autumn Ball is not available on UK DVD at present as it has yet to secure a wider international distribution. It is however available on Region 2 DVD from Estonian distributors, who ship to the UK free of charge, from:

http://www.cdmarketengland.co.uk/en/shop/dvdvideo/detail/867639/Movie-S__gisball