The fear of the foreign film

I'll be the first to admit I like a good foreign film despite the reaction I usually get from those around me. I know that generally admitting to really liking world cinema is considered a tad pretentious and I know this because I've been told as much on several occasions but it's not as though I'm sitting around just watching avant garde French films, smoking gauloises' and talking about how sophisticated I am. I just like them, there's some I even love and I think people who won't watch a film purely because it's subtitled are really missing out.

 Years ago when I worked in Chartbusters (a franchise now long gone) and they had quite a good selection of world cinema films (plus some super dodgy low grade porn but that's a conversation for another blog post) and I got to really indulge my interest in discovering new films. Let's just say I was one of the people who always brought home five free dvd's a week and wished we were entitled to more. I'm a girl who sure knows how to take full advantage of the perks of a job. I'm glad I had the opportunity because it was while working here I discovered some of my now favourite films but I also developed a growing awareness of how (particularly in my home town) people fear the subtitles. It reached the stage where I felt morally obliged to 'warn' people they were renting a world cinema title (sometimes the giant world cinema sticker on the front wasn't sufficient warning ) just in case they didn't realize and would to make a second trip to the store once they discovered their mistake. Trust me, that happened on more than one occasion. Sometimes you'd get people saying but if it's in Chinese (or other foreign language) how am I supposed to understand it and I would have to bite my lip to prevent myself quipping that it comes with a small cantonese phrase book and actually you fine you pick it up pretty quickly.  Once we had a guy rent the thai boxing movie 'Ong Bak' by mistake. Unfortunately for this young genius the fact that the movie was called Ong Bak , starred an asian actor called Tony Jaa and had a world cinema sticker on the front were not sufficient clues that this might not be an English film. Twenty minutes later he returned and flung the dvd on the counter saying it 'was in fooking Chinese'. I didn't waste my time correcting him.

 There's more to world cinema that artsy french films and Japanese horror porn ( extremely violent horror as opposed to a bizarre mix of genres) and for me it's kind of up there with the people who tell me they don't read non fiction because it's not interesting. Really, all non fiction is not interesting because that's a fairly sweeping statement and possibly assuming that everything not factual is just the sort of tripe Cecelia Ahearne writes. There's many I discovered by accident as well as those I've actively sought out and even talking about them now makes regret neglecting that interest of late. There are thrillers and drama's and comedies and really good, chilling horror's all but a subtitle away. Unless you would prefer to wait for Hollywood to bastardize them. When they remade the French comedy 'Taxi' using Queen Latifah I think I might have died a little bit inside.

 If you're feeling brave then here's a list of some of the ones that have stood out for me.
Downfall (German) - chilling portrayal of Hitlers last days.
Love me if you dare - Excellent French film about a complicated friendship and game of dares that gets more extreme over time
Asterix and Obelix : Mission Cleopatre -(French) Comedy based on the children's comic, absolutely hilarious
The other side of the bed ( Spanish) - Comedy/musical -about bed swapping couples- sounds bizarre but equally brilliant and hilarious
Pans Labryinth - (spanish) creepy film that mixes historical event's and fantasy. Very unsettling
The chorus (french) - film about a retired conductor who gets work at a school for boys with behavior problems and teaches them to sing, sounds cheesy but it's not and their voices are amazing 
La vie en rose (french) Life story of Edith Piaf- heartbreaking and intriguing. A biopic well worth watching. 
Amelie (french) - I think everyone and their cat (assuming said cat can in fact read subtitles) has watched quirky romance Amelie and if not why the hell not 

 There's more, so many more that I could probably do this all day but what with my actual job and such beckoning it's not really an option. On the other hand if you think that's all too much for you then I do believe Michael Bay might have a movie about an explosion that falls in love with another explosion, in the pipeline. Perhaps that will be more your thing.  

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