Although shorter than some of Rivette's other films, The Duchess of Langeais was for me less interesting or rewarding than the epic length Out One:Spectre or Celine and Julie go Boating. It's not that I have a problem with Rivette doing another exploration of love gone wrong. What perhaps wrongly bothered me was that The Duchess resembled the kinds of films that the Cahiers du Cinema crowd objected to fifty years ago - too well mannered, too dependent on dialogue, and no surprises of any kind. What The Duchess of Langeais needed above all was Out One's Jean-Pierre Leaud rudely showing up to badly blow on his harmonica and make a general nuisance of himself.

Better was 4 Days, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, although I was not prepared for how frank the film would be in depicting an abortion. Taking place in the Romania of 1987, Mungiu positions his camera for one shot that virtually positions the audience from the point of view of the young woman preparing to under the procedure. The effect is unsettling. That this was the top prize winner at Cannes is no surprise considering the somewhat contrarian choices made by the juries in recent years. Like last year's winner, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, 4 3 2 can be seen as being more than a look at the past.

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I probably could evaluate this 30th version of the Denver Film Festival had I had the opportunity to see more films. While I am glad that some films that may never otherwise played here were screened, I still wonder about certain films that played other festivals but were not shown here. I am especially concerned with the new rules regarding films in Thailand that opportunities were lost to present Ploy and Syndrome and a Century as intended by their respective filmmakers, or to allow them to be seen at all. That Thailand was represented by the horror comedy Sick Nurses at a recent San Francisco film festival may indicate that the military government has already decided what is worthy for Thais, and by extension, worthy for audiences outside of Thailand.

While I could not make the panel held last Friday on film bloggers, it seemed that Walter Chaw was not considered worthy of inclusion either. To me it seems almost typical of the Denver International Film Festival that the organizers give short shrift to local talent.