Speaking in Tongues: Beyond Babel Multilingual Film Festival

Multilingual film festival Beyond Babel brings together three movies from across the globe, with the aim of guiding audiences closer to cultures and realities different from their own, while also providing a platform for widening critical debate in increasingly important subject areas such as multilingualism and global citizenship.

It is certainly a diverse programme, with work from legendary German filmmaker Wim Wenders playing alongside that of France’s Cédric Klapisch and Welsh director Marc Evans. These are films that cover a varied a range of genres, including near-future (now past) science fiction, comedy and social commentary.

Until the End of the World

Bis ans Ende der Welt (Until the End of the World) is Wenders’ 1991 offering starring William Hurt, Max von Sydow, Sam Neill and Jeanne Moreau. Much of Wenders’ work is both sprawling and – in all fairness – a little confusing. Both of these traits still apply here, but Bis ans Ende der Welt raises many interesting questions with regards to technological advancement and its consequences. In the 1991 film (it takes place in late 1999), Indian authorities have lost control of the country's nuclear satellite, which is set to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and thereby contaminate a vast area of the Earth’s surface. On fleeing the city and getting caught up in traffic, Claire (Solveig Dommartin) takes a side street and embarks on a 'road trip' of self-discovery that is every bit as intriguing as it is, at times, perplexing.

Pot Luck

L’Auberge Espagnole (Pot Luck) is, by contrast, a comedy with which many current and former students will identify, particularly if they have ever studied abroad on the Erasmus programme. The movie was a considerable commercial success in France in 2003 and the presence of a talented ensemble cast (including Romain Duris, Audrey Tautou and Kelly Reilly) and some playful directorial touches involving split-screens and speeded-up footage make Cédric Klapisch’s film an entertaining romp, despite some overt cultural stereotyping which, in itself, provides grounds for debate.

Following the screening, Dr Isabelle Vanderschelden, the author of several critical film texts and guides, and her MMU colleague, sociology lecturer Dr Benedicte Brahic, will discuss the film’s intercultural dimension and the effects of multilingualism on its characters. “The movie depicts the day-to-day realities of constructing the European Union – the sort of experiences, dilemma and emotions Brussels does not and cannot account for,” Dr Brahic tells us. “It shows the tensions between the resilience of traditional identities and the 'appeal' of cosmopolitanism and globalisation and what being a global citizen means, or at least a somewhat 'hedonist' version of these ideas.”

Patagonia

In 2010, Mercy singer Duffy – who hails from Bangor in north Wales – made her cinematic debut playing Sissy in Patagonia, which tells the story of Gwen and Rhys, a troubled Welsh-speaking couple who attempt to reinvigorate their failing marriage by travelling to South America so that Rhys can photograph the Welsh chapels of Y Wladfa, the Welsh settlement established there in the 19th century.

A low-budget movie with the vista of a Hollywood blockbuster, Patagonia has a great deal of warmth and humour, covers a range of human interaction and is quite subtly clever in the way in which it dovetails the two cultures of Wales and Argentina. If for no other reason, however, the film should be seen for Robbie Ryan’s stunning cinematography, which brings to life the wild, barren landscapes in which the characters find themselves and illustrates each of their individual isolations perfectly.

There's an additional linguistic dimension in which Patagonia excels: it parallels two nations clinging on to the survival of their own languages and, in so doing, trying to preserve their individual identities, which makes the movie all the more intimate, absorbing and beautiful.