Not the only young filmmaker's work featured at CIFF that seemed influenced by Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, The Wake is part of a Greek "New Wave" that eschews the epic canvases of a Theo Angelopoulis for the raw, more intimate cinema of those inspirational Danish brothers. Even with their documentary style, the Dardennes manage an economy, subtlety and grace that gives their films a classical feel; The Wake is pure punk rock. Mostly jiggling close-ups of enraged, desperate people, this tale of sibling rivalry is driven by a claustrophobic intensity that will rock you back in your seat. The setting is Salamina, the largest island off the coast of Athens, but the pretty seaside vistas are quickly eclipsed by all manner of darkness and the seamy side of island life. The conflict at the film's center is rich in possibilities: two brothers, Andreas, a cop and Nikos, an Orthodox priest, both weighed down with painful personal baggage and a long history of disagreements over rights and wrongs that overflow the traditional bounds of authority each represent. But this film is hardly a philosophical argument; more like a cat fight. After a decade of estrangement, the brothers are united for a long night of opening old wounds, fighting old battles, and finally facing one another as they are forced to work together to resolve a family crisis. "Jesus is the desire to get close to one another" reads a small sign in Fr. Nikos' room, and while certain Christ-figure elements of the film seemed a little over-the-top to me, I liked the dark and breathless intensity — even if I felt a little beat up at the end.  

"Nepotism" comes from the Italian nepoti, or "nephews," because the nephews of the Renaissance Popes always managed to snag for themselves cushy jobs in high places — and even had a tendency to succeed their Papal Uncle on his throne. Likewise, nephews and uncles and nepotism abound in the Hungarian small town of Zsaratnok, where everybody who's anybody is related to everybody who's somebody. "Clan unity is what kept the nation together for a millennium," argues one newly-discovered relative to another, an idealistic lawyer named Pista Kopjass who finds that, upon his election to the office of Chief Prosecutor, relatives are coming out of the woodwork. "Call me Uncle Bela," chortles the mayor. His new Cousin Kardics, another backslapping, wink-wink-nudge-nudgenik at City Hall, gives young Kopjass the hookup at the bank, and tips him to where he can get a villa for cheap, in general seeking to initiate him into the corruptions of the happy "family" that runs, and bilks, the town. (The name of that town is abbreviated ZvS, pronounced "zheevay zhayvay", like an incantation, and has come to mean "You're in my pocket.")

Old master director Istvan Szabo is back with this humorous political morality tale set in Hungary's brief, shining moment between the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the onset of another World War and the subsequent glacier of Communism, the so-called Regency Period. The strangely kingless Regency as depicted in this film is so rotten within, it might soon have fallen of its own accord, even without Hitler and Stalin. Yet the era was rich in a distinctive and elegant style, captured here in impeccable art direction and slick cinematography that lingers over the gorgeous period interiors and architecture. The script and pacing perhaps aren't so impeccable, and unless I misread the subtitles or nodded off (entirely possible) there were some jarring lurches in the plot and tone. The classical trajectory of such a tale is easy enough to map: idealistic young family man is placed in pressure-cooker of corruptions of wealth and power, and must decide at the climax for either justice and all the consequences that difficult choice will bring or else the comfortable way of adopting the "family values" of the tight-knit ruling class. This is a very, pretty film, and the parliamentary pigs-at-the-trough imagery seemed unfortunately all too familiar (they call it "pork" in our own Culture of Corruption). But a film like this invests much in plot structure, and while there was marvelous detailing and flourishes, the structure seemed a little rickety, the character behavior at times a little confused, and the commitment to the have-nots a little too cursory to seem convincing.  

"Are these the people who couldn't get Rolling Stones tickets?" Director Stephen Frears' coy reference to his fellow Englishmen in town acknowledged his only real competition last night in Chicago, after he was introduced to a packed CIFF audience eager to see one of the most-anticipated films of the festival. Frears' new film, The Queen is powered, first of all, by the incomparable star power of Princess Diana, who was already the most irresistible of figures in a celebrity-crazed world even before her virtual martyrdom in 1997. Some say she was driven to her death by the press; others would implicate the Royals themselves. But while Diana is the ghostly presence or absence in this film, it is Elizabeth Windsor who is the central figure here. "It's such a cheeky thing to play the queen," admitted a somewhat sheepish Frears in a pre-screening interview with film critic Michael Wilmington. "We shouldn't be allowed to do this. And we haven't gotten away with it yet."

One of Britain's most-respected and versatile directors, Stephen Frears moved early in his career from theatre to film, only to "disappear" into television after the disappointing reception of his first feature. But, as Mike Leigh says (according to Mike Wilmington), British film in the Seventies was alive and well and living on TV. It was a special time, remembered Frears, when talents like himself, Leigh, and Alan Clarke were able to do remarkably creative work on the state-funded "Beeb". "We don't have to make money and do all the wicked things they have to do in America on television," he says. Perhaps, but after successfully re-launching his film career, the director decided nonetheless to try — and found more success — making films in wicked America. And it was here, he says, that it was brought suddenly home to him that unlike the Americans, he was not a citizen, but a subject. "It's so eccentric what happened in Britain. We have a democracy and a monarchy — which is a complete contradiction." Even so, for the British, this queen remains "very deep in all our psyches. In a sense, we've made a film about someone we've known all our lives — and yet don't really know. The truth is, this film is an educated guess. It had to do with a knowledge we had inside ourselves, so if something didn't strike us as true, we'd all feel it. So it's a sort of backstage life, even though I've never been backstage with the royal family."

The Queen focusses on the week between the death and funeral of the former Princess of Wales, who was killed in an automobile crash in Paris with her then-boyfriend, billionaire jet-setter, Dodi al Fayed — which was shocking in so many ways. Everybody's talking about Helen Mirran's performance in the title role, and rightly so, for surely she'll have both an Emmy and Oscar for playing Queen Elizabeths (including last year's award-winning tv mini-series performance as the first one). But I was just as, and possibly even moreso, blown away by Michael Sheen as Tony Blair. With films like this, great pains are taken to distinguish an imitation from an embodiment of a role: and however good you thought Phillip Seymour Hoffman was as Capote, he was imitating compared to the way that Sheen truly embodies Blair, with greater subtlety across a wider range of emotions. He is Blair. I want to vote for him. This is pre-Poodle Blair, at the height of his popularity, full of the youth and ambition and ideas that carried him to electoral victory and enabled him to guide his nation and even his Queen through a difficult time that, as everyone says here, was without precedent. Nobody had any idea how to handle the death of the ex-wife of the Prince of Wales — least of all her former mother-in-law, whose pious contempt for Diana is only overshadowed by her complete obliviousness to the nation's love for her. Holed up in the Balmoral Palace, the Royals intend to ride, and sit, this one out.

At one point someone suggests trying to see the situation "from the Queen's perspective" and I'm not sure the film adequately captured this — not in the sense of her personal perspective, which is conveyed in a career-making — if not legend-making — portrayal by Mirran. Yet I missed the historical and cultural perspective of why having a Queen with your democracy might not be such a loony idea after all. The worldwide outpouring of affection and grief for Diana, the deep anger at the Royals for refusing to take their rightful public place in the proceedings, all suggest that Royalty — or at least tradition, ritual and a certain amount of pomp and circumstance really does continue to have some rightful place in a contemporary culture. I'd have loved to have had at least one moment, perhaps at the funeral, where the queen lends majesty to the situation in a way that only a real queen can, and so makes us catch our breath and remember why it might be a shame if the Brits do away with their monarchy altogether. But that's a minor, minor quibble, for there's too much that went right with this film and performances to complain.

The backstage battle between Balmoral and Downing Street captures the debate over the role of monarchy in a democracy in an unforgettable way. The running contrast between the Blairs in their chaotic middle-class domesticity versus the Windsors in their rigid royal dowdiness is a constant delight and renews one's awe for democracy as one considers that it is the man washing dishes who is, in fact, the ruler of his nation. The third party in this peculiar British triumvirate, of course, is the media, which played such a central role in the life and death of Princess Diana. I loved watching the Queen watching television, remote in hand in bed, channel-surfing. Or the spectacle of all the royals in front of non-stop reports about Diana, gabbing on abstractedy over unrelated trivia, like the Pythons when they dress in drag and gossip in front of the telly. I tried to picture Her Royal Highness watching the DVD of this film, alone in Buckingham Palace, wondering if she and the Duke of Edinburgh will talk back cattily to the screen, and get it even then.

There is bitter irony, of course, in this stubborn, insulated ruler having to be talked out of a State of Denial by Tony Blair, who is today on the brink of being forced from office in part for his poodlish relationship with a stubborn, insulated ruler. With this in mind, director Frears slyly has the Queen offer her then-much-admired PM a prophetic warning about the viccitudes of history and the fickleness of The People. Fickle or not, the People have seen demonstrated that a "Let them eat cake" policy is one that democrats can adapt as readily as monarchs; perhaps the corruptions of one form of government are liable to make us long for the ideals of the other. As for Diana, all we're left with is the ideal, and that seems to be at least part of what bugged The Queen so much about "the People's Princess." But if Elizabeth II hasn't learned it by now, it probably doesn't matter if HRH ever understands that Diana in both life and death was probably the last best chance of saving the British monarchy in a democratic, media-driven age. Or that Her Majesty herself threw that last best chance away. This "hinge of fate" — to borrow a phrase of Elizabeth's first PM, Blair being her tenth — is captured just brilliantly in The Queen. Nevertheless, the true coda for this story might be a flash-foward to Tony Blair's recent troubles, his ouster, and the offering of his job to her eleventh Prime Minister by this same queen.