Ich bin ein Berlinaler

Before I get to my favorite movies of the Berlinale so far -- the festival continues for three more days, although today is my last day covering it -- I need to send up a giant red flag to everyone who loved French filmmaker Erick Zonca's 1998 debut "The Dreamlife of Angels": His new film, "Julia" (his first in English), a sort of remake of John Cassavetes' "Gloria," stars Tilda Swinton as an alcoholic kidnapper who finds redemption -- and it's insufferable. Many of my colleagues have noted that while they dislike the movie, they think Swinton is terrific. It is the sort of performance that people look at and marvel, "She can do anything!" when in fact it's simply a role that's all wrong for her. Cast as a woman who's blowsy, selfish and usually sozzled, Swinton plays down to her character, which isn't nearly the same as playing it. If Satan appeared at the door of my hotel room and offered me, for some outlandish price, the two hours of breathing time "Julia" took from me, I might be tempted to take it.

Then again, even though Blanche DuBois wasn't the type to hang around film festivals, she did inadvertently coin the festival slogger's motto: Sometimes there's God so suddenly. I found him, first, in Mexican filmmaker Fernando Eimbcke's "Lake Tahoe," one of those quietly miraculous little pictures that manage to be both minimalist and rich at the same time. At the beginning of "Lake Tahoe," a young man named Juan (played by Diego Catano) crashes his car somewhere on the outskirts of a Mexican town. He then sets off on an odyssey to find the single part that will get the car going again, in which he meets a grizzled old mechanic whose only companion is a sweet-tempered bruiser of a dog (who goes by the name "Sica," perhaps a reference to the great Italian neorealist filmmaker, or perhaps just a name); a young woman who's far more interested in punk music than in car parts; and a young man who can actually fix the car, but who would rather spend his afternoon in the dark watching a Bruce Lee picture. He invites Juan to join him, one of those simple gestures that represent a tiny yet immense act of kindness, something we don't realize until we learn that Juan is trying to deal with -- and seems to be buckling under -- enormous grief.

Eimbcke -- who made his debut in 2005 with the lovely "Duck Season" -- tells his story with a series of still shots. Characters move into and out of the frame, going about their business as if unwatched. Eimbcke's camera doesn't track; it only captures, keeping so still that it seems to be listening as well as watching. This is the kind of modest, unassuming filmmaking that doesn't win giant prizes. But it's the sort that can keep you going to the movies, and in the current climate -- one in which big Hollywood pictures, in particular, are becoming so increasingly and desperately facile -- that's more valuable than ever.

Even though no one actually sings in Johnnie To's "Sparrow," it's more a musical than an action movie, borrowing the mood, color and vitality of pictures like "Singin' in the Rain" and "The Band Wagon" and "An American in Paris" -- and maybe even "The Young Girls of Rochefort." In "Sparrow," a group of rapscallion pickpockets led by Kei (Simon Yam), a smoothie who dresses like an old-Hollywood matinee idol, make their way through Hong Kong. With moves that might have been choreographed by Michael Kidd, they lift the wallets of unsuspecting passersby, but these are principled petty criminals: After removing the cash, they conscientiously drop the wallets into a mail slot. (At one point Kei removes the bills and then replaces the wallet in the victim's back pocket, all in one smooth move.)

These guys take great pleasure in their craft; for them, stealing is artistry, as well as a way to make a living. And then a knockout femme fatale, Chun Lei (Kelly Lin, who appears in Olivier Assayas' "Boarding Gate"), infiltrates their circle and upsets their routine. The picture's beautifully orchestrated finale -- one that harnesses all the visual poetry of twirling umbrellas and rain-slicked streets -- is, again, more a dance routine than an action sequence. "Sparrow" is lighter, more buoyant, than To's last feature, the extraordinary (and moving) "Exiled." But it may be the better film: To uses plenty of standard film references here, and still, what he has come up with is quite unlike anything I've seen before. "Sparrow" is so pleasurable that I can't wait to see it again.

Face it: The idea of crossing an ocean to look at movies for six or eight or 10 days isn't just luxurious; it's absurd. Even so, a purely enjoyable picture like "Sparrow" can make you feel you've crossed that ocean for good reason. And it reminds you that Blanche DuBois was right.