Berlin film festival fails to reel in the critics

BERLIN, Feb 16 (Reuters) You know it has not been a vintage Berlin film festival when the leading contender for top prizes falls somewhere between ''average'' and ''good'' in the critics' ratings As the 10-day film odyssey draws to a close with the awards on Saturday, and with four competition entries still to be screened, crews and critics from around the world are packing their bags and scratching their heads to pick the highlights.

''The 57th Berlinale...might best be thought of as an average festival,'' wrote A O Scott in the New York Times.

He goes on to say that Berlin, once a bastion of serious cinema, has become ''something bigger, more varied and perhaps less distinctive''. The festival has grown rapidly in recent years and attracts Hollywood glamour as well as art-house films.

Critics argue that some of the best films in Berlin this year were outside the main lineup, and wondered whether festival director Dieter Kosslick had shied away from incendiary topics that robbed the competition of its ''Michael Moore moment''.

Cannes had it in 2004 with Moore's controversial documentary ''Fahrenheit 9/11'', which went on to win the competition, while Berlin had it last year with Michael Winterbottom's ''The Road to Guantanamo'', about the US-led war in Afghanistan.

This year the same buzz may have been created by ''The Lark Farm'', a drama depicting the tragedy of a family almost wiped out in the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915.

Turkey denies allegations by Armenia and others that 1.5 million Armenians died in systematic genocide at Turkish hands.

''The film comes at precisely the right time -- after the murder of the Armenian journalist Hrant Dink and threats against the Turkish Nobel prize winner Orhan Pamuk,'' wrote Peter Zander of the German newspaper Die Welt.

''It would have been a highlight of the Berlinale, perhaps the most important film of the year. But it's not in the main section.

Perhaps they wanted to avoid the big controversy. How unfortunate.'' WOMEN SHINE Among the competition films, if audience reaction at packed press screenings was anything to go by, ''Irina Palm'', starring British singer and actress Marianne Faithfull, would be the firm favourite to win the Golden Bear for best film.

She plays a grandmother who becomes a sex worker in London's seedy Soho district to raise money for her grandson's medical treatment, and the film mixes humour with a touching tale of selfless love.

Faithfull's was one of several standout performances by women in Berlin this year that also included Germany's Nina Hoss in ''Yella'' and China's Yu Nan in ''Tuya's Marriage''.

French actress Marion Cotillard shone as Edith Piaf in ''La Vie En Rose'', a biopic of the tragic chanteuse which provided an unusually popular opening to the competition.

''The Counterfeiters'', based on a real Nazi plot to disrupt Britain's wartime economy by flooding it with counterfeit banknotes made by Jewish craftsmen in a concentration camp, gives Berlin a chance of a home victory.

Critics liked Brazilian director Cao Hamburger's ''The Year My Parents Went on Vacation'', about the country's military dictatorship seen through the eyes of a boy.

Also popular was Robert De Niro's CIA drama ''The Good Shepherd'', one of several Hollywood productions already released in the United States that used Berlin as a European launch pad.

Reviews praised French director Andre Techine's ''Witnesses'', about the start of the AIDS epidemic, and liked ''Don't Touch the Axe'', Jacques Rivette's version of a Balzac novella.

Sharon Stone and Jennifer Lopez appeared in critical duds.

Stone starred in Ryan Eslinger's existential tale ''When a Man Falls in the Forest'', and Lopez was in Berlin with ''Bodertown'', a drama based on the real-life murder of young Mexican women in a town near the US border.

REUTERS PDM PM1705