LITTLE BY LITTLE

The Portland International Film Festival is winding down this weekend (closing party tonight, details here). Since the Portland Mercury aren't archiving the capsule reviews they ran in the paper, I decided to post mine here. I covered six films in total for them, and we had only 50 words to give our impression. It was a challenge at first, but fun once I got the hang of it:

HIS & HERS: A neat idea: a documentary collage of real Irish women, arranged in chronological order from birth to death, talking about their fathers, husbands, and sons. The effect is of a shared sisterhood, but a little variety would have added some sorely lacking depth.

HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER An Israeli paper-pusher must ferry the body of a former employee back to her home in Romania. Pulling more heartstrings than legs, director Eran Riklis’ middle-of-the-road trip has angry teenagers, backwoods sheriffs, and a corpse strapped to the top of a van. Still, not quite National Lampoon’s Eastern European Vacation.

INCENDIES This Canadian Oscar nominee spans several decades, two countries, and a lot of complicated politics to expose a dead mother’s secrets, but one plot twist too many turns serious drama into overly earnest pap. Icendies begins as a Leonard Cohen song, but ends up sounding more like Ray Stevens.

POETRY A South Korean grandmother discovers she has Alzheimer’s right around the same time she finds out her grandson is a creep best forgotten. In trying times, a newfound love for verse helps her search for meaning. Though slow going, Lee Chang-dong’s drama is worth it for its lyrical, emotional finish.

SILENT SOULS One wouldn’t expect to describe a movie about an amateur poet driving to the seaside with his boss to burn the body of the man’s dead wife as airy, but Aleksei Fedorchenko’s Silent Souls takes a freeform approach to its eulogizing. It’s film as memory: incongruous, enriching, and oddly playful. Then, poof! It's gone.

UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s story of a dying man in Thailand takes place in a rarefied state where folk tales and ghost stories mingle with everyday life. Meditative and mysterious, full of long takes and dreamy ideas, this Cannes favorite is as unpredictable as it is enthralling.

Current Soundtrack: Trash Can Sinatras' Song-a-Day Twitter feed

CLIMBING UP THE CINEMA WALLS

I have been absolutely buried the last couple of weeks in terms of movie viewing, and I am way, way behind on my reviewing. In addition to six capsule reviews for the Portland Mercury, I wrote up eleven films from the Portland International Film Festival for Criterion Cast. You can check them all out here on my author's page. That's seventeen movies in less than three weeks, in addition to everything else. Try it sometime, it will break your head!

Anyway, back to the old routine...

NEW IN THEATRES...

* Barney's Version, an ambitious literary adaptation that can't bear the narrative weight. Fine performances by Paul Giametti, Dustin Hoffman, and Rosamund Pike at least make it watchable.

UPDATED TO CRITERION CONFESSIONS...

* Amarcord, Fellini's beautiful and entertaining stroll down memory lane.

* Basil Dearden's London Underground, a boxed set of four movies from the innovative and narratively daring English filmmaker. (Also at DVD Talk.)

* Senso, Luchino Visconit's operatic tale of love and madness. Lush and erudite, it's a pretty spectacular piece of cinema. (Also at DVD Talk.)

* Still Walking, the story of one modern Japanese family's grief, directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda. (Also at DVD Talk.)

THIS WEEK IN DVD/BD REVIEWS...

* America America, Elia Kazan's remarkable epic story of one boy trying to get from Turkey to America.

* An Affair to Remember, Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant in a romance that never loses its passion.

* Burlesque, revisiting one of my favorite reviews from last year now that the movie is out on Blu-Ray and DVD.

* Futureworld, a sort of dull 1970s vision of a theme park future.

* Guest of Cindy Sherman, a documentary made by a narcissist who can't handle that his coattail ride doesn't come with its own coat. I got some particularly juicy hate mail for this review since the piece could be considered as a personal attack on the filmmaker. I stand by the assertion that if you're going to be the subject of your own movie and present yourself and your activities as some kind of plea for sympathy or even admiration, then you erase the line between art and artist. You are the art. This has been an ongoing topic of mine. I refer back to my review of Tarnation, written for this blog back in 2005. Feel free to post your thoughts on the subject below. I think it's an interesting topic worthy of discussion.

* Thelma & Louise: 20th Anniversary Edition: It's still fun to hit the road with Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis. Directed by Ridley Scott.

* Unstoppable, the other Scott brother's recent film about an out of control road trip is also a pretty damn good time.

Current Soundtrack: Robotanists, ROBOTANISTS does RADIOHEAD: The King of Limbs [In 24 Hours] (free download)

e-mail = golightly at confessions123.com * Criterion Confessions * Live Journal Syndication * ComicSpace * Last FM * GoodReads * The Blog Roll [old version] * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

All text (c) 2011 Jamie S. Rich

34TH PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

The 34th Portland International Film Festival officially starts tomorrow, February 10, and runs through February 26. The full line-up of movies is fairly extensive, including multiple programs featuring short films.

This year, I am joining forces with two other press outlets to review some of the selections, which range from the new Abbas Kiarostami release to a flick about mutated Japanese school girls. I've been watching screenings pretty much every day for nearly two weeks now. I may go blind, but I am soldiering on.

You can read short reviews by me as part of the the Portland Mercury's festival coverage, online through the link but also in the paper. Not sure if all of the reviews will be in both. I think depending on the screening schedule, some will just be online. Several went up today: Incendies, The Human Resources Manager, and His & Hers.

I am also writing longer reviews for the guys over at Criterion Cast, the first of which also went live today. You can access them at the Cast's PIFF microsite, along with the rest of their coverage, or jump direct to my author's page.

I'll be updating regularly over there for the next couple of weeks. Not sure how often the Merc will update their online list. I know I just sent them the blurb for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, which I saw this morning. Speaking of, did you see this awesome poster Chris Ware designed for the theatrical release?

Current Soundtrack: Christina Aguilera, "Prima Donna;" Natalia Kills, "Zombie"

PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2010, REVIEW 8: LOOKING FOR ERIC

This concludes my coverage of this year's Portland International Film Festival. Thanks to the organizers for inviting me along. The check out what is left for the programming, check out the PIFF 2010 website.

Looking for Eric (Great Britain; dir. Ken Loach)

Eric Bishop (Steve Evets) is a postman who cares about football and little else. He has let his two sons slip away, even though they live under the same roof. He still pines for his first wife. Even his love of football is out of date. He hasn't been to a Manchester United game in ten years, and his hero, Eric Cantona, retired at the turn of the century. Eric is so lost, at the start of the picture he gets on the highway going in the wrong direction--possibly on purpose.

Once Eric is out of the hospital, he starts to get roused from his sleepwalking routine. It begins with a silly self-help actualization exercise put on by his supervisor, a gent named Meatballs (John Henshaw). In it, Eric is prompted to visualize a person of confidence he most wishes he was. After imagining himself as Cantona, the real Cantona appears to him in a vision and starts giving him life advice. His eyes newly opened, Eric starts to deal with things, attacking problems the way his hero would attack the ball on the field. What Would Cantona Do?

Looking for Eric is directed by Ken Loach from a script by Paul Laverty, who also wrote Loach's 1998 film My Name is Joe. Loach is known for his realistic films, a modern update of the 1960s Kitchen Sink era of British cinema. His approach captures the look and tenor of average life. Looking for Eric's detours into fantasy, then, are kind of surprising. Smartly, the script never tries to explain the nature of Eric's visions, or even question them as such. No clichéd "I'm a figment of your imagination" speeches from Cantona, who plays himself and also produced. Eric just goes with it, and so, presumably, shall we.

Except that, for me, the Cantona stuff sat somewhat uneasily next to the rest of the narrative. The appearance of the footballer doesn't feel natural, it's more of a gimmick, and it ends up making some of the positive changes Eric makes, such as his exercise regimen, ring false. Looking for Eric is much better the more natural it is. The best scenes involve Eric sitting with his postal worker mates and taking the piss out of one another. The self-help exercise and an argument about football loyalty down at the pub had the audience I was in howling with laughter. The film's final act concerns itself with one of Eric's sons having gotten in trouble with a local hood, and how Eric decides to stand up and get him out of it. The solution he comes up with is both surprising and amusing.

Looking for Eric is a harmless piece of entertainment. It works for what it is and nothing more. As far as Loach's filmography, it may end up being a minor blip; then again, it was quite the crowd pleaser at the afternoon screening I attended, so its heart and its humor could end up making it more popular than his more serious, demanding films. Only time will tell.

One side note, for those of us who don't know much at all about Eric Cantona, I appreciate that Ken Loach cuts in a healthy amount of clips showing us the man at work. It doesn't take much to see what an interesting personality he was on the field. Though, Shawn Levy at the Oregonian suggested I take a look at this clip for the less heroic side of the footballer. An out-of-control Cantona vs. a Spectator:

Looking for Eric plays on 2/26 and 2/27.

Current Soundtrack: Elvis Costello, Secret, Profane and Sugarcane



e-mail = golightly at confessions123.com * Criterion Confessions * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * ComicSpace * Last FM * GoodReads * The Blog Roll [old version] * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

All text (c) 2010 Jamie S. Rich

PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2010, REVIEW 7: NOBODY TO WATCH OVER ME

PIFF 2010 website

Nobody to Watch Over Me (Japan; dir. Ryoichi Kimizuka)

Ryôichi Kimizuka's film Nobody to Watch Over Me starts with a fascinating cultural premise. In Japan, when someone has committed a terrible crime, their family is often considered as responsible for it as the perpetrator, and police officers are regularly assigned to watch the grieving relatives to keep them from committing suicide as a result of the shame.

Saori's life is turned upside down when her brother is arrested for killing two elementary school girls. The teenager, played by Mirai Shida, suddenly finds herself the subject of media scrutiny, and she is assigned a bodyguard, Detective Takumi Katsuura (Kôichi Satô), to keep her out of harm's way until she can tell police what happened. Saori may have been the only one to see her brother on the day the deed was done.

Things grow more complicated, though, when facts about Katsuura's past come to light. Three years ago, while trailing a drug addict, the tweaker stabbed a four-year-old boy. A reporter with an axe to grind paints Katsuura as indicative of a police force that cares more for the criminals than it does their victims. Katsuura has had the shakes ever since, blaming himself despite faulty procedure being the true culprit, and the psychological fallout has nearly destroyed his family. Protecting Saori may prevent him from taking advantage of the last chance he has to save his marriage, and the girl resents him for being there anyway.

The idea that a family would be held accountable for what one member has done is fascinating, and it's pretty easy to sympathize with poor Saori. Kimizuka and co-writer Satoshi Suzuki are offering a new twist on the old plot of one lone cop protecting one innocent witness, plugging the detective and a girl into a system that quickly overtakes both of them. Governmental policies, a ravenous media, and an angry public quickly dismantle any chance at escape they have. Each step of the way, there are new obstacles, and when internet gawkers get involved, the situation grows even more dangerous. Though most of the dramatic tension is more interpersonal than violent, we do get a pretty exciting car chase (with heartthrob Ryuhei Matsuda at the wheel) and Katsuura literally shows how far he'll go to shield his subject by taking a beating for her. The parallels to his old case are impossible to avoid, and in helping the girl come to grips with what has happened to her, he has to face up to what happened to him.

Kimizuka and cameraman Naoki Kayano shot Nobody to Watch Over Me in a slick, pseudo-documentary style. It has the kind of loose and sometimes shaky camerawork you might see on a show like Homicide: Life on the Street, but lit with neon. The acting is largely low-key enough to match. Satô and Matsuda indulge in a little buddy-cop banter, but when Satô is alone with Mirai Shida, he dials it down. Both offer poignant performances, even though Satô's shaky hand at times looks like he is literally at war with the material's inherent melodrama. It's one of a few aspects that are overplayed, and Nobody to Watch Over Me could have benefitted from a more cynical editor. Its overwrought theme song and the hyper graphics of the internet mobilization are jarring in what is otherwise a pretty down-to-earth film. The ending is also a little too conveniently tied together, but not necessarily out of line with more typical films of this kind.

Nobody to Watch Over Me asks us to stop and think about responsibility. Who is to blame for bad acts? What kind of atonement is really satisfying? Most of all, do our reactions make us any better or worse than what we are reacting against? Despite its minor flaws, Nobody to Watch Over Me is effective in this because it is also effective as drama. It was Japan's official entry into the Oscar pool this year, and though it's not even close to the best foeign film of the year, it's certainly better than last year's winner, Departures, and it's too bad that it's probably not going to get the same amount of attention.

Nobody to Watch Over Me plays on 2/24 and 2/27.

Current Soundtrack: Pulp, "Forever in My Dreams;" various artists, Dream Babes, vol. 1: Am I Dreaming?



e-mail = golightly at confessions123.com * Criterion Confessions * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * ComicSpace * Last FM * GoodReads * The Blog Roll [old version] * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

All text (c) 2010 Jamie S. Rich

PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2010, REVIEW 6: MID-AUGUST LUNCH

PIFF 2010 website

Mid-August Lunch (Italy; dir. Gianni Di Gregorio)

The screenwriter of Gomorrah cracks open the dangerous world of elderly women like a tenement slum!

Well, not exactly, but it is kind of surprising to see the architect of that grimy criminal expose making his directorial debut on a film about what old ladies like to eat. Then again, Scorsese followed Mean Streets with Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, so there's a precedent for this sort of thing.

Gianni Di Gregorio not only writes and directs Mid-August Lunch, but he also stars, playing Gianni, the middle-aged son of Valeria De Franciscis, a vain woman who lives in the upper condominium in Rome. I say vain because she still does her make-up and has a big pile of blonde hair despite the fact that it makes her look like someone mixed up Clyde with Ruth Gordon in Every Which Way But Loose. Also, because she and her son apparently haven't paid her bills in some time, and the condo co-op is ready to take action. As a trade-off, Gianni agrees to take in his landlord's old mother, Marina Cacciotti, for a couple of days. When Marina comes by, it's sprung on Gianni that he will also take Aunt Maria (Maria Calì). Then, when his doctor visits, the doc asks Gianni to cough and to babysit his mum (Grazia Cesarini Sforza) while he works the night shift.

Before he knows it, Gianni has gone from being a layabout to the concierge in an apartment full of four women, each with their own peccadilloes and demands. Maria forgets stuff and repeats herself, Marina is horny, the doctor's mom can't eat meat but sneaks it anyway, that kind of thing. At first the women all hate each other and retire to separate rooms, but then they find a common ground and get chatty and get Gianni to make them one big lunch.

And that's it. There is nothing more grand to Mid-August Lunch. At a scant 76 minutes, Di Gregorio gets in and gets out and doesn't let it get any more complicated than that. (In this, it is the complete opposite of Gomorrah.) While it is, yes, pretty anemic in terms of conflict-based plot, there is something undeniably winning about the film all the same. Shot simply and in close quarters, there is an intimacy to Mid-August Lunch that invites the viewer to be a part of the gathering. No great lessons are learned, but the assuredness of the delivery makes it so we can be content with just enjoying our time at the table, sharing a meal with new friends.

Mid-August Lunch has already screened for the public. No word yet on a wider North American release.

Current Soundtrack: Elbow & the BBC Concert Orchestra, The Seldom Seen Kid Live at Abbey Road



e-mail = golightly at confessions123.com * Criterion Confessions * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * ComicSpace * Last FM * GoodReads * The Blog Roll [old version] * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

All text (c) 2010 Jamie S. Rich

PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2010, REVIEW 5: VINCERE & MOTHER

PIFF 2010 website

Please note that I originally got my dates crossed for Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank, and you can see it on the 19th along with the two films below. Refresh your memory with my review.

Vincere (Italy; dir. Marco Bellocchio)

Newsflash: Benito Mussolini was a jerk!

Vincere (Win), the new film by radical '60s director Marco Bellocchio is a biography of Il Duce's obsessive mistress, Ida Dalser (Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Love in the Time of Cholera). As a young woman, she stumbles into the emerging revolutionary more than once, usually while he is on the run for his life. She insists her way into his life, devoting herself entirely to her lover (played by Filippo Timi), though apparently never really clueing in to the fact that he was already married. Still, Ida gives birth to Mussolini's first-born son only to find herself increasingly shunned as the Fascist leader grows more popular. Ida becomes the living embodiment of the adage "just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you." Eager to bury this extra family, Mussolini has his hoods lock Ida away in a mental hospital.

The tables are turned at this point of the movie, and Bellocchio challenges our perception of events. Is it possible that our first impression of Ida as an off-her-nut stalker was a little harsh? Mussolini has so effectively cut her out, she has a right to be angry, and he has placed her in the one place where it is assured no one will believe her. Bellocchio makes the smart decision to remove the movie's version of the dictator from the film at this point. From then on out, Mussolini only appears in unearthed newsreel, and the man himself looks far different than the handsome actor who portrayed his younger years (in a sly joke, even Ida doesn't recognize him). It's all about Ida at this point, and her unflinching devotion to the truth. Or is it the truth? Could his sudden absence mean it's all been in her head? Not likely, but you have to consider it.

Having recently viewed Bellocchio's debut film, Fists in the Pocket (1965), for the first time, I was eager to see whether the older director had retained any of the younger's anything-goes spirit. How would he fit in a formal genre like a biopic? Surprisingly well, as it turns out. When Vincere settles into its conventions, it's not unlike how Bellocchio's contemporary Bernardo Bertollucci got serious in the 1980s. The old man has some fire in him yet, however, and Vincere is frequently ignited by audacious doses of opera, collages of vintage cinema and documentary footage, and insistent title graphics that appear onscreen like propagandic headlines (not unlike how film was used to spread the message way back when). These are mostly present in the first half of the film, when the young Mussolini is ready to impose his will on his audience.

Filippo Timi is fantastic as Mussolini. He also plays the dual role as the younger Benito grown up, losing his mind, and doing impressions of his father. It's a fiery role made believable by Timi's intense charisma. He is powerful as Il Duce, establishing his hunger and his forceful personality, but then managing to parody his own performance with his comic turn as the deluded Benito Jr. Does he remind anybody else of Alberto Sordi? Litle Benito playacting as Big Benito is reminiscent of the comic stylings of early cinema's best funnymen.

Vincere is not the dictator's movie, however, it's an actress' picture, and Giovanna Mezzogiorno's passion not only dominates her lover's in the first half of the movie, but once Bellocchio surrenders his film completely to her, she runs with it. Ida's mental deterioration is heartbreaking, and Bellocchio pushes her by letting several scenes rest entirely on her face as she silently breaks down. Mezzogiorno is also dead sexy in that crazy kind of way, and the love scenes between Ida and Mussolini are extra steamy.

Vincere joins a spate of recent Italian movies that match political messages with cinematic vigor. Gomorrah played at PIFF last year, as did the less artistically successful but visually dynamic Il Divo. Something is obviously going on over there, the Italians are all fired up and ready to do some screen damage. I look forward to what's coming next.

Vincere plays on 2/19 and 2/21.

Mother (South Korea; dir. Bong Joon-ho)

Most people know Korean director Bong Joon-ho from his 2006 updating of the giant-monster movie genre, The Host. As fun and endearing as that movie is, the Bong Joon-ho movie I prefer is his 2003 crime thriller Memories of Murder, a darkly comic and grisly story of a hunt for a killer. The filmmaker returns to that kind of territory for his new film, Mother, and the finished product is no less impressive.

Mother follows a single mother (Kim Hye-je) who works as an herbalist and amateur acupuncturist. She worries over everything, but her biggest concern is her twentysomething son. Though a grown man, Do-joon (Bin Won) is developmentally disabled and has the mind of a child. When he is accused of murdering a neighborhood girl, Do-joon's mom refuses to believe he is capable of such violence, regardless of what the evidence says. When her attempts to plead with the police and hire a slick lawyer fail, she decides to investigate the situation herself. Enlisting her son's criminally minded friend, she digs into the dead girl's past, uncovering disturbing stories about the people she spent her time with, and leading her to unexpected actions.

The tone of Mother is very similar to Memories of Murder. Laugh-out-loud black comedy is mixed with the dark details of the crimes. Bong Joon-ho figures if you're in for a penny, you're in for a pound, and he doesn't think it's right to let you laugh at the situation without showing you how gruesome death and violence really are. He is able to flip back and forth effortlessly, without it ever being jarring or gimmicky. The gallows humor gets us through the rougher times.

Kim Hye-je is amazing as the frightened mother. Though her character is irritating and overbearing, the actress manages to make her human. Her concern for her child is ever-present, and her stubbornness is admirable. Joon-ho gives us tiny nuggets from the woman's past, hinting at deeper despair and even possibly implicating the woman in her son's mental deficiencies. The mother is someone who believes in simple remedies for complex problems, and the story pushes her out of her comfort zone: there is no root or potion that can navigate the maze her son has drawn them into.

And Mother is like a maze. It's an ever-changing narrative, full of dead-ends, wrong turns, and surprising revelations. Its final act is full of unforeseen twists. More than gotcha!-type discoveries, these switch-ups reveal how smart the writing really is. A good mystery can be as contorted as the screenwriter wants it to be without having to resort to cheap shocks. Bong Joon-ho also believes that every solution to a problem comes with a price, and so Mother ends up being far more satisfying as a result. Whether the right man is exonerated or the wrong man gets away with it, it doesn't matter, because no one walks away unchanged.

Mother plays on 2/19 and 2/23.

Current Soundtrack: The Dandy Warhols, The Black Album




e-mail = golightly at confessions123.com * Criterion Confessions * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * ComicSpace * Last FM * GoodReads * The Blog Roll [old version] * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

All text (c) 2010 Jamie S. Rich

PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2010, REVIEW 4: THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN

PIFF 2010 website

The Girl on the Train (France; dir. André Téchiné)

Veteran French director André Téchiné hits a whiffle ball with his latest, the boring, overlong, and intellectually muddled The Girl on the Train. Based on a play by Jean-Marie Besset, which itself was based loosely on real events, it tells the story of Jeanne (Emile Dequenne), a dull girl bored with the dull life she's too empty-headed to do anything about. Téchiné would have us think she's a free spirit, and he spends a good portion of the movie's first twenty minutes filming her dreaming the day away, editing it like she was in some bad music video, complete with the crappy music. Her mother (the always gorgeous Catherine Deneuve) wants her to get a job and even helps her set up an interview with an old admirer, crusading lawyer Samuel Bleistein (Michel Blanc). Naturally, Jeanne doesn't get the job. Bleistein is at the forefront of a fight against anti-Semitism. He doesn't need silly little gentile girls wasting space around his office. (Blanc at times comes off as a bulldog version of Martin Scorsese, as excited about lawyering as Marty is about movies.)

Eventually, Jeanne meets Franck (Nicolas Duvauchelle), a college-aged wrestler who stares into the camera like he's Jonny Lee Miller in Trainspotting
and makes vaguely threatening "jokes." Franck gets them a job as a caretaker at an electronics warehouse, but doesn't tell Jeanne it's a drug front. He gets stabbed, arrested, and rejects her. Now having no one to pay attention to her, the spoiled child draws swastikas on her stomach, cuts herself with a knife, and goes to the police to say six thugs beat her on a train because they thought she was Jewish.

This is the central event of The Girl on the Train, but it takes so long to get there and the lie is treated with such nonchalance, I kept hoping Téchiné was working his way up to something to say. Alas, he is not. There is little point to this story, nothing is learned, and it's not sufficiently interesting to warrant watching the film anyway. Jeanne is a nothing character, absent of any spark or emotion. Franck isn't the only one to fall in love with her, and the devotion men around her show to this brat is baffling. She doesn't even come off as sufficiently broken so we might think they have a white knight complex. Hell, she's not even that pretty.

Téchiné also spends a lot of time looking at Bleistein's life; particularly, there is a whole subplot involving his son (Mathieu Demy), his ex-wife (Ronit Elkabetz), and their child (Jérémie Quaegebeur), who is about to be bar mitzvahed. The divorced parents are just as spoiled as Jeanne, and are actually more insufferable for how highly they think of themselves. For whom are movies about the over-privileged made anymore? There are so few of them left, it has to be the most specific of niche audiences. I have a hard time feeling sorry for people with no real problems. Only the older generation here is portrayed as anything remotely human or doing anything worthwhile. I suppose I should consider that Téchiné is displaying some self-awareness, as Deneuve and Blanc seem as baffled and disgusted by their children as I am. Then again, maybe that's just him playing up to the baby boomers and the self-mythologizing where they convince themselves they are the last generation to have gotten it right. If I pretend to agree, will you go away?

The Girl on the Train plays on 2/17 and 2/18.

Current Soundtrack: The Fantastic Mr. Fox soundtrack



e-mail = golightly at confessions123.com * Criterion Confessions * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * ComicSpace * Last FM * GoodReads * The Blog Roll [old version] * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

All text (c) 2010 Jamie S. Rich

PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2010, REVIEW 3: THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE WEIRD

PIFF 2010 website

The Good, the Bad, the Weird (South Korea; dir. Kim Ji-woon)

The Good, the Bad, the Weird is a movie that doesn't just go over the top. Each time it climbs a particularly dizzy height, it peers out on the horizon in search of another summit, and then it climbs that, too.

Kim Ji-woon's Sergio Leone homage is being billed as a "kimchi Western." It is in every way Asian cinema's truest response to the 1960s Italian renaissance of the cowboy genre. Set in Manchuria during the 1930s, when China and Korea were occupied by the Japanese, the movie is one long chase, punctuated by occasional gunplay and slaptstick humor. Its trio of anti-heroes are a clean-cut bounty hunter (the good), a killer with anime hair (the bad), and a bumbling train robber (the weird). All cross paths at the start of the picture. The killer, Park Chang-yi (Lee Byung-hun, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra), has been hired to rob a Japanese banker transporting a map believed to lead to the greatest treasure of the Qing dynasty. Only, when he gets on board, he finds that Yoon Tae-goo (Kang Song-ho, The Host) has already killed the banker and taken all of his baggage. Also on the train is Park Do-won (Jung Woo-sung), who is on the trail of Park Chang-yi and has just gotten lucky.

This extended action sequence, which features the three different shooters working independently to stop the train and then coming together in a hail of bullets, is the first in a string of increasingly ludicrous and exhilarating gun battles. As Yoon Tae-goo becomes aware of what he has lifted, he makes a run for the booty, picking up more enemies along the way. By the end of it, not only is he contending with his rivals, including Park Chang-yi's gang, but he's also being chased by colorful bandits and the Japanese army. Horses, jeeps, dynamite, machine guns, mortars--if it can be used to pursue a guy or to try to kill him, expect it to show up. There are even the occasional anachronistic additions just to keep us on our toes. If you are one of those people who worries about where gunfighters get all their ammunition, you'll probably want to see a different movie.

Kim Ji-woon, who also directed A Tale of Two Sisters, crafted The Good, the Bad, the Weird with incredible style. His camera is regularly in motion, and he uses a very wide aspect ratio to get the full panorama. We see the vast expanse of the Manchurian desert, but we also get the larger-than-life close-ups, the zoom-ins on the eyes of the players. The big rectangle allows the director to show all the action. He whips around to follow motion, he chases his fighters through back alleys, he swoops down on them like a hawk. The best part is he does most of it with a minimal use of computer puffery or editing tricks. Some of the trickiest stunts are done live and Ji-woon often lets them run without cutting, just so we can see. One great bit features Park Do-won swinging over everyone's heads and firing his rifle, and though it's hard to tell if it was all done for real, photos during the closing credits show that at least some of it was.

The Good, the Bad, the Weird is meant as an admiring wink to all the films that its participants love, and they do a great job of it. The clothes may be more tailored, but the dirt and the heat are just the same as it was in Leone. The film's score openly references Ennio Morricone, and there is even a nod to Quentin Tarantino, borrowing the version of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" he used in Kill Bill. (I want this soundtrack so bad!) This is a film where it's clear that everyone involved really just wanted to get dressed up as cowboys and run around shooting at each other. Thank goodness they are so good at it. Every ounce of fun they so clearly had is up there on the screen.

The Good, the Bad, the Weird plays on 2/13, 2/15, and 2/27.

Current Soundtrack: Inglourious Basterds OST

PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2010, REVIEW 2: A PROPHET & FISH TANK

PIFF 2010 website

A Prophet (France; dir. Jacques Audiard)

Malik El Djebena is a 19-year-old Arab sent to prison for six years after an altercation with police. Played by Tahar Rahim, the boy is functionally illiterate and as completely alone outside jail as he is in jail. He is an isolated nothing of a character, slow to react or understand, the kind of guy who was made to be a pawn. Which is partially why the Coriscan gang leader César Luciani (Niels Arestrup) picks Malik for a job. A witness for the state (Hichem Yacoubi) is currently being held in the Muslim ward of the prison, and César thinks Malik's heritage will be his passport into the man's cell. He's right, and when Malik kills the witness on César's behalf, it starts the boy on a path that will give him new opportunities and a whole new education in the way things are done.

A Prophet is a staggering 150 minutes of cinema. In terms of narrative, it's a film that never once signals ahead to where it's going to go. Director Jacques Audiard and his co-writer Thomas Bidegain have rewritten a screenplay by Abdel Raouf Dafri and Nicolas Peufaillit and made a film that defies conventional genre classification. In some ways, it's a prison drama; in others, it's a criminal apprenticeship a la Ray Liotta's in GoodFellas. This isn't movie writing with a dogmatic three-act structure or the usual conflict/resolution step-by-step plot set-up. A Prophet is more like a novel, one that has room to grow and follow the natural succession of events, free of any imposed dramatic arc. It's not that Malik doesn't go from being the scared teenager he is at the start of the picture to something entirely different at the finish, it's that there is no way to predict what that something will be. The story of his life is a lot like life: unpredictable.

Audiard has assembled an impressive cast for a A Prophet, but the movie really rests on Tahar Rahim. He is in practically every scene, and you're not likely to see a more complete performance this year. For as good as Rahim is at convincing us that Malik is terminally stupid when the movie begins, he is even better at slowly revealing what is really going on behind those searching eyes. There is never a moment where you can look at the actor's face and not see that something is going on inside his head. The wheels are always turning, he is always watching, and Rahim develops the boy piece by piece. Even when Malik has to get touch or starts showing his cunning, Rahim manages to make him appear vulnerable, so that we as the audience keep underestimating him as much as everyone on screen does.

A Prophet begins with a series of inky images, black frames melting away like ice, giving us glimpses of what is behind the darkness. It's an unobtrusive visual metaphor for the movie. Our vision is limited, but the story is large. Clarity comes at a price, and in this film, it's often an extraordinary outburst of violence. It's violence that has gotten Malik imprisoned, but it's also violence that first begins to shed light on what he can be. It's the movie's central irony: the man he kills is the one who teaches him the most. He is Malik's prophet, showing him the way, and it's Malik who shows the rest of us.

A Prophet plays on 2/13 and 2/15.

Fish Tank (Great Britain, dir. Andrea Arnold)

It was only some time after I had finished watching Fish Tank that I started to realize that this movie is like a British version of Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire. It didn't occur to me during the screening because the two movies couldn't be more stylistically different, nor could they be farther apart in terms of artistic success. Both films are about young women living in poverty who dream about doing something flashy with their lives, but who must battle a lack of education, an uncaring mother, and the inappropriate advances of older men before they'll ever get a chance. Where Precious is manipulative and aesthetically cheap, however, Fish Tank is smart, emotionally honest, and technically restrained.

Fish Tank is the second film of writer/director Andrea Arnold, who previously made the stark crime drama Red Road. For her sophomore outing, she employs a similar digital, Neorealist style. Shooting on location with no musical score, she follows her main character Mia, played by a wonderfully effective first-timer named Katie Jarvis, through her day-to-day routine in an Essex housing project. She gets in fights, practices her dance moves, and wanders aimless and alone through the streets. When her mother (Kierston Wareing) brings home a new boyfriend, Connor (Michael Fassbender), Mia is attracted to him sexually, but also touched by the kindness and interest he shows her. He'll encourage Mia to pursue dancing and to open up, but when he moves into the apartment, Mia's attraction reaches a boil.

The final portion of the film is devoted to how Mia deals with this new attention and the fallout it causes. It's a strange, volatile ride. Her immaturity becomes more apparent with each irrational decision. Consequences don't seem to enter into the girl's mind before she does anything. Katie Jarvis is utterly convincing as the sullen teen whose rage seethes just below the surface. Fassbender is also very good, charming the audience into hoping he's not too good to be true. I really, really wanted to like him. He's a little like Peter Sarsgaard's character in An Education, except he's not Peter Sarsgaard, so it's not a foregone conclusion that he's creepy.

Most of Fish Tank is appropriately underplayed. Andrea Arnold doesn't rely on her characters to explain what is going on, she is far too intent on showing us through actions and reaction. (Something Lee Daniels, the director of Precious, is by all evidence incapable of.) Her camera practically stalks Mia, often having to run to keep up with her. Fish Tank is essentially a point of view film, Katie Jarvis is in every scene. The only time Arnold strains for a shelf she can't quite reach is when she tries to inject literary and visual metaphors into the movie. There is a thread involving a horse that was obvious enough before Arnold decided to put a finger right on its nose at the end. The final shot of the film is also a bit too "high school poetry" for my tastes.

Still, that's maybe four scenes in a two-hour movie. Not a bad ratio when you consider how much so many other directors get wrong in half the time.

Fish Tank plays on 2/19.
* I mixed up some dates in my review list, so posted this a little early, it seems.

Current Soundtrack: Retribution Gospel Choir, 2



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All text (c) 2010 Jamie S. Rich

PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2010, REVIEW 1: POLICE, ADJECTIVE & TERRIBLY HAPPY

For the second year in a row, I was lucky enough to see some of the movies from the Portland International Film Festival in advance of the starting date this coming Friday. Take some time to visit the PIFF website and look at all the movies they have to offer. Amongst the films I did not get to see, there are pictures by Alain Resnais, Peter Greenaway, Chen Kaige, Michael Winterbottom, Peter Chan Ho-Sun, and I am sure many fine artists who will be the top directors of years to come. There is even a Moomin movie!

As with last year's round of reviews, I am going to post my write-ups a couple of days before each film's initial screening to give you enough time to plan to go. PIFF begins this Friday, and the two films below are both part of the opening night.

(By the way, last year's reviews can be found tagged with "Portland International Film Festival," or here.)

Police, Adjective (Romania; dir. Corneliu Porumboiu)

A lot of people are going to call Police, Adjective boring, and I am not going to pretend I won't be one of them. That said, I may be alone in declaring it boring and saying I liked it anyway. Is that possible?

Dragos Bucur stars in Police, Adjective as Cristi, a drug-enforcement officer who is on a case following high school students around, wondering where they buy their hash. He wants to see the chain through and arrest people who really deserve to go to jail; his bosses want him to pick up the pace and arrest the kids for using. Apparently, in Romania, smoking a joint on the street can get you up to eight years in jail. Cristi doesn't want to destroy a kid's life for something acceptable everywhere else in Europe, his superiors bust his balls, and he's forced to make a decision.

Pretty straightforward stuff, but director Corneliu Porumboiu (12:08 East of Bucharest) takes a lot of time hanging around the subject and wondering what it's all about. Long stretches of the film are devoted to Cristi silently tailing his subjects, and equally long chunks of time are given over to mundane tasks. Cristi eating dinner, waiting for a meeting, literally doing nothing. There is one scene where his wife plays a schmaltzy song three times in a row. One more, and I was going to get up and look for the pause button.

These things are dull, even if I can't say I was entirely bored. The real quandary is why they are even there. Isn't there more to this story than the cop's sullen routine? Porumboiu is apparently saying no, there isn't, and using these mundane scenes as an illustration of Cristi's predicament. There is nothing else, so why the fuss? Many will ask the same of this movie. Police, Adjective's saving grace in these sequences is its gritty realism and voyeuristic framing. Apparently, there is still something inherently intriguing about spying on other people's lives.

Cristi is kind of an interesting character, even if his actions aren't all that interesting. He is wrestling with an abstract concept, one his boss boils down to settling on the correct meaning of the words "law," "moral," and "conscience," and reconciling those definitions with the duties of the police. The closest Police, Adjective comes to a climax is a long semantic argument. It mirrors an earlier drunken debate between Cristi and his wife over that song, in which the officer is seemingly incapable of grasping the concept of poetic metaphor. Why can't things just be what they are, why must they be something else? It's the same schism he feels in his brain. Thus, is there any real question what he will do when faced with the same query? If you are police, be police.

Then again, isn't that "police" as noun?

Police, Adjective plays on 2/12

Terribly Happy (France; dir. Henrik Ruben Genz)

One part Western, one part David Lynch, two parts noir pastiche, Terribly Happy is the Danish equivalent of Hot Fuzz. A dialed-back black comedy about a police officer whose bad mistakes have gotten him exiled to a small backwater town where he must learn to deal with small backwater ways.

Robert (Jakob Cedergren) has had some issues with his family and with his mental health, but he's back on the mend and if he serves his time in a remote Southern village, he can return to the police force in Copenhagen in no time. His new constituents aren't all that accommodating, however, they are quick to tell him that they only want his help on their terms. The self-described local quack (Lars Brygmann) is the only one to really establish himself as Robert's ally, and one half of the town's trouble couple, a woman named Ingelise (Lene Maria Christensen), latches onto the marshal. Her stories of being battered by her husband, the area's mean drunk (Kim Bodnia), are kind of believable, but she never seems to tell them without hitting on Robert at the same time. She also fills his head with horror movie tales of the mysterious Bog on the outskirts of the village that we know from the giggly opening voiceover is prone to sucking things into its depths.

Terribly Happy is a pretty entertaining movie, even if director Henrik Ruben Genz and co-writer Dunja Gry Jensen aren't always capable of making its disparate elements work. Based on a novel by Erling Jepsen, it's best when it's being a crime thriller. The bendy love-triangle narrative has positive echoes of the early films of John Dahl, the gleefully twisted Red Rock West and The Last Seduction. Robert is the dumb semi-hero, repeatedly stepping into the wrong thing--quite literally, as it turns out, from the number of soaked socks drying on his clothesline. Jakob Cedergen plays the cop with a straight-faced confusion, approaching each new development with the same blank, dunderheaded calm. Kim Bodnia is also great as the bad husband, giving chewy line readings from under his cowboy hat, coming off a little like a Danish Kevin Pollack.

It's the more wonky bits that never quite gel in Terribly Happy. The odd quirkiness of the rural folk and the scary movie tropes seem forced, as if the filmmakers are catering to our foreign perceptions of what dry Scandinavian humor must be like. They didn't need to go so far with it, the drab and desolate look of the town is enough to give us a sense of Robert's isolation from the modern world. This is a frontier outpost, a cowboy town that makes its own laws. 'nuff said.

Terribly Happy's plot isn't terribly original, but the movie has enough charm to keep you guessing until the very end. At a taught 95 minutes, it moves fast enough that you don't really get time to linger on its familiarity anyway. It also has some pretty great music. Definitely worth a look.

Terribly Happy plays on 2/12 and 2/14.

Current Soundtrack: Massive Attack, Heligoland expanded edition remixes



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All text (c) 2010 Jamie S. Rich

PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, REVIEW 7: DEAN SPANLEY

So, here we are at the end. This is my last review for PIFF. Hope everyone enjoyed the festival!

Dean Spanley (New Zealand; dir. Toa Fraser)

Dean Spanley is an inconsequential but surprisingly winning puff piece about dogs and reincarnation.

That's right, dogs and reincarnation.

Another quirky comedy from down under, Dean Spanley is set in early 20th-century England, shortly after the Boer War. The Fisks lost first one of their sons to the conflict, and then the mother of the family when grief overtook her. This leaves old man Horatio Fisk (Peter O'Toole, looking like the grim reaper himself these days) and the son he calls the Younger Fisk (Jeremy Northam). Dad is a jaded old man who doesn't go in for sentiment, not even grieving, and is prone to saying whatever is on his mind. This leads to many outbursts that are amusing for those watching, but mortifying for his son.

A chance attendance of an Indian swami's seminar on reincarnation leads Fisk Jr. to meet Dean Spanley (Sam Neill), an open-minded priest whom Horatio has run into before. In addition to his interest in alternative religions, the Dean has a taste for rare Hungarian wine. Fisk Jr. uses this predilection to befriend the clergyman, enlisting an outgoing middleman, Wrather (Bryan Brown), to procure the elusive brown elixir. Once Dean Spanley has tasted of his favorite tipple, he begins to unspool a tale of his own past life as a dog, a narrative that draws in all the other parties involved, revealing deeper connections between them and providing the catalyst for healing in the Fisk clan.

There is neither anything to love nor anything to hate in Dean Spanley. It rolls along at a well-considered pace, each piece of its heartwarming and amusing story falling into place without much fuss. The ensemble cast is all very good at what they do, with Peter O'Toole proving he is still the master showman, and the director, Toa Fraser, knows to stay out of the way and just let them all get on with it. Though Dean Spanley works on all fronts, what makes it an affable pleasure also makes it come off as slight. It's the kind of thing you see, enjoy, and forget.

Unless you're a dog person, and then you might find some deeper meaning in the tale of the puppy that got away. I am a cat person myself and resent that the filmmakers had to resort to tearing down felines in order to build canines up. I suspect dog lovers are so mean spirited because they secretly know they don't have the four legs to stand on. Cats rule, dogs drool!

Dean Spanley plays on 2/21. - PIFF's website at the NW Film Center

Current Soundtrack: Ocean Colour Scene, B-Sides, Seasides & Freerides


e-mail = golightly at confessions123.com * Criterion Confessions * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * ComicSpace * Last FM * GoodReads * The Blog Roll * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

All text (c) 2009 Jamie S. Rich

PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, REVIEW 6: LION'S DEN & THE BEACHES OF AGNES

PIFF's website at the NW Film Center

These two may be my favorites of all the ones I saw for PIFF.

Lion's Den (Argentina, dir. Pablo Trapero)

It's been a long time since I've seen as good an opening to a thriller as the first ten minutes of Lion's Den. Following a disconcerting animated credits sequence featuring a sing-a-long with South American children--I wondered it they had switched screenings on me--we get a series of quick-cut scenes where the film's heroine, Julia (Martina Gusman), slowly comes out of a state of shock to realize that there have been two bloody murders in her home. The way director Pablo Trapero (alongside three other writers) pulls you into the plot is deftly executed, moving rapidly to knock the audience off balance and put us in Julia's shoes.

Because from there, Lion's Den isn't really a thriller, but a prison drama about a young mother in a situation that has gotten out of her control. Unable to give a feasible account of the evening--which involved her lover and his boyfriend in a knife fight, leaving the boyfriend dead and the lover, Ramiro (Rodrigo Santoro), badly wounded--Julia is locked up pending trial. Since she is a couple of months along in a pregnancy, she is assigned to a maternity ward where convicted mothers can raise their own children until they are four. Depressed and nauseous with morning sickness, Julia takes a while to adjust to life inside, but eventually she becomes part of the community, even taking a lover, Marta (Laura Garcia), and using her outside connections to get goods for the inmates. Several years pass, and all the while Julia keeps fighting for her freedom. When her mother (Elli Medeiros) tricks her into taking her young son away, however, everything unravels.

Lion's Den is a harsh story filmed in a gritty style and lacking in any overt sensationalism. The script taps into a universal fear--of being caught in a legal system you can't get out of and incarcerated--and adds a specific and unique wrinkle I don't think we've seen in cinema before. The maternity prison is like a daycare center in Hell, a lethal combination of violence, boredom, and dirty diapers. A unique setting is nothing without a great character, however, and Julia is a fully realized human being with a real journey to undergo. The selfish, bleach-blonde girl at the start of the picture is vastly different from the confident, fierce mother that exits the final frame. Outside of one previous acting credit (Trapero's 2006 film Born and Bred), Martina Gusman has almost exclusively been a producer up until now and even has an executive producer credit on Lion's Den. Whatever prompted the switch deserves some kind of tribute or monument, because she's utterly convincing as Julia. So much so, I have cause to wonder if she really was pregnant during shooting. If not, Gusman sported the most impressive prosthetic belly I've ever seen. The performance shows an amazing range that is likely only just scratching the surface of her ability.

The film ends somewhere in the same territory where it began, with final scenes closer to a thriller than the hard-edged drama that passed between. Yet, neither the beginning nor the end feel disjointed from the middle, the transitions are as natural as Julia's changes. Behavioral action drives life, and it can drive a very good movie, as well. Lion's Den is one to look out for.

Lion's Den plays on 2/20 and 2/21.

Martina Gusman at Cannes for Lion's Den (a.k.a. Leonera).

The Beaches of Agnes (France; dir. Agnes Varda)

The new film by Agnes Varda is the memoir of an inventor, an essay by a prankster, and a documentary about a life in cinema. Altogether playful and seductive, while also at turns heartfelt and poignant, The Beaches of Agnes frames the remembrances of the famed director--the feminine voice of the French New Wave--in a series of mirrors. Varda recreates scenes from her life and from her films, intercut with actual home movies, photographs, and clips from those same films, sometimes side by side with the reenactments. The new stagings reflect the settings as they are now, with the past being taken over by the present that has replaced it. In the case of fallen comrades, Varda casts their children in their roles, including a fantastic scene that conjures her debut feature, La Pointe-courte. Varda takes unseen footage of test films she shot with friends and mounts it on a cart that was pushed through a narrow alleyway in the movie. The man featured in the film died while his children were young, and they never knew him as he is in the grainy black-and-white footage. As they move the cart forward, they watch the old reel--the past leads them on.

In recent years, Varda has created many museum installations that combine actual objects with video, and in its way, The Beaches of Agnes is an extension of that. It's one big art happening, a live multimedia staging, beginning with Varda positioning mirrors along a sandy coastline and ending with her in a room built entirely of film strips. As much of her life has been marked by visits to beaches around the world, the seaside becomes her stage. The constant flow of the tide is just like the flow of time. At eighty, Varda has seen and done a lot and known some of the greatest artists of the 20th century. This film is a tribute to all of them and their accomplishments, be they moviemakers, bakers, or musicians. It is also a tribute to the connections they made along the way.

The Beaches of Agnes is never overly sentimental or self-pitying. Varda celebrates even as she mourns. That's why, even at a near two-hour running time, her peculiar autobiography never gets boring. For some who are not film buffs familiar with the director's work, there may be a feeling of "you had to be there" in some of the cinematic ruminations, but overall, a life glimpsed through such a colorful lens becomes the life of anyone who views it. If Agnes Varda is cinema, and cinema is its audience, then we are all Agnes Varda.

The Beaches of Agnes plays on 2/20 and 2/21.

Current Soundtrack: Ocean Colour Scene, On the Leyline; The Prodigy, "O (Noisia Remix)"



e-mail = golightly at confessions123.com * Criterion Confessions * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * ComicSpace * Last FM * GoodReads * The Blog Roll * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

All text (c) 2009 Jamie S. Rich

PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, REVIEW 5: GOODBYE SOLO

Goodbye Solo (USA; dir. Ramin Bahrani)

Solo (Souleymane Sy Savane), a Senegalese immigrant who drives a cab in North Carolina, takes an active interest in most of the people he picks up in his taxi, but when grouchy old William (Red West) offers him $1,000 to pick him up on a specific date and take him to the top of a mountain and leave him, Solo gets more sucked in than usual. William wants to go to Blowing Rock, a famous local attraction where the winds are so strong, anything that you toss over the side of the cliff will be blown back at you. Just what business does an old man like William have going up there? This is what Solo is determined to find out, and maybe once he knows, he'll also know how to stop it.

The latest from director Ramin Bahrani (Man Push Cart), Goodbye Solo is a strange, contemplative drama that is more content to hang back and observe than to fully jump into the situation. This puts the audience in Solo's shoes, then, since we want to figure out what is going on but, just like him, we can't get past William's hardened defenses. There is a little bit of new American ambition in Solo, while William is symbolic of an America that has decided to pack it in. Unable to change, they resign themselves to fade away.

Ironically, some of America's worst tendencies are rubbing off on Solo. Though at first he complains that no one in the U.S. sticks by family the way they do in Senegal, when things start to go bad in his marriage, he heads for the door, leaving his pregnant wife (Carmen Leyva) and stepdaughter (Diana Franco Galindo) behind. He pushes his way into William's hotel room, forcing himself into a semblance of a new family situation, and he starts to dig in to what is bugging William enough for the old man to call it quits.

Which is the last thing that William wants, and the few things that Solo does find out only deepen the mystery--has he lied about not having kids? Why did his wife leave him thirty years prior? Is there a significance to his chosen suicide date? Is he even committing suicide or merely disappearing? Bahrani is determined to keep the questions hanging, however, and so the full portrait of William is never drawn. It's a pretty risky choice, and I imagine it will alienate some viewers. Personally, I think it may have kept me from being fully immersed in the movie. William's lack of communication not only cuts off our avenue to him, but his disinterest in Solo means we don't fully know the other man, either.

At the same time, Bahrani's defiance of Hollywood narrative expectation in the climax is the perfect choice, avoiding giving easy answers to hard questions. There is a suggestion that William has connected with Solo and his stepdaughter more than he has let on, and his presence appears to have put Solo back on track rather than contributing to his derailment. Both Savane and West are excellent in their roles, achieving a directness and naturalism that lends credibility to the realistic tones of Bahrani's scripting. Goodbye Solo may not entirely satisfy at first blush, but the effect of it lingers, forcing those who accept it to ponder what has transpired and search for what it means to them.

Goodbye Solo plays on 2/17. - PIFF's website at the NW Film Center

Current Soundtrack: Morrissey, "Because Of My Poor Education/Shame is the Name"

e-mail = golightly at confessions123.com * Criterion Confessions * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * ComicSpace * Last FM * GoodReads * The Blog Roll * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

All text (c) 2009 Jamie S. Rich

PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, REVIEW 4: WORLDS APART

Worlds Apart (Denmark, dir. Niels Arden Oplev)

Sara (Rosalinde Spanning) is a 17-year-old girl who has been raised in the Jehovah's Witness religion in Denmark. Though she has never questioned her upbringing, Sara's devout father Andreas (Jens Jørn Spottag) gives her the first reason to doubt her faith when he strays from the marital bed. Sara's mother (Sarah Kjærgaard Boberg) chooses not to accept his repentance, which in their church gives her grounds for divorce. Mom moves out, and the three kids--Sara has a younger sister and an even younger brother--decide to stay with dad because he has done right by God in confessing. In a flash, the family has split.

At the right age to wonder what this all means, Sara extends her questions and experiments into a more broad social life and ends up meeting Teis (Pilou Asbæk), a surprisingly kind 23-year-old. He walks her home from a nightclub, and further dates lead to them confronting Sara's religious values and finding a modicum of acceptance. One night when Sara misses the train home, however, things go a little farther with some above-the-clothes making out. Not very good at covering her tracks, Sara gets in trouble with the Jehovah elders. Though at first she chooses God's love over man's, the feelings that have been stirred in her are more complicated than that.

It isn't hard to identify where Niels Arden Oplev and co-writer Steen Bille are coming from in this film, though the script doesn't fall as firmly against religion as one might expect. Rather, Oplev creates a surprisingly balanced narrative that gives both sides their say without being disrespectful to either. Sure, the church elders are closed-minded and humiliate Sara with their interrogations, but Teis and his parents are just as closed-minded, insensitive, and self-righteous. Teis never really weighs the depths to which Sara's church is tied to her family and everything she would have to give up for a life with him. Not even after seeing her brother Jonas, who has been kicked out of the brood for reading the wrong books (Jehovah's Witnesses only read religious texts from their own denomination) does Teis fully accept the completeness of Sara's exile.

Based on a true account of one girl's struggles, Worlds Apart is a complicated story, and though a little heavy handed toward the end, a quietly compelling one. Oplev has a rather plain shooting style, one that reflects the humanity of the situation as well as the choices against materialism that Sara and her family have made. The actors are all just as unmannered and naturalistic, with each individual performer distinguishing him or herself with their sympathetic portrayals. Characters expose their own hypocrisies through word and action, and Sara's dwindling beliefs only lose their fortitude when faced with real and believable tests. As a coming-of-age story, her trek is not so much a dismantling of religion, but of a sheltered individual peeking her head out from that shelter to see what else is on offer. The greatest hypocrisy she encounters on both sides is a lack of compassion, and Sara's true desire is just to be left alone and to let others do as they wish in return. She also proves it takes more courage to stand on her own rather than take refuge in the strength of numbers.

Worlds Apart plays on 2/16 and 2/20. - PIFF's website at the NW Film Center

Current Soundtrack: Edwyn Collins, Home Again



e-mail = golightly at confessions123.com * Criterion Confessions * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * ComicSpace * Last FM * GoodReads * The Blog Roll * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

All text (c) 2009 Jamie S. Rich