Hard Candy

Caught an advance screening of Hard Candy at the Clay Theater this evening with director David Slade and actress Ellen Page present for a post-screening Q&A. As Juan Manuel Freire reported to the Greencine Daily from the Sitges International Film Festival last October, the awards for Best Motion Picture and Best Screenplay went to Hard Candy.

After the South by Southwest festival last month Micah reviewed the film for Dumb Distraction and Cinematical's Jette Kernion took part in a roundtable interview with writer Brian Nelson and director David Slade.

Todd Brown at Twitch reviewed the film from the 2006 Philadelphia Film Festival.

David Hudson gathered up yesterday's reviews for the Greencine Daily: " 'A schlockfest dressed up in sleek designer duds that feigns gruesome violence and flounders with psychological power dynamics, music video vet [David] Slade's directorial debut desperately tries to shock and disturb by exploiting male fears of castration and feminine revenge fantasies, both of which form the crux of his story about the torturous tête-à-tête between 32-old photographer Jeff (Patrick Wilson) and 14-year-old student Hayley (Ellen Page).' Nick Schager on Hard Candy in Slant. More from Rob Nelson in the Voice. Related: Ray Pride on that red hoody; Daniel Robert Epstein talks with Slade for SuicideGirls and, for Film & Video, Bryant Frazer talks with Jean-Clement Soret, one of the first colorists to be credited in the opening titles."

Reminiscent of Misery and uncomfortably compelling, Hard Candy is a drama-thriller hybrid about a 32-year-old man who takes home a 14-year-old girl he's met on the net. The film is dark, edgy, and primarily seductive because of Page's powerhouse performance. I was fascinated by her character even as she creeped me out. Here's my transcription of the post-screening discussion.

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Director Slade was asked to talk about how Hard Candy came about. He underscored that, first and foremost, Hard Candy is a completely independently-financed film. Producer David Higgins had the kernel of an idea based around a newspaper article he'd read about girls in Japan who would arrange to meet men on line for sex via the internet. The men would come lured and the girls would jump out of the closet and beat them up and steal their wallets. With that he sought out and found an amazing voice in Brian Nelson, the writer, who teaches theater for a living and is a screenwriter and a playwright. Rather than just take the article as read and make a straightforward thriller, Nelson elected to write a multitextural piece. This was the early first draft that Slade read, which he loved. "Usually as a director," Slade explained, "you look for a film that's ready to go because you don't want to go through development and all that stuff and this was a film no one was going to make. I could see that nobody was going to make this. But I loved it. My personal tastes—I grew up on the cinema of people like Nicolas Roeg and the like and it just spoke to me and I desperately wanted to make it so I went and I met with David who immediately attached me. Once we had a little package together, we very quickly financed it, under the specific caveat that we were going to make it for a million dollars or less so that we kept control." They didn't want it to be a studio film; they wanted it to be a "proper" independently-financed film, not one made through Warner Independent or any of the major studio independent labels. "It's a very very tough subject matter," Slade concedes, "and a very very tough film to make and we didn't want to be in a position where we would be told, well, you have to skew in this direction for this audience or skew your argument this way or resolve anything." They wanted to—as you do when you make a film for practically no money in Hollywood terms—make the film they wanted to make and Slade is proud of the fact that they got to do just that. Hard Candy was independently financed. "[T]hen we took it to Sundance," he continued, "where we were fortunate enough to get into a bidding war and Lionsgate Films bought it, again under the caveat that they weren't allowed to change a frame, and they haven't and—God bless them—they haven't asked us to either."

"We're very very pleased to be coming out on the 28th. We come out in New York and L.A. first and then here on the 28th. There was development along the way, but only very little. Brian Nelson and I fought hard to keep the original energy of the script exactly as it was."

Slade was asked to talk about getting Ellen Page involved in this project because—for such a young character and her being so smart in the movie—without the right actress it would have been definitely borderline cheesey. Page was dynamite and she actually pulled it off, so how did he come across her?

He said they saw about 300 people before Ellen was brought to his attention. He watched some of her television work and then sent on the script. "I remember you read with a shaved head," he smiled at Ellen. She had just gotten off of a film where she had shaved her head. The film's producers were quite strong and supportive but a little nervous as producers tend to be, and practically crapped their pants when they saw Ellen with a shaved head but Nelson, Higgins and Slade knew Page was the one. "There were some great actresses who came in," Slade admitted, "but Ellen just brought this passion that no one else did. She read it in a way that was honest and natural and it felt exactly how Hayley should be. She didn't play in a way that many actresses did, overplaying the sexual flirtation, she just played with great passion and that was the most important thing because in this film the actors have their lines, the actors have their points of view, these are not the points of view of the filmmakers, these are the characters' lines, we're not advocating Hayley's point of view, we're not advocating Jeff's point of view, we're leaving this to you as an audience to read into."

They managed to get Ellen to come to Los Angeles, they met in Starbucks and exchanged some notes and then she read "and absolutely blew everybody away, and that was that!" One of the most important things for a director is the casting, Slade insists. He quotes Billy Wilder: "The three most important things for directing is the casting, the casting, and the casting." They spent a lot of time, he adds, it was the longest time in the production of the film, waiting for and getting the right cast.

So then Ellen was asked what drew her to the part? And exactly how she decided to play Hayley.

When she first got the script, she was in Toronto, having just gotten back from Europe where she'd shot a film, and for which she'd shaved her head. "I wasn't supposed to look at anything," she explained, "I wasn't going to work for a while, and of course the first script that I got like three days after I got back was Hard Candy and I read it and I was just completely blown away and completely engrossed. I couldn't believe that a character like Hayley had been written for a teenage girl with so much intelligence and passion. It was really refreshing actually to not have the typical portrayal of the teenage girl that our media has currently. So I was really just inspired and all I wanted was to be in it and I'm really grateful that I got to be."

Asked her age, Ellen responded 19, though she was 17 at the time she made the film.

Asked how she prepared for the role outside of reading the script, Ellen said: "To be honest, I really just wanted, y'know, my heart to connect to her heart really, in the sense of her passion and the fact that she saw something that was happening in society that people were ignoring and justifying and it really angered her and she was going to do something about that and she was sick of peoples' passive natures. Yeah, there's a lot of things that piss me off. It's just channeling that and connecting on an emotional level."

Slade interjected that he believed adults have a "romantic misconception" that people at the age of 14 don't behave like Hayley or can't or somehow can't articulate. "I think this is a romantic misconception that we have as adults—I think this is something Ellen brought in ... this tremendous passion, this absolute belief, and it was so refreshing." There are those who still argue that a 14 year old wouldn't do something like this but Slade insists no, she would. "Really she would, she was so driven, her values were black and white because she hadn't lived to the point in which she'd filled in the greys." The film has been criticized for being an older man's interpretation of what a young 14-year-old girl thinks but Slade states: "In terms of vocabulary Brian will tell you, he will say, well, it was this student on this day who gave me the idea for that line and they were 14 and I always like to say that because it's one of these weird misconceptions we have and I think it's a romanticism that we like to have as adults."

Ellen was asked: Being that you're a younger woman and just ending your adolescence, how did you feel doing the movie knowing that this is based on pedophiles? I mean, did you recall any experiences that you may have had on your own or did you sort of have to imagine what it was like to be pursued in such a way?

"All I really need to think about is the fact that this guy would do something like this," Ellen responded, "regardless of my personal experience or Hayley's personal experience, the fact that this exists hurts her, the fact that these people are doing this damages her and angers her to an extent that she can hardly even articulate it and she is gonna frickin do something about it, y'know? And it was just about connecting with that. I've never been exploited while I was just trying to grow some basmati rice but it really annoys me that people are patenting seeds, know what I mean?"

I had to ask the obvious question about the red hood. Was the script purposely playing with the Little Red Riding Hood story which has been interpreted by some to deal with the sexuality of young women?

Both of them protested no. "The hood was red," Ellen explained, "and I like to put my hood up, literally, and now I keep getting all these analytical questions about Little Red Riding Hood." Slade added that they had a very little budget. The stylist spent most of it on Patrick's wardrobe. "Yeah," Ellen complained jokingly, "his pants were like $600!" And all she got were jeans and a red sweathood. But it looked right, Slade explained, and he asked her if she felt comfortable in it and Ellen said, yeah, and that was that. And then later he thought, "Oh shit, people are going to read this as Little Red Riding Hood." Besides, Ellen added, she recalled that in Little Red Riding Hood the wolf eats the girl and that's not exactly what happened here.

I took them at their word but it didn't truly satisfy me. If the symbol was not consciously used, perhaps it snuck in anyways. It's true that the wolf eats the girl and the granny but the woodsman comes along and cuts him open. And then what most folks don't remember is that the woodsman sews stones in the wolf's belly, which makes him sink in a body of water. The wolf drowns from the weight. I couldn't help noticing that Jeff's big dark secret was kept underneath a bunch of stones. But again, if they say they weren't playing with these images, I'll begrudgingly accept they weren't.

Ellen was asked if there was a scene that was especially difficult for her to film or for her to get in touch with? Obviously the scene being referred to is the grisly castration scene intent upon titillating morbid prurience. Slade answered for Ellen: "You know, we had 18 and a half days to shoot the film. We shot it for under a million dollars which meant that kind of schedule. Every day was emotionally draining. Every day was tough. Every day was hard work. We prepared and prepared and prepared. We had rehearsal which really helped. I would say there were some days that were harder than others because some days were more physically demanding because we were doing physically demanding stuff. There were some days that were emotionally demanding. But when you're stuck with an 18-day schedule, every day is tough and the only solace in that is that in 18 days it's going to be over."

Ellen countered that she thought the 18-day shoot was a luxury in a way. "I'm from Canada and we have no money," she stated wryly, adding that pretty much all the movies she's done have been shot in 18 days, so it wasn't really that unusual for her. At the same time she thought it helped the film because it added to the sense of immediacy and the film's manic nature.

Slade offered that they also shot pretty much in sequence except for the café scene, which was shot at the very end. "That was sheer necessity," Slade explained, "because we had to rip down the—we shot the entire interiors in a tiny stage that we built and then when we went out on location while the art department were ripping down the apartment to make a café, which is why we had to shoot that at the end but the relationship between the two characters, I think between the two actors had to grow over that time and that was very important in that schedule."

They were asked how much time was spent rehearsing before they actually started shooting? Slade said they had five days in a room about the size of the stage kind of square. Or less. The rehearsal period was really good for determining that they all understood what they were doing and they all agreed they were doing the same thing. Ellen and Patrick both were completely prepared so that the rehearsal period was really just diligence and ironing out certain things which might read well on the page but might not come out right. Slade asked Ellen directly: "What was your experience with rehearsal? Would you rather not have done it?"

"No, no, it's good to cultivate trust," Ellen assured him. "I know that sounds cheesey but without it I don't think you can do something as intimate as make a film, which is pretty crazy."

Ellen was asked what she thought about the film's R rating? "Oh it sucks! Yeah, it really makes me go … Balls (pardon the pun)! I mean it just sucks because I really would like teenage girls and boys to see this and to see a character like this. Hopefully, they'll just sneak in or something."

"I'm sure they will," Slade concurred and then praised Patrick Wilson's performance. Trained on Broadway, Wilson hit all his marks perfect, which is great when reined by a tight schedule. "He just acted nonstop because he's used to the stage. And he really went beyond the call of duty body and soul, bodily. People say, 'Oh, the makeup on his hands look great.' No makeup on his hands! His hands were really tied up and blue." Only one stunt was done by a stunt double; everything else was done by the actors.

Ellen reminded Slade that he made her watch Kieslowski's A Short Film About Killing. "It was my only reference piece," he explained, "I said this has to be real, the performances have to be real, the violence has to be real and so I need you to kind of do it!" And they did, and they did it safely with a fantastic stunt coordinator. The exteriors were shot at the stunt coordinator's house; it was a safer place to do stunts and stuntwork, hence all the roof scenes and running around the house were shot there.

Ellen was asked how she and Patrick were able to draw on such raw emotions take after take after take? Especially Patrick when he had to pretend his balls were being cut off. What did they have to do to get those emotions to come out?

Ellen seemed at a loss for an answer and then replied simply, "I dunno, I just like really really love to do this more than anything, y'know? And I really just like to disappear and lose my mind, it's like a drug. To find those elements and just pull them up and just literally disappear so, I dunno, I totally get off on it so it's just what I love to do. It's hard to explain. It's just … I just dig it and I just love to keep going for it. It's just like something that I love to do, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, he was getting his balls cut off but I'm the one standing there with all the friggin dialogue!"

Speaking for Wilson, Slade added that Patrick has said a number of times that when you're tied to a table there's not a lot else to do but act. You're tied up! You take an inch of pain and you turn it into a pound of pain and you engross yourself in that. All that he asked of them as a director, however, was that both of them come from a very honest place. This has proven kind of problematic for some people; they ask, "Who's the villain?"

"If both characters come from an honest place then they're both the villain," Slade states, "or neither of them are. That's up to you. So chiefly the text becomes about responsibility and how much responsibility does each person take and how much responsibility do you take as an audience and how do you assess your values having gone through the film, having rooted for one character and then maybe perhaps change your mind and had to root for another character because at the end things turn out a different way. There are people who would love to have people like Hayley go out and become vigilante-type people, but, here we show that it's actually quite a complex, very very complex thing to do."

Slade concludes: "You can see at the end of the film that she takes the weight of the whole day on her face, that she's taken on the responsibility that Jeff refused to take. He would rather die than accept the responsibility for what he'd done. For me that's one of the chief things about Western society is that we don't like responsibility because it's scary and it's full of danger. To me, more than the text which is very current right now, the film is about responsibilities."

Ray Harryhausen—The 7th Voyage of Sinbad

Ray Harryhausen destroyed Washington D.C. via an invasion of flying saucers. He caused havoc in Rome via the rampaging creature Ymir of 20 Million Miles to Earth, and demolished the Coney Island roller coaster in The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. And with great pride in his voice Harryhausen gloated that he pulled down San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge via his infamous sextopus! But after destroying so many cities, and with the Japanese jumping on the bandwagon laying waste to Tokyo via one Godzilla or another, Harryhausen decided he wanted to try something different. He set aside destroying the cities of the world and turned to the adventurous legends of Sinbad from the Arabian classic The Thousand and One Nights.

Last night, to help celebrate the seventh anniversary of the San Rafael Film Center, Harryhausen introduced a restored print of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, which—with all due deference to Ingmar Bergman—is the greatest movie with 7 in the title! The screening was also in conjunction with the recent Billboard Books publication of The Art of Ray Harryhausen, written by Harryhausen and Tony Dalton, foreword by Peter Jackson. The Art of Ray Harryhausen is rich with stunning examples of Harryhausen's preproduction panels, which served to secure funding for his films as well as to inspire and motivate the studio writers.

Joining Harryhausen on stage for a pre-screening discussion were Craig Barron, Arnold Kunert and Phil Tippett. Tippett credits The 7th Voyage of Sinbad with being the specific film that kickstarted his career in special effects. Craig Barron moderated the discussion via a slideshow of key illustrations from the book of characters in the film, beginning with the Cyclops.

The one-eyed, one-horned Cyclops of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad was Harryhausen's direct response against the man-in-the-Godzilla-suit style of special effects. He wanted to create a creature that clearly could not be a man in costume. Recycled from the armature of the Ymir from 20 Million Miles to Earth, the Cyclops strove for a representation far away from the easy notion of pasting an eye on the forehead of an Italian wrestler. Not many people notice that the second Cyclops that appears in the movie has two horns on his head.

The cover of the new book is Harryhausen's concept drawing of Sinbad fighting a skeleton on the top of a ruined spiral staircase. Initially, Harryhausen's choice of Sinbad was almost incidental; it was the skeleton that he wanted to animate. Pursuing that choice, however, forced Harryhausen to ask himself the question most people seldom ask: How do you kill Death? In The 7th Voyage of Sinbad the skeleton falls from the spiral staircase and his bones shatter on the rocks. In Jason and the Argonauts the skeletons plummet into the sea on the presumption that skeletons can't swim. As a Mayanist, I can only ponder the possibilities had Harryhausen explored the Mayan epic The Popol Vuh where the realm of death is harrowed and Death defeated by the clever intelligence of the Hero Twins.


Surprisingly, British censors cut out the swordfight between Sinbad and the skeleton as well as the scene where the Cyclops is roasting one of the sailors on a spit, allegedly for being too frightening for children. Harryhausen doesn't understand that reasoning since, nowadays, there are things in movies that would "frighten the devil"! Besides, every child carries a little skeleton around inside of him or her so what's the big deal?

As a special treat for his San Rafael Film Center audience, Harryhausen shared his model of the skeleton from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. He demonstrated its ball and joint armature and how it could be manipulated into any position. He used the model again—along with six new ones—for the fight sequence in Jason and the Argonauts. He expressed his hope that seeing the small size of the model didn't disillusion anyone. He was a notorious "people shrinker" who would make his actors small to match the proportions of his models.

The next character in the slide show was the "snakewoman", one of Harryhausen's favorite characters in the film. "I had always wanted to add a character at that point in the story who was not only completely different from the dancing girls with diamonds in their navels that feature in most costume adventures," Harryhausen writes, "but who would also show the magical powers of [the magician] Sokourah. The snakewoman is conjured up by the sorcerer to perform a dance of death when he 'combines' Princess Parisa's handmaiden with a serpent. Her upper torso is that of a human female with the addition of an extra pair of arms, but the remainder of her body is that of a snake. I decided to give her four arms so that I could elaborate the snakewoman's dance; with just two arms the creature might have seemed a bit mundane, but the extra pair of arms enabled me to give her whole body an allure and a flow that worked wonderfully with the music." (2006:163) Initially, to animate the model, Harryhausen used the music from the film Salome (1953), loaned by Columbia's music library, as a guide that provided a beat; later, of course, "Bernie" Hermann wrote a wonderful new score that fitted perfectly with Harryhausen's animation. Harryhausen concedes that the snakewoman was a precursor of the incredible Medusa in his later venture The Clash of the Titans.

What did Harryhausen think of Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong? Some things worked for him, others didn't, but above all he states you can't criticize Jackson's point of view. The primary difference for Harryhausen between the original and the remake was Merian C. Cooper whose infectious vitality infused the character of Carl Denham in the original. Cooper was Denham! And there was no way Jackson could have replicated that. One of the highlights of Harryhausen's life was to work with Merian C. Cooper on Mighty Joe Young. Cooper taught Harryhausen about "the wonderful valley of what if?"


Harryhausen praised Wilkie Cooper's cinematography for The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. The film was made on the miniscule budget of $650,000. To light the scene of the cave on the island of Colossa (Majorca), they had to borrow lamps, which en route fell overboard and sank to the bottom of the sea. It is to Cooper's credit that he was able to light the cave with so little and have it look so fantastic.

Another interesting tidbit about The 7th Voyage of Sinbad is that Ray Harryhausen has never met Richard Eyer, who played Baronni, the genie in the lamp. All of Eyer's scenes were shot in the U.S. when Harryhausen was on location. Eyer has since become an elementary school teacher and he and Harryhausen will finally meet for the first time in a couple of weeks at a special Burbank screening.

Before the screening of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Arnold Kunert recalled how, at an earlier appearance at the San Rafael Film Center (Harryhausen has graced their stage four times), Harryhausen admitted that one of his few regrets was not animating the tales of Edgar Allen Poe. Kunert pursued the idea and found a group of stop action animators in Toronto willing to undertake the project. Serving as the project's executive producer, Harryhausen has come somewhat out of retirement to help them accomplish their goal. Kunert was delighted to introduce the West Coast premiere of The Pit and the Pendulum, directed by Marc Lougee, who is likewise maintaining a blog on the film. This eight-minute short will be screened at this Fall's Toronto Film Festival in hopes of securing the backing for a continued series.


During the Q&A Harryhausen was asked what he thought about the Wallace and Grommit films. Harryhausen stated that, even though they were using the same basic process, Wallace and Grommit are "stylized puppet films" whereas he always sought to disguise such puppetry and make his creatures as realistic and believable as possible.

Asked which of his animations were the most difficult, Harryhausen stated that it took him four and a half months to animate the skeleton battle sequence in Jason and the Argonauts. Four and a half months for five minutes footage! Had he known it was going to be so difficult, he probably would never have started. The seven heads of the Hydra were also challenging to achieve. All it took was one phone call interrupting the process to throw everything off!

Asked how he was able to make his monsters so sympathetic so that audiences actually mourned their deaths, Harryhausen reminded that he never called his animations "monsters"; they were "creatures." Clearly, his humanoid creatures elicited more sympathy; but, ultimately, they were the villains and had to be vanquished and/or killed. He remembers being told, however, that when the creature in Beast From 20,000 Fathoms died it was like watching an opera tenor.

Asked if any of his animations had been cut in the editing room, Harryhausen conceded to scenes being trimmed for length. There was one bit in the skeleton fight sequence of Jason and the Argonauts that was cut out because it interrupted the flow: and that was of the skeleton Jason beheads who then falls down on his hands and knees groping and searching for his head. It proved distracting.

Harryhausen admits to having a Zeus complex. He likes manipulating his figures like chess pieces on a board.

It seemed a bit unfair to subject Harryhausen to questions when he admittedly forgets the answers. He credits fish oil for any memory he has left and his quick retort to most questions is "It's in the book!!"

2006 SFIFF—In Bed (En La Cama, 2005)

Somewhere between festival program capsules that woo a filmgoer to attend a film and critical print reviews warning filmgoers to either abandon all hope before entering a moviehouse or to rage against the light while leaving, lies some modicum of personal truth experienced only by watching the film itself. I enjoy movies best before the images become saddled with description, riddled full of interpretations, or critically and decisively executed. Armed with pandering previews and ranting reviews, I sit in the dark and hope to suspend my disbelief. And if I'm lucky, that's exactly what happens. I accept the "frenzy on the wall" as representational of something real—at the least!—but, hopefully, the taint of representation will be skillfully minimized by a director so that I hasten to claim the cinematic experience as my own true experience.

The official website for Matías Bize's In Bed (En La Cama) attests to the film's vigorous rounds on the festival circuit. The program capsule for last November's Leeds International Film Festival found In Bed "[i]mmensely erotic, perceptive, touching and familiar" and insisted that—though the film is set in just one room—it was "never claustrophobic." In fact, that capsule concludes that "this simple yet hugely eloquent film creates a dreamy world where strangers are lovers and one room is all you need."

Shaz Bennett's capsule for last November's AFI Fest praised director Matías Bize for "[a]llowing the performances to simmer and marinate on screen" and for setting up "an authentically satisfying denouement where a one-night stand can change your life."

Then in January at the Palm Springs International Film Festival the program notes praised Bize for displaying "an intelligence and understanding of the fragility of sexual relationships that belies his youth."

By March—when In Bed reached the Miami International Film Festival—the festival program credited Bize with finding "a place so sensual that you'll forget all you know about sex in the movies—and then rediscover it."

But then In Bed screened at the New Directors/New Films Festival in New York City last month and the film's fall from preview grace was notable. At The New York Times, Manohla Dargis was at the head of the mob wanting to kill the monster. She countered the film was precisely claustrophobic and synopsized: "In between the orchestrated ohs and ahs and regularly timed cigarette breaks, the woman (Blanca Lewin) and man (Gonzalo Valenzuela) discreetly show off their pretty bodies, pleasure each other like practiced lovers (or porn stars) and slowly bare their uninteresting souls. The director Matías Bize clearly means for this soft-core encounter to open into something more substantial and not long after Round 1, alas, the newly acquainted bedmates start sounding and behaving a lot like a couple. The idea that strangers can engage in sex for pleasure without guilt, anguish and veritable laundry lists of complaints remains out of bounds, which gives this Chilean-German co-production a curiously old-fashioned, decidedly unsexy vibe."

At Slant, Ed Gonzalez was equally unforgiving: "[T]he entirety of In Bed suggests a mash-up of Before Sunrise and Tape run through Altavista's unreliable Babel Fish Translation service—you can't shake the feeling that there's something not quite right about how it looks and sounds." Gonzalez stresses: "In Bed is a great porn but a piss-poor drama. The sex here is diced not with musical performances but with painstakingly-scripted chitter chatter (topics include: vintage cartoons, Reiki massages, and movie pitches) that similarly works to schematize a movie that aims for some level of naturalism."

Nick Schager writes: "A sluggish rehash of Before Sunrise minus the romance and philosophical insightfulness, Matías Bize's In Bed (En La Cama nonetheless works so long as Bruno (hunky Gonzalo Valenzuela) and Daniela (sultry Blanca Lewin) are working up a sweat, the director's up-close-and-personal cinematographic depiction of writhing, slapping naked flesh successfully maintaining the film's temperature at a near-boil. Once the sex stops and the squawking begins, however, all is lost."

Leslie Felperin's measured (and ultimately fair) Variety review, assesses that In Bed's "elegantly simple, Richard Linklater-esque concept, written by Julio Rojas, is energetically consummated by sophomore helmer Matias Bize . . . and its handsome leads." I smiled at her allusion to Samuel Beckett's tramps in Waiting for Godot (In Bed's duo announce several times that it's time for them to go, but neither actually leaves).

But it's Jorge Morales' Havana 2005 Fipresci review that provides, in my estimation, the best contextual critique of not only In Bed, but the other Chilean features it has accompanied on the festival circuit—Alicia Scherson's Play and Sebastián Campos' The Sacred Family / La sagrada familia. It's definitely a worthwhile read.

"The case of Matías Bize," Morales writes, "is the most paradoxical one. His debut with Saturday (Sábado) was a display of creative freedom. It was made in one sequence shot, and improvisation, spontaneity and the unpredictable risks were taken as the base and the decisive contribution to the mise-en-scène; as the traces of a style. With In Bed, Bize wanted to repeat the same effect in a new exercise. During an hour and a half, he only filmed two characters locked up in a room having sex and talking about their lives. But the result is totally different, risk-free; pure calculation and no spontaneity. It's a thorough and extremely conventional screenplay that covers, as if following a checklist, all the topics one can think of for two sporadic lovers. Visually, Bize works with a framing that seeks to render the image more dynamic (looking for all sorts of angles), with no apparent reason other than 'oxygenizing' the confinement, and without providing the shots with any narrative or emotional value. In a spirit closer to a short film, In Bed advances stumbling from a minimalist gaze to an orchestration full of common places. Nevertheless, the awards obtained in La Havana (Third Coral and best screenplay) are not entirely unmerited given the low level of the films in competition, and the fact that In Bed responds to a common vice among filmmakers that have achieved a previous success: making films for festivals."

So all that being said: what did I think of Matías Bize's In Bed (En La Cama)? Not that it really matters since both sides of the fence have been aptly painted; but here goes. In Bed is softcore porn. Softcore because you don't really see any full frontal erections or penetration, but definitely porn because the film's two actors Blanca Lewin and Gonzalo Valenzuela are the stuff of fantasies. She's a babe and he's a hunk. If you like to fuck, you'll want Blanca; if you like to get fucked, you'll want Gonzalo. If you're a switchhitter, you'll want a bigger bed. If you're a voyeur, you'll want a bigger keyhole.

I had no problem leaning back and enjoying the film on its surface, much like I would enjoy fooling around some evening with a stranger in a motel, and that is quintessentially what the film endeavors to express: the "transient shelter" that casual sex frequently provides the young. Bize succeeded in arresting my attention by making the scenario attractive via good casting and not-so-bad acting. His conceit that the bed is "a narrative place", a "most fundamental place" past whose limits "the universe disappears" is unflinchingly romantic, even if within the film he betrays the conceit by shooting a scene in the bath tub and boasts a game where the characters walk on strewn clothing on the floor without actually touching the floor (otherwise the world will end). In other words, they don't spend the whole time in the bed. But the depths that Bize hopes to plumb from this scenario are precisely demeaned by its softcore porn sexiness. This is a realm probably best relegated to Carlos Reygadas and actors I don't really want to see fuck each other.

Apt comparisons have been made between Julio Rojas' script and Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise / Before Sunset dyptich, which ultimately I found much sexier for remaining within the unconsummated dalliance. Discussing this with bud Bob Hoffman after the press screening, Bob stated he found the dialogue more believable in In Bed than in Linklater's films but I can't say I find the dialogue believable in either directors' work. Points are trying to be made in the relationships in both directors' work that really don't have anything to do with how relationships actually track; they're meant to suggest key elements. They're kind of like relationships and, for the strictures of a film, kind of work. In her Variety review, Leslie Felperin notes: "Like Before Sunrise, open-ending positively invites post-screening debate between realist and romantic-minded auds as to whether the characters will or won't ultimately get it together."

What worked for me in Bize's In Bed was the premise that the casual one-night stand can become the safest confessional because you can unload some deep dark secret that you've been carrying around too long. In my experience I have found this to be true. Orgasmic relief coupled to confessional absolution is a great doubleshot!! Wham wham bam bam thank you, mamn, Goddamn! And Daniela and Bruno—intuiting they will never see each other again—are free to hunt out secrets in her purse and his wallet. Those secrets truly intrigue and give the film its most interesting moments.

Philip Lopate—American Movie Critics: An Anthology From the Silents Until Now

Philip Lopate's recently-published landmark collection of film criticism is being celebrated at the Pacific Film Archives where Lapote—a long time champion of the work of Mikio Naruse—will introduce a screening of Wife! Be Like A Rose! on Sunday, April 9, 2006 at 3:00 pm.

Then on Wednesday, April 12, at 7:30 p.m. Lapote will have a chat with David Thomson at Codys Books on Telegraph in Berkeley. Good chance to ask Thomson some Angie Dickinson questions before the next big blogathon!

Via Girish, Andrew Horbal has a great overview of the critical response to Lapote's latest. Andrew also points to James Marcus' House of Mirth interview with Lapote and Marcus' review of the book for Newsday.com.

Imagining the Real—Paul Rusesabagina: An Ordinary Man

This April marks the 12th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide when almost one million people were killed in Rwanda. Paul Rusesabagina, the hotel manager who saved the lives of over 1,200 fellow Rwandan people during the horrific events of 1994, and whose story was recently portrayed by Don Cheadle in the film Hotel Rwanda, is on tour with his new book, An Ordinary Man. He'll be making a few Bay Area appearances. Via Stacey's Bookstore and the World Affairs Council, Rusesabagina will discuss the events depicted in the movie, the international response to Rwanda, and his role in this chaotic time on Friday, April 21, noon, at the Marine's Memorial Theater. For reservations and information, call (415) 293-4600. If you're not a member of the World Affairs Council, you will have a second chance to catch Rusesabagina at A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books at 7:00 that evening.

2006 SFIFF—LATIN AMERICAN & SPANISH LINE-UP!

Graham Leggat, Executive Director for San Francisco's 49th International Film Festival, and his programming team came under fire at the press conference late last month when the festival's program lineup was announced. Critics claimed female directors and African films were underrepresented. I had to agree; but, couldn't complain about the festival's Latin American and Spanish line-up, which boasts eleven entries this year, three of whom are vying for the 10th annual SKYY Prize of $10,000 (honoring emerging talent in feature debuts)!! Latin American/Spanish films remain my fave rave!

"Urban landscapes are explored in Alicia Scherson's lively Play (Chile) and in Roberto Gervitz's Underground Game (Brazil). In Play, a SKYY Prize contender punctuated by a powerful soundtrack, a woman from the country and an upscale urbanite cross paths as each looks for love in Santiago. In Underground Game, Roberto Gervitz turns the subways of Sao Paulo into a playground for finding love as a piano player spends his days constructing a specific route on the subway, hoping to find a woman who follows the same route. [Both directors Scherson and Gervitz are expected to attend the festival, as well as Underground Game's composer, Luiz Henrique Xavier.]

"Two South American expatriate directors residing in France (Raoul Ruiz, born in Chile and Juan Solanas, born in Argentina) weave tales that involve crossing the Atlantic. The Lost Domain (Ruiz, France) tells the story of various meetings between a French aviator and a young Chilean, whose lives intersect despite their opposing natures through a shared love of flying. In the SKYY Prize contender Northeast (Solanas, Argentina), a French woman's attempts to adopt a child in Buenos Aires go awry, so she travels to the northeastern region of Argentina and meets a pregnant woman who may be able to solve her problem. [The Lost Domain and Northeast are both West Coast premieres and Northeast's director Juan Solanas will be attending the festival.]

"Three sultry Latin American films explore passion and relationships. In Delicate Crime (Beto Brant, Brazil) a theater critic falls for a one-legged beauty who is also involved with the painter for whom she models. The critic's jealousy and intense feelings lead to an encounter which the woman claims is rape and the man says is an act of passion. [Delicate Crime is a U.S. premiere.] In Bed (Matías Bize, Chile) shows two young Chileans who spend the night together in a hotel room, as they contemplate life, love and sex. [In Bed is a West Coast premiere and director Bize will be in attendance.] And Sérgio Machado tells a story of two best friends who fall for the same beautiful young hooker in Lower City (Brazil). [Machado will be attending the festival, as well as his leading actress Alicia Braga.]

"Characters struggle and hope for better lives in three Latin American films. In the beautifully shot The House of Sand (Andrucha Waddington, Brazil), three generations of women struggle amid the inhospitable sand dunes of northern Brazil. [The House of Sand is a West Coast premiere and director Waddington will be attending the festival.] Ricardo Benet's News from Afar (Mexico), a moving and surreal SKYY Prize contender, is about a teenager living in the Mexican highlands who decides to seek a better life (and his biological father) in Mexico City. [Director Benet will be in attendance. The film is being co-sponsored by The Mexican Museum.] And in the passionate documentary The Dignity of the Nobodies (Argentina), director Fernando E. Solanas investigates Argentina's economic collapse and follows the efforts of various citizens to fight back and create a habitable living situation for themselves and their country people. [The Dignity of the Nobodies is a U.S. premiere and Solanas will be in attendance.]

"Rounding out SFIFF's selection of Latin American films is Viva Cuba (Juan Carlos Cremata, Cuba), a delightful film featured in the Spotlight: Family Films section of the program. In the film, two best friends (a young boy and girl) are faced with separation when it is revealed that the girl's mother is seeking to leave Cuba. When they find out, they run away in search of her father so they can persuade him not to sign the documents that would permit emigration."

Along with the festival's specific Latino showcase, there will also be the West Coast premiere of Sólo Dios Sabe (Carlos Bolado, Mexico/Brazil), co-sponsored by The Mexican Museum. "Road movie, passionate romance and spiritual quest—a lost passport sparks a voyage of discovery for a Brazilian student and a Mexican journalist. Their journey takes them on an exploration of mystical religion and destiny and a final leap of faith." Bolado will be attending the festival and—as mentioned before for Lower City—actress Alicia Braga will also be here. Must be sweet to be the actress of two Latin American films in the festival!

Spain's official Oscar candidate Obaba (Montxo Armendáriz, Spain/Germany), set in a mythical region in the Basque country, creates a beautifully enigmatic world, which fascinates and puzzles a young teacher who has arrived there with her video camera on a class assignment. Armendáriz will be attending the festival.

Master director Carlos Saura doesn't just make dance films, he makes films dance! In Iberia (Spain/France)—his intensely beautiful tribute to composer Isaac Albéniz—Saura tours southern Spain through music and performance, including ballet, flamenco and contemporary styles.

The Grönholm Method (Marcelo Piñeyro, Spain/Argentina) is about a large multinational corporation in Madrid where seven job applicants are thrown together in a room in a suspenseful dog-eat-dog competition, Survivor style, for a high position in the company. Director Piñeyro will be attending this West Coast premiere.

And finally, the documentary Favela Rising (Jeff Zimbalist / Matt Mochary, Brazil/U.S.A.) takes the filmgoer into one of the toughest barrios in Brazil where a drug trafficker turned social revolutionary musician leads his community into an art-inspired war against the drug trafficking army holding them captive. An inspiring story of redemption and survival within a battleground of drugs and violence. To be screened with the short, Phoenix Dance. Documentarian Zimbalist will be in attendance.

So there you have it! Only Lower City and The House of Sand have hold reviews so you can anticipate The Evening Class reviews on all of the others and as many interviews as my broken Spanish can muster!!

TAIWANESE CINEMA—Kôhî jikô (Café Lumière)

It was Doug Cummings' 2004 Toronto International Film Festival review of Hou Hsiao-hsien's Kôhî jikô (Café Lumière) that first brought my attention to this film. I added it to my wish list. Then while in Paris last September I had my first opportunity to view Café Lumière, albeit in Taiwanese with French subtitles. I'm proficient in neither language but elected to experiment with immersing myself in the film's visual imagery. It was an interesting way to watch a movie and not a completely worthless experiment; I lost a lot even as I watched a lot. I focused on composition, camera work, lighting, while my traveling companion Michael Hawley—who has much more of a command of French than I do—every now and then would whisper some key plot detail into my ear, just to keep me tangentially moored. So I was especially glad to have a second chance to view Café Lumière (with English subtitles!) at the 2006 San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. Unfortunately, however, I had a fever and bad cough by this stage of the festival and halfway through the film had to leave to go home and rest; I was just too sick. As much as I wanted to, I didn't feel I could write it up.

If Michael Hawley has been responsible for awakening my love for world cinema and festival fare, Frako Loden—in her write-ups for the SF Weekly, postings on The WELL, and preview capsules for various Bay Area festival programs—has, without question, furthered and deepened my appreciation of Asian and Asian American film. Thus, it is with particular delight that I offer Frako's recent "rough notes" on Café Lumière to counter my own lack of commentary on this lovely, measured film. What I appreciate about Frako's review is its keen perception of Tokyo's spatiality.

* * *

I just loved Hou Hsiao-hsien's Café Lumière (2003), or (the Japanese or Taiwanese title) Coffee Jikou. I don't know what jikou means—it's a compound I've never seen. Maybe it's Mandarin? It's the ji of toki (time) and the kou of hikari (light).

The story is simple. Yoko (Yo Hitoto), a young woman writer, has come back from one of her many trips to Taiwan, where she has a boyfriend and where she's been doing research about a (real) Taiwanese composer, Jiang Wenye, who lived in Japan most of his life. She lives near Kishibojin-mae station, which is on the Arakawa line. Her friend Hajime (Asano Tadanobu) runs a used book store in Ochanomizu and is a recorder of train sounds. Maybe in that same area they hang out at a cafe called Erika. When she returns from her Taiwan trip, she visits her parents near Yoshii station and they visit her grandparents' graves in Takasaki. Most of the time she travels on the Yamanote line trying to figure out Jiang's haunts while he was alive, like a cafe in Ginza 2-chome that is no longer there (it's Paper House now). She also visits Jiang's widow.

Meanwhile she's pregnant and tells Hajime and her parents. The father is her Taiwanese boyfriend, but she doesn't plan to marry him because he and his mother are too close. His family runs an umbrella factory in Thailand, and he wants Yoko to live with him there. She seems content to give birth and raise the child by herself. Her parents are very concerned, but not much discussion gets accomplished. Her mother urges her father to talk to Yoko, but he pretty much sits and says nothing although you can tell he wants to say something. Instead he offers her chunks of potato from his bowl of nikujaga, which she loves and has her mother bring on a visit.

The film's connections with [Yasujiro] Ozu: Both this and Ozu's films were made at Shochiku Studio. There's a title at the beginning honoring the centenary of his birth (1903). The opening scene is of a person being greeted on a return from a trip (while Tokyo Story's first scene is of a person being greeted just before he leaves on a trip to Tokyo). The film slows down for long shots of passing trains, like so many of Ozu's films do. The film has many scenes of families coming together and having meals or cleaning graves, making casual conversation. There's tension between a father and daughter who obviously have unspoken affection for each other. The camera is still and at the so-called "tatami level" in many scenes. Yoko's parents visit her in Tokyo. She doesn't pack them off to a hot springs resort like the offspring do in Tokyo Story, but there is a divide. For example, she seems more moved by Jiang and his wife's lives than that of her parents.

One of the train lines often featured in the film is the Arakawa line, Tokyo's only surviving above-ground streetcar network. Unlike the subways, the Arakawa line trains are slow, weave through untouristy neighborhoods not destroyed in the 1945 firebombing, and allow riders to view the landscape. It's considered the train line from another era.

Yoko lives on the Arakawa line at Kishibojin-mae station, which is located in front of Kishibojin (or Kishimojin), a Nichiren Buddhist temple housing the goddess who protects mothers and children (formerly the monstrous Indian demon Hariti, a child-kidnapper and devourer who was converted by Buddha. "Now she represents the Buddha's appeal to compassion, and his devotion to the welfare of the weak. Kishimojin is portrayed as a mother suckling her baby and holding a pomegranate in her hand (the symbol of love and feminine fertility)."

It's the temple that Yoko's mother drops by when they first arrive at Yoko's house, making Yoko and her father wait. It's her way of expressing concern for Yoko's unborn child without talking about it. It might also be a habit for her own sake, presumably having no children of her own since Yoko is a stepdaughter. I remember an enormous 600-year-old gingko tree at the temple that is also thought to confer fertility. Just the proximity of Kishibojin to Yoko's home seems to ensure the safe birth of her baby.

[Slant explains that Café Lumière's title is] "a reference to the Lumière Brothers' seminal short film of a train entering a station." Of course the kou of Jikou is translated into lumière in French. Actually Nick Schager's [Slant] review is worth quoting: "As is his hallmark, the director's formal rigorousness takes the form of measured, protracted takes in which the camera detachedly lingers on its protagonists (or, at times, on mundane, uninhabited scenery), and both the general absence of a score and Mark Lee Ping-bin's delicate, naturalistic cinematography—a far cry from his color-saturated work on Hou's Millennium Mambo—create a mood of enveloping serenity."

Yoko and Hajime are a species of Tokyoite depicted in movies who are not alienated by their urban environment. They are like the Angelenos that Phyllis Dietrichson envies so much in Double Indemnity: "It sounds wonderful. Just strangers beside you. You don't know them and you don't hate them." But of those she does know, Yoko has created a comforting environment of supporters. Hajime finds books for her, the master at Cafe Erika serves her hot milk and helps orient her toward the Jiang landmarks in Tokyo that have disappeared. When she rides the trains, she either stands near the front behind the driver's shoulder, watching him and the windscreen, or falling gently asleep. When she feels sick, she slumps against the wall of the platform and tells Hajime she'll be late. Nobody threatens her or looks at her weird. She doesn't shut out her environment with headphones or text messaging.

While watching Café Lumière I kept forgetting that it was directed by someone who doesn't make Tokyo his home. The film is so deeply familiar with its setting and mood somehow. Maybe he shows trains more than somebody who lives there, though. His shots of trains snaking across the landscape hint at an outsider's fascination. But more than any other non-Japanese director, Hou shows how Tokyo is a collection of tiny villages that Tokyoites create for themselves. The Yamanote circle line surrounds the center of Tokyo, the Imperial Palace (the sun), and from the stations on that circle radiate the rays to the outlying parts. So it takes you where you need to go, but it provides a reassuring and teeming "womb" composed of tiny villages, the form Tokyo took centuries ago.

* * *

My thanks to Frako for picking up my slack!! Along with her insightful impressions of Café Lumière, I would further recommend Girish Shambu's comments from the Toronto International Film Festival: "The experience of watching a Hou film does a funny thing to your mind and body. It slows your rhythms right down, and chills you out—not in a narcotic or somnolent fashion, but in a way that sharpens your attention, pulling you deep into the depths of the movie screen."

Also Filmbrain's commentary from the New York Film Festival: "The composition of the family scenes, shot at tatami-level from an almost voyeuristic point outside of the room (door frames often take up a portion of the screen), can be found in nearly all of Ozu's films. There's also a tremendous attention to detail, including several items that appear multiple times and in multiple places throughout the film—clocks, umbrellas, fans, and even milk."

Rouge has published an excerpt from Shigehiko Hasumi's keynote lecture for the Hou Hsiao-hsien conference held last April 2005. Hasumi's excerpt studies the role of trains in the director's oeuvre. "How does Café Lumière depict the railway networks that criss-cross Japan's capital city? The Tokyo of this film, Hou's first foreign work, includes none of the bustle of government and business in the downtown areas, none of the city's skyscrapers, and none of the neon signs of the entertainment districts. Hou's view of the city is characterised, rather, by the fact that his camera ignores completely the expressways that have been the image of cities of the future ever since Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972)." Incidentally, Hasumi is cameoed in Café Lumière as the café waiter delivering coffee to Hajime's bookshop.

In his write-up for Bright Lights Film Journal, Ian Johnston shies away from drawing too many resemblances between Hou and Ozu, and focuses instead—and rather interestingly at that—on their differences and distances. "In the end," Johnston writes, "the differences between Hou's and Ozu's film worlds are as great as their similarities."

04/05/06 Addendum: Meanwhile, Acquarello at Strictly Film School is not as impressed with Café Lumière, opining that "Hou resorts to familiar devices of expounding minimal narrative through telephone conversations, overdistilled ellipses (to the point of incoherence), and distended temps morts." Further, Acquarello comments: "[T]he theory about Ozu shooting his films at tatami level (popularized by Donald Richie) has been disproven by [David] Bordwell and critics like Tadao Sato. The camera height is actually around 18-24" inches, and unless these are small kids, the eye level from a tatami mat would not be that low."

04/10/06 Addendum: Steve at globality.org provides a wry rant against the audience that attended his screening of Café Lumière: "[I]f you're obviously drunk and looking for a good time, how do you end up at a movie prominently advertised in the SFIAAFF program as a tribute to I-wouldn't-dare-move-the-camera Yasuhiro Ozu by five-minute-shot-meister Hou Hsiao-Hsien? '...elegant, stark calligraphy of images'? '...often letting silences fill in the lines'? What part of that says, 'nice capper to a wild evening on the town'?"

Steve also provides an appreciative review of the film. "[B]efore watching this film," Steve cautions, "it's important to give up all expectations of a plot. If you take it on its own terms, watching it can be a soft and comforting experience." He furthers: "The earlier you give in and just abide with these people, the more you'll enjoy Café Lumière." He concludes: "[T]his is a film about birth, and it quivers with quiet, yet growing, energy."

2006 SFIFF—La Vita Che Vorrei (The Life I Want)

By comparison to Perhaps Love, the film-within-a-film love story in Giuseppe Piccioni's La Vita Che Vorrei (The Life I Want) seems downright old-fashioned, yet all the more engaging for it. Even the love theme from Laura is layered into it, lending the film an old romance movie feel as it gestures to the film's female protagonist, aspiring actress Laura, played by Sandra Ceccarelli. La Vita Che Vorrei (The Life I Want) is a tasteful setting for Ceccarelli's jewel of a performance. Talk about a camera loving an actor's face!! She strikes me as the Italian counterpart to Liv Tyler (via her self-amused smile) and Allison Janney (via her mature sensuality).

As for her male co-star, I'm beginning to wonder if I shall ever see an Italian film without Luigi Lo Cascio? I just saw him in La Bestia Nel Cuore (Don't Tell) and—previously, of course—in The Best of Youth. Not that that's a bad thing, mind you. I enjoy Luigi. He does a fine turn in La Vita Che Vorrei (The Life I Want) as Stefano, a successful actor concerned his career is about to fail even as he falls in love—despite himself—with an actress on her way up.

The two are cast in a period drama whose plot and characters neatly align with those in their "real" lives. Unlike Perhaps Love, however, subtlety is not eschewed in La Vita Che Vorrei (The Life I Want) and, thus, I felt something for these two souls and the complex emotions summoned through and drawn into their performances.

Cathleen Rountree has already made the specific comparisons to Truffaut's Day for Night and Reisz's The French Lieutenant's Woman, noting as well the film's melodramatic allegiance to Camille and La Traviata.

As an aside, Cathleen introduced herself to me before one of the press screenings with a query about my digital recorder, which she'd spotted me using at the press conference earlier in the week. We started sharing enthusiasm and I discovered that Cathleen is working on a book—The Movie Lovers' Club—exploring the social possibilities of cinema experience. I hope to review her book and interview her in the near future for The Evening Class.

2006 SFIFF—Perhaps Love

Whether through intention or coincidence, the two press screenings this last Thursday—Peter Ho-Sun Chan's Perhaps Love and Giuseppe Piccioni's La Vita Che Vorrei (The Life I Want)—were both love stories structured as films within a film. As meditations on a theme, they enhanced each other, though they were styles apart.

Perhaps Love is the first Hong Kong feature to open the San Francisco International Film Festival. For that alone, the programmers deserve a nod. Director Chan will be present to accept accolades and there's no doubt this visual dazzler will launch the buzz right into the opening night gala at the Regency Center. But I'm conflicted about Perhaps Love. I loved the look of it but really didn't like the film much at all. I side very much with Twitch on this one: "Perhaps Love is one of those rare films so visually impressive that you [could] literally take it apart frame by frame and not find a single weak image. The images on screen are simply stunning. Unfortunately Perhaps Love is littered with so many other flaws that, pretty pictures or not, the film verges on unwatchable."

I don't know as much about movies as others do, but, I do know that if I go into a movie and immediately discern that it has skillfully thieved from Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baz Luhrmann and Rob Marshall, that I'm about to choke—albeit dazzled—on the derivative. But at least derivative of Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baz Luhrmann and Rob Marshall, all of whom I like a lot in fact! So, in between trying to figure out whether I'm in the past, present, in the movie or in the movie within the movie, I was also distracted identifying lifts from Phantom of the Opera, some Moulin Rouge, a bit of Chicago…. By the time the whole phantasmagora was over and my mind had been run over by cinematic citation, I really didn't have much left over to feel for any of the film's characters.

Notwithstanding, it's an exuberant eyeful! Even as your eye is drawn in to the clear aesthetic of winter in Bejing—soft snowfall framing two hearts on fire—you are later reminded how fake the snow is, and how the snowfall is cleverly effected by offscreen technicians. That's not very nice. Just when I start to feel something, I'm reminded any feeling I might have would merely be a manipulated sentiment. Not nice at all. After a while I didn't want to risk any feeling whatsoever. Why should I? But then, maybe that's just what the film is trying to present?

So I allowed myself to be the visual sponge the film demanded I be. Sumptuous restless cinematography by Christopher Doyle and Peter Pau (my favorite were the circus scenes, lit from beneath like Degas, staged in bizarre Cirque d'Soleil chic, archetypes in the center ring, rendering love without a net as a trapeze act of trust in the high air). And I applaud Farah Khan's extravagant choreography, especially the "prostitutes" song. Meant to remind you of the "Cell Block Tango", it compiles the gist of this clip, for your perusal via Twitch.

Rewatching that clip reminds me that it looks much better and engages more forcefully without subtitles. Yet another distraction: Subtitles whose cerebral and calculated poetry effectively blocked any sensuality the visuals delivered.

The greatest distraction a film can make is to draw attention to itself. That's why breaking the proscenium and films-within-a-film are true challenges, best for laughs, and difficult to achieve. Chan almost achieved it here—and I really wanted him to!—but ultimately he has weakened the project by winking one too many times at influences, references, resemblances and a steady diet of major talent. An unknown might have injected a bit of love into this piece. Perhaps.

I agree with Graham Leggat that the pan-Asian cast is "ravishing." But someone still needs to buy Takeshi Kaneshiro a swimsuit and his love interest Zhou Xun a dental guard. Please.

2006 SFIFF—The Heart of the Game

I'm so glad that Ruby Rich acknowledges the optimistic heart of Ward Serrill's The Heart of the Game. "It's being described as a hoop dreams for girls, but I don't think that's fair to it. …It's not just about basketball and the individual experience of poverty. It's much more about the intense pressure of gender socialization and the amazing display of what happens when you begin to undo it."

As disinterested as I am in team sports generally, I really loved The Heart of the Game. I am impressed with Serrill's devotion to the film's premise, that he spent six years following the rise of the Roughriders, an all-girl Seattle basketball team. His editing is lean and tight as he adeptly abbreviates the various seasons of the team—their wins, their losses—and builds the film's momentum even as relationships are established between coach Bill Resler ("Santa Claus in Birkenstocks") and the team's key players, notably Darnellia Russell, whose talent and perseverance against increasingly unfair odds are sure to inspire sports enthusiasts and non-enthusiasts alike. Resler's ingenuity in providing inspirational guidance to his players—either through offering driving metaphors ("You're a tropical storm! You're a pack of wolves! You're a pride of lions! You're a school of piranha! DRAW BLOOD!") or bringing in senior citizen Maude Lepley, one of the original girl basketball players, to talk to her young cohorts—is near to genius. I was biting my fingernails as the Roughriders took it to the hoop. This, hands down, has been my favorite film yet from this year's festival!

Sir! No Sir!—The Evening Class interview with David Zeiger

I met David Zeiger midmorning at San Francisco's Ninth Street Independent Film Center after he'd already done a Quake radio interview and had a little breakfast afterwards. Eager for the opportunity to interview him in the midafternoon while he was visiting S.F., I negotiated a pick up of a screener dvd of his new documentary Sir! No Sir! and caught BART home to watch it.

Riding MUNI on my way back to the Center to conduct the interview, I was disappointed I didn't get to at least watch Sir! No Sir! twice. I would have liked to have had more time to appreciate it fully. As an incisive historical document, it deserved at least that much respect. David Zeiger immediately put me at ease, said not to worry, the guy who was interviewing him on the radio hadn't even seen the film and thought it was a feature. So I relaxed and decided to just have a casual conversation.

On the bus getting there I had reviewed Jonathan Stein's Mother Jones interview with Zeiger, which I felt more-than-adequately covered the background of the film so I didn't feel any need to ask any of those questions, but I was intrigued by some of Zeiger's comments in that interview and he agreed discussing those would be a perfect start.

Sir! No Sir! tells many different stories of resistance from within the military, but one of its most intriguing is that of "The Worms", Air Force interpreters trained in Vietnamese whose job it was to fly over North Vietnam intercepting radio communications. Seeing the difference between what they knew was going on and what the American people were being told, these interpreters formed the WORMS ("We Openly Resist Military Stupidity"). During the infamous 1972 Christmas bombings of North Vietnam, many of them went on strike. In Sir! No Sir! they bravely attest to "…The bombing of populated areas, civilian areas; the bombing of hospitals—things that the US denied over and over again that we were engaged in. Those are things that we were engaged in and we had access to that information. And the lies were so stark, it challenged your own dignity, it challenged your own loyalty, it challenged your own humanity."

These men who came out after 35 years to reveal their participation in The Worms had basically been hiding their story all this time for fear of legal repercussion. In the Mother Jones interview Zeiger stated he didn't know what would happen to these men when the film was released. I had to know if anything had happened? Had they been placed in any kind of jeopardy? Had there been repercussions?

"Not as far as we know at this point," Zeiger advised, noting that it had been a very difficult choice for them. They had all talked a lot about the issue of potential ramifications for coming forth at this time. "They came to me, they contacted me, when they heard about the film!" Zeiger stressed, emphasizing their voluntary bravery.

Zeiger explained they all felt—for one thing—that principally what was being talked about in the film and the aspect of their work that was being revealed was essentially the politics of what they were doing and their reaction to it. It wasn't as if anything they would be discussing would harbor information that would threaten national security. The technology has since gone way past what it was at that time.

"We have new ways to wage a war," I suggested and Zeiger laughed, agreed. "Exactly", he said, "and I think they've all been—on some level—waiting for the opportunity to tell their story and this was really the time when it was important to tell it."

"On one level I would say I don't really expect any legal ramifications," Zeiger offered but then suggested that on the other hand there have been recent cases of former servicemen who have been arrested for their anti-war activities in the 60s and 70s. One case in particular sprang to his mind of a guy who was living in Canada who had crossed the border dozens of time to visit friends and family. A few weeks ago for the first time he crossed the border and his name showed up on a wanted list and—wham!—he was arrested, taken to Camp Pendleton and held incommunicado. Zeiger wasn't sure about the guy's current status; whether or not he will be belatedly court martialed, but said the situation serves as a reminder that it's not like people's actions during the Vietnam war were irrelevant; they remain relevant today.

I expressed my hope that nothing happens to The Worms in his documentary. "I do too!" Zeiger emphasized and added that he and his company were prepared to get something done for them if need be. "But the more out there the film is, the more public the story is," Zeiger believes, it will serve to protect them from recrimination.

Zeiger further commented in the Mother Jones interview: "A big strength of the film, and what I think is going to bring it into the mainstream, is that this is a historical metaphor. We don't have to say a word about Iraq in the film for it to be clearly identified with Iraq for people. But [because it doesn't mention Iraq], the film can't be shoved into the category of a propaganda film." This distinction of the film being a "historical metaphor" rather than propaganda intrigued me. Because clearly not everyone is thinking that. On the film's website Zeiger graciously provides space for dissenting reviews, in particular one from the Marooned in Marin blog, which accused the movie—as well as Beth Ashley's Marin Independent Journal article promoting the February 2006 appearance of Jane Fonda for a benefit screening of Sir! No Sir! at Mill Valley's Throckmorton Theatre—as "simply another forum for her and aging 1960's leftists to spread their lies about Vietnam and claim parallels to Iraq."

It's only natural that with increased visibility comes a higher number of yays and nays. "You make a film and put it out there," Zeiger says matter-of-factly, and there's really no way to know how it's going to affect people. Certainly he wants the film to do good, to make some kind of change, but the best way for a film to do that is by telling a story and not by pounding someone over the head with propaganda. The story the film is telling is convincing in its own right, speaks for itself, and Zeiger wants people to take it that way, to use it that way. If this historical metaphor informs public perception of the war in Iraq, that's valid, even if it is not specifically addressed in the documentary itself. The important thing is for as many people to see it as possible so they can make up their own minds and draw their own connections. That was one of the reasons Zeiger decided the documentary should open in theaters rather than be immediately released on dvd, to get it out as broadly as possible to audiences.

Whether or not Sir! No Sir! specifically talks about armed ground forces in Iraq, it is being screened at several benefits for Iraq Vets Against the War, including one on Thursday, April 6th at 7:00pm, at the Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Avenue in Oakland. Advance tickets $8, $10 at the door; for tickets call 415-255-7296, ext. 244.

"That aspect of the film is very real," Zeiger concedes, "I'm glad that people are, y'know, taking it that way." But he insists his film is not propaganda.

Part of my training as a young man was as a Mayanist. I studied Maya history and epigraphy. I was taught then to take all historical information gleaned from elite hieroglyphic texts with a certain grain of salt because, as everyone knows, the winners write history. One of the things I liked most about Sir! No Sir! was that it questioned that premise, especially in terms of defining who "the winners" truly are, and the process of rewriting history. What I came away with from my first viewing of Zeiger's documentary was this uncomfortable sense that one of the most insidious thing done in the rewriting of the history of the Vietnam War was the systematic erasure from the public record of this G.I. anti-war movement. "Absolutely," Zeiger agreed, that's part of why it was important to make this film.

"The process of erasing this from history is a very complex one," Zeiger explained, pointing out that shortly after the Vietnam War was declared over, there was a great emphasis on reconciliation, putting the war behind us, wanting to forget. Focus was shifted to the returning veteran, hailed as a hero for defending his country, and shame was placed on those Americans who protested the war. Their protest was configured as being unpatriotic, tarnishing the efforts of these young men who had risked their lives in the name of their country. The image of the protesting veteran became subsumed in a cultural project of revisionist history engineered by the government and the complicit media. There was some vigilance, of course. A few books were written about the GI movement in the 70s, and since then there have been other books written, some work-up, but for the main part mainstream culture, including the more progressive, have all but forgotten the G.I. anti-war movement. For various reasons the idea of resistance within the military was simply unacceptable. Such an option meant the Vietnam war—in fact the concept of war—wasn't honored. It was not principally a question of the American people being opposed to war. They were opposed to further war, or more wars like Vietnam.

The last thing that would be included in the rewritten history of the Vietnam War would be the fact that the soldiers themselves were opposed to it. That would be the thing that would have to be edited out. To think otherwise would be treasonous and conspiratorial. It just made sense for the whole rewriting of the war to forget such a resistance ever happened and to focus on the heroic returning veteran. Even Hollywood got on the bandwagon. There had never been a Hollywood film about the Vietnam war that even hinted of the GI resistance movement. Sure, there were films about the veterans coming home and the difficulties they faced in readjusting to civilian life, and films about the veterans protesting the war once they were released from duty, but none of the on-duty soldiers who worked against the war. Hollywood gave us Rambo. "Which taught us that women could spit," I grinned. Zeiger laughed. "Exactly." He caught my deferential reference to the urban myth that returning veterans were spat upon by female hippie anti-war protestors.

"Because it's not a matter of something simply disappearing," Zeiger continued. "You can't have those two things side by side; having GIs protesting the war being spat on by antiwar activists. Doesn't make sense, right?"

It interested me how this urban myth had been created. Zeiger intimated that initially its creation wasn't purposeful, it was generated out of the popular culture, through movies. But during the (first) Bush administration, it became very purposeful. That was when ground troops were first being sent over to Iraq and the Bush administration made it a point of debate, actually put it out there, that the worst thing you could do was what they did back in the 60s when they spat upon the troops. This was one of their ways of rallying support for their current endeavors.

The images that were coming through the American media at that time, I remember, was of all the bombing visualized as a video game. The detachment and the distancing dehumanized the enemy. As Zeiger's film testified, aerial bombing had long become the alleged lesson learned in Vietnam. Never sending ground forces into a war that would last too long became the wisdom of experience. Air strikes were the way to go!! More could be damaged and more could be killed at less cost to our own. This strategic style of warfare and its application in Vietnam was never as clear to me as presented in Sir! No Sir! And it further served to clarify how there is dissent, even at top levels, regarding the ground troops that have been sent into Iraq to occupy the country and protect our assets. The military lesson that was allegedly learned in Vietnam is being purposely ignored and at what cost?

Zeiger and I also discussed the depiction of the black soldiers' resistance to the Vietnam war, especially those in the Army who were asked to return home to war against protestors outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. They did not want to fire upon their own people. They could not reconcile being sent to another country to kill for their country only to be asked to return to kill their own. It made no sense. And gave voice to an unstated racism.

Though I know it's not quite the same thing, this sequence in Sir! No Sir! reminded me of the presidential response to the aftermath of Katrina and how accusations of racism once again resurfaced. Only this time instead of sending the National Guard in as they had at Chicago, at Kent State, the National Guard—which was so desperately needed at home—was pulled out to defend governmental interests elsewhere.

Another aspect of Sir! No Sir! that I liked was what I felt was its respectful attempt at gender parity. "Hanoi Jane" was great, possibly the best on-film performance I've seen out of Jane Fonda in many a year, but I was particularly intrigued with the voice of naval nurse Susan Schnall who was arrested for flying a small plane over several military bases here in the San Francisco Bay Area, dropping leaflets for the first demonstration of GIs and veterans against the war. "I remembered hearing about the B-52 bombers that were dropping leaflets on Vietnam urging the Vietnamese to defect," Schnall relates in the film, "And I thought well, if they can do it overseas…."

"Susan was great," Zeiger beamed, conceding that there were a lot fewer women in the service then than there are now. But Susan was bold and brave, wearing her uniform to a protest rally, for which she came under much fire. Like many others at the time, there was nothing that could stop her. Just as Keith Mather described: "I had nothing to lose, and I had no idea what was going to come. That's a free place. It's a really free place, you know? You don't know what's going to happen, you don't know where you're going, but you know what you're doing."

I teased Zeiger about the digitalized reconstruction of Schnall's leaflet drop. "No, no," he grinned, "they had a camera up there . . . " Actually, they had a lot of fun filming that sequence, using the sky as a blue screen, and dropping leaflets from the top of his bunker garage.

Zeiger paid strong attention to the underground press of the GI anti-war movement. I asked him if anything comparable was going on among servicemen in the current war. "The obvious answer is blogs," he answered, "and the Internet in Iraq." Only one of the many reasons why the Government wants to censor the Internet. Notwithstanding these modern marvels of communication, Zeiger waxes a bit nostaligic for the old methods, the mimeographed newsletters that were passed hand to hand around military bases. You would walk into your barracks and find them on your bed, in your locker. There is something visceral about that, which he misses, even as individuals he knew then that were cranking out newsletters, now do the same with daily weblasts. Certain political choices conjure aesthetic choices, I guess. "One must accomodate the times as one lives them," Stephen Sondheim has penned.

But I knew what Zeiger was saying. It's as if information has become entertainment and not the social call to action that it once was. I was struck by a comment Jane Fonda made in the documentary when she was remembering the soldiers at the FTA concerts. FTA was originally an acronym for Fun Travel and Adventure, the military's recruiting slogan for enlisting young men. Over time this morphed into Foxtrot Tango and Alpha or, decoded, Fuck the Army! Fonda was recalling looking out at the concert audience with those tens of thousands of GIs raising their fists and tossing the peace sign in solidarity with the anti-war cause. She wondered if it could even happen today. Zeiger chuckled pensively.

The lesson Zeiger tries to take from that is that movements of resistance seemingly come out of nowhere, they come out of an element of "total surprise" and that's where he gleans his optimism. You just never know. Maybe it could happen again. Maybe it is just as Faulkner wrote, "The past isn't dead; it isn't even past."

Coincidentally enough, the day before the interview I had gone out to the Balboa to catch a doublebill of Joyeux Noel and Sophie Scholl and the dirty word that came up out of those two films was conscience. I've long joked that if you ever want to get out of jury duty, and you've been chosen and are sitting in the box, wait until the judge asks if you can follow his or her instructions on the law, and then calmly respond, "That depends." When they ask what you mean, tell them you would have to follow your conscience first and foremost and—bingo!—you're out of there until next jury call. Why should it be that law, and the order it promises, seem so antithetical to conscience? Bertolt Brecht wrote in a poem:

General, man is very useful. He can fly and he can kill.
But he has one defect: He can think.

The structure of Zeiger's documentary begins with brave and individual voices who by the nature of their conscience are driven to act without any kind of support network. They were the tip of an oncoming wave.

Sir! No Sir! is equally engaging for its San Franciscan history. I was almost ashamed to admit I knew nothing about the "Nine for Peace" and the Presidio 27. The "Nine for Peace" were soldiers who refused their orders to Vietnam and took sanctuary in a San Franciscan church, chaining themselves to priests in support of their cause. The Presidio 27—which included the soldiers arrested from the "Nine for Peace"—were the prisoners in the Presidio stockade that staged a sitdown strike in protest of a guard's murder of a mentally-ill prisoner. "That was just like electrifying for the whole country!" Zeiger said and praised the local San Francisco television stations who have kept their coverage tapes of that time when most other stations long ago had either erased them or thrown them away. "That was a moment when there was a coming together of the San Francisco scene and the GIs," Zeiger summarizes.

I wondered if that had anything to do with the instigation of the urban myth about soldiers returning to the San Francisco airport and being spit upon by hippie anti-war protestors? Were they somehow trying to get back at San Francisco?

Zeiger was amused with the idea. He hadn't thought of it from that angle but, sure, absolutely. San Francisco—because it symbolized the counterculture—was a magnet for that kind of character assassination.

Finally, I commended Zieger on the documentary's music. Especially how he bookended the two pieces: the Shirelles innocently singing "Soldier Boy" and Rita Martinson soulfully singing her antiwar song at the FTA concerts. "Actually there's a third song that comes after her's," Zeiger corrected, one written specifically for the film bringing it up to current events. I'm always interested in music rights so I asked him if he'd had any problems securing "Soldier Boy" and he said no, that it had surprised him since he had been a little concerned about it, but he was granted license. It cost a pretty penny though. I didn't ask how much.

None of the music inbetween those bookend pieces is from the 60s, however, as most folks assume. A lot of people actually thought he had found all this instrumental music from the 60s but, no, it's all original music, meant to create the atmosphere of the time without pulling the viewer back into the time. At one point they had included "Maggie's Farm", a song that became almost an anthem for the Presidio 27, they sang it all the time; but—after trying it in the film—Zeiger realized suddenly that it pulled people out of the film into their own head and their own memories of that time. That's how strong music and some memories are so it became a challenge for Zeiger's composer to elicit the music of the time to position the filmgoer in a historical moment without having to depend explicitly upon any specific song.

I wrapped our conversation up by thanking Zeiger for rewriting history correctly. He laughed again and said, "Thank you!"

Sir! No Sir!, as mentioned above, will be part of a benefit screening next Thursday at the Grand Lake. But then opens for its official San Franciscan premiere at the Red Victorian April 7-13. I highly recommend it. It's an important reminder at a time when history is perilously repeating itself.