The Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) announced its 2009 line-up last week, adhering to what has become a proven formula for the 32-year-old festival: Start with a dozen or so indie-ish, autumn-release prestige pics, often with stars and directors in tow. Next, throw in a couple big name tributes and high profile selections from the year's fest circuit. Then round things out with a big helping of docs, shorts, live music events and largely unheralded narrative features from around the globe. There are close to 100 programs from 34 countries this year, and what follows is a picky, subjective look at a portion of what's in store from October 8 to 18.
First off, MVFF has become the Bay Area festival for movie-stargazing. This year offers the opportunity to ogle Uma Thurman (appearing at a tribute with her new film Motherhood), Clive Owen (star of the co-Opening Night film The Boys Are Back, followed the next night with a tribute and screening of 1998's Croupier) and Woody Harrelson (also getting the tribu-treatment alongside a look at his acclaimed new film The Messenger). For those who like their stars a bit more edgy and obscure, MVFF presents veteran character actor Seymour Cassel—best known for his collaborations with John Cassavetes—in conversation with iconoclastic Bay Area filmmaker Rob Nilsson. Cassel's latest film, the LeVar Burton-directed Reach For Me, screens the following night. And while we're at it, Nilsson's got a new film in the festival, too (Imbued).
The tribute which really had Bay Area cinephiles oohing and aahing, however, is sadly not to be. Iconic French new wave actress, singer and director Anna Karina recently had an accident which prevents her from attending the festival. Happily, she has issued a rain check and promises to come here next spring. Meanwhile, MVFF will still be screening Karina's first directorial effort in 30 years, Victoria (described as Some Like it Hot meets Breathless), as well as a revival of 1965's Pierrot le fou, one of seven features she made with then-husband Jean-Luc Godard.
Of all the "stars" attending MVFF32, perhaps none will be on the lips of movie-goers in the next few months more than Gabourey Sidibe, the star of co-Opening Night film Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire. The film, which won Sundance's Jury Prize and Audience Award back in January, just got a huge push at Toronto (where it snagged another audience prize) with newly onboard executive producers Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey beating the drum. Precious is the inspirational story of a derided, African-American teen who's pregnant for a second time with her father's baby. TV actress/comedienne Mo'Nique has won accolades for her portrayal of the mother-from-hell, and even Mariah Carey has been singled out for her small role as a social worker. MVFF Director of Programming Zoe Elton is predicting that Precious will go on to become this year's Slumdog Millionaire, i.e., the little film that could. Director Lee Daniels is also expected to attend the screening. (Precious opens in limited release on November 6.)
There were two British films in competition at Cannes this year (well, three if you count Jane Campion's Bright Star), and MVFF has got them both. Ken Loach's Looking For Eric is one of two Closing Night films (along with Jean-Marc Vallée's The Young Victoria), and stars ex-Manchester United soccer champ Eric Cantona as an apparitional life coach to a put-upon postman. The other is Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank, in which a council flats teen (a much lauded performance from newcomer Katie Jarvis) experiences sexual tension with her mother's new boyfriend (Hunger's Michael Fassbender). Fish Tank is Arnold's second feature, and just like its predecessor, 2006's Red Road, was the winner of Cannes' Prix du Jury. It's my second most anticipated film in the festival.
And what's first? That would be André Téchiné's The Girl on the Train, starring Émilie Dequenne (best known for her titular role in the Dardenne Brothers' Rosetta) as a young woman who falsely accuses some black and Arab youths of an anti-Semitic attack. Based on true events, the film co-stars my favorite Israeli actress Ronit Elkabetz (The Band's Visit, Late Marriage), vet actor Michel Blanc, and Catherine Deneuve, making her sixth appearance in a Téchiné film. The Girl on the Train premiered at this year's Berlin Film Festival along with another anticipated French film on the MVFF roster, François Ozon's flying baby movie, Ricky.
Unfortunately, Latin America is grossly underrepresented at Mill Valley this year, a lamentable programming decision given the fact we no longer have an exclusively Latin American film festival in the Bay Area. I've scoured the line-up and come up with only one narrative feature from the region—Sebastian Silva's The Maid. Happily, this social satire about a maid becoming unhinged after 23 years of service to the same upper class Chilean family is one I've been looking forward to ever since it won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema.
Asian film enthusiasts will be thrilled to learn that master Hong Kong director John Woo is expected to attend the MVFF screening of his new film, Red Cliff. This two-part historical epic represents Woo's return to Chinese language films after a 15-year stint in Hollywood. It's also purported to be the most expensive film ever made in Asia, with an all-star cast that includes Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Takeshi Kaneshiro. With the aim of celebrating the 100th anniversary of Hong Kong cinema, MVFF will also be screening Johnnie To's Sparrow, which had a theatrical run at San Francisco's 4 Star Theater earlier this year. A more impressive choice might have been Red Cliff II, which has been touring festivals since January. Or even To's more recent Vengeance, starring craggy French rock n' roller Johnny Hallyday.
A last-minute addition that you won't find in the printed program is the latest from Polish maestro Andrzej Wajda. Many incorrectly assumed that 2007's Katyn, which screened at MVFF last year and was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, would be the 83-year-old director's last. But he turned up in Berlin this year with Sweet Rush, an older woman/younger man film-within-a-film romance that surprisingly copped the festival's boundary-pushing Alfred Bauer Prize. Kudos to the programming staff for securing this one.
As for the rest of the World Cinema section, it's mostly filled with unknown entities (to me at least), making it difficult to know quite what to spotlight here. I'm a fan of Czech director Jan Hrebejk (Up and Down, Beauty in Trouble) and am pleased to see his latest, Shameless, in the line-up. I'm also intrigued by the made-for-$500 Romanian film about two teens trapped in an Elevator. Hipsters is a splashy Russian musical about rebellious Soviet youth in 1955 Moscow, while another period piece Hellsinki, concerns young Finnish criminals in the 1960s/1970s. The clip from Israel's Surrogate shown at the MVFF press conference made it look pretty darn sexy. Jermal is an Indonesian father/son drama set on a remote deep-sea fishing depot. A film about a narcissistic, egomaniacal movie star would seem to be an unlikely entry from Iran, but nonetheless we have Tahmineh Milani's Superstar. In addition there are a couple films each from India, South Africa, Australia, Denmark and Sweden that look promising. Finally, anyone planning to wait until the marvelous An Education opens in theaters on October 16 should know that director Lone Scherfig (Italian for Beginners, Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself) will be attending that film's MVFF screening.
I've touched on a handful of the fest's U.S. narrative features and here are a few more worth considering. First off, director Jason Reitman (Thank You for Smoking, Juno) will receive a tribute accompanied by his recent Telluride/Toronto triumph Up in the Air, starring George Clooney. Miguel Arteta (Chuck & Buck) directs his first feature in seven years, Youth in Revolt, with Michael Cera as a dull teen with a seriously rebellious alter ego. I'm not sure which of these two films has the more intriguing cast—Mitchell Lichtenstein's Happy Tears with Parker Posey, Demi Moore, Rip Torn and Ellen Barkin, or Rebecca Miller's The Private Lives of Pippa Lee with Keanu Reeves, Alan Arkin, Robin Wright Penn and Maria Bello. Admirers of Larry Blamire's affectionate 1950s sci-fi spoofs The Lost Skelton of Cadavra and its sequel The Lost Skelton Returns Again, surely won't want to miss his parody of 1930's "old dark house" movies, Dark and Stormy Night.
Amongst the two dozen non-fiction features in the festival's Valley of the Docs section, perhaps none will draw more attention than Rick Goldsmith and Judy Ehrlich's The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg himself is scheduled to attend both MVFF screenings. Traditionally the fest brings us several fascinating music documentaries and this year they've come up with Meredith Monk—Inner Voice and Soundtrack For a Revolution, which explores the music that accompanied the American Civil Rights Movement. The Blind Boys of Alabama are expected to perform live at the October 10 screening of the latter film. And finally, the Bay Area's own counter-cultural cheerleader and ice cream flavor gets the bio-doc treatment in Michelle Esrick's Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Movie.
10/07/09 UPDATE: Of related interest, Dennis Harvey offers up his "Mill Valley Menu" for Variety. MVFF, he writes, is "starting to look like kudos season preview, Northern California edition."
Cross-published on film-415 and Twitch.
"There are no secrets; only shame."—Tonia.
[This entry is dedicated to Johnny Ray Huston, whose Cinema Scope article "Double 'O' Heaven: The Vertigo Pop and Phantom Desires of João Pedro Rodrigues" provided some of the first working language to appreciate this Portuguese maverick's films more fully. Thanks, Johnny! João Pedro says hi and looks forward to seeing you in Vancouver. This entry is not for the spoiler-wary!!]
In his most recent vision Morrer Como Um Homem (To Die Like A Man, 2009), Portuguese filmmaker João Pedro Rodrigues has staged some uneasy equations. The film begins with a close-up of a soldier's face applying camouflage paint. You hear the voice of another soldier—who you will later learn is Zé Maria (Chandra Malatitch), the son of drag queen Tonia (Fernando Santos)—complimenting his friend on how he looks, adding some finishing touches to his lids and cheeks. The parallel to how women apply their daily war paint is obvious and these militarized men are tainted by a suggestion of femininity. They break away from their patrol to wander AWOL in the night. Zé Maria leans his feminized friend against a tree, pushes down his pants and spitfucks him hard. At this point, you realize this is not your father's war movie. Their lust satiated, the two soldiers continue exploring this dark enchanted forest of the night that they have entered. They come across a house brightly lit in the darkness wherein two men dressed as women are singing at the piano. The sodomized soldier suggests candidly to Zé Maria that perhaps his father knows these two? Zé Maria hardens, mutters, "My father is dead" and shoots his friend in the chest. Rarely has a spit-stiff dick and a rifle penetrated flesh with such enraged and internalized homophobia.
This violent act initiates To Die Like A Man's portrait of transgendered Tonia, a veteran drag queen in Lisbon circles whose life has begun to unravel. The drag queens are getting younger and more competitive. Audiences want a different style of performance. Her son Zé Maria has become a deserter and a murderer and her boyfriend Rosario (Alexander David) is pressuring her to have a sex change operation. Her silicone breast implants have poisoned her body and she is dying of cancer. Sometimes it's just not worth waking up in the morning. In order to forgive and be forgiven for the slights endured over a long life as a drag queen performer, Tonia devolves her body back into a male form and seeks reconciliation with her estranged son, even if it be by way of dementia.
To Die Like A Man arrived for its North American premiere at the Toronto International after competing in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes. David Hudson gathered those decidedly mixed reviews at The Daily @ IFC. At Toronto—where day after day I caught one adequate film after another—To Die Like A Man stood out as a uniquely energized and distinct vision, strange and special. As indicated at Wikipedia, the story of Tonia was allegedly inspired by the life of Joaquim Centúrio de Almeida (artistic name: Ruth Bryden), and has motivated a lawsuit by Carlos Castro, the author of de Almeida's biography. I welcomed the opportunity to sit down with João Pedro Rodrigues and one of his actors Alexander David to discuss the film.
* * *
Michael Guillén: João, To Die Like A Man is a fascinating film and difficult to talk about because it operates on multiple registers: it's sublime, it's ridiculous, at times sad and frequently hilarious. Perhaps it would help me more if we start at the end of the film?—that closing fado?—whose lyrics synopsized what I had just witnessed and perhaps not fully understood. For starters, who sings that fado?
João Pedro Rodrigues: That fado is sung by Fernando Santos, who plays the transvestite Tonia; but, the song is a fado from the '80s from a singer who is not very well regarded in Portugal. He was a rebellious maverick of the fados in the '80s. As a man, he would wear skirts in the streets—quite the crazy guy!—but, he wrote strong lyrics. That closing song is a particularly beautiful fado. Fados aren't what I listen to most; but, especially that song expressed a lot about the film and sublimated Tonia's character. I wanted Tonia to have the aura of the grande dame of the drag show. At the same time, in this film I tried to go against the usual films that feature drag queens. I wanted to do something different. I wasn't interested in shooting Tonia's stage performance, at least not until the end of the film when it becomes a special moment; when it becomes something different.
Guillén: As far as I'm concerned, To Die Like A Man is now the definitive transgender movie and has set the bar for subsequent transcinema. Not only does it speak uniquely for the transgender community; but, it has a "formal audacity"—as Eye Weekly's Jason Anderson phrases it—that is downright thrilling, precisely for its difference. You dalliance with some stunning visual flairs.
I suppose why the fado struck me so much was because it desirously expressed what I have long felt is the underlying fear of gay people: the confrontation with their unapologetic androgyny; that they suffer no façade of what is male and female and operate at their best when remaining true to both. Their particular desire might be argued to be a longing—in fact—to remain both male and female, to remain—as the fado puts it—plural. "I want to be plural," Santos sings. He wants to be understood for being more than what he appears to be; that the singularity of his appearance might deceive his true plurality. For the singular, unfortunately, plurality is judged as an abomination, something supranatural exceeding division. Its excess is suspect. In the face of such inexplicable androgyny, a single sex suffers deficit.
That being said, I guess my true question is who is this movie for? Who do you imagine to be your audience? Or do you imagine your audience?
Rodrigues: I don't think about it. I'm the first audience of the film. I think of myself first as a viewer; but then, it's hard to tell. But I don't mean that I only want to do films for myself. The way the film is shot and the way it resembles my other films, I suspect you either like it and understand it or you don't. Even in terms of space. When I think of filming a room, I prefer filming pieces of the room. If you then try to combine the pieces to see how the room looks as a whole, you can't. In my films I try to build a space that—though not real space—is close to reality. Reality comes first. I like films that are real even as I try to arrive at some imaginary space. Of course, any film is about building an imaginary space constructed from shots and sounds, all the more so because the film also goes into the direction of a fairy tale. It's hard for me to know a priori what kind of reactions audiences will have toward the film.
Guillén: You're no stranger to controversy so I'm sure you're used to mixed-to-negative reviews?
Rodrigues: I am.
Guillén: Now, I want to be clear that I am wholly respectful of your singularly unique vision; but—as I was preparing how I wanted to approach this interview—I found I could understand To Die Like A Man better by comparing it to the work of other filmmakers. If I mention other filmmakers, I don't want you to interpret that in any way as some judgment that you're derivative because that's not what I mean at all. And nothing could be further from the truth. It's more that I find your films to be in the same domain of energy as certain other filmmakers.
Rodrigues: I do that too. I watch a lot of films so it's normal. Although I went to film school, I learned how to make films mostly by watching other films.
Guillén: As To Die Like A Man starts out, two AWOL soldiers have separated from their patrol and are alone together in the dark forest. This reminded me of how you claim night's terrain as a mise en scène within which to frame the fractured passions of obsessed psyches, which I wrote about when I reviewed your last film Two Drifters. As with that film, because To Die Like A Man starts with a night sequence, I am once again reminded of Djuna Barnes' Nightwood query: "Watchman, what of the night?" This seems to be the presiding question that addresses your films. Within your films, we watch the night. In this, they remind me of the films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul and the "Plaisirs de la forêt" series of photographs by Pierre and Gilles. All three of you share a fairy tale element to the night. Can you speak to what night means for you in your films and why you use it so frequently?
Rodrigues: This might not be at all what you're thinking, but I wanted the movie to start as a war movie in the style of classic Hollywood cinema, like Raoul Walsh's Objective Burma (1945). In that film you follow an abandoned troop of soldiers. I wanted To Die Like A Man to start as one thing so that it could turn into something else altogether, though of course you return to characters in the film that you glimpsed in the beginning. I wanted the film to be always changing and surprising, even if only little surprises.
As for the night, well, first, it's mysterious of course. Sex is connected to the night. Though To Die Like A Man starts as a war movie, the two AWOL soldiers start fucking. While I was writing the script, it seemed obvious to start it that way. Sometimes I don't know how to put into words or to explain my choices. Sometimes they're instinctive. Through the film work, things come up and I don't know exactly why sometimes.
Guillén: Inversely, as spectator, those who do understand what you're filming experience a commensurate instinctual response. As a filmmaker, you tap into something spectators instinctively recognize. I found it difficult to explain to myself why I was reacting to the film the way I was. But that's your gift. You have a knack for the numinous.
I don't mean to be overly literal, but I'm curious what the blue swing means in your film? Not only that it's there in your night scenes but that it's also pushed and set swinging each time it's passed?
Rodrigues: That came from a book called Casa Susanna, which is a bunch of photographs of men dressed as women that were found in a flea market. The pictures are from the '50s and the '60s. The two men who edited the book [Robert Swope and Michel Hurst] didn't know who the individuals were in the photos, but were intrigued by these men dressed as women drinking tea or walking in the woods. They're a bit like William Eggleston's pictures sometimes. They possess that mystery of finding images of people who you don't know who they are. One photo shows a transvestite in front of a tree on which a sign is nailed: Casa Susanna. You can just imagine their social encounters in the middle of the woods somewhere in America.
Guillén: We used to be able to have social encounters in the woods. It's all been privatized now so we can't do it anymore for fear of prosecution. But it was fun while it lasted!
Rodrigues: [Laughs.] Anyway, there's one very beautiful image of a man dressed up as a woman in a swing. That's where the image of the swing came from. Also, because I framed that shot exactly the same way the two times you see it, it's like a doorway into another world; a swinging door into a fairy tale world.
Guillén: One interesting visual flourish with Alexander's character Rosario is that you take this broken young man whose masculinity is frail and contingent and you dress him in macho t-shirts. I often see this on public transit—scrawny kids wearing Conan the Barbarian t-shirts—it's their way of expressing a masculinity that is not readily evident. Which leads me to ask about the performance of gender. Acting like a man. Acting like a woman. Passing for either. Sometimes possessing masculine attributes through feminine gestures.
Rodrigues: That idea was built with João Rui Guerra da Mata, the art director of the film, who's worked with me on all my films. Everything is constructed—the clothes, the décor—everything is worked out even at the writing stage. The idea was that there are these young guys like Rosario in Portugal who go out to the clubs with drag queens. I don't even know if they're gay or not. They pretend to be with their women. That's the idea behind their wearing—what you call—macho shirts. Also, there's a playfulness in that. Rosario wears a Robin Boy Wonder shirt too. We were playing with the idea of Rosario as an eternal child, not a feminized young man, but a playful, childish one. Rosario's relationship with Tonia, they're more than lovers, they're almost mother and child.
Guillén: There's also a slightly sadomasochistic co-dependency going on. An almost necessary cruelty passes between them. Much in the same way that a teenage son would rebel against his parents by punishing them with juvenile behavior. Further, there's also another quality that I've come to think a lot about in my middle years that was introduced to me during the Men's Movement some years past: that there is a specific male nurturance that is not an imitation of female nurturance; a male nurturance that is paternal, not maternal, and specific to the male gender, where some older guy helps a younger incomplete guy get along with life, much as Tonia did with Rosario. I sometimes question whether the unhappiness of drag queens like Tonia might have something to do with their misunderstanding this nurturing impulse within themselves, defining it as feminine and maternal when in fact it's one of the best masculine qualities they have: an ability to guide, to take care of others, to provide, to make decisions.
Alexander David: With them also there's something of a shared survival instinct. She helps Rosario but Rosario helps Tonia too. I'm not exactly sure in which way; perhaps just by being with her, providing companionship. I imagine they were in love when they first met; but, that faded away as they lived together.
Rodrigues: Tonia is also a very lonely person. That echoes my other characters in my other films, as someone who doesn't really know how to deal with that and who can't face that she's really lonely.
Guillén: That I understood, unfortunately, through personal experience. [Rodrigues laughs.] My partner of 12 years passed during the AIDS pandemic. It's now been 13 years since his death and I've, of course, had to move on with life; but, the truth is that since him, I've never been able to fall in love again in the way that I loved him. I have found and lost other lovers and have now discovered—in my middle years—that all I can do is to unconditionally further love in others. If I know there's something I can do for someone else, that's the only kind of love I have left. I don't feel the passion I used to have for my partner. So in my experience I have, like Tonia, taken young men under wing who frequently remind me that they believe they have stolen from me what I have offered freely. But there is still enough power and love within me to absorb such slights and to help them achieve their goals in life.
I agree with you, Alexander, that Tonia and Rosario give each other reasons to keep going, even though they're a bit abusive to each other. The relationship between Maria and her partner Paula likewise has a level of abuse going on, much like a diva with her stagehand. Can we speak about Maria Bakker (Gonçalo Ferreira De Almeida), who—in my estimation—took your film into Fassbinder territory: unapologetically melodramatic, over the top, chewing the scenery.
Rodrigues: [Chuckles.] That character Maria Bakker pre-existed my writing of the script, even though Gonçalo Ferreira De Almeida usually plays Maria Bakker in English. For Gonçalo, Maria Bakker is a fantasy character. He does shows and sings songs. At first, he didn't want to do it in Portuguese because for him it didn't make sense that Maria Bakker would speak Portuguese. For a while we considered that Maria could speak in English and Tonia in Portuguese and that they would somehow understand each other. Perhaps in this strange world people could understand each other even if they didn't speak the same language? But then we decided it would be too strange. [The idea of something being too strange in a João Pedro Rodrigues film made me chuckle under my breath.] Maria Bakker in my film, her hair, all of that comes from the character that Gonçalo already created. Also, it's a little past the halfway point in the film when Tonia and Rosario arrive at Maria's house. At that point, I wanted the film to go towards the direction of comedy.
Guillén: And that's where it went!
Rodrigues: But it's very difficult to play comedy. Still, I wanted to try. Did people laugh during your press screening?
Guillén: There were these two buffed up butch dudes who I presumed were straight laughing their asses off. They got it. It became interesting to me to watch when people would leave the screening, at what point, at what scene. Mainly it was women who left. I don't know if they felt they were being travestized, perhaps? I've known women who have admitted they don't like drag queens because they don't feel that they perform women; they feel they perform travesties of women, which insults them. I don't know how across-the-board that sentiment is.
Can we talk about things buried in the garden?! First, there's the soldier buried in Maria's garden, which startled me at first. I kept thinking, "What is that soldier doing buried in Maria's garden?! Wouldn't they have come looking for him precisely because he'd gone AWOL? And isn't this a dead giveaway with the soldier's helmet perched on the cross on the grave?" Then there was that wonderful sequence that actually moved me quite a bit where Tonia and Rosario dig up her memories from the backyard garden where her little dog has buried them. Perhaps as someone whose heart's cargo consists of memories frequently recapitulated, I once again identified with Tonia. I am often reminded of how important my memories are to me; they're like seeds buried in my garden.
Rodrigues: The idea was that—just before she falls ill—Tonia has a flashback of symbolic moments in her life. You got exactly what that scene meant. As for the soldier buried in Maria's garden … [Rodrigues starts laughing] … sometimes I can only answer you with silly answers. The soldier died in Maria's garden and there was no undertaker to remove him to a morgue and bury him in a cemetery, so they buried him in the garden. I wanted it to be like an Indian burial from the cowboy movies.
Guillén: So before we wrap up here, let me ask you Alexander how you approached your characterization of Rosario in the film? I didn't much like your character at first. He reminded me a little too much of the kind of young man I was talking about earlier who feel they have stolen what has been given freely.
David: I tried to follow the kind of acting style from Robert Bresson. João Pedro gave me some of Bresson's films so I could gain a sense of his style.
Rodrigues: But you're also naturally like that. That's what I liked about you. You're natural for what interests me in an actor.
Guillén: So what exactly is that? Is it a lack of affect that you're going for? What is it that interested you in Alexander?
Rodrigues: Again, it's instinctive. It was instinctive to play the character in a sotto voce tone. Basically [addressing Alexander]—not that you acted like you are; you're not like that addict at all—but, we talked about this: you were playing yourself a lot of the time.
David: I strived for low profile acting. There was no psychological construction of my character.
Rodrigues: We didn't talk much about psychology.
David: He didn't want that, so I didn't do that.
Guillén: Rosario was so angry, though. Where did the anger come from? Wasn't there some psychological motivation for that?
Rodrigues: The role was written that way.
David: Yes. Why was he angry? The stuff with the girlfriend. [He grins.]
Cross-published on Twitch.
In perhaps her most pinched performance to date, Audrey Tautou concedes the characterization of fashion designer Coco Chanel to Shirley MacLaine’s televised performance in Coco Chanel (2008), the made-for-Lifetime-movie that earned MacLaine nominations for Best Actress at the Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild kudofests. I’d be very surprised if Tatou earns any nominations whatsoever for her performance in Anne Fontaine’s Coco Before Chanel (2009), though “performance” in this instance is way too generous. In an effort to render Chanel as taciturn, prickly and worldly-wise, Tautou approximates one of Chanel’s mannequins more than Chanel herself and listlessly suggests the heart of this rags-to-riches story. Tatou leaches all the life out of her portrayal of Chanel, relying instead on the film’s sumptuous set and costume design to do the heavy lifting. In this instance, however, clothes do not make the woman.
Coco Chanel is a rather fascinating figure in and of herself whose life warrants a filmic treatment. Oddly enough, many years ago while flipping through a magazine in a doctor’s waiting room, I came across two quotes by her that have stayed with me all these years. The first, a concession that the term “perfect stranger” is apt because only strangers can be perfect. The other: “Two people marrying out of loneliness only double their loneliness.” Her no-nonsense approach towards affairs of the heart spoke to the unbridled but inexperienced romanticism of my youth.
The performances that do redeem Coco Before Chanel are the charmingly seductive Alessandro Nivola as love interest Boy Capel and Emmanuelle Devos as Coco’s friend Émilienne, exhibiting more sensual entitlement in one glance than Tautou musters throughout the entire film. Benoît Poelvoorde as Coco’s benefactor Étienne Balsan likewise achieves a satisfying character arc from carousing womanizer to the man reluctantly infatuated with Chanel’s expressed androgyny.
So go for the sets, go for the costumes, relish all that fetishized period detail, enjoy the supporting performances, but don’t expect much life in this window dressing of a movie. Finally, I think it’s time for Tautou to stop being the icon of naifish wonder and amazement. Yes, she has big beautiful liquid eyes; but, the only thing amazing at this point is that she does the same old tired thing with them. Her peeking through the curtains of theatrical artifice does nothing to add magic and induced, instead, weariness with a now-familiar Amelie schtick.
Cross-published on Twitch.
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?—William Blake, "The Tyger"
Imagine for a moment, if you will, that the filmmaker's lens is William Blake's visionary eye, aiming consciousness (i.e., a bright and burning light) into the dark recesses of the cinephilic psyche. Five films at this year's Toronto International Film Festival seemed to inflect this conceit in manners both divergent and amazingly parallel. Whether surreal, irreal, pantheist or intimist, the forests of the night enable and reflect an alterity that counters the deceits and defeats common to the day and offers compensatory remedy.
In Lars von Trier's controversial Antichrist, Willem Defoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg attempt to process their grief over losing a child by backpacking to Eden—a cabin in the woods—where the limbs of overarching branches are underlit menacingly, demarcating a fearful and uncanny realm in which recapitulations approximate ritual and all that lies repressed rises in purging rage. The ancient oaks attack and pummel the roof of their cabin with falling acorns. Gravity becomes the will of reigning chaos. Eden can be seen as fecund source, the ur-garden, the ur-forest, the original space, the illo tempore, from which exile flows. We return to this dark forest in nightmares and dreams impelled by the restless desire to recover a home from which we've been banished only to discover that by its very nature—in fact, through its extension of human nature—nihilisim permeates the phantasmagoric texture of creation.
From the perspective of self-imposed exile, Iranian filmmaker Shirin Neshat has readily admitted that the orchard in her debut feature Women Without Men—adapted from the eponymous novel by Shahrnush Parsipur—serves as a refuge, albeit a place of exile, for the women in her film; a liminal space wherein they can recognize and accept themselves. In one scene specifically, Faezah is awakened from an insistent nightmare. She looks out her window and sees a woman draped in a black chador moving among the moonlit trees. Faezah pursues her and discovers the woman is her traumatized self, raped by men who followed her home from a café-bar. In a sense, facing this double wandering the dark forest of the night is the manner by which Faezah comes to terms with what has happened to her, bearing witness to her own survival, and her capacity to confront a memory forcibly repressed. The night orchard provides safety for her to heal where she has been ruptured. Neshat writes: "The concept of the garden has been central to the mystical literature in Persian and Islamic traditions, such as the classic poetry of Hafez, Khayyam and Rumi where the garden is referred to as the space for 'spiritual transcendence'. In Iranian culture, the garden has also been regarded in political terms, suggesting ideas of 'exile', 'independence' and 'freedom.' "
As a comparable place of exile and refuge, the night orchard of Women Without Men resembles the night forest in João Pedro Rodrigues' To Die Like A Man where transgendered men and women pause to listen to Baby Dee's "Cavalry" under the carmine stain of an eclipsed moon. Rodrigues admitted when we discussed his film that he was unaware that in mythic literature the lunar eclipse is a frequent symbol of the gynandrous marriage of male and female (where sun/masculine and moon/feminine occupy the same space); an apt inflection for transgendered experience.
Also listening expectantly in the dark is Miguel (Sid Lucero), the son in Raya Martin's lustrous Independencia who—crouched still with vigilant eyes—hears the sounds of war approaching within a raging storm that ravishes the Philippine rain forest. The wet foliage—as Joni Mitchell phrases it—"looks like slick black cellophane" and as if to emphasize the film's irreality, Martin purposely employs theatrical devices and fabulist artificiality to emphasize not only the history of his country, but the history of his country's cinema. Martin describes Independencia as "an intimist film in the woods."
And, of course, no mention of the forest at night can exclude the dilated visions of Apichatpong Weerasethakul whose breathtakingly beautiful short film A Letter to Uncle Boonme was featured in TIFF's Wavelengths: Une Catastrophe program. In one especially mesmerizing sequence, the camera cranes upwards through moon-laced jungle foliage towards a starlit sky interrupted by an unexpected migration of night birds. Insights take flight from Joe's wind-disturbed canopies.
Though I intend to write about all of these films more fully, for now I am contemplating cinema's suggestion that the fearful symmetry of the psychic night can be framed at 24 frames a second, either staged as artifice or documented as the "real", whether in the Mideast, in Southeast Asia, or the Portuguese woods. The animals that wander these dark cinematic forests might be none other than ourselves; their cries of sad and painful recognition, our very own.
Cross-published on Twitch.
While most of the Twitch team caught Karyn Kusama's Jennifer's Body at Toronto's Midnight Madness, Evening Class contributing writer Peter Galvin caught the film's press screening in San Francisco. Though Twitch editor Todd Brown cautioned viewers to "adjust expectations accordingly", he credited Jennifer's Body for being "a much sharper than normal stab at PG-13 horror comedy" and predicted that it "will, no doubt, play strong to its intended audience." According to indieWIRE's Anne Thompson, however, the film "opened soft" this weekend with some confusion as to who its "intended audience" truly is. She characterized the film as "a classic tweener: neither a horror thriller for men, nor a coming-of-age horror-comedy for women." At The Auteurs Daily, David Hudson has scooped up the decidedly mixed-to-negative reviews, with only a few cheering the film on as an acceptable genre piece that will gain a cult following. My thanks to Peter Galvin for sharing his thoughts with both The Evening Class and Twitch readerships.
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There's a great untapped market for Jennifer's Body. Men like blood and hot chicks, sure. Check. But instead of the tired slew of female victims being stalked and dismembered, writer Diablo Cody flips the script, making men the targets. It’s a feminist's dream. Hell, it's a college essayist's dream. Written, directed by, and starring strong, tough women, will the male-oriented horror audience flock to theatres to watch their male facsimiles be dismembered? So long as they're not expecting to actually see much of the dismemberments, they just might.
Jennifer and Needy (short for Anita; I catch the pun) are best friends. They've been BFFs since they were kids and swore to always be true to each other. Or at least Needy swore; Jennifer has always been more of an egotistical, hyper-sexual, selfish brat. Definitely not a virgin. So when a fire at the local "nightclub" results in a struggling indie-band sacrificing Jennifer to Satan, she comes back as a flesh-eating demon. And she's got a whole high-school of hormonal boys just dying for a date with her.
Right off the bat, this is very much Diablo Cody's film. All that love-it-or-hate-it dialogue you remember from Juno is back in full-force. However, I think horror might be a more appropriate avenue for Cody's limitless pop-culture references. Perhaps I'm less sympathetic to made-up catch-phrases in a coming-of-age film than I am in a teen-horror film, but here I was able to take it in stride as part of the charm. I don't even know if high-school kids talk anything like this, but I'll be damned if Cody hasn't got me convinced that they do. So, for what it's worth, I decided to strap in for a good time.
It's hard not to when the actors are having such a good time themselves. No doubt Megan Fox is a little zany—and the recent character she has created in the tabloids makes it a bit hard to separate fact from fiction—but she absolutely works in this role, delightfully making the audience squirm. Perpetually the second fiddle, Amanda Seyfried really comes into her own here. I've always found her a convincing actress, but the extra breathing room she has as the "final girl" hopefully gets her more starring roles in the future. Filling out the supporting cast, both Adam Brody and J.K. Simmons appear to be having the time of their lives, stealing every scene they're in as the lead singer of the indie band and a high-school teacher, respectively.
Overall, Jennifer's Body lays more squarely on the comedy side of this horror-comedy. Cody has seen enough B-movies to parody many of the more well-worn tropes—at times reminiscent of Slither—and it is often laugh-out-loud funny, even if Cody employs a "kitchen sink" comedic strategy. On the other hand, the horror doesn't fare nearly as well. In addition to skimping on the gore, the scares are flat and tedious, and I couldn't help but see squandered potential, most notably during the underwhelming climax.
But like I said, there's a market for this. Forgetting the subtext and satire for a minute, this is a movie written by a big kid for little-er kids. On that level, it should succeed with its intended market, and it shows a lot of potential for more films like this. If you can handle another round of Juno-logue, aren't looking to be scared, and aren't expecting Megan Fox's nipples, it's an enjoyable tongue-in-cheek effort.
Cross-published on Twitch.
"Who you gonna get to do the dirty work when all the slaves are free?"—Joni Mitchell.
In an environment of imprisonment and enslavement, such a question is fraught with peril.
Jacques Audiard's Un prophète (A Prophet) arrives in Toronto for its North American premiere after having won the Grand Prix at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival. As synopsized at Cannes: Condemned to six years in prison, Malik El Djebena cannot read nor write. Arriving at the jail entirely alone, he appears younger and more fragile than the other convicts. He is 19 years old. Cornered by the leader of the Corsican gang who rules the prison, he is given a number of "missions" to carry out, toughening him up and gaining the gang leader's confidence in the process. But Malik is brave and a fast learner, daring to secretly develop his own plans...
Although I immediately thought of the Biblical adage that a prophet knows no honor in his own country, Audiard disavows any Christian innuendo in the film's title other than that protagonist Malik—in a compelling, thoroughly convincing slow burn by newcomer Tahar Rahim—has acquired a gift for scrying the future after a (somewhat cryptic) near-death experience. At its simplest meaning, a prophet is one who sees the future. "Yes, the prophet is just a prophet!" Audiard advised Karin Badt at The Huffington Post, confirming the title's lack of religious subtext: "As for Jesus or Mohammed, I don't 'eat that kind of bread.' "
Rather, Malik's future—in which he sees himself freed from the "protection" that enslaves him—hints at what SBS Film's Lisa Nesselson suggests is "a changing of the guard." Which, in itself, is an incisive yet hopeful critique of French classism and racism, wherein a better future can be imagined (or seen, if you will). Audiard has also stated that—though there is no Italian mafia in France—there is a mob, which happens to be Corsican. As Nesselson explains further, "by sheer virtue of numbers, the Arab and Muslim populations in French prisons are an increasing force to be reckoned with. Malik navigates between clans, each with their codes of respect and honor." At The Hollywood Reporter, Peter Brunette writes that Audiard "explores this basic tribal confrontation like a seasoned anthropologist." In effect, the pressures and prejudices of the social world outside the prison are inflected in the microcosm within the prison. "It's not all that different on the inside or the outside," Audiard explains.
How one manifests a prophetic sense of the future becomes one of the film's main narrative concerns, rendering a sense of destiny as achieved through self-constructed identity. As David Phelphs phrases it at The Auteurs: "A man's identity is the moves he makes." Despite petty crimes, Malik arrives at prison as something of a tabula rasa. Though Malik has been sentenced for juvenile indiscretions, he's not quite yet a true criminal, as much as he is a desperate young man. We are told virtually nothing about his past and we watch his character unfold and mature before our eyes as he negotiates his position within the prison hierarchy. At the L.A. Times, Kenneth Turan observes that A Prophet speaks to Audiard's long-standing interest in what he calls "self-education, the building of someone's character." In effect, Audiard aestheticizes the autodidact, the self-made man. As TIFF's program capsule synopsizes: "Audiard turns this premise into a probing psychological study of a disinherited, rootless young man, who initially makes choices based on the animal instinct for survival. When that need has been met, however, another set of motivations comes into play." At Moving Pictures Magazine, Eric Kohn notes the "undoubtedly tragic irony" in which Malik "gets forced into criminality by the very system intended to condemn it." Let alone that this criminality is his initiation into manhood.
Further energizing this philosophic and psychological enterprise, however, is Audiard's well-known penchant for elevating genre to artistic heights. Dispatching to Film Comment from Cannes, Amy Taubin observed: "Not surprisingly, some of the most pleasurable movies were by directors who fully embrace genre. ...A Prophet is elegantly structured, arresting in its detailing of a little-known subculture, filled with fascinating characters, and gripping beginning to end."
"What interests me about genre," Audiard explained to Kenneth Turan, "is that the public connects immediately with it, it has certain rules, certain codes the audience recognizes. I can use that to create something very big," an aim which—Turan notes—includes "creating icons, images for people who don't have images, the Arabs in France." Audiard has become the new master of the polar (French thriller), which he has intelligently infused with indirect socio-political commentary. Variety's Justin Chang describes Audiard's project as "solid, sinewy pulp fiction with strong arthouse prospects." At Screen, Jonathan Romney concurs that "A Prophet works both as hard-edged, painstaking detailed social realism and as a compelling genre entertainment." The blend makes for thoughtful, absorbing and ultimately entertaining filmmaking.
The film also plays with the tension between the literal and the phantasmagoric. The prison—with its "brutally restricted iron-and-cement palette" (Romney)—appears real; but, ends up being a completely constructed set because, of course, all the prisons in France were serving as prisons. Thus, even though the real is configured at its most naturalistic—with actual convicts cast to play themselves in prison scenes—it is likewise always held in question as a cinematic conceit. At Variety, Justin Chang finds Malik's education behind bars "improbable." One might even say romanticized. Even more intriguing is the ghostly presence of a man Malik is ordered to kill early in his prison stay. Throughout the six years of his sentence, this ghost hovers around Malik in his cell, his skin burning (as if registering that he is visiting from Hell); intimate evidence of the decisions Malik has had to make to become himself and to ready himself for his release back into the outside world. Surprisingly, the ghost is not a voice of conscience or guilt. He doesn't seem to judge Malik, despite the fact that Malik has taken his life and committed further atrocities. The audience finds itself in a similarly spectral position of non-judgment, satisfied by film's end with Malik's transformation towards the heart of his prophecy. He has become who he has seen himself to be.
Cross-published on Twitch.
As Diana Sanchez details in her program capsule: “An apt title for the film, huacho means ‘bastard’ or ‘having no father’ but can also mean ‘abandoned.’ ” Chilean director Alejandro Fernández Almendras’ feature debut observes how four members of a southern Chilean peasant family are left behind by a modern way of life that does not include them.
Within the simple structure of a long summer day’s cycle, Almendras’ quasi-documentary tracks its four protagonists through overlapping narrative threads that achieve a threadbare honesty and intimacy. As much a portrait of their struggles to make do on limited means, Huacho skillfully captures the ignobility of work in the modern age. Grandma Clemira makes and sells cheese by the roadside to passing motorists who force her to sell her wares at less than what it costs her to make them. Her husband Cornelio has become too old to work in the fields and suffers for not being able to provide for his family, remembering better days when he could. Cornelio’s memories only annoy the young boy Manuel who longs for the kinds of things that will help him fit in with a clique of well-do-do classmates who ostracize him and call him “peasant.” Manuel’s mother Alejandra is raising him without a father and works as a cook at minimum wage. To get necessary money for the family to pay off its utility bill, she’s forced to pawn off her only nice dress. Sadness and frustration pervade all their lives, with scant relief in sight.
Manuel’s teacher writes on the chalkboard: “One day or another we will all be happy.” But what he’s referencing is death, not opportunity. The film achieves added poignancy for being dedicated to Juan Pablo Rebella who—Sanchez informed me—took his own life, unable to express the pain he felt in everyday life. Huacho holds a gentle mirror up to that desperate pain, reflecting loyalty to family and perseverance against odds, let alone one filmmaker’s homage to another.
As reported earlier on The Evening Class, Huacho received completion funding from the Global Film Initiative. Dave Hudson gathered the Cannes reviews for The Daily @ IFC.
Cross-published on Twitch.
Pedro Almodóvar’s Los Abrazos Rotos (Broken Embraces, 2009) is a moebius strip of film, a cinephilic helix twisting, doubling and reflecting upon itself with recursive bravado. Yet, as imaginative as the film is in concept—and it does make its audience work—it evades any singular pleasure and fractures into narrative shards, each intriguing on their own but not necessarily satisfactory as a whole. Pleasurable enough simply for being an Almodóvar film, it’s nevertheless a minor (though always welcome) contribution to his ongoing oeuvre.
The doubling begins with the opening credits wherein the control camera captures lighting doubles being replaced by Penelope Cruz and Lluís Homar. This establishes the overriding conceit that movies double life, as the two actors have not yet stepped into their roles. When they do, Homar becomes Mateo Blanco, a director who has fallen in love with his lead actress Magdalena “Lena” Rivero (Cruz). But, even before they begin embodying their fictional characters, Cruz and Homar have been slyly configured as fiction for the control camera.
An admitted declaration of love for cinema, Broken Embraces delights in its movie within a movie—a comedy called Girls and Suitcases (in turn, an amusing replication of Almodóvar’s beloved Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown), which Blanco is directing—as well as a “making of” documentary that runs a parallel narrative to the original. The “making of” video is being shot by the gay son of producer Ernesto Martel (José Luis Gómez) who has assigned the project to his offspring specifically to keep tabs on his actress-wife Lena, who he jealously (and rightfully) suspects of having an affair with director Blanco. This is easy to understand because Lena/Cruz evokes the beauty of Audrey Hepburn in Billy Wilder’s Sabrina. For those of you who have already lost count, that’s four, arguably even six movies so far (if you count the citations to Sabrina and Women on the Verge).
Add yet another citation to Rossellini’s Viaggo in Italia and keeping count becomes superfluous. Almodóvar has said that—even though from the moment they are finished, all films are the past—he sees “premonitory qualities in them.” Thus, scenes from films within his films are never haphazardly cited and are usually meant to echo the main narrative or offer insight into his characters. For Broken Embraces, Almodóvar selects the specific scene where Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders visit excavations at Pompeii just as the archaeologists uncover the bodies of a man and a woman consumed by lava. (Technically, it’s their absence that is found—their bodies having been burnt to ash—with the shape of their bodies being reconstructed through plaster casting. I’ve actually seen these plaster casts at Pompeii and they’re quite haunting.) In the Rossellini film, Bergman is shaken by the experience of finding these lovers immortalized for thousands of years as it brings into relief the deterioration and pettiness of her own marriage. It bears repeating that the usage of this scene in his film bears agency and is not just “a simple homage or a nod at the spectator.”
Mateo and Lena watch Viaggo in Italia on a television set in a bungalow at Famara on the island of Lanzarote where they have stolen away to pursue their affair. This volcanic association of ash with love is replicated in a scene where Mateo and Lena embrace above the black sand of Golfo Beach. Mateo takes a photograph from the cliffs above the beach and only later realizes that he has captured another couple embracing on the beach below. And, of course, Ernesto Martel, Jr. (Rubén Ochandiano)—nicknamed Ray X just to complicate matters further—is likewise spying on their embraces. His raw “making of” footage is reviewed by his father in a ritual of daily anguish and—since there is no sound—he hires a woman who can read lips to reconstruct what the lovers are saying to each other; yet another form of dubbing as doubling and one Almodóvar used before in Women on the Verge.
It is while Martel is reviewing footage of Lena’s violent argument with his son (when she discovers he is filming her and Mateo), that Lena enters his mansion and finds him and the lip reader in the sitting room melding sound to image. Almodóvar explains: “Lena becomes a duplicate of herself, the woman who from the screen confesses to Martel that she doesn’t love him. At that moment, the ‘making of’, produced by Martel with perverse intentions, turns against him. Lena leaves him doubly, on the screen and from the door of the sitting room, behind him. As a result of Martel’s harassment, the humiliation and pain when Lena leaves him is doubled.” This scene is by far the most numinous of all the doubled images in the film and achieves viscerally what Almodóvar has been gesturing towards throughout the film. It’s a masterfully edited sequence that drives home the film’s narrative thesis. “The plot of Broken Embraces,” Almodóvar specifies in his press notes, “dramatizes the importance of editing, its direct relationship with the director and the fragility of the film if someone gets between the editing and the director.” For Almodóvar, editing is where the cinematic narrative begins.
Believe it or not, all of this is back story to the film’s main narrative thrust which takes place 14 years later, after Mateo loses Lena in a car accident and is himself blinded. No longer able to direct, he withdraws into the pseudonym Harry Caine, which he previously used for scriptwriting credits. In essence, Almodóvar tells us, Mateo Blanco died on Lanzarote with his beloved Lena and all that is left is this other blind creature; this semblance of his former self. Yet another doubling.
Lest you think I am giving away the plot of the film, I assure you that the plot of Broken Embraces—spare as it is—works more as a scaffold upon which Almodóvar drapes his cinephilic preoccupations, including a tip of the hat to the dark erotic triangulations of film noir. The story is simple but in its constant doubling, in its rhymes and repetitions, in its reflections and refractions, the film works more as texture than tale.
Cross-published on Twitch.
While at the Toronto International, it's near to impossible to keep up with the movies and enter them onto The Evening Class and Twitch. So until I get home to SF, entries will be pretty rough, without much formatting, hyperlinking or photos.
As anyone who hosts a blog on Blogspot is aware, the software allows the option to reject comments made to any given entry. Each host has their personal reasons for why they choose to publish or not publish a comment. Before I’m accused of censorship or—God forbid!—anti-Semitism, I want to be upfront that I received a “comment” from Jerome Courshon, an L.A.-based producer/writer, which I’ve declined to publish because—in essence—it is not a comment at all; it is a boilerplate screed guised as an “open letter to John Greyson” that Mr. Courshon has been emptying into the comment sections of various sites, such as Jewlicious. I don’t see any need to publish his comment when it has been published verbatim elsewhere. In my online experience, repeated boilerplate comments are akin to shouting in an effort to drown out opposition. It’s a tactic based on the misguided belief that if you say something over and over and over again, you’ll either convince the opposition or wear them out.
If Mr. Courshon’s rant is, indeed, an open letter meant for Mr. Greyson, then I kindly request he send it to Mr. Greyson or—failing that—start his own blog instead of trying to use other people’s blogs to bully a platform. Complaining that all the governments of the world—except the United States—are anti-Semitic belabors the trope and hazards the absurd. Surely it can’t be that U.S. interest in Israel—and its strategic position in the Mideast—is merely because they’re a bunch of Jew-loving Americans?
With regard to accusations of defamation, I strongly encourage a look at Yoav Shamir’s Hasmatsa (Defamation, 2009) wherein an Israeli director questions the conservative Jewish habit of pulling out the anti-semitism card whenever they don’t get their own way.
Greyson’s complaint that the Spotlight on Tel Aviv is an uncritical celebration of Israeli cinema achieves merit in the forum of ideas. As I’ve quoted before, multiple stakeholders invest in a film festival and it is not the role of festival personnel to satisfy the concerns of all its constituents; that would be—as Bailey implied in his response to Greyson—impossible. However, negotiation of conflicting investments is requisite. Negotiation, if not resolution. “This negotiation, in other words, is not incidental to the festival institution itself, but crucial to both its function as an event and to the way that the festival is understood as a cultural phenomenon. We might understand this as suggesting that the constant public discussion of the battle of festivals for aesthetic autonomy from the varying pressures of Hollywood, audiences, critics and corporate sponsors is theoretically misleading. The festival cannot solve these conflicts. Rather, it has an interest in playing them out in the cultural public sphere. (Emphasis added.)" (Daniel Dayan, “Looking For Sundance: The Social Construction Of A Film Festival”. Published in Moving Images, Culture and the Mind, 2009:18-19). Whether or not I agree with John Greyson’s political beliefs, I defend (and commend) his right to engender public debate within the cultural arena of the film festival itself. Since film festivals are sites of cultural production and nodes of cultural dissemination, Greyson’s protest is strategic and valid.
That being said, Mr. Noah “Shame On You” Harlan, whose earlier comment I published in the comments section of my previous entry, has sent a follow-up comment which—out of discretion and respect to him—I’ve decided not to publish. In gist, he once again hurls accusations that I am somehow responsible for the entire world not having the chance to see and appreciate Israeli cinema. It’s my fault, wouldn't you know? Apparently, my entries covering the Covered controversy at TIFF and my vote of support for John Greyson’s right to protest at that festival means I have held a gun to the heads of ticket-buying audiences disallowing them their chance to attend these films. I just love knowing I have that much power! Don’t you wish you did? Further, because I won’t accept his shaming, Noah says I am not engaging his arguments. But this is something I’ve learned from watching old vampire movies and being on The WELL for 12 years: You don’t invite vampires—or trollish arguments—over the threshold. You just don’t, dude.
More accurately—if accuracy even counts in a meta-thrash—my experience with festival controversies is that they are part and parcel of the festival as a cultural event and, more often than not, boycotts engender interest in the very films they contest. Or if people intend to “cross the picket line” as it were, they do so consciously, perhaps even defiantly, perhaps with only piqued curiosity, but certainly with an added layer of socio-political awareness to enrichen their in-cinema experience. I doubt that Greyson’s removal of his short film from TIFF or my vote of confidence on his behalf will have much affect on attendance at the Tel Aviv Spotlight—frankly, it might help it!—but, again, his protest has brought a critical focus to an uncritical celebration. As I understand it, Greyson’s protest is not about the content of the films chosen for the spotlight nor a comment on the filmmakers who have made those films. I believe he has stated as such in his open letter to the festival heads. If anything, his protest is about what is not there and why it is not there. But rather than directly address that absence, Cameron Bailey’s response struck me as seeking to redress what he felt was a diminished appreciation of the spotlight’s content as is. Content, however, is not the issue; context is the issue. Who is funding the Tel Aviv Spotlight and why? Is TIFF aligning itself with the admitted propaganda campaign of Brand Israel? What does it mean if they are? Should invited filmmakers and their audiences care?
On the other hand, I don’t mind receiving criticism from long-time blogbud Peter Nellhaus because he expresses his disagreement without spicing it up with ad hominems and—even more importantly—he walks his talk. Peter forwarded Cecilie Surasky’s informative interview with Naomi Klein and Israeli publisher Yael Lerer on why boycotting Israel will pressure the country to live up to international law. For me their contentions make a lot of sense and, again, I commend and defend their right to protest in the manner they strategize most effective. Perhaps what provoked me more than anything was Klein’s comment: “[T]he state of Israel has an open strategy of enlisting gay and lesbian rights and feminism into the conflict, pitting Hamas's fundamentalism against Israel's supposed enlightened liberalism as another justification for collective punishment of Palestinians (never mind the ever-growing power and intolerance of Israel's ultra-orthodox Jews). It's a very sophisticated strategy.” I’ve heard this argument used many many times, but never understood it within this context.
This transcript likewise incorporates Israeli author Neve Gordon’s agonized editorial for the Los Angeles Times, wherein he voiced his difficult decision to support the 10-point Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign (i.e., the Global BDS Movement). After initially opposing the tactic, he became convinced that outside pressure "is the only way that Israel can be saved from itself." Response to his editorial has been alarmingly vitriolic.
Finally, over at Girish Shambu’s site there has been a volley between two anonymous posters—would the plural be anonymice?—in the comments section of his August 20 entry. It’s a heated exchange redeemed by the strength of conviction. Equally, a link to Michael Posner’s Globe and Mail coverage of the Spotlight on Tel Aviv accrued an added poignancy because of the paper’s need to disable comments. Apparently “an overwhelming number of readers were making offensive statements about other commenters and/or the individual or individuals mentioned in the story”, which was a breach of their commenting policy. I can’t help but wonder: do you think Noah shamed them too?
09/03/09 UPDATE: The Toronto Declaration: No Celebration of Occupation has been posted online.
The Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) announced its 2009 line-up last week, adhering to what has become a proven formula for the 32-year-old festival: Start with a dozen or so indie-ish, autumn-release prestige pics, often with stars and directors in tow. Next, throw in a couple big name tributes and high profile selections from the year's fest circuit. Then round things out with a big helping of docs, shorts, live music events and largely unheralded narrative features from around the globe. There are close to 100 programs from 34 countries this year, and what follows is a picky, subjective look at a portion of what's in store from October 8 to 18.
First off, MVFF has become the Bay Area festival for movie-stargazing. This year offers the opportunity to ogle Uma Thurman (appearing at a tribute with her new film Motherhood), Clive Owen (star of the co-Opening Night film The Boys Are Back, followed the next night with a tribute and screening of 1998's Croupier) and Woody Harrelson (also getting the tribu-treatment alongside a look at his acclaimed new film The Messenger). For those who like their stars a bit more edgy and obscure, MVFF presents veteran character actor Seymour Cassel—best known for his collaborations with John Cassavetes—in conversation with iconoclastic Bay Area filmmaker Rob Nilsson. Cassel's latest film, the LeVar Burton-directed Reach For Me, screens the following night. And while we're at it, Nilsson's got a new film in the festival, too (Imbued).
The tribute which really had Bay Area cinephiles oohing and aahing, however, is sadly not to be. Iconic French new wave actress, singer and director Anna Karina recently had an accident which prevents her from attending the festival. Happily, she has issued a rain check and promises to come here next spring. Meanwhile, MVFF will still be screening Karina's first directorial effort in 30 years, Victoria (described as Some Like it Hot meets Breathless), as well as a revival of 1965's Pierrot le fou, one of seven features she made with then-husband Jean-Luc Godard.
Of all the "stars" attending MVFF32, perhaps none will be on the lips of movie-goers in the next few months more than Gabourey Sidibe, the star of co-Opening Night film Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire. The film, which won Sundance's Jury Prize and Audience Award back in January, just got a huge push at Toronto (where it snagged another audience prize) with newly onboard executive producers Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey beating the drum. Precious is the inspirational story of a derided, African-American teen who's pregnant for a second time with her father's baby. TV actress/comedienne Mo'Nique has won accolades for her portrayal of the mother-from-hell, and even Mariah Carey has been singled out for her small role as a social worker. MVFF Director of Programming Zoe Elton is predicting that Precious will go on to become this year's Slumdog Millionaire, i.e., the little film that could. Director Lee Daniels is also expected to attend the screening. (Precious opens in limited release on November 6.)
There were two British films in competition at Cannes this year (well, three if you count Jane Campion's Bright Star), and MVFF has got them both. Ken Loach's Looking For Eric is one of two Closing Night films (along with Jean-Marc Vallée's The Young Victoria), and stars ex-Manchester United soccer champ Eric Cantona as an apparitional life coach to a put-upon postman. The other is Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank, in which a council flats teen (a much lauded performance from newcomer Katie Jarvis) experiences sexual tension with her mother's new boyfriend (Hunger's Michael Fassbender). Fish Tank is Arnold's second feature, and just like its predecessor, 2006's Red Road, was the winner of Cannes' Prix du Jury. It's my second most anticipated film in the festival.
And what's first? That would be André Téchiné's The Girl on the Train, starring Émilie Dequenne (best known for her titular role in the Dardenne Brothers' Rosetta) as a young woman who falsely accuses some black and Arab youths of an anti-Semitic attack. Based on true events, the film co-stars my favorite Israeli actress Ronit Elkabetz (The Band's Visit, Late Marriage), vet actor Michel Blanc, and Catherine Deneuve, making her sixth appearance in a Téchiné film. The Girl on the Train premiered at this year's Berlin Film Festival along with another anticipated French film on the MVFF roster, François Ozon's flying baby movie, Ricky.
Unfortunately, Latin America is grossly underrepresented at Mill Valley this year, a lamentable programming decision given the fact we no longer have an exclusively Latin American film festival in the Bay Area. I've scoured the line-up and come up with only one narrative feature from the region—Sebastian Silva's The Maid. Happily, this social satire about a maid becoming unhinged after 23 years of service to the same upper class Chilean family is one I've been looking forward to ever since it won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema.
Asian film enthusiasts will be thrilled to learn that master Hong Kong director John Woo is expected to attend the MVFF screening of his new film, Red Cliff. This two-part historical epic represents Woo's return to Chinese language films after a 15-year stint in Hollywood. It's also purported to be the most expensive film ever made in Asia, with an all-star cast that includes Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Takeshi Kaneshiro. With the aim of celebrating the 100th anniversary of Hong Kong cinema, MVFF will also be screening Johnnie To's Sparrow, which had a theatrical run at San Francisco's 4 Star Theater earlier this year. A more impressive choice might have been Red Cliff II, which has been touring festivals since January. Or even To's more recent Vengeance, starring craggy French rock n' roller Johnny Hallyday.
A last-minute addition that you won't find in the printed program is the latest from Polish maestro Andrzej Wajda. Many incorrectly assumed that 2007's Katyn, which screened at MVFF last year and was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, would be the 83-year-old director's last. But he turned up in Berlin this year with Sweet Rush, an older woman/younger man film-within-a-film romance that surprisingly copped the festival's boundary-pushing Alfred Bauer Prize. Kudos to the programming staff for securing this one.
As for the rest of the World Cinema section, it's mostly filled with unknown entities (to me at least), making it difficult to know quite what to spotlight here. I'm a fan of Czech director Jan Hrebejk (Up and Down, Beauty in Trouble) and am pleased to see his latest, Shameless, in the line-up. I'm also intrigued by the made-for-$500 Romanian film about two teens trapped in an Elevator. Hipsters is a splashy Russian musical about rebellious Soviet youth in 1955 Moscow, while another period piece Hellsinki, concerns young Finnish criminals in the 1960s/1970s. The clip from Israel's Surrogate shown at the MVFF press conference made it look pretty darn sexy. Jermal is an Indonesian father/son drama set on a remote deep-sea fishing depot. A film about a narcissistic, egomaniacal movie star would seem to be an unlikely entry from Iran, but nonetheless we have Tahmineh Milani's Superstar. In addition there are a couple films each from India, South Africa, Australia, Denmark and Sweden that look promising. Finally, anyone planning to wait until the marvelous An Education opens in theaters on October 16 should know that director Lone Scherfig (Italian for Beginners, Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself) will be attending that film's MVFF screening.
I've touched on a handful of the fest's U.S. narrative features and here are a few more worth considering. First off, director Jason Reitman (Thank You for Smoking, Juno) will receive a tribute accompanied by his recent Telluride/Toronto triumph Up in the Air, starring George Clooney. Miguel Arteta (Chuck & Buck) directs his first feature in seven years, Youth in Revolt, with Michael Cera as a dull teen with a seriously rebellious alter ego. I'm not sure which of these two films has the more intriguing cast—Mitchell Lichtenstein's Happy Tears with Parker Posey, Demi Moore, Rip Torn and Ellen Barkin, or Rebecca Miller's The Private Lives of Pippa Lee with Keanu Reeves, Alan Arkin, Robin Wright Penn and Maria Bello. Admirers of Larry Blamire's affectionate 1950s sci-fi spoofs The Lost Skelton of Cadavra and its sequel The Lost Skelton Returns Again, surely won't want to miss his parody of 1930's "old dark house" movies, Dark and Stormy Night.
Amongst the two dozen non-fiction features in the festival's Valley of the Docs section, perhaps none will draw more attention than Rick Goldsmith and Judy Ehrlich's The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg himself is scheduled to attend both MVFF screenings. Traditionally the fest brings us several fascinating music documentaries and this year they've come up with Meredith Monk—Inner Voice and Soundtrack For a Revolution, which explores the music that accompanied the American Civil Rights Movement. The Blind Boys of Alabama are expected to perform live at the October 10 screening of the latter film. And finally, the Bay Area's own counter-cultural cheerleader and ice cream flavor gets the bio-doc treatment in Michelle Esrick's Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Movie.
