Jim (Matthew Goode) and George (Colin Firth) in Tom Ford's A Single Man.
Heart attacks
By John Esther
A gala selection at AFI Fest 2009, fashion designer-turned-filmmaker Tom Ford's adaptation of Christopher Isherwood's novel of the same name is charged with anger, angst, ego and eroticism.
A US premiere, after credits continue-um with a naked male underwater, A Single Man shifts in a dreamlike state blending eros and thanatos as George (Colin Firth) walks toward a wide-eyed dead Jim (Matthew Goode) laying in bloody snow and kisses him. It is a haunting scene of love and lost shattered by the dreamer denied as George wakes up to his miserable existence.
Miserable existence? On the surface, George seems to have his life in order: money, style, architecture, art and some solitude. Yet this means little to George.
In one of the most gripping film scenes this year, we quickly discover George has lost the love of his life, Jim. He is paralyzed by the loss. Being what they and the times were, the man "light in the loafers" is not permitted to attend Jim's funeral. His mourning must be done alone.
Set over the course of a day, we watch George losing his grip with the present through flashbacks of his past. Stricken by what he no longer has, George is incapable of realizing what the future could hold. With young men flirting with him under the golden California sun, fate may have something good in store, but uptight, determined George continues to plan his demise. The former Londoner who now lives in Los Angeles accepts the inevitability of death, but why, or so why not, hurry up with it?
Although minutely flawed with pretentiousness and filled with a ghastly glamorization of cigarette smoking (plus I would like to see the car crash scene again -- in retrospect, the model of the car seems more recent than 1962), Ford's feature directorial debut bursts with radiant images of love, loss and lust in rather equal measures. Rather than making our lives hell, sometimes other people are the only heaven we will ever know and Ford designs this sentiment like a fine suit. (A Single Man reminds one a lot of last year's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.)
Firth's portrayal of a man of his times and times loves lost is brilliant. It is probably the best performance I have seen this year (I imagine he had a little help from Isherwood's novel if not Isherwood's longtime lover, Don Bachardy, as well). Co-starring Julianne Moore and Nicholas Hoult. (Recommended)
(A Single Man is scheduled to screen Nov. 5, 7 p.m. at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, 6925 Hollywood Blvd. For more information: 866/AFI-FEST; www.afi.com)
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Terence (Nicolas Cage) and Frankie (Eva Mendes) waste away in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. No big easy watch
By Miranda Inganni
Detective Terence McDonagh (Nicolas Cage), a policeman honored for his heroics during Hurricane Katrina, is now a drug addict using his gun and police badge to wield power and get whatever he wants.
Along with his prostitute girlfriend, Frankie (Eva Mendes), McDonagh spirals out of control. On the job he teams up with Big Fate (Xzibit), trying to solve the murder of a group of illegal Senegalese immigrants while off the job helping him acquire some illegal narcotics. It just so happens that Big Fate is not only a drug lord, but also the prime suspect in the murders.
For those folks who enjoy watching Cage play a crazed addict a la Leaving Las Vegas, director Werner Herzog's remake of Abel Ferrara's 1992 film starring Harvey Keitel may tickle their fancy. This World Cinema selection did not tickle mine. Relocating the film from New York to New Orleans did not seem to help either, and the hallucinations involving reptiles and voodoo dancing are silly.
(Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is scheduled to screen today, 7 p.m., Mann's Chinese Theater 1, Hollywood Blvd. For more information: 866/AFI-Fest; www.afi.com)
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Eric Cantona and Steve Evets star in Ken Loach's Looking for Eric.
Going postal
By Ed Rampell
The AFI Fest often premieres hard to see but nevertheless worthy films for Los Angelenos, such as Ken Loach’s stellar, stirring Looking For Eric.
In the past this great progressive British helmer has directed explicitly political features, such as 1995’s Spanish Civil War classic Land and Freedom, 1996’s pro-Sandinista Carla’s Song, 2000’s L.A.-set, pro-union Bread and Roses, 2006’s Irish Revolution drama The Wind That Shakes the Barley, etc. He has also placed working class life under the movie magnifying glass in films such as 1998’s My Name is Joe.
Looking For Eric combines both Loach trends – with a dose of magical realism. The title character refers to Eric Bishop, a washed-up mailman (Steve Evets) subject to panic attacks and Eric Cantona, the real life soccer player who – like Humphrey Bogart in Woody Allen’s 1972 Play It Again, Sam – appears to advise the proletarian protagonist on how to be heroic and play it cool.
The ending to this World Cinema selection is a thinly veiled socialist solution, as mass unity and action intervene, with a mob of mailman and other UK workers singing "La Marseillaise," taking matters into their own plebian hands and going postal. The rousing finale may be a reference to Bertolt Brecht’s athletic socialist clubs in the newly re-released German classic, Kuhle Wampe. Of course, in the best tradition of Wilhelm Reich, the mass action also gives Eric the confidence to finally – after 30 freakin’ years – get the girl (Stephanie Bishop). Bravo, Loach!
(Looking For Eric is scheduled to screen Nov. 5, 7 p.m., at Mann Chinese Theater 1, 6801 Hollywood Blvd. For more information: 866/AFI-FEST; www.afi.com.)
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Gerard Depardieu and Jacques Gamblin star in Bellamy.
By Ed Rampell
Fifty years after the French Nouvelle Vague swept cinema, auteur Claude Chabrol, one of the masters of that innovative movie movement with classics like 1969’s La Femme Infidele, is back with the North American premiere of Bellamy.
In this mystery, death does not take a holiday, as vacationing Parisian police inspector Paul Bellamy (a more understated Gerard Depardieu) is swept up in investigating local crimes of passion. But rather than emphasizing the action inherently associated with violence like a typical policier thriller would, Chabrol instead concentrates on the characters’ emotional underpinnings. Not only of the criminals, but Bellamy’s own family politics, with his n’er-do-well half-brother Jacques (the resentful Clovis Cornillac) and Bellamy’s wife, Francoise (the seductive Marie Bunel). Their erotic playfulness suggests a 21st century, grown-up version of Nick and Nora Charles in the Thin Man series.
While stylishly directed this World Cinema selection doesn’t have any of the cinematic panache and inventiveness of 1959’s (and beyond) New Wave classics, such as the jump cuts in Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless or the haunting freeze frame that closes Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (BTW, the best movie ever made about unhappy childhood). But with Bellamy’s focus on emotional intensity, rather than on mindless action, 79-year-old Chabrol continues the tradition of a New Wave that long ago ebbed -- although his talent never has.
(Bellamy screened Nov. 1, 1 p.m. at Mann Chinese Theater 1, 6801 Hollywood Blvd. For more info: 866/AFI-FEST; www.afi.com.)
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Jason Schwartzman at the North American premiere of Fantastic Mr. Fox. The feature opened AFI Fest 2009. Photo by Ed Rampell.Wes Anderson gets animated
By Ed Rampell
During Opening Night at AFI Fest 2009 last Friday night, I asked Wes Anderson, the co-writer/director of quirky character driven pix such as 2001’s The Royal Tenenbaums and 2007’s The Darjeeling Limited, “what’s the difference between directing live action and animated films?” The rail thin, long-haired 40-year-old replied: “Animation is lots slower.”
Director Wes Anderson at the North American premiere of Fantastic Mr. Fox at the AFI Fest 2009, Grauman's Chinese Theatre, Hollywood. Photo by Ed Rampell.
Indeed. The excruciatingly executed handmade stop-motion techniques pioneered in classics such as King Kong and Ray Harryhausen’s Sinbad, Gulliver and Argonauts flicks must require tons of patience and perseverance to pull off. But Anderson acquits himself well in Fantastic Mr. Fox, based on the story by Roald Dahl (who may have been strange but whose work is no stranger to animation).
In a nutshell, Fantastic Mr. Fox is an animated parable about the struggle for survival that children of all ages will enjoy. Top actors provide the characters’ voices, including George Clooney as the rascally Mr. Fox, Meryl Streep as foxy Mrs. Fox, Jason Schwartzman as their klutzy cub Ash and Bill Murray as Badger – who, in that hallowed Hollywood tradition of typecasting, an attorney. Let’s hope, however, that Anderson didn’t typecast himself by playing Weasel! A good time is had by all, on and off-screen, in this saga of the survival of the foxiest – which is, but of course, a 20th Century Fox release.
(Fantastic Mr. Fox screened as the opening night gala, Oct. 30, Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. For more information: 866/AFI-FEST; www.afi.com.)
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Micheal Cera is Youth in Revolt.
One more virgin popped
By Don Simpson
Directed by Miguel Arteta, this World Cinema selection is adapted from C.D. Payne’s novel, Youth in Revolt.
Nick Twisp (Michael Cera) enjoys great literature, foreign cinema and Frank Sinatra – which means, of course, that he is still a virgin. While vacationing at a trailer park, Nick falls head-over-heels for Sheeni Saunders (Portia Doubleday), a Francophile with a taste for Jean-Paul Belmondo and Serge Gainsbourg. She dreams of being swept away by a bad guy named Francois. When Nick finds himself at risk of losing Sheeni’s affection he develops a rebellious alter-ego named…Francois. Armed with a moustache, cigarette, and white trousers, Francois takes Nick down a road of destruction with outrageous consequences...all in the name of love.
(Youth in Revolt is scheduled to screen Nov. 3, 10:15 p.m., at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, 6801 Hollywood Blvd. For more information: 866/AFI-FEST; www.afi.com)
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Golshifteh Farahani and Taraneh Alidoosti are About Elly
Lies like a Persian rug
By Miranda Inganni
Sepideh (Golshifteh Farahani), along with her husband and their friends are vacationing north of Tehran. Elly (Taraneh Alidoosti), Sepideh’s son’s kindergarten teacher is invited along, ostensibly to help with the kids, but there are other motives -- involving the group’s recently divorced friend, Ahmed (Shahab Hisseihi).
After an initial 24 hours of music and merriment (volleyball; charades), things take a turn for the worse. Elly is asked to watch three children playing on the beach, when her back is momentarily turned, one of the boys goes under the water. In the ensuing chaos, Elly, too, goes missing.
Lies beget lies and the group’s mistrust of each other has them fighting. And the longer Elly is missing, the more the group tosses blame around for this mysterious woman’s disappearance.
Sepideh thought she was doing Elly a favor, but when the truth finally comes out, it seems Sepideh’s best intentions only lead to tragedy.
The story moves at a smooth pace allowing the viewer to comfortably watch the web of lies unravel even as the tension increases.
A 20/20 selection at this year’s AFI Fest, filled with taut writing and a wonderful and beautiful cast, writer-director Asghar Farhadi has created a fantastic movie about the dangers of deceit. (Recommended)
(About Elly is scheduled to screen Nov. 2, 7 p.m. Mann Chinese Theater 6, 6801 Hollywood Blvd. For more information: 866/AFI-FEST)
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A gaze of abuse: Gabourey Sidibe stars in Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire.
A bearable darkness of being
By Don Simpson
Set in Harlem, Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire is the heart-wrenching tale of Clareece “Precious” Jones (Gabourey Sidibe), an obese, illiterate, abused and molested 16-year-old African-American girl.
Impregnated for the second time by her father, Precious is expelled from high school; but her principal, who recognizes Precious’ true potential, refers her to an alternative school with an intimate student-to-teacher ratio and teachers and counselors who work well with troubled students.
As things improve at school, matters at home spin out of control. Precious’ welfare queen mother (Mo’Nique) has always treated her as a slave and a human punching bag; but the abuse escalates ten-fold once Precious brings her second baby home from the hospital. Despite her blank expression, Precious is an intelligent and curious young woman with an amazing desire to break out of her predicament.
Still buzzing from scoring the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize for best drama at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and the People's Choice award at Toronto International Film Festival, Precious is being featured as a Gala Screening at AFI Fest 2009.
Should we believe the hype? The brutally honest performances by Sidibe and Mo'Nique (many critics are already predicting that both women will be strong contenders during the awards season) are juxtaposed with hyper-real images dripping with oversaturated yellows, oranges and reds. Precious is an emotional roller coaster and true Hollywood fodder; and with Oprah Winfrey's support, the possibilities are endless. (Highly Recommended)
(Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire is scheduled to screen Nov. 1, 7 p.m., Grauman's Chinese Theatre, 6925 Hollywood Blvd. For more information: 866/AFI-FEST; www.afi.com)
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Jason Palmer and Desiree Garcia star in Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench. Photograph by W.A.W. Parker.
Nouvelle Vague novelties
By John Esther
If you are heading to AFI Fest 2009 this weekend with a companion who generally refers to non-Hollywood movies as "weird," you may find some middle ground with Damien Chazelle's Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench.
With all the dumbed-down narrative virtuosity of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, Chazelle's film apes superior Nouvelle Vague directors and their films of the early 1960s (Jean-Luc Godard, in particular) and sets it to a bourgeois jazz score -- performed by the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra -- so non-threatening one could imagine Sen. Joe Lieberman tapping his toes. And like the most overrated film of the 1990s, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench pretty much ends and starts in the same place, only to move the narrative just a bit into the future for its optimistic conclusion.
Before the 83rd minute of the film Guy (Jason Palmer) meets, mistreats, seeks and tweaks for girl, Madeline (Desiree Garcia). He is a trumpeter working his way up the jazz ladder. She is an unambitious, barely employable gal breaking into noxious song and dance. They miss each other in many ways, but cannot find the courage or coincidence to bring them back together. Fortunately, these shortcoming are nothing a feel-good goody goodness film cannot overcome.
A 20/20 selection for AFI Fest 2009, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench is the kind of film you would expect to see from Hollywood yesteryear: shot in black and white (by Chazelle); bad boy and troubled girl coming together in the big city; people breaking into song; flagrant sentimentality; and finding security in the future.
Of course, old golden Hollywood would never cast someone like Palmer or Garcia as the leads in a romantic film. Yet that hardly makes for social progress or independent cinema (beyond budget). A reactionary film, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench just uses a few certain challenging tropes, which are hardly radical today, and makes it more palatable to less adventurous audiences.
(Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench is scheduled to screen Oct. 31, 2 p.m., at Mann Chinese Theater 6, 6801 Hollywood Blvd. For more information: 866/AFI-FEST; www.afi.com)
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Mother-daughter dynamics are explored in First of All, Felicia.
(S)mothering, Romanian style
By Miranda Inganni
This New Lights Competition film opens with Felicia (Ozana Oancea) waking up on her final day of her annual visit with her parents in Romania. When her driver to the airport cancels, 40-year-old Felicia is left taking a cab. If that were not bad enough, her mother (Ileana Cernat) insists on joining her for the ride. When Felicia misses her flight back to The Netherlands, she frantically calls her ex-husband, Maarten, to arrange for their son’s pick up from camp. While Felicia deals with her parents and sister in Romania, she also has to take care of her family in The Netherlands.
The majority of the film takes place in the airport while Felicia tries to reschedule her flight. Her mother’s “help” seems more of an hindrance than anything, and it doesn’t make matters better that both her father and sister keep calling her with his or her own suggestions of what she can do to expedite her return. As Felicia’s frustration at trying to find a flight increases, so does the friction between mother and daughter. Felicia finally speaks her mind, letting her emotions lose.
Filmed in sunny yellows – almost sepia tones – the warmth of the visuals betray the tension between mother and daughter.
Directed by Melissa de Raaf and Razvan Radulescu, First of All, Felicia feels more like a play than a film with its minimal locations and considerable dialogue. Moreover, the story offers little new in the way of mother-daughter dynamics. However Oancea and Cernat offer powerful performances, perhaps drawing from their own experiences?
On another note, First of All, Felicia is in Romanian and Dutch. The Romanian dialogue is accompanied with subtitles; the Dutch, for some odd reason, is not.
(First of All, Felicia is scheduled to screen Oct. 31 at 1 p.m., at the Mann Chinese Theater 1, 6801 Hollywood Blvd. For more information: 866/AFI-FEST; www.afi.com)
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Other worlds move in Jiří Barta's In the Attic.
By Don Simpson
Jiří Barta, along with fellow Czech Jan Švankmajer, is one of the foremost stop-motion animation directors in the history of cinema.
In the Attic (Na pude aneb Kdo má dneska narozeniny) marks Barta’s long-awaited return to animation after 20 years (he encountered difficulties releasing films after the communist government in Czechoslovakia fell).
Screening in the World Cinema category, In the Attic is an intricately designed fairy tale about friendship and standing up to tyranny. When the female doll Buttercup is kidnapped by the evil henchmen of the Head, her best friends – Teddy (a bear), Sir Handsome (a wooden stick figure), and Schubert (a ball of clay) – undertake an epic quest to save her.
Barta’s stunning surrealist creation turns linens and plastic bags into treacherous water obstacles, pillows into fluffy clouds, and vacuums into airplanes. (Recommended)
(In the Attic is scheduled to screen Oct. 31, 10 a.m., at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, 6801 Hollywood Blvd; and Nov. 6, 3:15 p.m. at Santa Monica Laemmle Theater 4, 1332 2nd St
Santa Monica. For more information: 866/AFI-FEST or www.afi.com)
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Screw your eyes into Frankie Latina's Modus Operandi.
Grindhouse action at AFI
By John Esther
During an extensively long roll of the opening credits, writer-director-editor-set designer Frankie Latina sets the tone and texture of Modus Operandi. Worshiping the most vulgar aspects of independent cinema circa early 1970s, the film adheres, deconstructs, and reworks those iconographic signs of exploitation, politics, motifs and hardcore of the times while maintaining a joyous feeling of collaborative filmmaking.
Once an international legend of his own making, former CIA agent, Stanley Cashay (Randy Russell), downs his days in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with booze and thoughts of avenging his wife's death. On the verge of suicide, Stanley receives an offer from his former boss (Danny Trejo) that he will not refuse: recover a few caches belonging to a conservative presidential candidate, Squire Parks (Michael Sottile), and he can have his wife's killers. Why they have been withholding this information from their their top assassin is one of the many miscues (and questions) of the movie's convoluted plot. Or is it just missing reel or two?
Recharged with a purpose, Cashay sobers up and calls on a few hit-persons he knew before the hitting-the-bottle days. Quickly the blood starts flowing, heads start exploding, double agents are double crossed and sadistic torture is the death du jour. Oh, but not to worry, dear hippies, there is probably more nudity, sex and camaraderie than killing -- although the two frequently collide.
Many of the murders are extremely violent (a head is blown off; another head is dragged off by a horse; snuff films) while a few are downright silly (a playing card to the forehead; a sheik takes a nunchucka to the noggin). The violent special effects work to various effect -- no doubt sometimes deliberately.
As far as tapping into the massive misogyny of its predecessors, unlike the vast array of movies of exploitative ilk, Modus Operandi has its share of miscegenation, sex with multiple partners of different sexes, and plenty of nudity from different genders (something those two primary prudes behind Grindhouse geek-ly avoided while going gaga for gore).
Latina and his large multicultural cast and crew are clearly enjoying the collaborative effort of making a cheesy, low budget movie set in their town. A lot of the actors here have no more to do than show up for a scene, strip, play party, kill and die. Independent cinema will never die with as long as there is artistic collaboration (thus, supposing, the long opening credits giving them their due).
Part of the Alt_Cinema at this year's AFI Fest, Modus Operandi offers grinds out a little more than what one expected. If you like this kind of content in general, you are in for some fun.
(Modus Operandi is scheduled to screen Oct. 31, 12:15 a.m. at Mann Chinese Theater, 6801 Hollywood Blvd. For more information: 866/AFI FEST or www.afi.com)
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Brenda Blethyn and Sotigui Kouyate star in London River.
Multiculturalism matters
By John Esther
From the opening moments of this 20/20, World Cinema selection you know which way London River flows. Protestant Elisabeth (Brenda Blethyn) listens to a sermon about loving your neighbor while Muslim Ousmane (Sotigui Kouyate) prays toward Mecca in solitude. Both are resigned to their fates, existing for the sake of existing.
On July 7, 2005, terrorists strike several veins of transport, killing dozens and sending both believers into panic mode. Where are there children? Elisabeth leaves Guernsey (a Channel Island) while Ousame leaves a forest in France, both heading to London. She is looking for her daughter, Jane, while he is looking for his son, Ali.
Because of the connection between Ali and Jane, Elisabeth and Ousmane continually encounter each other. She is full of mistrust of the Muslim; he is full of regret for leaving Ali when his son was 6. Although she raised her Jane and he did not raise his Ali, neither parent really knows her or his child. She is bedazzled by her daughter's choices while he fears for the worst with his son.
Directed and co-written by Rachid Bouchareb, London River packs quite a bit of drama for a 90-minute film. It is anyone's guess whether the children are still alive. Both parents must go through the horrors of visiting hospitals and morgues in the chance his or her child was a victim of the attacks. Do they really want to find them? Under these circumstances, ignorance may be bliss compared to knowledge.
Elizabeth is plenty ignorant to begin with, considering her husband a hero in "the war" of the Falkland Islands in 1982 (the undeclared war lasted 72 days and claimed an estimated 1000 casualties) and oblivious to people speaking Arabic ("Who speaks Arabic," she asks?), she is one of those bourgeois Britain's the other classes love to hate. At least she speaks French; but, then again, everybody (cop, butcher, Imam) speaks French in this film so Ousame does not have to try speaking English. Phew!
Thanks to the tremendous performances of Blethyn and Kouyate the drama has a greater impact. For what is at stake here, as Armand Amar's score aurally illustrates, is the wish by fanatics to kill the narrative of modernist multiculturalism and how terrorism -- in the long run, not the short -- assures that people from different cultures will eventually have a greater understanding of each other. After all, grief, guilt, and guile are universal languages and nobody can blow that away. (Recommended)
(London River screens Oct. 30, 7 p.m., at Mann Chinese Theater 1, 6801 Hollywood Blvd. For more information: 866/AFI-FEST; www.afi.com.)
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Gitti (Birgit Minichmayr) and Chris (Lars Eidinger) fight like Everyone Else.No exit
By John Esther
Gitti (Birgit Minichmayr) and Chris (Lars Eidinger) should be having the loving time of their lives. Here the German couple are staying in his mother's lovely villa in Italy. The weather is lovely, he has a good job, she can ignore her job even more, and they have all the solitude for spontaneous sex any time. But instead, they focus most of their time bickering, fighting, and hurting each other emotionally -- just like everyone else?
Written and directed by Maren Ade (The Forest for the Trees) the first part of the New Lights Competition film focuses on what makes the couple work. They have a certain dynamic suggesting they feel extraordinarily hipper than everyone else, especially Chris' mother, who has these funny collections around the place. This tragically hip attitude loses altitude when Gitti, a flaky publicist with an unremarkable intellect, challenges everyone else on his or her opinions. Rather than stick it in for his wife, Chris sticks up for his friends, and rightfully so. (While I would not call it misogyny, Ade clearly likes the male characters more than her female ones in Everyone Else.)
A two-hour film feeling a lot longer, despite the gorgeous cinematography by Bernhard Keller and the solid performance by the two leads, Everyone Else putters like a poor play. Too much of the movements, actions and reactions have a staged feeling. This may be somewhat the point considering the last 30 minutes of the film where Gitti commits two or three actions so obnoxious and melodramatic it is hard not to root for Chris to kick her right out of this stage in his life. That he does not makes you wonder what she has to do to get him to exit the couple.
(Everyone Else is scheduled to screen Oct. 30, 9:30 p.m. at Mann Chinese Theater 6, 6801 Hollywood Blvd. For more information: 866/AFI-FEST; www.afi.com.)
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