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Showing posts with label palm springs international film festival. Show all posts

Showing posts with label palm springs international film festival. Show all posts

PSIFF 2011: CIRCO

A scene from Circo.

No clowning around

By Miranda Inganni

Compelling yet uncomfortable to watch, Aaron Schock’s 75-minute documentary, Circo, goes under the tent and behind the ringmaster scenes of the Ponce family, a small circus troupe in Mexico living by the skin of their skills.

A family business struggling to stay afloat, Tino wants his family to maintain the century-(h)old Ponce tradition while his wife, Ivonne, contends that this is no life for their four children. (Maybe the fearful 15-year-old Ivonne should have tried to talk it out with her mother before hiding in Tino’s truck?)

Shedding light on the cruelty to humans and other animals in the circus world, this documentary illustrates what can happen when the most passively controlling parents, and willing children, try to live the lives they believe they wanted.

(Circo screens Jan. 15, 7 p.m., Palm Canyon Theatre; Jan. 16, 10 a.m., Palm Canyon Theatre. For more information: Circo)

PSIFF 2011: HEARTBEATS

Nico (Niels Schneider) in Heartbeats.

Quazy Québécois kids

Francis (director Xavier Dolan) and Marie (Monia Chokri) are hyper-hip BFF’s who commence a fierce competition for the affections of the sexually ambiguous Nico (Niels Schneider). In turn, Nico knowingly or unknowingly (it's your call) taunts and teases the friends into a bitter high school-ish rivalry that eventually comes to physical blows.

Heartbeats is essentially about a threesome of trendy twenty-something Québécois hipsters with a unique flair for melodrama. All three characters are quite superficial in terms of their appearances (they are what they wear -- nothing more, nothing less) and attitudes towards others. Dolan’s penchant for slow-motion when photographing the leads clearly accentuates their beauty and elegance, yet reinforces that their beauty and elegance is all they have.

Francis co-opts the physical appearance (or, at least, the iconic hairstyle) of James Dean; Marie evolves into Audrey Hepburn (by way of Anna Karina); and Nico resembles a classic Greek Adonis, or a cross between a Jean Cocteau and Kenneth Anger lead. Nico exists purely as an object of lust, while Francis and Marie appear to be driven only by sex.

To counteract (or provide a Brechtian disruption for) the purely sexual tension, Dolan intersperses pseudo-documentary footage of female and male subjects describing their most obsessive loves. With these talking head interviews, Dolan is informing us that Francis and Marie are not the only two people who have become crazy while in the grasp of love. Sometimes Brechtian techniques work better than other times; in the case of Heartbeats, the interviews do not work at all. This is Dolan’s one amateurish flaw in Heartbeats.

Something I have noticed is that in comparison with the kind and beautiful male characters, Dolan’s females are cruel and calculating monsters. (Nico, being a straight male, is merely a dick tease.) Dolan’s gay males are not the stereotypically catty, spiteful and flamboyant queers we have grown to know and love via Hollywood; they are quite vulnerable, sympathetic and normal characters. He might be impeccably dressed with perfectly coiffed hair, but Francis is by no means flamboyant. For all intents and purposes, Francis could be a straight metrosexual hipster -- except we do occasionally see Francis in bed beside another male, and we know that he has a more than just friends infatuation with Nico (highlighted in the cleverly conceived masturbation scene). Basically, Dolan has discovered a way to normalize gay men, all the while demonizing straight women; but the jury is still out on straight men and lesbian women.

Dolan artistically crafts each and every scene of his sophomore feature with intensely colorful costume and production design. The party scene -- during which Dolan utilizes strobe lights to tremendous effect -- is a lot of fun to watch; while the monochromatically-gelled lighting of the bedroom scenes introduces a certain Kenneth Anger aesthetic to the film. First and foremost, though, are the slow-motion walking scenes (which is quickly becoming Dolan’s directorial signature) in which the actors’ wardrobes are always brilliantly juxtaposed against a colorful backdrop, all the while the soundtrack (which is often the de facto theme for Heartbeats, Dalida's “Bang Bang”) meshes perfectly with the movement.

(Heartbeats screens Jan. 14, 8 p.m., Palm Springs Regal 9; Jan. 16, 2 p.m., Palm Springs Regal 9. For more information: http://www.psfilmfest.org/)

PSIFF 2011: AFTERSHOCK

Fang Deeng (Zhang Jingchu) in Aftershock

Long on melodrama, short on very impressive special effects, China's Oscar entry for Best Foreign Language Film, Aftershock, offers a wallop of both.

The film opens with a pretty impressive scene of dragonflies flying through the air and out of town. They seem to know what is about to go down. A Chinese family watches in amazement as the dragonflies flee.

Once home in the city of Tageshan, Aftershock immediately establishes the family dynamic. The parents are hard working, simple Chinese folk just making it through the world. They have two children, twins. Fang Da (Li Chen) is a bit of weakling, letting his sister, Fang Deeng (Zhang Jingchu), fight his battles. A cooling fan is a luxury.

As the parents finish their business in the back of their truck, the ground begins to shake, shake and shake. It is the 1976 earthquake of Tangshan and for what seemed a good five minutes on screen, thousands and thousands of people are crushed under the weight of unstable buildings. Other things fall, streets crack, people jump out of windows only to be crushed by the building behind them. There is a crane coming undone. There is a pit in my stomach. Imagine the intense, loud, chaotic scene in Ron Howard's, oops, Oliver Stone's World Trade Center where the tower collapses on the firemen and magnify that by ten and you start to get the picture.

It is pretty gut wrenching, especially if you live in the city of Los Angeles where we anticipate the inevitable big one. It does not help that the film's sound shakes the theater walls.

When the rubble starts clearing, the mother, Li Yuanni (Xan Fan), has to make a "Sophie's Choice" between which buried child to choose to live. She picks one, but unbeknown the other hears her mother's choice. To compound the drama, the unpicked child survives unbeknown to the mother and other child.

Jumping over the next 32 years, until the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, each of the surviving members suffers in his or her post-traumatic vein. To keep the saga going, Aftershock incorporates a bombastic music score, multiple tropes of lost chances, and numerous crying scenes.

The highest grossing Chinese film in China's history, for well over two hours, director Xiaogang Feng's Aftershock offers up plenty of emotions. The problem is that the earthquake scene is so powerful the rest of the film incrementally becomes anticlimactic to the point one wishes it would speed up to its predictable conclusion.

(Aftershock screens Jan. 14, 10:30 a.m., Camelot Theatres. For more information: Aftershock)

PSIFF 2011: THE HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER

A scene from The Human Resources Manager.

Backtrack in the Post-USSR

Winner of five 2010 Israeli Film Academy Awards and Israel's Oscar entry for Best Foreign Language Film, director Eran Riklis' The Human Resources Manager moves from Israel to Russia at a tank's pace, offering little more than meandering musings and mawkish meanings about work, duty, honor and human value.

Based on the novel, A Woman in Jerusalem, by A.B Yehoshua, screenwriter Noah Stollman situates The HR Manager (Mark Ivanir) at Jerusalem's largest bakery between a hard spot and rough space when one of the bakery's ex-employees is killed during a suicide bombing. Under attack at work and by the local press, The HR Manager (his job is his identity) must return the woman back to Russia for a burial. Promises to his own estranged daughter (Roni Koren) may not be fulfilled, again.

Once in Russia, The HR Manager encounters various sorts of sordid shenanigans by various Russian characters who are only going to make his task that much more difficult. Of course, there is that Russian bureaucracy. The victim's Ex-Husband (Bogdan Stanoevitch) is a brute. The victim's son (Noah Silver) is an angry adolescent. The victim's mother (Irina Petrescu) thinks the return of her daughter's body for burial is a mistake, food poisoning, etc. And here he thought he was doing something good for which everyone would thank him. At least he has all the spending cash he needs to make things right.

Slowly becoming a world-renown director, Riklis has made successful and moving films about self and group identity in such films as The Syrian Bride and Lemon Tree. Those films centered on the plight of women under pressure by society and self. They did not offer any easy answers and they were engaging. It seems Riklis lost some purpose with his latest film. An exercise in overstated ironies, hindered by contrivances and caricatures, The Human Resources Manager does not offer those merits.

(The Human Resources Manager screens Jan. 11, 4 p.m. Palm Springs Regal 9. For more information: THRM)

PSIFF 2011: UNDERTOW

Marieta (Tatiana Astengo) and Miguel (Christian Mercado) in Undertow.

Against the current

Written and directed by Javier Fuentes-Leon, Undertow (Contracorriente) walks a thin line between taking a stance against homophobia and holding homosexuality accountable for its disruption to tradition.

Peru's pick for Oscar submission in the Best Film in a Foreign Language category, Undertow tells the tale of Miguel (Christian Mercado), who is madly in love with his wife, Marieta (Tatiana Astengo). She is pregnant and is about to give him a son. But then Miguel falls for an artist named Santiago (Manola Cardona). The community frowns on this kind of relationship.

The way most Peruvians in the Peruvian coastal town treat Santiago is deplorable. Rooted in superstition they are cruel to the artist. They ignore him. They throw things at his house. They consider him a pervert. Conversely, Santiago is selfish, expecting Miguel to throw away everything for a love, which Miguel resists; Miguel does not consider himself gay. To compound matters, Marieta is very sympathetic and, thanks to Santiago, her life is being ruined by her husband’s homosexual urges.

This strain of sympathies continues until the very end with Santiago getting the better of Miguel at the expense of Marieta. Santiago may have gotten what he wanted, but it is not what Marieta wanted and the film makes it clear whose demands were more justifiable.

Marked by strong performances yet plagued with troubled conceits, rather than promote understanding, it is easy to see how this film could be used by anti-GLBT organizations to keep the GLBT down.

(Undertow screens today, 1:30 p.m., Camelot Theatres; Jan. 9, 7:30 p.m., Camelot Theatres. For more information: Undertow)

PSIFF 2011: THE BORDER

A scene from The Border.

On August 30, 1946 the town of Velke Siemence was divided by Russia's Red Army. On one side was Velke Siemence, which remained in former Czechoslovakia/current Slovakia. The other part was set in a part of the Ukraine (formerly a part of the Soviet Union) and called Male Siemence.

All of a sudden and without warning, family and friends were divided by an armed border. If you wanted to walk a few feet in one direction to visit family or friends you would have to travel hours in another direction, often multiple times, in order to acquire the proper papers. If you spoke out against the border your living space would become a lot smaller in some far away place.

Slovakia's entry for Best Foreign Language Film, this documentary chronicles the history of the divide up until the present where it has once again become unified, but at what cost?

Maybe it was just a bad day, but I had a hard time staying awake for The Border's running time of 72 minutes.

(The Border screens, Jan. 8, 11:00 a.m., Camelot Theatres; Jan. 10, 8 p.m., Camelot Theatres. For more information: http://www.psfilmfest.org)

PSIFF 2011: ANOTHER YEAR

Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen) in Another Year.

Leigh film screens at Palm Springs International Film Festival

The opening sequence of Another Year lays the groundwork for the tone of Mike Leigh’s follow-up to Happy-Go-Lucky. Janet (Imelda Staunton) visits her doctor’s office for sleeping medication, but she is referred to Gerri (Ruth Sheen), a counselor, instead. Gerri asks Janet to rate, on a scale of one to 10, how happy she is. Janet instinctively responds: “One."

We never see Janet again -- good riddance to her sad and sorry self -- but Gerri turns out to be one of our primary protagonists. Gerri is married to Tom (Jim Broadbent), a happy-go-lucky geologist. Their marriage is nothing short of idyllic, and their emotional stability enables them to function as the bedrock for their miserably single friends and family (most of whom would probably rate their happiness similarly to Janet). It seems each season (Another Year is split into four distinct segments -- one for each season) delivers new emotional issues for Gerri and Tom to assist with as they also tend to the seasonal changes of their fruitful vegetable garden.

Another Year is a story of haves who want to help the have-nots, yet the haves never get all that involved in the personal business of the have-nots. It is as if Gerri and Tom do not want other people’s sorrows to interfere with their own happiness. Emotionally detached, like psychiatrists, they might occasionally ask a probing question or two (suggested drinking game: Take a swig every time a character asks “How are you?”) but they mostly function as a sounding board for their friends and family to divulge their woes.

For Leigh, everyone has a choice to control their own happiness. People have the option to change and there is always room for personal growth. The trick is that one must learn to adapt to life's setbacks, to suck it up, to always look on the bright side of life.

Another Year is one of the lesser films in Leigh’s “depressed old people who cry a lot” cannon mainly because the characters’ psychological states are too grossly exaggerated for my tastes. Gerri and Tom seem all too perfectly happy, while characters such as Mary (Lesley Manville) and Ken (Peter Wight) seem like one-dimensional caricatures of the hopelessly depressed. A more interesting story might have been Leigh’s perspective on the secrets to Gerri and Tom’s successful marriage -- a topic Another Year avoids altogether.

(Another Year screens Jan. 8, 4:30 p.m. Camelot Theatres; Jan. 12, 4:30 p.m., Camelot Theatres. For more information: http://www.psfilmfest.org)

PSIFF AND SFFLA 2011: STEAM OF LIFE

A scene from Steam of Life.

In the highly entertaining 1991 feature film, Night on Earth, one of the five segments is set in Finland. Unlike the previous four segments, which are variably comical, this one by writer-director Jim Jarmusch has two Finnish men lament away in a taxicab. The second monologue is more tragic than the first. Amusing and making a sort of "independent" film by ending on a down note, I think the scene lasts about 25 minutes.

It was about 26 minutes into Joonas Berghäll and Mika Hotakainen's 84-minute documentary, Steam of Life, when I started to get bored.

Set in a series of seemingly random saunas, various naked Finnish men deliver monologues about the some tragic tale: the loss of a loved one (alive or dead), a traumatic experience, personal problems, etc. Some of the men can tell their tale well, some of the men are clearly there to talk on cue, and other men are sometimes there to listen to his friend's problem – something many of them have seem to have heard numerous times already.

Sure, there is something to be said about allowing a film of full of naked men into American theaters without garnering an NC-17 rating (Steam of Life is Finland's Oscar entry for Best Foreign Language Film to boot), and hearing men bare their calamities (and cocks) for all the world to view, and some of the sauna locations are humorous and there is even a bear here for laughs, but eventually the scenery and stories, well, run out of steam.

Steam of Life will also screen at the Scandinavian Film Festival L.A.

(Steam of Life screens at the PSIFF Jan. 9, 4:30 p.m., Regal Palm Springs 9; Jan. 11, 1:30 p.m. Regal Palm Springs 9; Jan. 12, 6 p.m., Regal Palm Springs 9. For more information: http://www.psfilmfest.org)

(Steam of Life screens at the SFFLA Jan. 8, 7:30 p.m., WGA Theatre. For more information: http://www.scandinavianfilmfestivalla.com)

PSIFF: EVEN THE RAIN

A scene from Even the Rain.

Collective colonization

Director Sebastian (Gael Garcia Bernal), producer Costa (Luis Tosa) and their Spanish crew have just arrived in Cochamba, Bolivia to make a film about Columbus' arrival in the Americas during the late 15th century. An examination in racism, religious hypocrisy and resistance, the film within the film of director Iciar Bollain's Even the Rain takes an unflattering view of the Spanish crown's gold crush in the 16th century.

While on location, the local "Indians," many of whom are involved with the film at significantly lower pay than their Spanish counterparts, are involved in a struggle with powerful forces (back by foreign corporations) over the local water supply. The locals have virtually no rights to the point they are prohibited from collecting the rain.

If making an epic historical film were not daunting enough, the local struggle threatens the film, the filmmakers' safety and the filmmakers' ideas about what it means to make a film about historical oppression while contemporary oppression is surrounds you and what it means to make a film about an oppressed people of the past without oppressing people of today.

Written by oft-Ken Loach collaborator, Paul Laverty (Bread and Roses; Looking for Eric) Spain's Oscar submission for Best Foreign Language Film swirls on a wide range of levels and topics. The film about a film or films (someone is shooting a documentary on the making of the film) thoroughly analysis the limitations and possibilities about making films to address (adjust?) social injustices, whether they are past or present, and that film is never the same as reality, regardless of accuracy, yet this is being illustrated in a film.

Highly recommended.

(Even the Rain screens Jan. 7, 6 p.m., Palm Springs Regal 9; Jan. 08 10 a.m., Palm Springs Regal 9. For more information: http://www.psfilmfest.org)

PSIFF 2011: WASTE LAND

Artist Vik Muniz in Waste Land.

A few years ago, one of the better selling living artists in the world, Vik Muniz, left his adopted home in Brooklyn, New York, to return to his home country of Brazil for his latest project. Rather than find inspiration in the metropolitan cities of Brasilia, São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro (like Orson Welles), Muniz went to Jardim Gramacho.

Located on the northern outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, Jardim Gramacho is the world's largest garbage dump. Unlike the highly class conscious city of Rio De Janeiro where the extremely rich and the extremely poor are demonstrably demarcated by posh homes and pitiful favelas, Jardim Gramacho accepts all th(r)ash of life in the consumer culture age. It is located on the other side of Christ The Redeemer whose arms throw out blessings to the wealthy southern Rio de Janeiro residents from Corcovado Mountain. Behind the world's second largest art deco statue in the world (since we are talking art here) the arms of many flurry through the heaps of garbage for mere pittance.

Known as catadores, these poor people do not just go through trash looking for food for a rich person's discarded treasure (although there are some of those), they pick and separate recyclable materials.

When Muniz set out to paint the catadores he was expecting to find people beaten by the system, but what he found were many people with working class dignity. Women come here rather than prostitute themselves. Rather than enter the violent drug racket in Brazil, here men toil in trash in order provide for their large families. There are plenty of other things these people would rather be doing than picking through tons of waste (or a human body on occasion), yet they do see purpose in their occupation. As Brazil tears up the Amazon to the detriment of the world, these people are helping save the earth.

Because of what he found in these people who work the Jardim Gramacho, Muniz decided to recreate photographic images of the catadores out of garbage. The results are magnificent. Not only are the photos impressive works of art and meaning, they also transform everyone involved.

A real crowd pleasing documentary destined for Oscar nomination, Lucy Walker's Waste Land is a surprising joy about finding pride and purpose in one of the most unlikely places in the world.

(Waste Land screens Jan. 7, 9 a.m. Annenberg Auditorium; Jan. 10, 4 p.m. Annenberg Auditorium. For more information: http://www.psfilmfest.org)

PSIFF 2011: OF LOVE AND OTHER DEMONS

Sierva (Eliza Triana) in Love and Other Demons

Rabid with religion

By Miranda Inganni

Director Hilda Hidalgo’s film based on Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel of the same name is a stunningly supple fairy/morality (mortality?) tale set in colonial South America.

The film stars Eliza Triana as the copper haired, young noble 13-year-old girl, Sierva Maria, whose ethereal image pops in stark contrast against the gritty backdrop.

Heavily influenced by the indigenous community around her parents’ jungle home, Sierva wishes for her own death as her beloved nanny lays dying. At the market, Sierva is bitten by a rabid dog and is thought to have contracted the disease, which the Catholic Church insists is demonic possession. Because of pressure from the Church, her father (Joaquín Climent), reluctantly agrees to send her to a convent where a young handsome priest, Cayetano Delaura (Pablo Derqui) oversees her exorcism. Subsequently, Sierva and Cayetano’s dreams seem only to reinforce their waking lives and the intense, desirous connection they have for each other.

Costa Rica's Oscar submission for Best Foreign Language Film.

(Of Love and Other Demons screens Jan. 7, 5 p.m., Palm Springs Regal 9; Jan. 9, 10 a.m., Palm Springs Regal 9. For more information: http://www.psfilmfest.org)

PSIFF 2011: PEEPLI LIVE

Natha (Omkar Das Manikpuri) in Peepli Live.

Caste away

By John Esther

Thanks to a lifetime of hardship resulting in hopelessness and a controversial government program, thousands of Indian farmers continue to commit suicide for money. The number of farmers who have committed suicide in India between 1997 and 2007 now stands at 182,936. That is about one suicide for every 31 minutes.

A fictional account of the capitalist crisis met with government response, writer-director Anusha Rizvi's Peepli Live tells the tale of two brothers, Natha (Omkar Das Manikpuri) and Budhia (Raghubir Yadav), who are about to lose their plot of rural land and want to take advantage of the government program.

After the brothers decide which one will die, the story breaks out with the media, government, politicains and entrepenuers descending on the small rural village to see if a suicide will take place. Sadly humorous, everybody has an agenda. Votes, ratings and money are at stake and nobody cares if a nobody sends back the gift of life.

A better writer than director, the strength of Rizvi's Peepli Live is the film's unsentimental portrayal of the poor. Far more Émile Zola and Shohei Imamura than John Steinbeck and Michael Moore, the films depicts India's lowest cast as ignorant and brutish, with adults and children prone to yelling, violence, excessive inebriation and self preservation at any cost. This honesty prevents sympathy for the self/society-doomed protagonist, which translates into a more complex look at the issues at hand.

India's Oscar submission for Best Foreign Language Film is about despair and doom. And while that may sound like a depressing time at the movies, consider that with its 104-minute running time, over three Indian farmers will have, on average, committed suicide during the film.

Recommended.

(Peepli Live screens Jan. 7, 1:30 p.m., Palm Springs Regal 9; Jan. 8. 10:30 a.m., Palm Springs Regal 9. For more information: http://www.psfilmfest.org/

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