Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Norm’s back with his second report from the fest. I love it when this happens... a reader is at a fest that otherwise wouldn’t get the coverage. Yeah, a lot of the same films play the fest circuit this time of year, but it’s great to see how the films play to different audiences and different viewers, and everyone also seems to find a gem or two that are unique to their particular festival in the process. Check this out, for example...
Hey Drew,
Here's another bunch of brief reviews of all kinds of movies I've been seeing these past few days.
Tan de Repente
A quirky Argentinean film that’s thoroughly entertaining but also lingers in your mind long after it’s over. The story is about how Marcia, a fat and depressed Buenos Aires lingerie store clerk, is taken on an impromptu road trip by a pair of switchblade lesbians (!) who call themselves Mao and Lenin. Mao is a real firecracker, making overt sexual passes at strangers without blinking, and it’s sad how Marcia lets herself get attached to such an unpredictable person. Lenin is somewhere between the two; she’s a hitch-hiking, shoplifting punk, but when she takes her friends to her aunt’s place in Rivero, she finds herself unexpectedly caring and humbled by the 70 year old woman.
This is 26 year old Diego Lerman’s first feature, but it’s a surprisingly mature yet irreverent film. This sexy Latin road movie and its unspoken life-affirming message might call to mind "Y Tu Mama Tambien", but "Tan de Repente" has a style of its own. Not only does it revolve around young girls instead of boys, it also has an almost impressionistic feel, with long stretches without dialogue, just great music and black & white cinematography and a lot of life and beauty.
Blissfully Yours
Actually, I didn’t see that one. They "lost" the film, so it couldn’t be screened. Thus I went into whatever was starting soon in one of the other theatres instead:
Jimmy Scott: If You Only Knew
Jimmy Scott’s life story is so pathetic you’re not sure whether to laugh or cry. His father abandoned the family, he lost his mother at a young age, he had to hustle as a kid to survive during the Depression, and at 12 he stopped growing because of an hormonal disease. Hence, he never went through puberty, retains boyish features and can’t reproduce. This also gave him a curiously high-pitched voice, which got him attention in the jazz community in the 50s. Unfortunately, he was screwed over and over by the music business, to the point where he stopped singing and spent decades struggling through minimum wage jobs, three failed marriages and alcoholism. Only recently has he been rediscovered by jazz enthusiasts, which led to a proper record deal and some recognition- he’s apparently big in Japan.
After the screening, Matthey Buzzell admitted himself that he’s not a filmmaker, just a big fan of obscure 75 year old easy listening vocalist. Yet while we can feel Buzzell’s affection for his subject through the documentary, it doesn’t change the fact that the movie is amateurish and superficial. Scott’s story is rather interesting, but "If You Only Knew" coasts through it in 77 minutes without going further than running a check-list of the man’s (few) good and (many) bad times.
Un Homme sans l’Occident
Unsurprisingly, this film from French photographer Raymond Depardon is expertly shot, but it’s hard not to grow impatient with its uneventful, deadly slow narrative. A self-proclaimed "elegy to the nomads", it opens by quoting David Lean with a shot of infinite sky and small and smallish black specks that turns out to be men on camels when they get closer.
The film then sticks with long, static shots of early 20th century nomads struggling to survive the Sahara desert and each other in amoral survival-of-the-fittest bouts, with the mostly unseen threat of the white man hanging over them. This makes for a stunningly beautiful flip-book of deep focus black & white photography, but the potential for it to overwhelm you with the cruel emptiness of the desert is undermined by annoying blocks of National Geographic-style narration.
Waiting for Happiness
Funny watching this after "Un Homme sans l'Occident". Another slow-paced, contemplative film set in the desert, this touching little African picture is not quite as gorgeously photographed as Depardon's, but it possesses so much more heart. Another difference is how it's set in present, as the influence of the Occident has become inevitable, for better (cars, planes, lightbulbs) or worse (cigarettes, bad Karaoke singing, Des Chiffres et des Lettres on TV).
There is not much plot to sepak of; this is a "hanging out" movie. We meet a father and his young son who work as electricians, a mother teaching her daughter traditional music, and ever more men (and women) who hear the call of Europe and leave the village. Writer-director Abderrahmane Sissako has made a quietly beautiful film about "transit cities" between Africa and Europe, which are called "heremakono", ie places where people are "waiting for happiness".
La Devinière
Badly shot, pointless documentary about mental patients grimacing, making animal noises and messing with scrap in and around a dilapidated asylum. I d'angeloed after two reels.
Isabelle Huppert, une vie pour jouer
A somewhat voyeuristic look at French actress Isabelle Huppert: in rehearsals for the play Médée, on set with Chabrol or Heneke, swamped by the media and fans at Cannes, during photo shoots, even as a kid in old Super 8 films. We also hear Huppert's views on the profession. On good days she sees it as "holding on to childhood and playtime"; on not so good ones, she feels she is "nothing", with acting being her only way gain "definition". Interesting.
This Is Not a Love Song
Spike and Central Heaton (get hit?), two dumb Scottish lowlives, spends days and nights wandering in the English countryside to escape the wrath of the locals after the accidental death of a farmer’s daughter. Billie Eltringham’s latest is an occasionally intense but simple-minded "Of Mice and Men" update, brought down by the clumsy way it shifts between a faux-vérité look (it was shot on digital video in two weeks) and Guy Ritchie-type gimmicks.
The festival resumes this week-end, I'll send you another report after my last rush of movies (which should include "Ken Park" and "Far From Heaven").
Norm
