TIFF08—My Twitch Roundup

Unlike Todd Brown, my editor at Twitch, I just can't crank out two or three reviews a day during a festival. Not out-of-town on a laptop. Not countering humidity and cat allergies. Not while I'm prepping for interviews and schmoozing with old and new friends. Not in the journalistic maelstrom known as the Sutton Place press lounge. Not when I'm tempted at every hour by yet another film. As it stands, I caught 33 films out of the TIFF08 lineup and interviewed 10 directors; my most productive film festival yet! But at Twitch, like at The Greencine Daily, everyone's wrapping up their Toronto coverage just as I'm kicking into gear. I'm far from finished writing about the films I've seen; but, to satisfy Todd's request, here are my top ten favorite films and my five least favorite, both in descending order.

Top Ten

Sugar—Most folks caught this film at Sundance and it's a testament to the film's merits that it was included in the TIFF World Cinema lineup. It was—hands down—my favorite film for being so full of heart. Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden are compassionate filmmakers who capture the dignity of marginalized communities. Their work is genuine.

JCVD—I've dismissed Jean-Claude Van Damme's career without having seen a single one of his movies, which is perhaps why I was so surprised and thoroughly entertained by this accomplished self-reverie. It reveals a depth and vulnerability behind the macho veneer that I would never have suspected. One can only hope that Van Damme is allowed the chance to flex an ability to act heretofore ignored. JCVD's upset of expectations and mediated fantasies was masterful.

L'Heure d'été (Summer Hours)—Eschewing his recent pretenses at genre films, Olivier Assayas has returned to French roots to offer a nuanced family portrait and a philosophic rumination on the contrasting role of art in personal and public spheres. As a collector of art myself and the executor of two estates, I was quite moved by concerns I've rarely seen articulated in film.

Un Barrage Contre le Pacifique (The Sea Wall)—By merely lifting an eyebrow Isabelle Huppert can make you feel 75 different conflicting emotions. Rithy Panh's political consciousness is in direct service to Marguerite Duras' anti-colonial narrative of a courageous woman resisting the inevitable waves of unjust colonization. By complicating the dynamic of inequitable power hierarchies, Panh reaffirms the value of unexpected cross-class solidarities and communal perseverance.

Waltz With Bashir—Dazzling animation serves to help distance the viewer from horrific events. The shadow of the Holocaust slants across repressed memories and haunts survivors by way of unrelenting guilt. If history—by necessity—must be engaging to demand attention, cinema affords the opportunity to remember our human failings so that we need not—hopefully—repeat them.

Tokyo Sonata—Stretching his grasp of alterities to include laugh outloud humor and a whimsical score, Kiyoshi Kurosawa successfully reveals the hope beneath apocalyptic collapse. He has broadened his range with this family melodrama and emphasized the fragility of everyday constructions. Nothing is more horrifying.

Les Plages d'Agnès (The Beaches of Agnès)—A biographical documentary as remarkable as this one underscores how remarkable a personality is Agnès Varda. Imaginative, fearless, creative, she opens herself up to reveal sandy terrains of memory. Playfully walking backwards in time while glancing askew in wind-tossed mirrors, she reminds of the reverse footage of Jean Cocteau who rendered memory and dream as a means of in-camera editing. Memory is, afterall, the best of special effects.

Revanche—This film starts as a slow burn, shifts from the urban to the rural, and becomes a psychological thriller of revenge held in abeyance. Negotiating by way of secrets, rage and grief are barely tempered. Violence smolders like sexuality beneath the skin and retribution is only one cruelty away.

35 Rhums (35 Shots of Rum)—Another exercise in abeyance and enthrallment, Claire Denis presents a straightforward and simple treatment of Ozu's Late Spring. Shades more accessible than L'Intrus, this is not her best work but it's compelling nonetheless, punctuated here and there by poetic rapture.

Che—Again, another example of cinema in service to the history lesson, essential in today's amnesiatic classroom. The first film is inspiring; the second defeating. They remind of the human qualities that make all ideologies fallible, especially revolutionary ones, which are so contingent upon the human and limited ideals they orbit.

Bottom Five

Flame & Citron—The heroism of the Danish Resistance is grafted onto these two individuals but on such a one-note basis that it's hard to feel much not being from Denmark. The film feels imitative, as if it is trying to accomplish what has already been accomplished by the cinematic treatments of Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid and Bonnie & Clyde.

Two-Legged Horse—Though there were some truly poetic moments in this film, the filmmakers forgot the most important element of poetry: economy. By turning children into metaphors of political processes, they forfeited all feeling. The repeated cruelty becomes intolerable and is never resolved. By film's end I despised both children for their half-witted co-dependency.

Under the Tree—I was quite fond of Garin Nugroho's last two films—Love and Eggs and Opera Jawa—and was hoping for a notable follow-up. Instead, I find a lateral move rendered in a shockingly dull palette and a convoluted, braided narrative. The press book was much more colorful and intelligible than the film.

Martyrs—After all the hoopla that's been made about this film on Twitch, I am reminded yet again that a little genre goes a long ways. What a boring, pretentious piece of crap. I want my two hours back. Once again, a filmmaker thinks he is pushing the envelope by amping up the blood tactics. Truth is, all of this has been done before in paintings depicting Christian martyrs flayed alive. Nothing new here. Move along.

Adam Resurrected—There's no question that surviving the Holocaust—however one must—is a commendable feat. However, directing Jeff Goldblum to channel Cesar Romero's Joker hardly intrigues and barely suffices. Schrader should bury this film in the back yard with the other dog bones. I have enough barking dogs on Bernal Heights, thank you.

Cross-published on Twitch.

DEAD CHANNELS 2008—Lineup

While scurrying up Bay Street in Toronto I was hailed by Bruce Fletcher to come join him and friends at an outdoor table to lift "twobeer"; a welcome invitation on a humid afternoon. Bruce introduced me to "Ant" Timpson, Executive Producer of Head Strong, a feature film development company out of New Zealand; Ian Rattray, the Co-Director of London's Film4 Frightfest; and James Faust, Senior Programmer for the AFI Dallas International Film Festival. After achieving a perfect buzz, we stumbled into a press screening of Sauna, but not before Bruce gave me the heads-up on the line-up for San Francisco's upcoming Dead Channels: Festival of Fantastic Film to be held October 3rd-9th, 2008 at San Francisco's Roxie Film Center and on October 9th at Oakland's Parkway Speakeasy. This year's Festival will showcase 20 feature films and 20 short films from 10 countries and it includes exclusive world premieres, cutting edge women directors, classic repertory picks, amazing animation and much more, guaranteed to blow your mind!

The Opening Night Film on Friday, October 3 at 8:00PM is Tomas Alfredson's Swedish vampire flick Let the Right One In (Låt den Rätte Komma in). Winner of the Best Narrative Feature award at the TriBeCa Film Festival and the Jury Prize for Best Film at the Fantasia Film Festival, Let the Right One In comes highly recommended by Twitch teammates Todd Brown and Ard Vijn. Todd writes: "The film is beautifully shot and anchored by very strong performances from its young leads and stands quite easily as the most compelling new entry into vampire mythos in … well, as long as I can remember. An exceptional piece of work." Ard writes: "[O]ut of all the gory movies I've ever seen, this one is without a doubt the sweetest. And out of all the sweet movies I've ever seen this one is without a doubt the goriest!"

The Closing Night Film on Thursday, October 9, 8:00PM will be Jennifer Chambers Lynch's Surveillance, produced by her father David Lynch, and starring Julia Ormond, Bill Pullman, Michael Ironside, and French Stewart. Todd announced this one at Twitch back in May along with the trailer. As Bruce explains, "Everyone is lying. Witnesses fabricate stories for two FBI agents (Ormond and Pullman) who arrive to investigate a brutal murder spree that may involve members of the corrupt local police force, headed by the legendary Michael Ironside. Jennifer Lynch's follow up to the much maligned Boxing Helena is an action-packed, clever, violent, strange and cruel, neo-noir FBI procedural thriller. It'll get under your skin."

Dead Channels will feature three world premieres, including Justin Paul Ritter's A Gothic Tale, narrated by Roddy (They Live) Piper. A Gothic Tale is a clever, horrific melting pot of three classic (and notoriously morbid) gothic tales: Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart", Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" and Robert Louis Stevenson's "Markheim". Justin Paul Ritter's follow-up to KatieBird is an over-the-top, old-school, and bone chilling night at the movies that will haunt you long after you exit the theater. Screening at the Roxie Film Center on Sunday, October 5, at 10:00PM, and Monday, October 6, 6:00PM.

David Gregory's Plague Town is the second world premiere. Gregory, producer of Jim van Bebber's The Manson Family, hits the bull's-eye with his narrative directorial debut. Plague Town is a scary, gory, freaky old-school horror movie about a family that gets lost in the rural countryside in Ireland. Fangoria's Michael Gingold offers a preview: "Even as it has become a cliché of the new horror wave for filmmakers to say that their projects aim for the spirit of '70s chillers, movies that genuinely evoke that veneer are few and far between. There's a certain vibe about the decade's drive-in fare that's hard to define and harder to capture... One new production that gets it, and gets it right, is Plague Town." Plague Town screens at the Roxie Film Center on Friday, October 3, 4:00PM and Saturday, October 4, 8:00PM.

The third world premiere is Jimmy Creamer's Reality Bleed-Through. This movie is really out there. It's an indescribable live action-animation hybrid that plunges headlong into madness, magick, mayhem, cults, pharmaceuticals and an Apocalyptic War on God. And you'll learn to love the Suicide King! The year is unknown. The government has been overthrown by a Sun-Worshipping drug cult. The environment is damaged and the Sun kills. Plagues kill millions. The end of the world will be a relief. This is Reality Bleed-Through. Black magic, psychic driving, flashbacks, harmful and subversive subliminals, hands, cut-ups, no hands, good drugs, Wars on God, deprogramming, live action, dead stasis, bizarre animation, inter-dimensional rips, death-trips, tritones, set the controls for the heart of the sun, mutilation, suicide fuck, reality cult, psychotic break, psychotic break, psychotic break. Screening Saturday, October 4, 6:00PM at the Roxie Film Center.

Dead Channels will also feature the U.S. Theatrical premiere of Nicolas Roeg's Puffball, starring Kelly Reilly, Miranda Richardson, Rita Tushingham, and Donald Sutherland. Nicolas Roeg, the legendary cinematic architect of mind-bending, sexually charged classics such as The Man Who Fell to Earth, Performance, Walkabout, Insignificance, Eureka, Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession, and Castaway finds fertile material for his unique sensibility in his latest work. Puffball, adapted from Fay Weldon's book by her son Dan, is concerned with fertility, witches, family and the Old Gods. The film also reunites Roeg with Donald Sutherland for the first time since their collaboration with Julie Christie in the masterpiece Don't Look Now. Screening Sunday, October 5, 8:00PM at San Francisco's Roxie Film Center and Thursday, October 9, 6:30PM at Oakland's Parkway Speakeasy. The trailer can be found on YouTube.

Another Dead Channels U.S. theatrical premiere is Johnny Kervorkian's The Disappeared, an intelligent suspenseful thriller starring Neil Murphy, Harry Treadaway and Tom Felton. This tragic tale of a family's loss is emotionally heart-wrenching, extremely well-acted and scary as Hell. Teenaged Matthew has lost his mind. He is directly responsible for the disappearance and probable death of his younger brother, Tom, and he can't bear the responsibility. It's cracking him apart. When Matthew returns home from the Hospital, his father Jake valiantly attempts to contain his anger; but his calm façade is beginning to crack. Then young Tom returns from the grave and he's not alone. Screening at the Roxie Film Center on Monday, October 6, 8:00PM and Thursday, October 9, 6:00PM.

As if all that isn't enough, Dead Channels will also feature four other highlights. Frank Henenlotter, the director of cult classics Brain Damage, Frankenhooker and the Basket Case trilogy, returns to the big screen with Bad Biology, a terrifically twisted tale of sex, evolution, masturbation, procreation, God and monstrous genitalia. Welcome to Frank Henenlotter's amazing world—straight up, no chaser. Screening Friday, October 3, 10:00PM at S.F.'s Roxie Film Center and Thursday, October 9, 9:15PM at Oakland's Parkway Speakeasy.

Canadian directors Darren Curtis and Pat Kiely offer up Who is KK Downey? Not long ago, the Art World was enthralled with (and scandalized by) J.T. Leroy. Now it's KK Downey's turn! This may be the funniest film of the year and particularly relevant to San Francisco audiences. Who is KK Downey? is the story of two low-rent artistes who decide to make a name for themselves. Terrance wants to be a Rock Star, while Theo dreams of publishing Truck Stop Hustler—a sordid look at the street-life of KK Downey, an abused teenaged junkie male prostitute. Screening at the Roxie Film Center on Sunday, October 5, 6:00PM and Tuesday, October 7, 6:00PM.

Yoshihiro Nishimura's Tokyo Gore Police is the most talked-about genre film of the year. Put on a bright red raincoat and brace yourself for this relentless new high-water mark for stunningly beautiful, jaw-droppingly perverted, hyper-kinetic Japanese cyber-punk carnage. Mere words can never do this justice—you have to see it to believe it. Unforgettable and beautiful set pieces litter the screen. Tokyo is burning! Set in a future-world where the police have been privatized and bitter self-mutilation is so casual that advertising is often specially geared to the "cutter" demographic, this is the story of samurai sword-wielding Ruka and her mission to avenge her father's assassination. The Tokyo Police Corporation is locked in a bloody war with the "Engineers." These unstoppable, genetically modified super-criminals can biofuse their open wounds with weapons, turning self-mutilation into a deadly combat form. Screening Saturday, October 4, 10:00PM at the Roxie Film Center. We wrote this one up earlier at The Evening Class at its Another Hole in the Head appearance. Kudos to Dead Channels for bringing it back!

John Bergin wrote, directed and animated From Inside, a darkly surrealistic, almost hallucinatory adaptation of his graphic novel of the same name. He worked for 2½ years to put his vision in motion on screen, and Dead Channels is honored to present the final result—a beautifully animated, yet often disturbing, epic post-apocalyptic science-fiction tale. Screening at the Roxie Film Center on Friday, October 3, 6:00PM and Sunday, October 5, 2:00PM.

A chill is in the air (and the snails on the move) as unrequited, obsessive love is swept up in a sea of blood. Dead Channels is delighted to present Epitaph, the internationally critically acclaimed, stunningly shot and directed, Korean box office sensation from the Jung Brothers. The year is 1942; the Korean capital of Kyung Sung is occupied by the Japanese; and the Anseng Hospital lies in the center of the city, representing the twin glories of Japanese Imperialism and Western modernization. But mysterious things are happening at the hospital: An intern, romantically drawn to a corpse, is instead bound by his parents to marry a girl whom he has never met; a traumatized little girl, the lone survivor of a horrific car crash, is tortured by bloody visions; and a married couple, who are doctors, desperately try to manage their colleagues' behaviors but find themselves investigating a series of brutal murders. As the stories unfold and secrets are revealed, the hospital and its staff descend into a dark abyss from which they may never return. Screening one night only at the Roxie Film Center on Tuesday, October 7, 8:00PM.

Dead Channels kicks off its midnight series with Ryan Nicholson's Gutterballs, a crazy throwback to 80s wanton bloody excess! Hold ON!!!! A brutally sadistic rape leads to a series of bizarre gory murders during a midnight disco bowl-a-rama at a popular bowling alley. One by one, players of two teams meet blood-drenched gruesome deaths at the hand of a black bowling-gloved masked killer. By sunrise, this alley runs red with blood. WARNING: this film is fiercely politically incorrect, gory, tasteless and often extremely hilarious. However, it may also be considered terribly offensive by the humor-impaired (and the particularly devout will recognize it as a sign of the impending End Times). Screening Friday, October 3, 11:45PM at the Roxie Film Center.

An homage to German Expressionist silent films, Karla Jean Davis's feature film debut Golgotha is the memoir of an evil sorceress's life at the top … alone. Once the most powerful sorceress of all time, age has reduced this once-feared sorceress to a sick, old woman on her deathbed. In a rare moment of candor (and humility), she confesses her life story to a goblin named Minion, the last of her loyal footservants. The story's end might be more than she bargained for. Golgotha is a reverse fairytale on a particularly expressionistic stage and a hand-crafted epic labor of love. Screening at the Roxie Film Center on Saturday, October 4, 2:00PM and Wednesday, October 8, 6:00PM.

In conjunction with Dead Channels, Cosmic Hex is offering screenings of four fantastic vintage classics. The first is Joseph Sargent's 1970 Colossus: The Forbin Project. This is the granddaddy of all computer run amok films. The film's climax is unsettling, but no more so than the actual state of world affairs in 1970. Charles Forbin designs the "first" Artificial Intelligence. Shortly after being turned on, it detects Guardian, its previously unknown Soviet counterpart. The computers insist that they be allowed to communicate. What happens when two supercomputers get together and realize just how sad is the human race that they serve? The logical conclusion, of course! The best way to defend humanity is to protect it from itself … by ruling it. Colossus: The Forbin Project will be presented in full cinemascope and blinding technicolor. Screening Sunday, October 5, 4:00PM at the Roxie Film Center.

The second is Condenados a vivir (Cutthroats Nine, 1972) by Spanish director Joaquin Luis Romero Marchent. Commonly referred to as "The Most Violent Western EVER Filmed", this incredibly hard to find film would feel more at home with the title, "Most Vicious Western." Gold hunting, double-crossing, robbing, raping, arson-loving, chain ganged criminals face off with the last vestige of law and mother nature. The superb filmmaking of this obscure 1972 exploitation film puts it head and shoulders above the rest—stop crying and run home to your mommy with your "G" Rated Fulci westerns! Screening Tuesday, October 7, 10:00PM at the Roxie Film Center.

The third is Robert Ground's 1967 Weird World of LSD. Part Drug Scare "information" façade with promises of titillating glimpses into the forbidden … part something else. It would have been utterly disappointing if this tent road show picture on the horrors of LSD had been just a clone of past reefer and cocaine exploiters. It's something else all right! Hold on for seemingly endless gratuitous scenes demonstrating how cosmic and magical the world can be on a few tabs. Drop out, but not too far—feel the green, taste the purple! Screening Saturday, October 4, 11:45PM at the Roxie Film Center.

Last but not least is Elio Petri's 10th Victim (1965) starring Marcello Mastroianni, Ursula Andress, and Elsa Martinelli. Sean Axmaker writes: "It's like Fellini gone ballistic." What happens when drugged-out '60s swingers in a totalitarian future play "The Most Dangerous Game"? Your mind could never envision the description-defying scenarios that unfold in this unclassifiable gem. A nearly impossible to find film print that almost defines "Must See!" A dark, psychedelic, scifi, comedy trip! Screening Thursday, October 9, 10:00PM at the Roxie Film Center.

So is all of this fantastic enough for you? And I haven't even mentioned the shorts programs and the Thrillpeddlers and the parties, oh my!! For starters, why not show up this Saturday, September 20, 9:00PM at the Vortex Room at 1082 Howard Street (between 6th & 7th) to witness the unveiling of the Dead Channels 2008 Festival Program? Be the first to taste and smell the 2008 programs HOT OFF THE PRESSES!

Cross-published on Twitch.

COMIC CON 2008 Panel On Indie Genre Film Goes YouTube

Back in July, The Evening Class announced the Comic Con panel on indie genre film organized by Pop Skull producer Peter Katz. The panel—moderated by Drew McWeeny "Moriarty", screenwriter and West Coast editor of AintItCoolNews—included the Dowdle Brothers (co-writers/director of The Poughkeepsie Tapes and Quarantine); Steven Schneider (producer of Paranormal Activity); Jacob Gentry and Dave Bruckner (co-writers/co-directors of The Signal); Eric Zala (director/actor) and Chris Strompolus (producer/actor) of The Raiders of the Lost Ark:The Adaptation; Adam Wingard (co-writer/director/producer of Pop Skull); and Chad Feehan (producer) and Thomas Hammock (production designer) of All the Boys Love Mandy Lane. That panel has now become available through four informative YouTube segments.









Cross-published on Twitch.

FRENCH CINEMA NOW 2008—Michael Hawley's Preview

During my absence at the Toronto International, Michael Hawley reviewed the press announcements for the San Francisco Film Society's newly-launched French Cinema Now film series on behalf of The Evening Class and reports on his findings.

* * *

The San Francisco Film Society launches its inaugural French Cinema Now series with a great big BOUM!—bookending the five-day mini-fest with the two highest-profile French films of 2008. Arnaud Desplechin's Catherine Deneuve-starring A Christmas Tale (Un conte de Noël) gets things started on October 8, and Laurent Cantet's Palme d'Or-winning The Class (Entre les murs) wraps it up on October 13. In between, Bay Area audiences will be treated to a terrific mix of recent Gallic cinema, with a few treats from the archives thrown in as well. Landmark's historic Clay Theater on Fillmore Street will play host.

French Cinema Now is an idea that's way overdue. Here in the Bay Area, where we have film festivals dedicated to every possible nationality, ethnicity and "lifestyle"—from the Armenian Film Festival to the Sex Workers Film Festival—it's absurd not to have a specialty fest dedicated to the country which (to my mind, at least) still produces overall the most vital cinema in the world. Not that we suffer a dearth of French fare. The Film Society's own eminent spring festival is always French film heavy. And our Frameline, Jewish, Arab and Mill Valley Film Festivals can always be counted on to fill in some gaps. But a lot still falls through the cracks, as anyone who longingly peruses the line-ups for New York's Rendez-Vous with French Cinema or Los Angeles' City of Lights/City of Angels festivals can attest. Hopefully, if French Cinema Now's debut is a success, next year's edition can be twice as long with twice as many films.

And what a fine debut it is, starting with the opening night film. Although it's not being officially touted as such, the screening of A Christmas Tale is the film's U.S. premiere, screening two days before its appearance at the New York Film Festival. Catherine Deneuve won a special prize at Cannes for her portrayal of a cool matriarch hosting her dysfunctional family over the holidays. The large cast includes Desplechin regulars Mathieu Amalric and Emmanuelle Devos, as well as Chiara Mastroianni, Hippolyte Giradot and personal fave Melvil Poupaud. Arnaud Desplechin himself is expected to be in San Francisco for opening night, and during the course of the festival two of his earliest works will also be screened: 1991's rarely seen Life of the Dead (La vie des morts) and 1996's My Sex Life … or How I Got into an Argument (Ma vie sexuelle).

Laurent Cantet's closing nighter The Class is a West Coast Premiere, arriving roughly two weeks after it opens this year's New York Film Festival. It was the unanimous jury choice to receive 2008's Palme d'Or, and represents the first time France has received Cannes' top honor in 20 years. Following the travails and triumphs of a multiethnic, Parisian junior high school class over the course of one year, the film is said to be an emblematic portrait of France in the 21st century. I've been a big fan of Cantet's work ever since 1999's Human Resources (Ressources humaines) (including his much maligned Heading South (Vers le sud) from 2005), and am very pleased I'll soon have the chance to catch his latest.

Another film with a Cannes prize attached is Valeria Bruni Tedeschi's Actresses (Actrices), which won a 2007 Special Jury Award in Un Certain Regard. Tedeschi co-wrote the script for this comedic drama, and stars as a 40-year-old stage actress on the verge of, if not a nervous breakdown, then a loudly ticking biological clock. Among the possible candidates for fatherhood are Mathieu Amalric and Louis Garrel, playing her director and co-actor in a production of Turgenev's "A Month in the Country." Noémie Lvovsky, who co-wrote the script, appears in a Cesar-nominated performance as the play's assistant director and Tedeschi's femme compatriot.

As much as we love to see prize-winning films with festival pedigrees, the real value of a program like French Cinema Now is the chance to see more "mainstream" French cinema—films with a smaller chance of U.S. festival and/or arthouse exposure. Two films that might fit such a category are Dany Boon's Welcome to the Sticks (Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis) and Pascal Bonitzer's Alibi (Le grand alibi). Boon's comedy carries with it one hell of a superlative—it's the most financially successful French film of all time and is soon expected to surpass Titanic as the most successful film ever released in France. The director is also the film's star, a miserable postal worker whose banishment to the cold, rainy boondocks of northern France is not what he expected. Bonitzer's Alibi is an adaptation of Agatha Christie's 1944 whodunit The Hollow, in which a group of toney guests gather at a country estate housing France's premiere firearms collection. The cast includes several actors familiar to U.S. audiences, including Miou-Miou, Lambert Wilson and once again, Valeri Bruni Tedeschi. It is hoped that Pascal Bonitzer will be in San Francisco for the screenings. And even though Alibi is being shown here for the first time in the U.S., another festival apparently has the "U.S. Premiere" bragging rights (the Film Society is billing it as a "Special Preview Presentation.")

In addition to the two older Arnaud Desplechin films, French Cinema Now has one other archival film up its sleeve, 1965's omnibus Six in Paris (Paris vu par). The half dozen New Wave directors whose contributions comprise this work are Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer, Jean Rouch, Jean Douchet and Jean-Daniel Pollet. This is one movie I didn't even know existed, and I'm very excited to be seeing it on a big screen. Finally, rounding out 2008's French Cinema Now's line-up are Benjamin Marquet's horse-racing jockey apprenticeship documentary, Lads and Jockeys, and a midnight screening of Franck Vestiel's sci-fi eco-horror film Eden Log.

So there you have it … and I think anyone would agree it's a very promising little program. The only downside is that the dates run concurrent with the final five days of the Mill Valley Film Festival. Bay Area cinephiles might have some tough choices to make in the weeks ahead, but better tough choices than no choices at all.

Cross-published on Twitch.

TIFF08—L'Heure d'été (Summer Hours)

The sermon of the inanimate is such that objects of art speak through the memories emotionally invested in them. And yet the shift of objects from daily usage to museum display via estate bequest is a transition rarely recorded in film. In their museum settings, empty vases thirst for water and flowers; paintings recall affectionate placement on the walls of homes and their daily dalliance with shifting angles of window light; artist notebooks plead not to be torn apart and auctioned off a page at a time. The circle that is the art of collecting holds its breath at being broken and then resigns itself to the cursory glances of strangers. In a surprising turnabout from the Hollywood B-movie homage of Boarding Gate, Olivier Assayas offers up in L'Heure d'été (Summer Hours) a film that feels distinctly European, unquestionably French, imbued with refined, cultured nuance. As Michael Hawley mentioned in his recent "tabulation of deprivation", along with Hou Hsiao-hsien's Flight of the Red Balloon, L'Heure d'été was commissioned to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Musée d'Orsay, where transitional scenes in the lives of these objects are administratively staged.

After siblings Adrienne (Juliette Binoche), Frédéric (Charles Berling) and Jérémie (Jérémie Rénier) return home to the countryside for their mother's (Edith Scob) 75th birthday, an unexpected event threatens family unity and forces them to face up to their past. Her passions well spent, Edith Scob—in a performance that glows with the beauty of diminishing embers—anticipates death, sadly aware that she will take with her memories, secrets and stories that no one cares to listen to anymore. She knows that her children’s lives will lead them far away from their childhood home where she has raised them; a home decorated with accumulated treasures of art: the “detritus” of a life well-lived. She has no illusions that her home will need to be sold and has prepared for this likely event by making an inventory of what is valuable and museum-worthy. More than anyone, having lived her life fully, she is aware that nothing can remain the same in order for the new to thrive. Her house of breath is dismantled—not board by board—but by one meaningful memory at a time.

Her eldest son Frédéric deems her morbid; but, she is lucid and sensible. Her daughter Adrienne (Juliette Binoche sporting a blonde wig) and youngest son Jérémie (Jérémie Rénier, looking one hundred times foxier than the addict in Le Silence de Lorna) have chosen lives that have no need for their childhood home. It is only the eldest son Frédéric who had hoped to hold onto the estate to share with his children and the film registers his initial disappointment and eventual resignation to the wishes of his siblings.

In one of the film’s final sequences, Frédéric’s daughter throws a party for her friends in the empty house, filling it with blasts of rock music, dope smoking, and drinking. Youth cannot bemoan the past; it must celebrate its passing in order to come into its own. Assayas has rendered an evocative portrait of the turning of generations and the manner in which beautiful belongings return to the world.

Cross-published on Twitch.

TIFF08—CHE

Steven Soderbergh’s two-part four-hour biopic Che doesn’t have a gorgeous Antonio Banderas complaining about all the howling hysterical sorrow over the death of Eva Peron. Nor will you see Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s band of disaffected youth rambling through Tokyo all wearing the same iconic Che t-shirt. In fact, as Twitch teammate Kurt Halfyard quipped to me during the intermission after the first two hours, he wasn’t sure he really saw Ernesto “Che” Guevara in Soderbergh’s treatment of one of the world’s most infamous revolutionary heroes. Which is to echo Amy Taubin’s assessment in her Cannes08 dispatch to Film Comment (July/August 2008, p. 55) that—as the film now stands in its festival presentation—Che is "[d]ialetically composed of a pair of nearly mirror-opposite films" that "eschews interiority, focusing instead on the processes of guerilla warfare." As an aggrandized history lesson, a primer in revolutionary philosophy, and a study of the effect of varying environment on guerilla tactics and strategies, these four hours of film sweep along engagingly and—in my estimation—quite brilliantly. Their importance should be a given; though I don’t anticipate Americans will be so generous. The revolution may never truly be televised; but, Soderbergh has done an admirable job of rendering it cinematically.

As Taubin also mentioned, Soderbergh is under pressure “to deliver something a bit more commercial (i.e., half as long)”, which accounts for her concern that this film may never be seen in the United States as we have had the chance to see it at Cannes and, now, Toronto. I elected to watch it in its full four-hour stretch and appreciate the insights that arose from that commitment.

Because I am, after all, a geographically-impaired citizen of the United States of Amnesia, I appreciate that each segment of Che commences with an old-style educational map that patiently situates the viewer in the country that is the respective locale of the film. For Part One, an outline of Cuba appears, resembling a discarded nylon, whose provinces are then delineated, along with the cities key to the Cuban Revolution, and the Sierra Maestra mountain range, whose long history of guerrilla warfare was furthered by its strategic use by Fidel Castro when he returned to Cuba after his exile in Mexico. Castro and the few other survivors from the failed attack on the Moncada Barracks hid out in the Sierra Maestra where they built and expanded the 26th of July Movement that kickstarted the revolution throughout the region. They built up guerrilla columns, and in collaboration with other groups in the central provinces, Escopeteros on the foot hills and plains, and the urban resistance, eventually overthrew Cuba’s corrupt dictator Fulgencio Batista. Che, Part One basically shows how this was done and it’s an inspiring piece of military history, the likes of which we may not see again in any immediate future.

Che, Part One has a somewhat glamorous sheen to it, partly because this phase of Che’s life is more familiar and iconicized than his later efforts in Bolivia. Authentic documentary footage is combined with recreations of Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s initial introduction to Fidel Castro in July 1955 (Fidel’s brother Raul introduced them). Their early conversations revealed and reinforced a mutual commitment to overthrowing Batista’s regime. Their revolutionary efforts systematically began in November 1956. Che’s initial capacity as a doctor and his involvement with the March of the Wounded allowed him to quickly grasp the art of guerrilla warfare. His transition from doctor to commander to revolutionary hero is graphed out in precise detail with an admirable focus on his particular compassion for the sick and the poor and his intolerance of corruption among the troops. The armed struggle of the Cuban revolutionaries is juxtaposed (often to comic effect) with Che’s later address to the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1964 (though these scenes were the first filmed before the recent major renovation of the United Nations). Delivered from the Cuban jungles to the New York press junkets, one can’t help comparing which was more arduous. Clearly it’s a question of wry degree.

In these New York sequences, largely through translated interview voiceover, Che articulates his revolutionary theories confidently. I especially enjoyed his exchange with a U.S. Senator, where Che earnestly thanked him for the Bay of Pigs Invasion, saying nothing motivates a people towards revolution better than a U.S. invasion. His assertion that love is the central tenet of revolution reminded me of Lawrence Durrell’s comment that the words evolution and revolt share the word love spelled backwards. His discussion with one journalist about whether the individual more truthfully expresses human nature is qualified by the responsibility of the individual to society. These are all the great ideas of revolutionary idealism that bear as much truth and relevance today as they did then; though their application has been complicated, if not compromised, in modern times.

This becomes the gist of Che, Part Two—the story Soderbergh really wanted to tell—and to which, in some ways, Part One is merely the glamorous contextual preface. After the success of the Cuban Revolution, and at the height of his fame and power, Che Guevera disappeared, forsaking the luxurious benefits of victory, and emerging incognito in Bolivia, primed to commandeer the Latin American Revolution. Che, Part Two is a much different animal than the first. Its palette is more bleached. Its feel more constrained. It’s not stylized with the first part’s black-and-white flashbacks and is moreorless a straightforward and tense account of the failure of Che’s revolutionary ideals in Bolivia (originally chosen by Castro as the country at the stragegic center of Latin America from which the revolution was to expand). Here the revolution is betrayed by Bolivia’s Communist party, by a terrain vastly different from that of Cuba’s, and by a people too frightened to participate in the process of their own emancipation. Its defeat is further engineered by an American government who had learned about guerrilla warfare from its experience in Vietnam.

Where Che, Part One is joyous and celebratory in its revolutionary spirit and will be a movie most people can, I imagine, like; Part Two is frustrating, sad, and ultimately tragic. It doesn’t feel good at all. It doesn’t even look as colorful as the Cuban sequence. Its palette is bleached and dry. It’s hard to watch the disillusionment of such fervent ideals and the death of the revolution’s key figures one by one. Yet the film suggests that the revolution in Bolivia achieved consciousness precisely through its failure and Che’s martyrdom assured his place as a symbol of idealism and heroism in the hearts of struggling people throughout the world.

Benicio Del Toro was awarded the Prix d'interpretation masculine (or Best Actor) for his performance, and I can’t complain about that. The role took seven years of research and Del Toro brings the expected strength and charisma one expects out of the character of Che Guevara, but he also reveals an asthmatic who survived strenuous conditions out of sheer tenacity and despite debilitating physical odds. If his performance is more iconic than nuanced, it serves the film’s purpose. The remaining cast is a veritable who’s who of Spanish and Latin-American actors. I single out Demián Bichir as the military strategist Fidel Castro; Rodrigo Santoro as Raul Castro; Unax Ugalde as “Little Cowboy”; Joaquim de Almeida as Barrientos (who I just saw the other evening in Guillermo Arriaga’s The Burning Plain); Lou Diamond Phillips as Mario Monje; Franka Polente as Tania; and Catalina Sandino Moreno as Che Guevara’s wife Aleida.

I learned a lot from watching these two films and I have to thank Steven Soderbergh for his invaluable historical contextualizations. I’m not sure anyone else could have pulled this off so genuinely.

Cross-published on Twitch.

TIFF08—L’Empreinte de l’ange

Imprinting between mother and child is elevated to thematic heights in Safy Nebbou’s L'Empreinte de l'ange (Mark of an Angel). While picking up her son at a birthday party, Elsa (Catherine Frot) finds her entire world turned upside down. Believing Lola, a little girl at the party, to be her daughter, Elsa ends up in a head-to-head confrontation with the girl's mother (Sandrine Bonnaire). Reviewing the film for The Screen Daily, Lisa Nesselson states this psychological duel "packs a punch." Watching these two accomplished actresses square off with maternal fangs bared makes for entertaining if not thoroughly believable melodrama. One key sequence where Lola nearly drowns in the family pool becomes an awkward misfire when revealed as an out-of-nowhere dream sequence. The transference of trustworthiness between the two women becomes the film’s main narrative traction and its resolution is not as surefooted as the closing walk in the park would have us believe.

Sunday’s festival edition of Screen Daily announces that Celluloid Dreams has sold L'Empreinte de l'ange to the UK (Metrodome), Greece (Odeon), Canada (Seville), and Switzerland (Xenix).

Cross-published on Twitch.