THE MAGNIFICENT TATI—The SF360 Interview With Michael House

It seems that every 10-15 years Jacques Tati is reintroduced to the American moviegoing public. The last wave was in the late '90s when the recently-restored color print of Jour de Fête (1949)—Tati's first directorial feature—traveled the art house circuit. Now with the participation of the French ministry, spanking new prints have been struck of Tati's films and a new wave is hitting American shores. Riding the crest of this most recent wave is The Magnificent Tati, an outstanding documentary biography by Michael House, which will see its U.S. premiere in San Francisco at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on Sunday, January 24, 2010, 2:00PM, with House in the house.

Along with Dennis Harvey's helpful overview of Tati's career, SF360 has optioned my interview with Michael House, which is now up at their site. As synopsized at SF360, Michael House was born in San Diego and worked as a musical composer in Los Angeles, writing music for television commercials. He migrated to San Francisco with his wife Julie roughly a month after Loma Prieta. They wanted to live in Europe but couldn't negotiate work visas so they decided that living in San Francisco would be the closest they could get to Europe within the United States. They lived in San Francisco for 12 years before moving to Paris, where they have lived for the past 10 years. House still considers himself a San Franciscan, however, and returned to San Francisco to complete the final stages of The Magnificent Tati in collaboration with Kim Aubry's ZAP Zoetrope. Aubry used to be the Head of Post Production at Zoetrope Studios and a long-time collaborator with Francis Ford Coppola. House phoned me from Paris to converse on the upcoming premiere and—to complement my piece on SF360—here are a few additional questions I put to him.

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Michael Guillén: When you were talking to Macha Makeïeff of Les Films de Mon Oncle, she expressed the archive's commitment to incorporating contemporary responses to Tati's work. While conducting my research for our interview, I was astounded by the number of artists who claim to have been influenced by Jacques Tati, including those who served your documentary The Magnificent Tati, among many others. One noticeable absence, however—and I was wondering about his exclusion from your documentary in terms of helping you find financial backing—was Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean), who has capitalized on vague associations with Jacques Tati and who, I understand, was invited to introduce Mr. Hulot's Holiday at the UK French Film Festival?

Michael House: I talked to him, yeah. But may I be honest with you? I don't feel he's much like Tati at all. Isn't that terrible? Unlike Tati, he pulls all the comedy into himself. His character Mr. Bean is still a magnet for the viewer. Even though his character Mr. Bean doesn't talk, and there's been a film made Mr. Bean's Holiday (which mimics M. Hulot's Holiday), it's a bit of a stretch—in my humble opinion—to liken him to Tati. He might say he's like Tati, and maybe he is in some way, but I don't see it and I didn't really want to put him in my documentary. I guess that sounds horrible. Also—and this might sound like I'm milking the fact that I don't have any superstars in the film—but, I didn't really want to use anybody super famous, especially a performer. At the height of his career, Tati could have put anyone in his films—he could have put Sophia Loren in his films—but, he intentionally didn't put anyone famous in his films.

I had even approached Johnny Depp's sister, his agent, about possibly appearing in the documentary and everyone was like, "Oh! If you get him, the film will be great! You've got to get him in the film!" But Tati would have probably thought Depp was a jackass. Not that I think Johnny Depp is a jackass—I admire him greatly—but I'm just trying to say that what I would call "real" artists have careers that are not based on celebrity. Rowan Atkinson wasn't that into the project, to be honest with you. He might have been willing, but not really. So I didn't use him.

Guillén: Another sequence I much admired in your film was the foley sequence filmed at the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, Chapman University where the instructor was teaching his class how Tati worked with sound to create comic effects. I'm aware that some of the students at Dodge College helped with your film. Could you speak to their involvement in your project?

House: I wouldn't say that they helped. They helped in that sequence. They helped do some of the filming, helped with the lighting, and I shot a few sequences with them; but, Dodge College became involved after Melvin Bragg backed out. I approached Dodge to see if they wanted to help finance the film. They said, sure, we'll put in some money if you involve our students and I said, "Okay. All right." They gave a little bit of money for the production—which was great at the time—and then they sent six students from L.A. to Paris for a week and I took them to the Tati archive. They got to see and touch and learn all about Tati from Macha, followed up by a tour of France to all the locations where Tati filmed. After that, Dodge dropped the ball in the production, like people do. They got what they wanted and—I'm not badmouthing Dodge—but, they were going to handle post-production of the film at their million dollar facility in L.A. That had been the idea: that the kids would get to see a little bit at the beginning when I was researching the film and then help out with the final editing and sound mix to see how the film went from inception to projection. But Dodge dropped the ball and I had to find other ways to finish the film.

Guillén: I've heard that when the time came to dismantle Tativille—which is an immensely sad story that comes across quite poignantly in your film: this loss of vision, let alone his personal resources—Tati threw the script for Playtime into the rubble. Is that true?

House: It's really hard to see him doing it but in my film there's the footage of the big buildings being pulled down with ropes and if you look down in the shadow there's a guy in a brown leather coat who you see flinging something, and that's Tati flinging the script. Marie-France Sielger, Tati's assistant, confirmed for me that it was indeed the script he was throwing into the rubble.

Guillén: Can you comment on the relationship between René Clément and Jacques Tati? I'm aware that Tati wrote and acted in René Clément's first short film Soigne ton gauche (1936) about a country boy turned boxing maestro. Then later Tati stepped in as director for Clément when he withdrew from Jour de Fête.

House: I think he did, yeah. There's a fair amount of contradiction in accounts of those early pre-WWII short films. I wouldn't swear by any of it. But it seemed that Tati and Clément worked together a lot. Clément was trying to advance himself so, of course, when something bigger came along, he took those chances. At that time Tati was a nobody and his productions were gambles.

For example, Jour de Fête—Tati's first feature—was supposed to have been directed by Clément but he got an offer to direct Au-delà des grilles [Beyond the Gates, 1949; in English distribution, The Walls of Malapaga]. He abandoned the Jour de Fête project to make this now classic French film. I don't know if he and Tati were close after that. Clément's career took off after Au-delà des grilles. They knew each other, they worked together, but they were both struggling and took the opportunities as they came. Back then, I think Clément and Tati both thought, "I'm going to take the best offer I can get."

There is so much backstory to that whole Jour de Fête project. I couldn't possibly have gone into it in my documentary; but, it's fascinating, all about the film industry within France during the Occupation. Jour de Fête, in many ways, was an attempt by the French film establishment to get into the running and into the big leagues; but, unfortunately, it didn't work out. They had the wrong film method for colorizing. A lot of people have talked about this incredible period in books, including Dave Bellos in his book, when France was struggling to reestablish itself, in more ways than just cinema.

Guillén: Roger Ebert has indicated that Clément's Forbidden Games (1952) was likewise a project encouraged by Tati, who had seen a short film of Clément's based on the same story and which Tati recommended Clément expand into a feature.

House: I don't know. I think they remained friends; but, his name faded after Jour de Fête in all my research. Tati had to put up with a lot of shit anyway with Jour de Fête. Fred Orain, the producer of Les enfants du paradis (1945), also produced Jour de Fête. He was trying to make the first French color movie. Jour de Fête was supposed to be a vehicle for that. Orain got Tati involved because he knew him from his earlier shorts. Orain was a huge and important technician in French cinema. He was feeling high from the success of Les enfants du paradis and conquering the world with that film. But then when they couldn't release Jour de Fête in color, I think there were a lot of people—Clément included—who said, "Oh fuck. Jesus Christ. All this waste. It's just black and white. It's like an old Chaplin film. Fuck it." They couldn't get Jour de Fête distributed in France. Tati took it very personally.

Almost a year after they wrapped the film, Tati took it upon himself to lie to a group of critics. He told them there was going to be a screening of a new film out in some remote venue and he lured a lot of critics there and screened Jour de Fête. They loved it! It got a Paris distribution from that bullshit session and then from there it got picked up nationally, then internationally.

Guillén: That's a wonderful story. Thanks for relaying that to me.

House: He did that a lot. He did other really crazy stuff like: he would make all the extras in his films come to the first week of the opening and he would say, "Okay. I want everyone to line up—all 50 of you—I want you to line up in front of the theater, go in, leave by the back door, and come back around to get back in line. I want people to think there's a perpetual line of people wanting to see this film." He paid them to do that. They couldn't actually go to see the film. He did that so that people driving by would think, "Oh, Tati's film is popular." I think he did that with Playtime.

Guillén: Can you speak at all to Tati's failed project with Federico Fellini: Don Quixote?

House: I've heard about that. I read a letter that Tati's secretary had written to someone, saying that Tati and Fellini were friends and that he was very interested in helping Tati with his Don Quixote project. I think it's true. I think Fellini wanted to make Don Quixote with Tati in the lead role. Tati would have been perfect visually, though they probably would have killed each other on the set; but, from what I've deduced, that rumor is fact. That was out there. They were talking about it. But by the time Tati had filmed Mon Oncle, he had lost interest in little European 16mm projects and, poor Fellini, he could only get the money to shoot his films in 16mm. It was a shame he couldn't get the money to film Don Quixote properly. Fellini, as far as I can tell, is one of the few directors that Tati ever paid attention to. He didn't go to the movies much.

Cross-published on Twitch.

NOIR CITY 8: CLEO MOORE—Magazine Rack

Of related interest: Noir City Index.

FRAMEWORK 50 (FALL 2009)—A Response to Three Cinephilias

One of the most influential conversations I had in 2009 was with Cinematheque Ontario programmer James Quandt who helped me articulate a rumbling discontent deep in my filmwriting practice, specifically with regard to what has been pegged as "the new cinephilia"; a subject Quandt had recently written about in an essay entitled "Everyone I know Is Stayin' Home: The New Cinephilia" for the Fall 2009 issue of Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media. In gist, he relayed the growing preoccupation among programmers and curators with the "in cinema experience" and the compensatory "value added" to public screenings (intended to replicate the commentaries and essays accompanying DVD releases, which a current generation of cinephiles have come to expect).

Having staged that generational distinction, I asked him where he stood with regard to the "new cinephilia" and he admitted he was conflicted and that his Framework essay was purposely poised as a polemic. He said: "I think we're all lying to ourselves that—when we analyze a film on DVD—that we act as if we've seen it and we haven't. I'm convinced of that. I give all kinds of examples in this article. Critics and film professors fool themselves when they say they can make believe watching a DVD is the same as watching a film and that the differences can be translated sufficiently. I don't think they can. It goes from subtle, embarrassing things such as the color coding of a certain film where—when I came to see the film again on screen—what I thought was white on DVD, was actually pale rose. I've had this discussion with people at work where one person said, 'That's inconsequential'; but, I'm sorry, it isn't to me. You wouldn't have an art historian do a visual analysis of a Renaissance painting from a reproduction. They would be laughed out of their profession. There are so many things they could get wrong because of the differences in reproduction. It's the same thing with cinema, as far as I'm concerned."

That comment hit a nerve with me because of the increasing tendency to offer screeners to press covering film festivals rather than arranging screenings. Though I can understand the practicality and cost-effectiveness of such a policy, I have become increasingly concerned that what I'm seeing on screener and writing about is not what audiences actually see projected. I've mollified myself by rationalizing that watching a film on screener allows me the luxury of finessing the narrative; however, at the same time, I worry that my writing has become conflated with festival promotion. Again, practically, these days that's sometimes the only way a festival publicist and a journalist can coordinate an advance preview piece on an upcoming festival. But I can feel the difference between my first year of writing on film when press screenings were still in practice and these last few years when policy has shifted to screener libraries.

Of course, no one forces a journalist to watch screeners and some even prefer doing so in the privacy of their own homes; but—as Quandt expressed (and I agree)—the "in cinema experience" is far superior and, somehow, more genuine. By way of example, when the San Francisco Film Society asked me to cover their Sundance Kabuki Screen series—which I had some interest in doing—they then advised that this would have to be done by way of screeners. Again, I understood the practicalities of that policy; but, for the first time, my enthusiasm was completely doused. It was no longer about having access to the films; it was about being denied the full experience of the films. Something felt ingenuine to me about promoting a film I had not actually seen and experienced fully in the cinema with an audience (or as Quandt puts it: "I am inclined to think we are lying or telling half-truths when we describe a film we have seen only in this way."). For that matter, I also have issues with the so-called "audience" at press screenings. Consequently, I became more attracted to cinematheques like the Pacific Film Archive and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts where I could write about a film I had watched with a "true" audience in house. Quandt's comment confirmed my decision to shift away from promotional pieces of writing to experiential pieces of writing.

Granted, that isn't always possible due to time constraints or one of a hundred other rationalizations. I still watch some films on screener; but—if I write about them—I've decided it's important to disclose the medium. That's the only way I can reconcile the tension. I also believe written experiences of films can be layered. I appreciate how Acquarello distinguishes between festival drafts—her first experience of a film—and her more burnished responses based on a second viewing. Each journalist has to find the practice that feels authentic for them.

While waiting for my ordered copy of the Frameworks issue on the new cinephilia, Girish Shambu generously forwarded me three of the essays from the volume, one being Quandt's. Much of what we discussed in our conversation is reflected in the essay and it felt good to see his polemic committed to script. There were a few additional ideas in Quandt's essay that I wanted to address.

First, is an early definition of cinephilia "in terms of personal history." That speaks to me, not only in the generational distinctions that characterize cinephilia, but in the vision that informs writing about film. Myself, I journalized about film long before I became a film journalist. I clearly recall when that practice began. I was in my late teens in Twin Falls, Idaho, reading the diaries of Anaïs Nin, which seemed to me a window into an avidly desired life of experience. She had gone to see Teinosuke Kinugasa's Jigokuman (Gate of Hell, 1953)—which was all the rage in Paris at the time—and she rushed home to her diary to describe her experience of the film; not a critique, her experience. That's when I realized that seeing a film had the potential of being life experience—not just entertainment; not just diversion; not just information—but, life experience. As a writer, going to the movies was never the same again. Writing became intimately tied to my experience of film. It has been an alternating current ever since—watching film, writing about film, reading what others have written about film. That alternating current charges my cinephilia.

Pursuing his concern that film cannot be legitimately analyzed from an easily-accessed DVD or video—"nevertheless legible (that is, consumable)"—on a computer screen, Quandt asserts eloquently: "Is the 'new cinephilia', this Netflix, YouTube grande bouffe of images in which Costa, Straub, and Baillie can be seen in Nunavut or Cappadocia and immediately discussed online with philes from afar, a miracle of 'open museum' cultural democracy or a spurious celebration of the omnivorous and inauthentic?"

I enjoyed his further elucidation of the "in cinema experience": "The phrase 'in cinema experience' has recently entered the discourse of film curation—to differentiate traditional filmgoing from gallery and installation presentation of 'moving image' works, videotheques, etc.—a marker of the rapid move of cinema's realm from the social and ceremonial to the insular and domestic, the analogue to the digital, the hard-won to the easily accessible." Quandt observes that some archivists argue that the very phrase "in cinema experience" provides "the last hope … of restoring an 'aura' around film, and thereby fostering a traditional kind of cinephilia."

That phrase "aura around film" is particularly intriguing. Quandt situates it as a "venerable Benjaminian notion", along with "authenticity", which—once approached—leads to "the realm of the ineffable" where "weight, solidity, grain, clarity, the there-ness of images are all difficult qualities to describe."

Finally, Quandt writes: "Suggesting that technology and aesthetics increasingly exist in inverse proportion, the advance of one diminishing the urgency of the other, Tsai [Ming-liang] recently said: 'I am not happy about the whole DVD medium, in fact. The quality of film experience is crashing. People are now satisfied just watching a film to find out what the story is. The experience is almost being reduced to a kind of information gathering. What is going on? Who is it? My films are really for the big screen only.' "

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In Adrian Martin's essay "Cinephilia As War Machine", he defines cinephiles as "a band of outsiders, a band apart—or they are nothing." He stresses: "Cinephilia is a motivating, and mobilizing, passion. Cinephilia is always about thought, always about theory, always about criticism. If it's not about those things, it's just a load of nonsense about devising best-film lists and seeing six thousand movies."

With "Best of the Decade" lists swamping the Internet, I have to take Girish's argument that the most valuable and productive purpose of end-of-the-year and end-of-the-decade list making is "to spark conversation and debate" with a necessary grain of salt, even as I trust his affirmation that "such a list isn't merely a casual inventory of movies, a trivial exercise: it's a public and visible move in the political/cultural wars around exactly what cinema is worth taking seriously and why. For anyone seriously interested in cinema, this is an important subject." I guess it depends on which list you choose, which in turn might necessitate a List of Lists? At The Auteurs Daily, David Hudson has been tackling that one quite competently. He's up to his eighth entry on the subject. Admittedly, I admire his competency more than the lists. Fortunately, I avoided a Best of the Decade list because I have only been officially writing about film for five years. I've refused several requests to participate in others' lists, but must be honest and say that I miss my list of the 10 best drawings by Girish Shambu because—in this last year—he's had other things on his mind than doodling. Sigh. Now I'm feeling inclined to draft a list of the 10 things I regret most about lists. Enough.

Returning to Martin's essay, I was particularly intrigued by his notion that cinephilia should contain a certain soulfulness or—more accurately—is soulfulness. Though the seat of the soul has been in debate for millennia, I'm willing to accept that soulfulness "in the sense that it animates, in a lively way, a whole tradition or shared network of assumptions and feelings about cinema" can be a working equation for cinephilia. Echoing some of Girish's sentiments about the value of lists, Martin references Serge Daney who, he says, "knew that the war machine of cinephilia was sometimes about, precisely, taste: not good taste, not cultivation or sophistication, not a canon of films—but a war over what is to be seen, what must be seen, and even more, what we can get to say in public about what we have seen. And that war is never over."

Which leads me to wonder about the politics of taste, since wars always seem to revolve around politics. The Evening Class was encouraged by an argument in the Movies Conference on The WELL with a woman who complained about my queer readings of film. She didn't want to read what I had to say. Of course, she never had to read what I had to say; but, that wasn't the point. The point was she was trying to stifle my perspective. It was a point as sharp as a tack and convinced me of how important it was to—as Adrian puts it—say in public what I have seen; i.e., my subjective specularity, which is about as political as it gets. So I've gone public with The Evening Class and—over time—have become grateful to her inspirational irritation.

As time goes along, I find my taste compelled towards films from the Global South, independent filmmakers who are self-distributing, or—in essence—any film that isn't being pumped out and promoted through the studio system. Why write about a film that five thousand other bloggers are writing about? As Mark Peranson has opined in the current issue of Cinema Scope: "A film that most people have heard of is by its very nature less interesting than a film that only a few programmers or critics have seen." I've decided that if I have to watch screeners, they'd best be of obscure films that I might otherwise never have the opportunity to see.

* * *

Finally, Girish Shambu's essay "What Is Being Fought For by Today's Cinephilia(s)" borders on the controversial for being so affirmative of the "new cinephilia". He admits that from its beginnings, his cinephilia "always existed in a context, a landscape, that included two key technologies: Internet and DVD/video, both of which play a central role in my cinephilic practice." Without question his site has been on the cutting edge of the new cinephilia for years. Blogathons started there and much much discourse over the years. His is an appropriate counter-argument to Quandt's.

The succinct and beautiful definition of cinephilia that Girish prefers comes from Antoine de Baecque and Thierry Frémaux: cinephilia is "life organized around films." Anaïs helped me intuit the life within films and—since my retirement—my life has certainly been organized around film, more than I ever imagined possible. Like myself, Girish's cinephilia is charged by the alternating current of watching film and the written record of film. He writes: "So, what is today's Internet cinephilia fighting for? I would propose: it is fighting to build bridges between zones previously kept apart—thus, for example, a given social network of cinephile blogs that values both commercial and avant-garde cinema; Hollywood and world cinema; older and newer films; and so on."

Girish continues: "What should today's Internet cinephilia be fighting for? I would propose: aiming not only to concurrently embrace and engage every kind of cinema, but finding a place for, valuing, and encouraging multiple modes of discourse. By this I mean three distinct groups—professional critics, academics, and 'amateur' cinephiles—that are part of the same blog network, forming a 'learning community,' each group bringing something unique and essential to the conversation."

Nowhere is that more apparent than on his own site.

PSIFF10: BELGIAN CINEMA—Meisjes / The Over the Hill Band (2009)

Sid:"We'll be known as The Over the Hill Band. …Believe me, that's a real young-sounding name."

Claire: "When I look in the mirror, I wonder who the old bat is that I can see. Because underneath this old skin, I'm still 17. That's how I feel."

Meisjes (Dutch for "girlfriends"; "The Over the Hill Band" in English distribution) arrives for its U.S. premiere at the 2010 Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) as a celebrated World Cinema Now Gala Screening, with director Geoffrey Enthoven expected to attend, along with actors Jan van Looveren, Marilou Mermans, and Lea Couzin. Along with My Queen Karo, Altiplano and The Misfortunates (Belgium's official submission to the Oscars® foreign language category), Meisjes rounds up a record-breaking quartet of Flemish productions featured this year at PSIFF.

Meisjes first played at the Montreal World Film Festival, had its international premiere at Germany's Internationales Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg (IFFMH), and won the Grand Prix Hydro-Québec at the 28th International Film Festival of Abitibi-Témiscamingue.

Recently-widowed septuagenarian Claire (in an anchoring performance by Marilou Mermans) seeks to redress issues with her two sons, which have lingered unresolved while her husband was alive. Though her son Michel (Lucas van den Eynde) is a successful businessman, her other son Alexander—who prefers to be called Sid (Jan van Looveren)—is a failed and frustrated musician who blames part of his failure on the lack of parental support, which he accuses all went to Michel. Admitting to herself that Sid was the child she loved most "in her gut", but that she had indeed paid more attention to Michel out of guilt-driven compensation to hide the fact, Claire elects to use the last of her economic resources and her remaining years to support Sid's musical quest; to finally grant him his long overdue share of affection. Recalling her teenage years singing in a band with her girlfriends Magda (Lea Couzin) and Lutgard (Lut Tomsin) as "The Sisters of Love", Claire strategizes that as backup singers they can help Sid form a band. She convinces Magda and Lutgard to come out of retirement and Sid reluctantly agrees to join his mother and her crazy friends because he needs the money. But he does set one condition … they will play his kind of music.

Hailed as a "sassy social comedy" in the tradition of last year's Moscow, Belgium and playing like a combination of Calendar Girls and Young at Heart, Variety reviewer Boyd van Hoeij nonetheless saddles the film with accusations of predictability and crowd pleasing, which raises the inevitable question: who are movies for? Especially at a film festival? Are they for the critics or the audiences? Or more accurately—since they are surely for both, as both have vested interests in the festival-event—whose reaction is most appropriate? Can that breach even be gauged? I'm reminded of that lyric in Stephen Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along where a producer protestingly sings: "What's wrong with letting them tap their toes a bit?!"

Critically, perhaps, there is always something wrong with predictability; but, audiences ain't critics and sometimes their anticipation of the mainstream offsets the erosive demands of the auteurial, especially at a film festival. As Maurie Alioff pegs it at Northernstars, Meisjes is mainstream fare, but also "the kind of movie festivalgoers embrace for its feel good vibe." Writing for the Montreal Gazette, John Griffin describes Meisjes as "funny, ribald, touching and inspirational comedy" and advises: "Take your pointers where you may, but this genuinely appealing tale does suggest that life is short. Live every day to the max." After receiving a standing ovation at the 28th International Film Festival of Abitibi-Témiscamingue, the jury lauded the film for its "clear style and ability to subtly narrate a serene view on death."

And so, yes, as much as I esteem my Variety colleague Boyd van Hoeij, I rabble with the crowd on this one and recommend this predictable crowdpleaser. One has to wonder how much guilty pleasure is enfolded within the predictable? From its opening sequence when Claire's husband chides her for humming to herself, I knew immediately that his demise was imminent and that his death was somehow going to be a good thing, relieving Claire of the repressive pressure of his attitude towards life so that she can finally rediscover hers. Wasn't it her husband after all who found no worth in her son Sid's musical ambitions? By recognizing their mutual love for music, Claire and Sid "grow predictably closer", but not without permutations both subtle and poignant.

Indeed, Meisjes contains more poignancy than von Hoeij gives it credit. The film effectively questions the traditional patterns of wives giving up their lives and dreams for their husbands. It stares unflinchingly at the encroaching sunset of old age and death. Watching Claire come to the realization of how she has unfairly treated her son Sid—and then observing how she gradually "loses her marbles" and experiences "butterflies in her head"—are heartfelt jewels within the narrative setting. The film's final ruffle-edged photographic image of The Sisters of Love in their youthful heyday serves as a wistful reminder of the fugacity of all human beings and how—to honor Blake—one must kiss the joy as it flies.

So, sure, just as von Hoeij complains, before you can say "predictable plot twist" the Sisters of Love are reinvented as the Over the Hill Band with a playlist that ranges from Eurohouse anthem "Pump Up the Jam" to a pimped-out version of Wallace Collection's "Daydream". It's a sure-fire set-up; but, I have to say I couldn't help but laugh watching these elderly women get back in touch with their inner vixen. The film's closing sequence is a thought-provoking blend between senile and cinematic fantasies, in line with Rob Marshall's trenchant staging of musical numbers as compensatory interiorized enactments.

Jan van Looveren negotiates a difficult arc from an initially wholly unattractive and unlikeable Sid to the kid you can't help but like. Lut Tomsin also deserves a shout-out as the crotchety youth choir-director who learns to get a buzz off the bass. In one especially hilarious sequence she drolly mouths the lyrics to sexually suggestive hiphop while filling her shopping basket with rap CDs. She has a touch of Lily Tomlin (who should surely play the role if there's a U.S. remake). And the mirthful, fun-spirited Lea Couzin earns a point for defending Jacques Brel as God. Look for a brief cameo appearance by Greg Timmermans as the funeral priest. Timmermans was last seen at PSIFF in the popular offering Ben X.

In summary, Meisjes is nothing new, but its predictability is precisely what constitutes its fun. My only concern is that the senior demographic at Palm Springs might become a bit unruly after watching this film. Juniors beware!

[Disclaimer: Reviewed from screener.]

Cross-published on Twitch.

MEXICAN CINEMA—Backyard (El Traspatio, 2009)

"The voice of the woman is a reflection of her condition on Earth. Air echoes in a chest that is smaller, vibrates vocal cords that are smaller and that produce a higher, thinner sound. It requires twice the energy, twice the intensity of a man's voice to be heard. This is why I learned to shout for those who couldn't ... and to cry so many times for and with so many women, girls and boys whose voices and whose lives have been crushed by the impunity of our state and our nation."—Esther Chavez.

As detailed in the press book for Carlos Carerra's most recent feature Backyard (El Traspatio), the film's narrative is based on actual events that took place in 1996 in Ciudad Juárez: a Mexican border city sustained by American-owned factories, or maquiladoras, that sprang up on the Mexican side of the border after the NAFTA agreement went into effect. "1996 was the year when people on both sides of the border began to grow accustomed to the fact that every month or every week in Juárez, a young woman would turn up dead. The screenplay was written in the year 2001 as the murders continued: three or four bodies appeared like clockwork every month, while the author [Sabina Berman] was writing her screenplay in the local Holiday Inn. Backyard was filmed on location in 2008, when each week murdered women continued to appear—in keeping with what is now a local Juárez custom."

As Diana Sanchez specified in her program capsule for the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival (where Backyard saw its international premiere in the Contemporary World Cinema sidebar): "This ongoing tragedy remains a painful stain on Mexican history and has been the subject of numerous films, articles and books", including the 2006 Jennifer Lopez vehicle Bordertown and Lourdes Portillo's 2001 documentary Señorita extraviada (Missing Young Woman), in which Portillo sought to give voice to the many victims and to understand how these awful crimes could take place. In her onstage interview with Variety critic John Anderson at the 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival, Portillo detailed the death threats she received after making Señorita extraviada and the debilitating effect it had on her.

Similar threats were levied at the cast and crew of Backyard, as outlined in Guy Adam's report to The Independent: "Last year, the makers of … El Traspatio (The Backyard) reported that an actress from Ciudad Juárez, where they were shooting, had found a slaughtered lamb on her doorstep, with a death threat pinned to it. She was replaced, for her own safety. Several other crew members on the film, about local drug murders, reported receiving sinister anonymous phone calls." Carrera's crew shot their film surrounded by two bands of armed men. One of these rings was formed by agents from the government Division of Investigation Specializing in Organized Crime (SIEDO), the other by soldiers with rifles. Two police commanders assigned to security duty were slain and a third had to flee in fear of her life. Although the governments of Juárez and Mexico ultimately decided to provide protection to Carrera and his film crew, they first tried to dissuade Carrera from the project, hoping he would instead shoot a romantic comedy in Cancun; but, Carrera and Berman remained committed to the subject of femicide in Juárez. As reported by Tracy Wilkinson to the Los Angeles Times, "Local government officials do not come off well in the film, having often preferred to downplay the murders of easily replaced female factory workers in order to prop up business interests."

Perhaps best known for El crimen del Padre Amaro (2002), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Carlos Carrera is expected to attend Backyard's screening at the 2010 Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF), where it has been included in PSIFF's Modern Masters sidebar. Backyard is likewise Mexico's entry this year in the Academy Awards® foreign-language film category.

As Diana Sanchez has written: "Presented as a fiction, Carrera's film is all the more moving given that the events he recounts are based on true stories and touch upon the various theories that have been put forward as to the cause of the murders. Hypotheses range from a serial killer, to drug cartels, to the more abstract pains of globalization, and it is easy to see how any of these factors could be at work in this Mexican town, which is a backyard to El Paso, Texas. Through his film, Carrera is able to denounce culprits who have never been brought to justice. However, the most devastating truth he illuminates is that these murders continue to happen because they have become commonplace. Today, some men kill women in Ciudad Juárez simply because they can."

The topic of femicide is unquestionably important and Backyard aims its statistics of sex-related murders from other Mexican cities and other South American countries with stern verve, pointedly wrapping up with sobering statistics from New York City where 3,200 murders of women remain unsolved. A worldwide issue, femicide is clearly not exclusive to Juárez; yet—though conceding the necessity of keeping the issue in public focus to counter its statistical frequency—I have mixed feelings about Backyard. Though it has high production values, with a strong turn by Ana de la Reguera in the lead role of Police Captain Blanca Bravo, I have substantive concerns with Berman's script which—though it informs through dramatization—offers questionable solutions, primarily through a revenge scenario towards film's end that has been both applauded and deplored by audiences. Though Berman has defended her scriptural choice as morally unambiguous, it remains excessively dramatic and—oddly enough—counterproductive. As Marilyn Ferdinand opines at Ferdy on Films, the dramatic violence of the subject scene provides the audience cathartic relief from their frustration but possibly sends them home "without really taking the message of the film to heart." In this instance, cathartic release falls far short of viable solutions. It's too easy to kill the killer and be done with it. Not to say that Berman should pretend she has solutions, but at the same time she shouldn't really defuse their absence through compounded violence. Acknowledging that the wall of indifference and denial in Mexican society is a horrible problem, there's a defeatist edge to Berman's vision: "We can't solve it," she said to the L.A. Times, "let's change the subject." I'm not criticizing her defeatism. I think it's a healthy and honest response. I'm not so sure, however, about her dramatized solutions which offer false remedy.

Ferdinand does a solid job of synopsizing Berman's narrative and endorsing the "important message of this grave film", even as she stages a cogent complaint that despite Carrera's disclaimer that Backyard is not intended as "entertainment" certain "touches—particularly the attractive lady detective in the Law & Order mold—are right out of the Hollywood play book." Ferdinand's concern that reviews that read and critique Backyard as a thriller "underplay or ignore its message—a rather chilling commentary on how even the most hideous violence against women has so completely infiltrated the entertainment industry." Again, no solutions appear ready to present themselves. For now, a sober eye on the information is in order.

Cross-published on Twitch.

RABIA (2009)

Sebastián Cordero's third film Rabia is a romantic thriller about José María (Gustavo Sánchez Parra), a construction worker on the run for killing his foreman who hides in the mansion where his girlfriend Rosa (Martina García) works as a housekeeper. Rabia had its World Premiere in the Contemporary World Cinema program at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival, where Diana Sanchez wrote in her program capsule: "Rabia is an incisive commentary on the frustration of Latin Americans living in Spain. Victims of racism and paternalism, they must endure humiliation in order to keep their jobs, send money home and attain a better future. Often robbed of dignity, many are forced to live like José María—hidden, the unwanted other in Spanish daily life." Rabia now boasts its US premiere at the 2010 Palm Springs International Film Festival.

Cordero adapted his script for Rabia from the eponymous novel by Argentine writer Sergio Bizzio (whose short story "Cinismo" was the basis for the 2007 film XXY). In his Director's Statement, Cordero explained: "The 'rage' in Rabia alludes to José María's growing fury at being denied something basic: respect, love, a family. He rebels by hiding, becoming invisible. José María thinks this is his only option, but his situation is contradictory and hopeless, because ultimately he doesn't want to disappear."

I am in complete agreement, however, with Howard Feinstein at Screen Daily who observed that, unfortunately, even with Guillermo Del Toro's imprimatur, Rabia comes off as a "thin thriller". Feinstein pointedly criticized that Rabia's "promotion as a commentary on the ill treatment of Latin American immigrants working in Spain is a ruse that goes nowhere." Final analysis? "The rats living with José Maria in the attic are more energized."

Cross-published on Twitch.

LISTS 2009—My 10 Favorite Interviews

I always count my blessings this time of year, especially because I consider intelligent conversation one of the greatest gifts life offers the discriminating adult. It still amazes me somewhat that I get the chance to talk to so many of the incredible luminaries behind and in front of the lens that create the films that affect me so much in the dark. Here are my 10 favorites for 2009.

Adam Sekuler and the folks at Northwest Film Forum walked their talk and helped distribute Lisandro Alonso's Liverpool throughout the U.S. this year. The highlight of that distribution strategy was a retrospective held in Seattle at Northwest Film Forum where each of Alonso's films were shown with the director in attendance to finesse each of his projects. Lisandro is a highly likeable and accessible individual and it was such a pleasure to spend days with him talking about his movies in an informal setting. The fact that he's going to take a hiatus before launching into his next film made this opportunity to ask him a few more questions all the more poignant.

Susan Oxtoby at the Pacific Film Archive has been a great friend to me this year, offering interviews that I might not have sought out myself. I was highly flattered when she asked me to speak with avant-garde filmmaker Robert Beavers on the occasion of Beavers' rarely-screened film cycle Winged Distance Sightless Measure. As someone who knows very little about avant-garde cinema, this was a great opportunity to take a look at one of the most accomplished and lyric filmmakers within that tradition. Not only did I learn more about avant-garde cinema but walked away feeling that I had befriended a great soul and a consummate artist. Over the space of two weeks, I asked several questions, and cobbled these together with a languorous dinner conversation, compiling parts one and two of our conversation.

Turner Classic Movies has likewise been most fair to me over the years. This year they offered me the opportunity to speak with one of Hollywood's elder statesmen, Ernie Borgnine, whose enthusiasm was boundless as we reminisced on the stars of Hollywood's yesteryear.

Kirby Dick has always been a hardhitting documentarian with an unflappable sense of integrity. I admire his work very much. Outrage—his fierce documentary on closeted public officials causing harm to their brethren—spoke to my personal experience and it was a great honor to thank him for his efforts and to be invited to contribute to the film's DVD release.

I've teased Aaron Hillis about his tongue-in-cheek lament that he has interviewed all his favorite auteurs, sometimes twice, if not three times. Who's left? Such a concern, eh? I'm happy to say that there are still so many auteurs left for me to talk to even on a first go-round, and Bruno Dumont was this year's auteurial privilege. Handsome, stern, and deliciously provocative, I'm grateful to Danny Kasman at The Auteurs for optioning my conversation with Dumont.

The Wind Journeys was predictably chosen as Colombia's Oscar® submission this year; but, the Oscar I would have preferred would have been Oscar "Papeto" Ruiz Navia, who along with his actors Rodrigo Vélez and Arnobio Salazar Rivas sat down at the Toronto International to speak with me about Crab Trap, one of those quiet movies that has stayed with me throughout the year. Oscar was about as adorable as a director can get; a big kid making small movies of large dimension.

In another life—had I only applied myself—I might have been like Chon Noriega. One of the minds I most respect in Chicano studies, along with Amalia Mesa-Bains, I was delighted when Turner Classic Movies invited Noriega to host their annual "Race and Hollywood" series, which this year focused on Latino images in Hollywood film. They made a dream come true in finally providing the opportunity for me to converse with one of my admitted mentors.

As mentioned previously, Susan Oxtoby at Pacific Film Archive has been one of my champions this year, offering not only the chance to speak with Robert Beavers, but also the immensely articulate James Quandt, programmer for Cinematheque Ontario, who was in the Bay Area celebrating Nagisa Oshima. With informed candor, our conversation was one of the richest and most influential this year, parts one and two.

Speaking of auteurs, I have long wanted to talk to Portuguese director João Pedro Rodrigues and—on the occasion of the North American premiere of To Die Like A Man at the Toronto International—I was given that opportunity, along with his actor Alexander David. His is queer artistry at its most visionary. He has a deep husky laugh that I could listen to for hours.

Finally, this was the year that Dina Iordanova invited me to contribute an essay to their ongoing Film Festival Yearbook series. With diasporic cinema and diasporic channels as a form of distribution serving as a guideline, I pursued conversations with several Bay Area programmers whose efforts have addressed their diasporic constituencies; but, my favorites were with Nancy Fishman for the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (timely, since she has since moved on), Ivan Jagirdar and Anuj Vaidya for 3rd I, and Chi-hui Yang for the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. Not only did these conversations provide insight into the behind-the-scenes workings of their respective festivals, but emphasized a collaborative ethos in the Bay Area among our community-based film festivals. Along with the theme of diasporic cinema, they indulged my interest in the spectacular dimension of their festivals, as well as the problematic issue of press tiering in the Bay Area (which is for a later entry).

Here's to 2010 and the conversations to come!