CineMedusa

Movie Reviews

by Mara Math

San Francisco International Film Festival

Reviews by Mara Math

At the press conference for the opening of the San Francisco International Film Festival, new executive director Graham Leggat appeared surprisingly surprised to be asked why there were proportionally so few women directors in this 49th year of the festival. His response to journalist Kathleen Wilkinson's challenge has created quite a buzz.

First came a somewhat panicked nitpicking: Leggat pointed out that there were 13 and not 12 women, as Wilkinson had counted, in one particular category, because one film had a woman co-director—and he chided Wilkinson for not giving a female co-director her proper due. This was followed with ahistorical loftiness, as Leggat assured the room that quality had been the only consideration in film selection. While this is surely true in the technical sense, the notion of an a-cultural bias-free gold standard of "quality" was an unfortunately anachronistic defense, especially when delivered in multicultural San Francisco by a white middle-class male. (After all, isn't that notion of a universal "quality" how we got a literary canon devoid for centuries of female and black authors?) And finally, as Wilkinson attempted to respond, Leggat cut her off and dismissed her with the condescending instruction not to belabor the point.

Oy.

Despite this inauspicious opening, the 49th SFIFF promises to be an exciting one. How much of the nearly dizzying array on offer will prove to be smoke and mirrors—figuratively, as with the hideously unusable "experimental" Table of Contents in the program guide, or nearly literally, with 200-ft slide projections of Tilda Swinton on City Hall—remains to be seen, but it's well worth investigating: More, and more varied, venues are utilized this year, including a San Francisco Fire Station and queer bar El Rio. Swinton gives the 2006 State of the Cinema Address. Awards programs feature, respectively, directors Werner Herzog, Guy Maddin, and Jean-Claude Carriere, as well as actor/director Ed Harris. Panels coordinated by sf360 will discuss new media, film as a tool for social and political change, and what new technology and new platforms may mean for film; a special seminar with Norwegian director Bent Hamer will discuss translating literature to film. Judy Stone (Not Quite a Memoir: Of Films, Books, The World) , John Anderson and Laura Kim (I Wake Up Screening), and Will Shank and Jim van Buskirk (Celluloid San Francisco: The Film Lover's Guide to Bay Area Movie Locations) will read from and sign their books.

This year's 237 films, culled from over 4,000 entries, represent 56 countries and a wide range of abilities and views. As always, with this range of film, picking tickets can be a gamble, so here's some help with the luck of the draw:

Don't-Miss Documentaries

Al Franken: God Spoke. The latest from the respected directorial duo of Chris Hegedus and Nick Doob (The War Room, Down From the Mountain) reminds us that politics can be fun. The film follows writer/satirist Al Franken, a Saturday Night Live alum, on tour with his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. As the tour progresses and progressive radio network Air America takes off with Franken as co-host, viewers get a front-row seat as Franken skewers Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Ann Coulter (the last radiating true snake-evil in humanoid form).

The Dignity of the Nobodies. The second in director Fernando Solanas's trilogy on the collapse of Argentina, The Dignity of the Nobodies is profoundly moving. Interspersed with footage where the police are caught on tape murdering innocent demonstrators, a dozen or so individuals tell their stories. Left stranded as their nation and their banks are looted by corporations and the IMF, these "nobodies" organize to help each other stay alive, with soups kitchens, grassroots schools, and prescription swaps; they march demanding "work, not handouts." Particularly impressive are the women farmers who manage to halt farm auctions, not unlike the collective response of Depression-era farmers in this country.

Favela Rising documents the successful efforts of Anderson Sa and his Grupo Cultural AfroReggae to turn young men away from gang life in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. As affecting as the film is, it's peculiar to see a transformative social movement that includes no women. American filmmakers Jeff Zimbalist and Matt Mochray give screen time to only three women: Sa's mother, godmother, and fiancee, and only the fiancee even gets a name title.

Heart of the Game. Ward Serris originally intended this documentary as a portrait of Bill Reisler, a tax professor whose unorthodox coaching and game strategies led the Roosevelt High School Roughriders to their first victorious seasons.Three years in, Serris and Reisler realize they're bearing fortunate witness to the rise of a "basketball genius," Darnellia Russell—one of the few black students at Roosevelt and the only one on the team. Narrator lines such as "Darnellia had problems because she was uncomfortable being around so many white people" reveal unwitting bias, but Darnellia's struggles shed some light on gender and class, and even the non-sportsminded will find the film gripping.

Smiling in a War Zone . My favorite doc this year, Smiling in a War Zone is a lively, playful and intelligent account of feminism in action. Danish pilot Simone Aaberg Kaern and her partner Magnus Bejmar directed the story of their challenging and sometimes dangerous three-month flight —in Simone's tiny 1961 Piper Colt plane— from Copenhagen to Kabul. Kaern undertook the flight to support an Afghani girl who had told a reporter she wanted to be a fighter pilot; by the trip's conclusion, she is taking a hard look at her own motives and culture.

Who Killed the Electric Car? Possibly the best mystery in the 2006 Festival, albeit a non-fiction one. Wouldn't you think that when customers adore a product so deeply that they are willing to get arrested committing civil disobedience on its behalf, the manufacturer would be happy? And increase supply? Director Chris Paine tracks the disappearance of GM's beloved electric car, the EV-1 of the 1990s, even hiring a helicopter to find the hidden graveyard, and delineates well the factors involved in its fate and those of its electric contemporaries.

Must-See Narratives

Half Nelson depicts, with originality and subtlety, the spiky friendship (non-sexual) that develops between an idealistic, messed-up young white teacher and his black 13-year old student. Ryan Gosling excels in his best role yet, and he is well-matched by the amazing Shareeka Epps, a first-timer with incredible screen presence more than sufficient to hold her own. Though the sport does not appear, the title refers to a hold in which a wrestler appears to partially embrace an opponent while forcing the opponent down; Dan and Drey indeed clutch at the possibility—-or illusion—of redemption they see in each other as if drowning.

One Long Winter Without Fire . In this sensitive examination of grief and mourning, Jean and his wife Laura are left emotionally and economically stranded by the fire which killed their daughter and destroyed their farm in the Swiss mountains. Laura retreats to her creepily possessive sister and then into a breakdown, while Jean must take work in a factory, where he finds kindred spirits in a Kosovan sister and brother also suffering loss and dislocation.

This year's Festival revisits the Algerian-French conflict with the promising trio of films I Saw Ben Barka Get Killed. The Betrayal, and October 17, 1961, Seeds of Doubt could be considered the fourth in the series.

Seeds of Doubt opens with Algerian-born Tarik playing the boogeyman for his young son—a role he will soon reprise unwillingly in German society. In response to an anti-Islam dinner-party diatribe, Tarik allows himself one jibe, and for that becomes an officially suspected terrorist. An epidemiologist specializing in plagues, Tarik soon finds himself powerless against the less tangible epidemic of post-9/11 paranoia infecting his German neighbors, colleagues—and wife. Since Tarik has some significant secrets from Maya, we begin wondering, too. It's worth noting that a more exact translation of the Swiss title is "Consequential Damage."

House of Sand. Ravishingly photographed, with every frame elegantly composed, this may be the most beautiful film in this year's lineup. In 1910 Brazil, a city-dwelling mother and her pregnant daughter (real-life mother and daughter actors Fernanda Montegro and Fernanda Torres) are stranded in the starkly beautiful, extremely isolated Marnhao region, and must build a new kind of life during their essentially captive three decades there. Unfortunately, writer/director Andrucha Waddington's male perspective has the three generations of women relate only to men and never to any of the referenced-but-never-seen other women, but this one is still well worth seeing.

YMMV: Your mileage may vary:

Brothers of the Head. Loosely based on a Brian Aldiss novel, this semi-satirical mockumentary follows conjoined teenage twins in mid-60's Britain, who are set up in a band for novelty value before they can even play music. They become a pop then punk/glam rock phenomenon, exploited in ever new ways, before crashing from the heights and into near-melodrama as the film ends more abruptly than any real doc would. Fine performances from real-life brothers Harry and Luke Treadaway anchor the film, but all of the acting is top-notch. Score by Clive Langer.

Eden. What begins as an acutely observed comedy of manners detours briefly into slapstick, then reverses into heartfelt drama before a fatal swerve into melodrama. As a fat lonely chef specializing in cucina erotica , Josef Ostendorf's delicately nuanced performance is a marvel, but director Michael Hofman's fine eye is offset by a tin ear. Hofman is not above using a dog for sweet comic relief—and then expecting viewers to remain sympathetic to a character revealed to have once killed and cooked a dog. And in Eden's contrivance-heavy world, restaurants don't carry insurance, famous chefs can't get bank loans, and juries have never heard of self-defense.

Iraq in Fragments. Three linked shorts open a window on the ancillary effects, the collateral damage, of the U.S. occupation: the heartbreaking tale of an 11-year old boy emotionally abused by his boss; a somewhat repetitious look at how Saddam Hussein's fascism is being replaced by theocratic fascism; and an often lyrical account of an eager young student forced to abandon school for farm work. It's a shame that filmmaker James Longley doesn't trust his material to speak for itself, or the audience to get it, and so 'hots it up" with jittery, frenetic camera work reminiscent of primitive MTV, and an overbearing score.

Perhaps Love. is such a derivative pastiche that one reviewer left the press screening loudly muttering, "Bits and pieces! Bits and pieces, that's all it was, bits and pieces!" Yes, Perhaps Love borrows—poorly—from Moulin Rouge, and others, but this Chinese tale of a decade-long love triangle does offer certain pleasures: gorgeous cinematography, good acting, and intriguing layering in this film-within-a-film-possibly-within-a-film. When press notes are as necessary as they are here, however (for instance, you'll want to know that the top-hatted fellow is a free-floating Muse), it's an indication that the film is deeply flawed.

Prairie Home Companion. As the Brits say, "It's the sort of thing you'd like, if you like that sort of thing." With his popular program "Prairie Home Companion," Garrison Keillor has become the Ralph Lauren (nee Ralph Lifshitz) of radio, selling us nostalgia for a past that never quite was, and director Robert Altman attempts to uncritically translate this to the screen. A genially melancholic film disfigured by the horrific plot contrivance of a Real Live Angel (and Blonde, no less), PHC is nowhere near Altman's gold standard (most recently Gosford Park) but still far better than The Company.

See You in Space. A quartet of heterosexual love stories, set in Budapest, Rome, Moscow, and outer space (one lover is an astronaut) follows four couples as their relationships fail. The stories, while well-acted, finally add up to nothing; a more interesting film would have resulted from following the police psychiatrist—attracted to the possible murderer she must interview—and her adopted African-born daughter, who is fetishized by a nerd ignorant of just how unsettlingly accurate some of his "exotic" fantasies about her are.

Spin the Wheel Again (buy a ticket for something else):

iberia. The biggest disappointment in the festival, iberia must also be the worst dance film ever, even counting '30s archival footage where Doris Humphreys and troupe are credited as the "visual accompaniment" to Bach. Director Carlos Saura's conceptual . . .. documentary? sacrifices the dance to the concept, whatever that is. Inept cinematography constantly goes to close-up on the dancers' faces at the expense of the (none-too impressive) choreography. In the ultimate insult to the art, during one dance the camera cuts away three times to fill the screen with a wall-size photo, circa 1900, of composer Isaac Albenix.

Romance and Cigarettes is another disappointment, a musical with dull choreography and a score of old '60s pop love songs, as though writer/director John Turturro were either afraid to risk an original score or incapable of creating one. James Gandofini is fine as the cheating hubby, and Susan Sarandon's superb performance as his wronged and vengeful wife is the best reason to sit through this. Uneven throughout, the film finally sidles from comedy to inspirational weepie, leaving a peculiar taste in the mouth.

Factotum. Director Bent Hamer gets even the title wrong in his take on the late alcoholic poet Charles Bukowski: A factotum indeed performs many jobs, but they're usually for one employer rather than varied by reason of having been fired from each previous job. The perfection of the set design and the wonderfully louche sexuality Lili Taylor inhabits as Jan are not compensation enough: Matt Dillon's Bukowski is a monotone blowhard bore, and Marisa Tomei's inabilities are put to apt use. Hamer buys into Bukowski's grandiose delusion, quoted in voiceover, that he had a hard life because he "went all the way for the writing." No. He didn't. He went all the way for alcohol, as the film drearily insists on showing us.

Good Bets (not yet screened):

Backstage

The Betrayal

The Blossoming of Maximo Oliverso

Cycling Chronicles

Illumination

Jonestown

Look Both Ways

Manslaughter

Obaba

A Short Film about the Indio Nacional (or The Prolonged Sorrow Of Filipinos) Maicling pelicula nang ysang indio nacional (O Ang Mahabang Kalungkutan ng Katagalugan)

Reviews and Web Design Copyright © 2006 Mara Math

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