This week in film

Ok. So, I finally broke down and made myself a shedule for things to do. I used to be a fanatic list maker, and I suppose these things never really go away, but for the last year or so, I have been managing to keep reality (partially) bounded and myself (primarily) on task without the aid of any sort of personal organizers. Not that I have a problem with them, I even have a little PDA that served its purpose when I was managing the lives of 20 odd exchange students and host families, but let's face it, my life is just not that exciting to warrant an electronic babysitter for my brain. I can pretty much keep everything straight, even meetings and such (because I mostly don't go to any, but the really pressing ones, and for those you get fifteen email reminders up until the day of the meeting, so, clearly, there is no need to keep track of them). My mother, or my father, on the other hand without their PDA's would have the world cave in, Dad because if it's Tuesday, you must be in Timbuktu, and Mom because she freelances in courts all over the state, so she needs to know where and when her presence is required. As I said, I am far less important to most people, and as long as I manage to squeeze myself through the bars of my personal prison at the appropriately allotted times, I get a pay check and I get the graduate student A's (I don't think that they give anything but these in grad school, not that I care, although I did get a few A+s last year just because I was loveable, no doubt).

Up until last week everything was going swimmingly. Until. dun dun dun. I started feelling super tired, and night is falling earlier, and I am get decidedly acheiving less productivity than what is required of me, and I can't even seem to help I. get her homework done on time. So I caved. And I made a list of work to be accomplished by each day of this next week, building in the inevitable leeway, that is required of me, and my tenacious case of procrastinatis. And in that I built myself a Friday afternoon nap. And I was taking it (the best part about coming home early from work to an empty house is that you can park the bike, run inside and just take your clothing off and lounge with no one asking questions or requiring attention) when the phone rang fifteen minutes in, and jerked me back out of my delicious slumber. So, I figured that I would take advantage and post a commentary on the last several films I have witnessed especially because it has been that sort of a week.

So, before I begin, I must confess that I often forget what a public forum this internet thing is, and I was pleasantly surprised by a newfound friend (that's you Santiago, if you stop by any time soon) who contacted me specifically because of a review I published online. It was about his movie. Ugh. Sometimes I really should stop myself. No, in fact, it was a fair and honest reaction to the film that I saw at a festival last year, but still, if I had imagined the director actually contacting me to talk about it, well, I don't know, I guess I might have felt less confident in my affirmations. Whatever, he's an interesting fellow that I am glad to have "met", and is currently in Paris, working on his second film (being sponsored by the Cannes festival), so perhaps it is better that I didn't pull any punches after all. But honestly Ilana, you never do know when someone might stumble upon your writing. I'm feeling a little sheepish. Usually I just hide behind the fact no one, or hardly anyone could possibly be interested enough in my life/ writing to pore over the now upwards of five-hundred posts (in exactly one year of blogging - clearly it met a need in my life that was lacking) and find anything damning. But I could well be wrong about that. And I forget about those little things called search engines that do the sorting for us. Ah yes, wouldn't anonymity be a wonderful thing. Sometimes I toy with the idea of erasing this blog and starting anew (of course after letting y'all know where to find me) but I just don't see the point, and, after all, I'm secretly a confrontational person, and I like to be known.

That said, I am still going to say some nice things, and some not so nice things about the movies I watched, and I hope that those people who take offense to what I say will just keep moving.

La niña santa, directed by Lucrecia Martel. This I got to see on the "big screen" in the university film series. I loved it. Perhaps it was nostalgia for the interior of Buenos Aires hotels, in that timeless phase, a place that could have been as easily 1970 as now. It examined the sexual coming-of-age of a thirteen or fourteen year-old girl, who lived with her mother in the family hotel, in discrete terms. I mean that not because of a lack of graphic skin shots (although this would be true, too) but rather in that the action of the film is highly limited, and the emotional movement, as examined from an exterior point-of-view, is almost imperceptible, and yet, unmistakeable. It focuses on the protagonist's encounter with a man her father's age, in a sort of a staid Lolita way; once he unbridles her desire he is faced with his own perversion. She wants to save him, and he wants to flee from ackowledgement, but the gears have already been set in motion, and the ending is a perfect closure, the last moment of ignorant, little-girl bliss, just before the bomb is about to drop. Perhaps, I might add, it included the most beautiful solo-sex scene I have ever encountered on film. I don't think that a male director could have pulled it off with his young actress, but it was absolutely, one-hundred percent, believable in the hands of a woman. What times those were. Sigh.

Solas, directed by Benito Zambrano. I really liked the edginess of the main character, a whiskey guzzling, chain smoking 35-year-old woman who finds she is pregnant by a man much like the father that she so despises. It is a study in the language of hope, and redemption but without being cheap, or cute. Extremely well acted, as she and her mother rediscover themselves, she learns to forgive her for not leaving the drunken brute of a father that she had, and she gains an adoptive grand-father for the baby that she ultimately keeps. Extra points for gorgeous, brilliant dog, and taking the risk of sexualizing the aged (on film, I mean, really, I don't think it ever really goes away, does it?)

Carandiru, directed by Hector Babenco. This is the kind of movie that is like a brutal fist to the face. I loved it, and, it will be a long time until I am able to watch it again. It is a fictionalization of the uprising of Carandiru prison in Brasil in 1992 in which 111 inmates were killed by the storming police. The point of view was extremely interesting, taking as its focus the AIDS outreach work of a doctor who visited the jail, and became acquainted and even friendly with the prisoners, all of whom, like Babenco, were excellent storytellers. This was the logical extension of his 70's film Pixote and many of the characters and themes seemed like grown up versions of his child prison, including the queen culture within the jail and the brutality, desperation and social situations that made it inevitable for many of the prisoners to be where they were. Babenco truly humanizes the experience, even as he purges the demons and monstrosity of a society whose distribution of wealth is so disparate that real change almost feels like an impossibility. The most impacting scene was, perhaps, one of the prison's hallway stairs running rivers of blood, and then buckets of soapy water being splashed upon them, merging together in pink foam.

Broken Wings, directed by Nir Bergman. This was a fabulous, moving film out of Israel, and perhaps what was so refreshing for me, not living there, is that it was not about "the situation" in any way. It was a film about a family in crisis, about a daughter who felt responsible for the death of her father and for the maintenance of her family as her mother struggles through the postmortem depression, losing her other half and her stability, beginning to try and live again, and a son who is brilliant and has no desire to return to school, because he realizes the absolute insignificance of human life, its intranscendence and uselessness. It was beautiful and crushing as the family ties unravel, the younger son has an accident because the daughter slipped on her "motherly" duties, failing to retrieve the youngest daughter. It ruefully examines the trials of a free-market economy on an individual scale, the drive for fame and personal recognition and its juxtaposition with family duties, and maintains high emotional tension throughout, culminating not in a Hollywood ending, but in a sense of resolution, possibility and the discovery of hope.

Copacabana(2001), directed by Carla Camurati. Perhaps this is not the best Brazilian film I have seen, no, I am sure of it, but it is the very first that I watched without subtitles, and actually understood the whole thing, so it is a milestone for me, anyhow. Who cares? I know, this does not belong in a serious review, which is why this is all decidedly non-academic. It is an interesting take on the development of a city through the eyes of a ninety-year-old photographer who "dies" and is mysteriously revived by his Virgem de Copacabana who it seems was really an indigenous virgin whose features were discovered and described by a native of Perú (a story much like the story of Juan Diego and Tonantzín, México's Virgen de Guadalupe) and who miraculously set sail, landing on Brazilian shores, the very same one who has accompanied him his whole life since the time he was left on a church doorstep at birth. It is fun, light, a little slow, and a bit repetetive, a film that reflects the experience of listening to your grandpa tell the same story for the umpteenth time, but still wanting to be there, to see the story through. It is a woven tapestry of voices and memories as his friends and he reminisce about days gone by. Incidentally, there was a strange rap over a sampled base of "Gangster's Paradise" which as a recurring theme, added to the meta-referential narrative, despite its not really being tied in at the end.

Twenty-nine Palms, directed by Bruno Dumont. I picked this movie, I'll be honest, because it was French, and because it was about a place that I had visited, and enjoyed, just this last year in the Joshua Tree desert. It was, perhaps, the single-most egregious waste of celuloid that I have seen. Ever. It meant to be a self-reflective portrait-a-deux but failed miserably for the following reasons. 1) There was no plot. None. Just two marginally attractive individuals driving in a Hummer with really grating music that sounded Balkan, but that bore no relation to what was going on in the film. 2) Not only was there no chemistry between the actors, who were, supposedly ardent lovers, but the gratuitous sex, while vaguely monstrous, was not exciting in any way shape or form. It seemed like a film that couldn't decide whether it wanted to be an art flick or a porno, and fell short on both accounts. The character's emotional interaction was bizarre, and undecipherable, but not disturbing in any intellectual capacity, just boring and useless. She was an insipid French girlfriend (not that this is a general characteristic), who had random bouts of unfounded jealousy and an American boyfriend with a terrible French accent, who made awful gurgling noises and crassly insensitive pillow talk, and who had nothing interesting to say, although he was apparently scouting some sort of a location for a shoot. 3) Gratuitous violence that culminates in senseless yet pointless murder of, big surprise, the insipid, mentally ill girlfriend, but only after an unexpected and ridiculous rape scene in which boyfriend is the recipient of sexual violence while girlfriend, already naked far too many times to shock or appeal, watches, and both make animal sounds, which also don't surprise because they have been grunting throughout the film. You just don't care what happens to them, because they are such empty figures and their attackers are so divorced from any meaning whatsoever that there is never any grounding point. Rarely am I so put off by a film, I can almost always find something good to say, but this was, simply put, a pointless pontification on the pointlessness of bad art, which, if it had meant to be this, might be ok (though highly doubtful), but then the question bears, why bother? And why should I care?

On deck for tonight or tomorrow:
La finestra di fronte, directed by Ferzan Ozpetek
and
8 Femmes, directed by François Ozon