Long Pauses

Tag: SFIFF

  • 2009 SFIFF Diary 3

    2009 SFIFF Diary 3

    Rembrandt’s J’Accuse (Peter Greenaway)

    The last Greenaway film I saw was Prospero’s Books, so I have no idea if Rembrandt’s J’Accuse is a return to form, as programmer Rod Armstrong claimed when he introduced it at SFIFF. A companion to Greenaway’s recent Rembrandt biopic, Nightwatching (2007), Rembrandt’s J’Accuse is an art history lecture disguised as an essay film. In his meticulous dissection of Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch,” Greenaway alludes to the painter’s biography, to the political life of 17th century Amsterdam, to the aesthetic tastes of the day, to romantic intrigues, to the history of technology, and to various schools of relevant academic criticism, but the film seems less intent on uncovering the mysteries of a great painting than on modeling for a contemporary audience the fine and fading art of looking. Really looking.

    Though drowning in a whirl of images, we are sorely lacking in visual literacy, the film implies. Or, that’s certainly what I found most interesting about it, at least. Formally, Rembrandt’s J’Accuse is an odd bird. Each of Greenaway’s arguments is presented logically and in sequence (such is the burden of a linear medium), but it has something of the quality of a Flash presentation or a late-’90s CD-Rom. I can imagine it being spliced into hyperlinked elements and finding a home as an interactive museum kiosk. (I almost certainly would have preferred to explore it that way.) Greenaway’s talking head even appears throughout the film like a pop-up window, reading from the script in a resounding, pedantic tone that rivals Terrence Davies’s.

    The Other One (Patrick Mario Bernard and Pierre Trividic)

    The Other One (Patrick Mario Bernard and Pierre Trividic)

    My expectations for The Other One skyrocketed during the opening title sequence, which is a beautiful montage of high-angle, nighttime shots of a mostly-empty, twelve-lane highway. It reminded me of a Claire Denis film — the helicopter ride that opens I Can’t Sleep or the rooftops of Paris in Friday Night. The wide highway leads eventually to a toll station. Then, as I recall, Bernard and Tridivic cut to their heroine, Anne-Marie (Dominique Blanc), who proceeds to drive a hammer into the side of her skull. Anne-Marie, we learn, has recently ended her relationship with a much younger man, freeing him to meet someone more appropriate. When she later learns that his new partner is also d’un certain age, she comes unhinged. She fails, embarrassingly, to seduce him, she cyberstalks, she begins to hallucinate.

    With The Other One, Bernard and Tridivic are positioning themselves somewhere in that line from Sirk to Cassavetes to Almodovar, all of them male directors preoccupied by strong women of fading beauty and sexual power. Blanc’s performance is impressive, and the style of the film is often suitably claustrophobic and disorienting, but something has gone awry in the structuring of this film. That cut from the toll station to Anne-Marie’s bathroom is the first of countless ellipses, most of them chronological jumps, both forward and backward in time. It’s not confusing — I never struggled to understand what was happening, or when — but the cutting creates a flatness or stasis in the main character, a woman who is presumably becoming transformed through a moment of crisis. Particularly during the last half hour, as my patience waned, I thought often of Fien Troch’s disappointing recent film, Unspoken, which also seems to assume that fixing a camera long enough on an actress will necessarily reveal the complexity of her character (exactly the wrong lesson to be learned from the best practitioners of contemplative cinema). Sirk, Cassavetes, and Almodovar (at his best) empathize with, are curious about, and have an essential understanding of their heroines. I don’t doubt Bernard and Tridivic’s commitment to Anne-Marie but the film lacks a trustworthy guide behind the camera.

  • 575 Castro St.

    575 Castro St.

    Dir. by Jenni Olson

    Rather than write about the “Voices Carry” shorts program, which was a jarring and poorly curated combination of Roy Andersson/Terry Gilliam wannabes and thoughtful documentaries, I want to focus, instead, on 575 Castro St., Jenni Olson’s cleverly conceived piece about Harvey Milk. The film is seven minutes long and consists of only four static shots, along with an opening title that contextualizes what we’re seeing:

    In February 1977, the San Francisco Gay Film Festival was born when a self-described “ragtag bunch of hippie fag” filmmakers got together and projected their Super 8 short films on a bed sheet. Many of these films explored gay themes, but (like many other experimental films of the era) many were simple light and motion studies. Most of these films passed through Harvey Milk’s Castro Camera Store at 575 Castro St. for processing.

    In 2008, the Castro Camera Store was recreated at that address for Gus Van Sant’s film MILK. This film was shot on that set.

    I’ve quoted the text in full because it’s as essential to Olson’s project as any of the shots are. It’s as essential as the soundtrack, which is an edited recording of the “In Case I’m Assassinated” tape that Milk made while seated alone at the desk in his store. The film works wonderfully on the most basic level — that is, as a haunted image. When I spoke to Olson after the screening, she told me how overwhelming it was to visit the set, to listen to Milk’s voice, and to know that it was here — right here — that he contemplated his imminent murder. She’s translated that experience well to her film, which is ghostly and deeply moving. But, of course, it wasn’t right here that Milk made his tape. This is a meticulously dressed set. That’s Sean Penn in the top-left corner (see the image above). It’s artifice. Make-believe. Harvey’s been gone for more than thirty years now.

    A few ways of looking at 575 Castro St.:

    As a history of film technology — I’d forgotten that Milk owned a camera shop, and didn’t realize he processed Super 8 there and played a role in the making (literally) of gay cinema. That made the experience of watching 575 Castro St. interesting in two ways: first, Olson’s film was projected not onto a bedsheet but onto a large screen in a stadium-seated multiplex; second, shot digitally, projected digitally, this “film” required no physical processing whatsoever. Olson didn’t need a shop like Harvey’s. Her medium is ones and zeroes rather than celluloid. You can even watch 575 Castro St. online.

    As a “simple light and motion” study — I wish I were familiar with the specific films Olson is alluding to in the text of the film’s opening title. A longtime collector, archivist, and critic of LGBT cinema, she is presumably offering her film as an homage to those who came before her and claiming her place in their line. Each of the four shots lasts a bit longer than the one that precedes it, and the final shot lasts for nearly three minutes, or just under half of the film’s total run time. It’s a beautiful image. Sunlight reflecting off of passing cars illuminates the wall and gives a curious movement to the static shot. I would have happily watched it for several minutes more.

    As tragedy tourism — One consequence of the extended shot lengths is that viewers are allowed the time to thoroughly and freely explore each image. As a result, we become consciously aware of the artificiality of it all. The opening shot could be from 1977, until we spot two late-model cars pass outside the storefront windows. The last shot could be vintage as well, until we recognize Mr. Penn. I have a theory that, because 21st-century Americans’ lives are marked by such comfort and politeness (generally speaking), we have a strange desire to associate ourselves, personally, with other people’s tragedy, as if doing so will grant us access to some hidden, distant experience and wisdom. Hence the Martin Luther King, Jr. museum at the Memphis hotel where he was gunned down and, more recently, our commitments to “never forget” the victims of 9/11, the Virigina Tech shootings, the Minnesota bridge collapse (remember that one?), and on and on. When the Harvey Milk museum is eventually built, somewhere in the Castro, Olson’s film will likely play on a constant loop there. Which isn’t to say it’s not genuinely moving. It is. But it’s also one step removed from the genuine. It’s a tourist destination.

    As a comment on the Hollywood biopic — I’ve bumped Milk to the top of my Netflix queue, although, truthfully, even as a great fan of Gus Van Sant, I don’t have high expectations for it. Traditional biopics — and especially Hollywood productions about recent historical figures — are hamstrung, I think, by a wealth of extratextual pressures. Large budgets demand large returns, and that economic pressure necessitates the transformation of a complex, messy life into a coherent and familiar narrative. (Steve McQueen’s Hunger is a recent and remarkable exception that proves the rule.) Hollywood biopics also tend to be marketed as acting showcases and “prestige” pictures, which forces audiences to view the film through a thin veil of celebrity. Plus, there’s always that nagging problem of verisimilitude. (I’ve always liked E. L. Doctorow’s response to critics of his “inaccurate” depiction of real historical figures in Ragtime: “I don’t know if these events actually happened, but I’m absolutely confident they’re true.”) Again, that photo of Sean Penn is key here. 575 Castro St. challenges every formal tendency of the Hollywood biopic — it’s short, slow, contemplative — but, in a way, it is a Hollywood biopic. On a practical level, an independent filmmaker like Olson would rarely have the resources to access and dress a location like this. And, presumably, those of us who are interested in a film like 575 Castro St. approach it with those same preconceptions about Penn’s performance and celebrity, even if we haven’t seen Milk. (Such is the nature of contemporary media saturation.) It’s a clever interrogation of the form, I think.

    As a document of progress — Finally, as uncanny and heartbreaking as it is to hear Harvey Milk confess his fears, there’s something celebratory (not quite the right word) about 575 Castro St., too. This is not a nostalgia piece or maudlin reveille. Even down to its digital form, it is very much a document of the present moment. When Milk mentions that, rather than rioting on news of his death, he would rather see “five, ten, a hundred, a thousand rise” and come out, we know that his dream is slowly but steadily becoming realized.

  • 2009 SFIFF Diary 2

    2009 SFIFF Diary 2

    Oblivion (Heddy Honigmann)

    Four years ago, on my first trip to the San Francisco International Film Festival, a couple friends and I had our liveliest debate after a screening of Ellen Perry’s The Fall of Fujimori, a documentary about Peru’s recent political history told mostly in the first person by Fujimori himself. On one side of the debate were those of us who felt the strength of the film was its subtle ironies, particularly its use of the contemporary context (the early days of Bush’s war on terror) to undermine the elected dictator’s self-aggrandizing justifications of his anti-democratic domestic policies. On the other side were those who argued that people in power are afforded ample opportunity to speak for themselves and that the filmmaker was morally obligated to condemn Fujimori outright. It was a fun — and heated — exchange. Heddy Honigmann’s latest film is a fascinating answer to that discussion. Oblivion is also told in the first person, though this time mostly by aging, blue-collar workers who, in several cases, literally served (whether food or drink or services) several past presidents and dictators, including Fujimori. I’ve only seen two Honigmann films, but in both I’ve been startled by the candor she elicits from her interview subjects. Here, her camera lingers awkwardly on a man who admits with some shame that after working for more than 30 years in one of Lima’s finest restaurants, he had never had an opportunity to take his wife there. A 60-year-old leather worker hides his face when he’s overcome by emotion while remembering all he lost during the days of runaway inflation. An adolescent shoeshine boy stares blankly into the camera and tells Honigmann, “No, I don’t have any dreams. No, I don’t have any happy memories.” She intercuts these stories with footage of young, self-taught jugglers and acrobats — homeless kids — who perform in busy intersections during red lights. They’re graceful and full of life, their performances have a startling and kinetic beauty. The juxtaposition is complex and loaded with ambiguities — a reflection, I suspect, of Honigmann’s personal relationship with her home country.

    Everything Strange and New (Frazer Bradshaw)

    Everything Strange and New (Frazer Bradshaw)

    To recycle a line I’ve used before, I’m often more interested in what a film does than what it’s about, and Bradshaw’s first narrative feature, Everything Strange and New, does quite a lot. The opening shot (pictured above) is a long, static take accompanied by an explosion of percussive, dissonant music — a self-conscious announcement that this is not another of those suburban stories about disaffected fathers and husbands. As it turns out, it is one of those films, but I’ll credit Bradshaw for his experiments with the genre, particularly his working-class lead character, Wayne, and for his often fascinating photography. One or two shots approach Bela Tarr territory (if Tarr shot a low-budget dv movie). Had the film ended 20 minutes sooner, I would have even applauded Bradshaw’s success at blending avant-garde techniques with more naturalistic storytelling. But a plot turn in the final act — and, more importantly, Bradshaw’s cynical handling of it — caused me to reevaluate everything that came before. Everything Strange and New is cruel to its characters in a way that comes off as smug rather than searching.

    35 Shots of Rum (Denis, 2009)

    35 Shots of Rum (Claire Denis)

    I’ve already written a bit about this film, but I want to quickly mention a scene that, to me, encapsulates all that distinguishes Denis’s take on the small, family drama from most other films in the genre. The morning after the “Nightshift,” Noé (Grégoire Colin) announces to Gabrielle (Nicole Dogué) and Joséphine (Mati Diop) that he’s leaving for a job in Gabon. Rather than dealing explicitly with the fallout from his decision, Denis cuts, instead, to a closeup of Lionel (Alex Descas), who’s walking home, presumably after a one-night-stand. She then cuts on an eyeline match to Joséphine climbing precariously out of their top-story window with a bottle of cleaner and towels in her hand. We are given, cinematically, the perspective of a father watching his child in danger. Or, at least that’s how I read the image the first time. On repeat viewings, there’s something much more interesting in Lionel’s expression: his intimate and hard-won understanding of his daughter’s behavior, his realization that she’s cleaning, which means that she’s upset, which means that it’s his job to go soothe and protect her. This plays out in the next few minutes in a wonderful scene in which their history is revealed through gestures. There’s text — Joséphine shaking out the bedsheets, looking through family photos, and arguing with her father — and there’s subtext — not only the loss of their mother/wife but also their deep familiarity with each other and with moments like this. (We can immediately imagine them having a hundred other similar confrontations — her cleaning, him stoic, with arms folded.) Characters in movies expertly express their feelings; real people, in my experience, typically don’t. Yet those of us in successful, long-term relationships manage to communicate anyway. 35 Shots of Rum is rare for managing to capture that peculiar kind of intimacy on screen. Ozu would approve.

    Zift (Javor Gardev)

    Zift (Javor Gardev)

    A Bulgarian film noir? Yes, please. Although a bit too stylized (in the Tarantino sense) for my tastes, Zift is a hell of a lot of fun and could probably find a decent audience in the States if a distributor packaged it properly. (First-time director Gardev must surely be taking studio offers for his next film as we speak.) The movie borrows liberally from classic Hollywood noirs, most notably a reenactment of Rita Hayworth’s iconic number in Gilda, and the black-and-white cinematography honors that legacy while updating the camera movements for contemporary audiences accustomed to a more frenetic pace. The two lead actors are fun discoveries, too, particularly Tanya Ilieva, who, frankly, is one of the sexiest women I’ve ever seen on screen. Zift was on my radar last September at TIFF, so I’m glad to have finally had a chance to catch up with it.

    Wild Field (Mikheil Kalatozishvili)

    Wild Field (Mikheil Kalatozishvili)

    Wild Field belongs to a class of films I’m drawn to at festivals. I rarely expect them to be great (and they rarely are), but I see them less for their stories or formal innovations than for the opportunity they provide to watch people in a part of the world I would never have a chance to see otherwise. (Tulpan is another recent example.) Wild Field is set in a remote region of the Kazakh steppes, where a young doctor lives Thoreau-like, tends to a handful of locals, and pines for his girlfriend back in civilization. Although I can’t find confirmation for this, I suspect this is an adaptation of a novel. I can imagine the protagonist’s inner life being a playhouse of ideas for a gifted writer, and the moments of magical realism that pockmark the film could flower beautifully in prose, but Kalatozishvili fails to find a cinematographic analogue, and the pacing of the film suffers for it. Still, I was perfectly content to study the landscape and faces for 90 minutes or so.

  • 2009 SFIFF Diary 1

    2009 SFIFF Diary 1

    Adoration (Atom Egoyan)

    There’s certainly no mistaking an Atom Egoyan film — the non-linear narrative, the technology fetish, the intertwined obsessions with history, identity, and trauma, and all of those secrets and lies. Closest in spirit and form to Ararat, Adoration is another interesting jumble of ideas from Egoyan that, to my surprise, works more often than other critics had led me to expect. I especially like the scenes between Scott Speedman and Arsinee Khanjian, who are the only two actors in the film who consistently make Egoyan’s dialog sound like words an actual human being might speak. (In Egoyan’s defense, the performance of language and identity is a central concern — and plot point — of the film, so some of the awkwardly-heightened language is clearly by design. Egoyan alerts the attentive viewer to this fact by formal means, though I’m not sure if that defense justifies the unfortunate shifts in tone he creates.) Egoyan’s at his best when he manages to balance his wealth of ideas with drama, when his characters transcend the intellectual and psychological conceits they are intended to embody. That happens often enough in Adoration, particularly in the final act, to make it my favorite of his films of the last decade. (I’m still eager to see Citadel.) One final note: Mychael Danna’s original score is fantastic, but I’d prefer to hear it alone on a soundtrack album. I suspect I would have liked Adoration a good deal more if Egoyan had trimmed 75% of the music cues.

    Bluebeard (Breillat, 2009)

    Bluebeard (Catherine Breillat)

    God bless you, Catherine Breillat. When Bluebeard started last night around 9:40, San Francisco time, I’d already been awake for 19 hours. Who else under those circumstances could put me at the edge of my seat, giggling and gasping at the nerve of a film? A playful and stylized period piece in the (formal) vein of Rohmer’s Astrea and Celadon, Bluebeard is a wicked dismantling of a fairy tale that, although lacking Breillat’s trademark nudity and explicit sexual content, is no less obsessed with bodies. Mary-Catherine (Lola Creton), Bluebeard’s young bride, is one more Breillat heroine, tempted by, curious about, and fearful of both sexual desire and by sex itself — by the physical, biological realness of it. I can’t think of a better image to represent Breillat’s cinema en toto than a shot of the massive, shirtless Bluebeard (Dominique Thomas) being watched unnoticed by his waif, virgin wife. Brilliant film.

  • 2007 SFIFF Capsules

    2007 SFIFF Capsules

    A few notes typed at the end of a long flight home.

    Daratt is The Son flipped on its axis, the story of a fatherless child whose justifiable desire for vengeance is tempered by grace and grief. A few key scenes are poorly executed and so aren’t quite as powerful as they should have been (the Dardennes would have hit them out of the park), but the film seems more impressive the more I think about it, thanks in large part to a final scene that is as perfectly structured, as surprising, and as satisfying as any I can think of.

    Opera Jawa was simply an overwhelming experience for me. Full of images as powerfully imaginative as any you will find in Angelopoulos and late Kurosawa (I kept thinking of Ran), combined with a stunning gamelan score and dance sequences so strange and transcendent I expected Denis Lavant to make an appearance, this film has the effect of all great opera: it’s epic, sensuous, and impossibly beautiful.

    A Few Days Later . . . Imagine Kiarostami’s aesthetic (long static takes, a fixation with winding roads) combined with the mise-en-scene, wit, and narrative tension of the typical American soap opera and you’ll get something like this film. I didn’t care for it.

    At the Edge: New Experimental Cinema included a couple strong entries. Of the films I hadn’t already seen, Charlotte Price’s Discoveries on the Forest Floor, 1-3 were probably my favorite. As usual when I write about experimental film, I’m coming from a position of near-total ignorance, but Price’s short montages of extreme close-ups impressed me with their rhythm as much as their images. I also really liked Ken Jacobs’ Capitalism: Slavery, which cuts between the two halves of a 19th century stereoscopic photograph, suspending the depicted slaves, slavemaster, and field of cotton in a kind of endless exchange.

    Forever, like Agnes Varda’s The Gleaners and I, is a lovely manifestation of its creator’s curiosity. During her pre-screening interview, Honigmann drew a distinction between her films and the work of most contemporary documentarians, claiming, “I don’t make films about subjects; they’re about people. Unless I love the person in front of my camera, I cannot film them.” In this case, she found in Paris’s Pere-Lachaise cemetery a usable metaphor for the fickle permanence of art. There, amidst the shrines to Chopin and Proust, she meets a collection of mourners and pilgrims whose rituals casually reveal the peculiar nature of loss. What makes the film such a success is Honigmann’s willingness to allow the people she meets to dictate the course of her essay. Rather than leading them with questions, she listens attentively, with curiosity, and not surprisingly most are eager to tell her their stories.

    The Island begins like an Indiana Jones film and ends somewhere closer to Ordet. I shouldn’t have liked it nearly as much as I did, but the basic premise — a man devotes his life to back-breaking service in a community of monks as penance for his sin — worked for me, and the film is just clever enough, funny enough, and serious enough to avoid sentimentality.

    Paprika was not the film I’d hoped it would be — that is, the film that would cure me of my anti-anime biases. The best I can say about it is that it is the product of an astounding imagination. But, at the risk of gettin’ all Bazinian, I’ve decided that I go to the cinema to see images of reality captured by a camera. (That foul smell you just noticed is the reek of my newly-opened can of worms.)

    The Old Garden wasn’t the best film I saw at the fest, but it was definitely the most pleasant surprise. More coming . .

    Private Fears in Public Places finishes strong, doesn’t it? When I saw it at TIFF I left early, thirty minutes or so before it transformed into a work of magical realism. Resnais, in his old age, has discovered images of such painful and beautiful melancholia, which are too rare in the cinema. By the time it ended, I cared deeply about every character in this film, another rare quality.

    Fresh Air is straight out of the Kaurismaki school of expressionless faces, pregnant pauses, and coal-black humor. Agnes Kocsis, who was only twenty-five when she made the film, shoots mostly in master shots, stringing together dull moments in the life of a mother and daughter who long ago gave up on communicating with one another. Fresh Air reminded me also of Juan Pablo Rebella’s Whisky, which likewise ends about how you would expect it to but does so with a precise enough attention to detail and with a genuine enough concern for its characters that it all seems worthwhile. Another film with a strong final sequence.

    Desperately Seeking Images was introduced by the program’s curator, who told us he doesn’t like grouping short films by “themes.” He might reconsider that strategy. The standout was Tube with a Hat by Radu Jude, who was assistant director on The Death of Mr. Lazarescu. I love the film’s premise — a boy begs his father to have their television repaired so that he can watch a Bruce Lee movie. The film follows them on their day-long journey.

    Vanaja was a last-minute change in my schedule, and I still haven’t decided if it was a good move. I was angry with the film for most of its running time — movies that include child rape and dance numbers aren’t my cup of tea — but at my most charitable, I think Vanaja is an interesting subversion of the Cinderella fairy tale. Like an Angela Carter story (or a Thomas Hardy novel, even) it subjects its heroine to a string of trials with little hope of a happy ending. That it was such a crowd pleaser at the festival, though, confirms my initial impression that first-time director Rajnesh Domalpalli elided too much of the violence and failed to really subvert the genre at all. Truthfully, I’m still a bit angry with the film.

    Dans Paris answers the question, “What would those early New Wave films — the ones made before Godard and the rest got all “political” — look like if they were made today?” It’s a fun film. Sexy, touching, with a great score. I liked it a lot.

  • The End and the Beginning (2006)

    The End and the Beginning (2006)

    Dir. Eduardo Coutinho

    “We want to hear stories,” director Eduardo Coutinho says early in this film, which is built almost entirely from interviews he conducted over a two-week period in Paraiba, a backlands town in in the northeast of Brazil. Specific stories. Intimate, personal stories. Ten minutes or so into the film, as a man in medium close-up describes the hard circumstances of his life, Coutinho drowns him out with his own voice-over narration, informing us that this story won’t do, that it lacks the “closeness” he’s seeking. And so, with the help of Rosa, his young guide, he focuses instead on the community where she lives, a small network of aged kin who’ve given their lives to the hard land they live on.

    Many of the people Coutinho interviews inhabit the same homes where they were born six, seven decades earlier. Their skin is hard and deep-lined, and their stories are similar: each began a life of labor during childhood, only a few received a formal education; there were marriages (most of them successful, or so they say) and many, many pregnancies. We learn about all of this from their lively, impassioned, and occasionally bitter remembrances. Coutinho, we discover in a surprising two-shot near the very end of the film, sits quite close to his interviewees (typically, they’re framed in tight close-ups), earning their trust and fondness.

    Very much like a film I saw here at SFIFF two years ago, Raymond Depardon’s Profiles of Farmers: Daily Life, The End and the Beginning is, in Coutinho’s words, “a tale of a life that is rapidly disappearing.” Frankly, I remember almost nothing of Depardon’s film, but I suspect Coutinho’s will linger with me for quite a while, partly due to the charm of his subjects, but also because, in acknowledging its position as a work of documentary — the first words of the voice over tell us that the film “began from scratch”; the crew simply drove out of Rio de Janeiro and showed up in Paraiba — The End and the Beginning also serves as a kind of test case, giving a media(ted) voice to people who have never had one before but never pretending that such mediation is without moral and political consequence.

    When Coutinha returns to each of his interviewees to say a final goodbye, there is genuine sadness in their faces (or at least in the faces that made the final cut). Earlier, one man in particular had expressed misgivings about appearing on camera, saying that he felt his words would be spoken “in vain.” When Coutinha asks him what he means, he says, “a word in vain is a word with no future.” The line resonates throughout his final on-camera appearance. In the intervening days he’s apparently thought a great deal about filmmaking. He suggests, even, that Coutinho shoot him from a different angle, then he laughs, and instantly we imagine him alone in front of a mirror, turning and looking through the corners of his eyes at his right profile then the left and back again. Given an opportunity, finally, finally, to tell his story, he regrets that the chance has passed so quickly. “You’re a smart and interesting man,” Coutinho tells him. “I have more to tell,” he says.

  • SFIFF 2007

    SFIFF 2007

    I’ve resigned myself to a life in the suburbs, but the older I get, the more frequently I’m overcome by a traveling Jones. So when Michael graciously offered me a place to stay, I jumped at the chance to spend a week roaming the hills of San Francisco and watching some great films. This will be my second trip to SFIFF, and I’m really excited about my lineup. I’ll get a second shot at a few TIFF favorites (Colossal Youth and Private Fears in Public Places), I’ll get to see a couple that I missed the first time around (Daratt, Opera Jawa, and The Island), and, of course, there will be several new discoveries. I’m especially excited about Forever, the latest from Heddy Honigmann, who will be in town to receive the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award.

  • SFIFF 2005

    SFIFF 2005

    San Francisco, in case this hasn’t been said often enough, is a great city, and I spent most of my time there doing all of the touristy things one is obligated to do during a first visit — riding cable cars, walking through Muir Woods, taking pictures of the Golden Gate bridge, browsing through record and book shops, and eating to the point of exhaustion. It’s a particularly great city to visit with other film buffs; we hit almost every stop on the Vertigo tour.

    The first week of the ’05 San Francisco International Film Festival was a bit of a disappointment, though. This is what I saw:

    • The Gravel Road [Menon]
    • Profiles of Farmers: Daily Life [Depardon]
    • Innocence [Hadzihalilovic]
    • Revelations [eight short films]
    • La Petite Chartreuse [Denis]
    • Street Angel [Borzage]
    • Dear Enemy [Xhuvani]
    • Pin Boy [Poliak]
    • Edgar G. Ulmer — The Man Off Screen [Palm]
    • The Fall of Fujimori [Perry]
    • L’Intrus [Denis]

    I hope to write at length about three of them: Pin Boy, which was the real standout of the lot, Street Angel, which featured a new, live score from the American Music Club, and L’Intrus, which I managed to see again thanks to Rob’s access to press screeners. After a second viewing, L’Intrus may have bumped Cafe Lumiere from the top spot of my 2004 list. Just a great, great film.

    Of the documentaries I saw, Depardon’s is the best, though I’ve come to accept the fact that I just don’t know how to write about films like it. It’s a portrait of a dying way of life, beautifully composed and deeply fond of its subjects. And I’m always a sucker for films that allow the elderly an opportunity to tell their stories (several of the farmers are in their 80s). Definitely worth seeing. The documentary about Edward Ulmer, director of The Black Cat and Detour, is enjoyable in a Biography channel kind of way, but it offers little insight into Ulmer’s style and fails to pursue one of its more interesting threads: a questioning of auteur criticism. The Fall of Fujimori has certainly provoked more debate than any of the other films we saw, and, to be honest, I still don’t know what to think of it. Like Fog of War, it allows its subject to craft his own story, for good and bad, through a series of sit-down interviews. I’ll be curious to see if any kind of critical consensus builds for this one.

    Of the other narrative films I saw, I can recommend Innocence if only for the incredibly rich atmosphere it invokes. (During the walk back to the subway, I was reminded of Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now.) The film’s allegory isn’t quite substantial enough to maintain the weight of a feature length, though, and at some point I began waiting for it to end. The Gravel Road has all of the faults of a low-budget debut film — frustrating pacing, heavy plotting, hit-or-miss performances — but I found myself unexpectedly touched by its final act. Dear Enemy is a competent comedy of manners that made me laugh out loud once or twice, but I can’t imagine thinking about it again after I finish writing this sentence. As for La Petite Chartreuse, well, I’ll just echo what Doug has already written: Any film that makes Olivier Gourmet utter the line, “Don’t you understand? I can’t cry!” deserves some kind of special raspberry. What a ridiculous waste of a stunning performance.

    Oh, and Suzi Ewing’s 14-minute short, Going Postal, is really nice. Definitely my favorite of the Revelations program.