Cine Fest Petrobras Brasil ‘09: Budapest

Readers are rightly skeptical of novels ostensibly written by famous people. Of course, the Brazilian music legend Chico Buarque is not a typical celebrity. He was in fact briefly imprisoned for an experimental play he wrote in the late 1960’s. While composing and performing some of biggest hits of bossa, samba, and MPB, Buarque also maintained his literary chops, writing internationally acclaimed plays and novels, like 2003’s Budapest, now adapted for the screen (trailer here) by director Walter Carvalho and screening tonight at the 2009 Cine Fest Petrobras Brasil film festival.

Budapest is a spectacular city, whose beauty remained undiminished by fifty-some years of Communist misrule. Though it is a world away from Rio, the city would exert an irresistible pull on José Costa following a chance stopover in the Hungarian capitol. Returning home from the annual ghost-writers convention, Costa is increasingly frustrated to see his clients celebrated for his words. Especially disturbing is the extent to which his newsreader wife seems charmed by one particular German expat customer currently enjoying a run on the bestseller list, thanks to his ghost-writing services.

Costa’s intimate relationship with language has been a blessing and a curse in his life, so immersing himself in Hungarian represents an attempt to hit the reset button. He finds himself deeply attracted to his divorced language teacher Kriszta, but is frustrated by both verbal and emotional language barriers. Though Kriszta claims Magyar is “the only language the Devil respects,” Costa soon masters it to the level that he again finds himself facing the same dilemma regarding the ownership of his words.

Ironically, Budapest’s story of a frustrated ghostwriter was in fact written by a celebrity, Buarque, who makes a surreal, non-musical cameo appearance. The film’s soundtrack actually features none of the author’s vocals, instead showcasing Leo Gandelman’s smoothly romantic saxophone and some effective string chamber music.

Leonardo Medeiros is a mass of insecure neuroses as José Costa (a.k.a. Zsoze Kósta), but not a particularly pleasant protagonist to spend time with. However, Gabriella Hámori brings intriguing depth to Kriszta, Costa’s demanding teacher and mercurial lover.

Carvalho effectively uses his picturesque Budapest locations, including a memorable visual of an enormous disassembled statue of Lenin, slowly drifting down the Danube on a garbage barge. While the M. Night Shyamalan-style ending is not very surprising, he maintains some sense of uncertainty by resisting the urge to fit each and every little piece together.

Caustically satirizing the book business, Budapest is a memorable film media professionals would particularly appreciate. Ultimately though, it is a strange, dreamlike love letter to the poetic power of words and one of the truly great cities of the world. It screens again tonight (8/7) as the Petrobras Brasil Fest concludes at the Tribeca Cinemas.

Cult Movie: I Sell the Dead

Grave robbing was a cottage industry in early Nineteenth Century England before the 1832 Anatomy Act made it easier for legitimate medical researchers to obtain cadavers. Still, the real money came from snatching undead bodies for two happy-go-lucky Burke & Hares in Glenn McQuad’s I Sell the Dead (trailer here), opening this Friday in New York.

After years of stealing corpses, Arthur Blake is about to become one. Sentenced to the guillotine for a murder he did not commit, Blake has five whiskey-fueled hours to tell the inquisitive Father Duffy his story of the final snatch that went bad. In flashbacks, the audience sees several very odd jobs, which brought Blake and his mentor Willie Grimes into conflict with the House of Murphy, a grave-robbing cartel allegedly in league with the Devil himself, inevitably leading to his date with the chopping block.

Following in the long tradition of monster movie team-ups, Sell boats a cast of cult film idols, including indie horror auteur (and co-producer) Larry Fessenden as Grimes. Dominic Monaghan, best-known from the television series Lost, takes the lead as Blake. Also notable among the colorful supporting cast are Angus Scrimm (a.k.a. “The Tall Man” in the Phantasm films) as the sinister Dr. Quint and Ron Perlman (the big guy in Hell Boy and dozens of other genre pictures) as Father Duffy. All four actors chew the scenery with a relish appropriate to the film’s spirit.

While Sell might be relatively short, McQuad throws in everything including the kitchen sick, stocking the graves with all manner of creatures, even borrowing from other genres for comedic effect. Yet, it is surprisingly restrained in the gore department, with most of Sell’s special effects displaying an idiosyncratic b-movie charm, rather than going for gross-out shocks.

In many ways, Sell pays homage to the horror films which came before it. Stylistically, it is clearly patterned after the Anglo-gothic Hammer horror films, but includes the occasional nod to the classic Universal monster movies as well. Though produced in the indie trenches, McQuad and art director Beck Underwood recreate a quite credible facsimile of its Nineteenth Century low life environs. Sell also has a distinctly comic-oriented visual aesthetic, starting with the perfect mood-setting opening title sequence. Indeed, McQuad worked with artist Brahm Revel on the forthcoming graphic novel adaptation of his screenplay before the he started shooting the film.

Sell is a horror spoof that never smirks too much, because the filmmakers clearly have real affection for the movies that inspired it. It is a well paced film, nicely spacing the laughs in between the ghoulish business of plundering rotting undead corpses. A great deal of fun, Sell should be a big hit with midnight movie audiences and at horror conventions. It opens this Friday (8/7) at the Quad Cinema.

Cine Fest Petrobras Brasil ’09: Simonal—No One Knows How Tough It Was

In the 1960’s, every self-respecting Brazilian bachelor pad was stocked with vocalist Wilson Simonal’s records. However, in the 1970’s, he was shunned like a pariah. The music business is certainly hard and unforgiving, but a series of personal controversies made it especially so for Simonal, as co-directors Cláudio Manoel, Micael Langer, and Calvito Leal document in Simonal—No One Knows How Tough It Was (trailer here), currently screening in New York as part of the Cine Fest Petrobras Brasil film festival.

Likened to Sammy Davis, Jr. in the film, Simonal’s soulful vocals and commanding stage presence made him one of Brazil’s top all-around entertainers. He perfected a blend of orchestral pop, soul, and Brazilian musical styles known as “pilantragem.” However, having ruled the Brazilian charts for several years, Simonal was a bit concerned when his accountant Rafael Vivani informed him he was fast approaching bankruptcy. His response to Vivani would be rather uncharitably characterized by the accountant as kidnapping and extortion. Serious charges perhaps, but it was the unsubstantiated stories of Simonal’s complicity with the military authorities which emerged during the resulting trial that really derailed his career.

Suddenly, Simonal’s name was anathema to the Brazilian Left, which included pretty much the entire music scene. He would scuffle and mount comebacks for the remainder of his life, but he never reclaimed a fraction of his past glory. Following his death in 2000, his sons continued Simonal’s campaign to clear his name in the Brazilian media, and indeed, their participation in Tough can be considered part of that effort.

While Manoel, Langer, and Leal do not definitively “exonerate” Simonal, they clearly present him in a sympathetic light. They interview many of his close associates, even including a still somewhat annoyed Vivani. However, many of Simonal’s musical contemporaries, like Caetano Veloso and Chico Buarque, are notable for their absence. (At least Paulo Moura and Nelson Motta stepped up to the camera, as did Brazilian football hero Pelé.) Still, the film provides a great deal of musical and political context for the singer’s turbulent life and times.

Regardless of the mistakes Simonal made in life, his music sounds as smooth as a cool drink on a warm Brazilian beach. Though some repetitive talking head segments could stand a bit of a trim, Manoel, Langer, and Leal tell a compelling story, set to some groovy tunes. Tough screens again during Cine Fest Petrobras this Friday (8/7) at the Tribeca Cinemas.

Cine Fest Petrobras Brasil ‘09: Wandering Heart

Many sides of Caetano Veloso, arguably the greatest figure of Brazil's Tropicália musical revolution, have been presented on film. He appeared as the romantic balladeer performing in Pedro Almodovar’s Talk to Her. Often times, he is presented as an icon of artistic conscience or simply the spiritual godfather of Brazilian music in general, as in films like Carlos Saura’s Fados. However, director Fernando Grostein Andrade offers a different perspective on Veloso, capturing the musician-vocalist’s laidback sense of humor in his documentary Wandering Heart, which screens during the 2009 Cine Fest Petrobras Brasil Film Festival.

Veloso’s fans know him as a charismatic performer, but they might be surprised how funny he is in private. Sometimes he even cracks himself up, as when he tells a Lady Di anecdote that is incomprehensible due to his giggling. Still, the music heard throughout Heart is of the consistent high quality his listeners will expect.

Loosely structured, Heart essentially follows Veloso during the American media campaign for his first English language album, and a subsequent tour of Japan, where he seems to have remarkably camera-friendly fans. As a result, the audience gets to hear some of his renditions of American popular song (like the Berlin standard “Blue Skies”) in addition to his traditional favorites.

While Andrade by-and-large paints a portrait of an artist living the good life, late in the film he includes an oblique reference from Veloso regarding personal tragedies that adds considerable context to his apparent happy-go-lucky attitude. Ultimately, Veloso emerges as a genuinely likable individual, joking with fans and laughing off criticism, secure in his estimable place in the Brazilian music scene.

Though Heart’s running time barely exceeds one hour, Andrade uses nearly every second. Viewers should be advised to stay through the entire final credits, because they are liberally interspersed with further candid footage and a brief but complete performance.

Heart is an entertaining profile of Veloso that should please longtime fans and intrigue new listeners. Refreshingly, he comes across like a person who would be fun to hang with—a youthful sixty-six year-old, despite his arrest and period of exile during the years of the military regime. One of several music documentaries selected for this year’s Cine Fest Petrobras, Heart screens again at the Tribeca Cinemas on Friday night (8/7).

Honor Killing in Turkey: Bliss

There is a modern secular Turkey and there is a traditional Islamic Turkey. Whether they can coexist within the same political-geographic borders remains to be determined. The tension between enlightened modernism and the misogynist old ways drives Abdullah Oğuz’s Bliss (trailer here), a bold look at the "honor" killing practice in provincial Turkey, opening this Friday in New York.

As the film opens, a shepherd finds young Meryem badly beaten and violated, lying unconscious near a lake outside her remote village. He carries her home not to a sympathetic family, but a cruel step-mother and weak father, who automatically blame her for her condition. The village Agha, her father’s cousin, decrees that Meryem must die for the dishonor she allegedly brought upon the family. When she refuses to do the job for them, the Agha assigns his son Cemal, recently discharged from the army, the horrific task of her honor killing.

Though a dutiful son, Cemal has no taste for cold-blooded murder. Although he is conflicted, uncertain whether he is truly doing the right thing, Cemal spares Meryem. As they take flight from their wrathful family, Meryem and Cemal must turn their backs on their former village lives. They find refuge as crew members on the yacht of Irfan, a sociology professor who dropped out of academic life, hoping to find peace of mind through life on the water.

Clearly, Irfan represents the modern secular impulse of Turkey. He is an educated man, who can talk to a former student wearing a bikini without thinking anything of it. Cemal by contrast, nearly goes into shock. A bit free-spirited but no idiot, Irfan starts to suspect the rough outline of his young crew’s troubles and does his best to help them find their way.

The three main characters of Bliss are sharply drawn and well nuanced, raising it above the level of a mere issue film. Özgü Namal gives an understated, but moving performance as Meryem, a woman abused all her life, only now starting to assert herself after suffering an unspeakable trauma. Murat Han brings seething intensity to the role of Cemal, conveying the bitterness and resentment of a man forced to confront the injustice of customs he had always uncritically accepted. As the silver-maned professor, Talat Bulut comes across as realistically flawed but deeply humane, rather than a caricature of modernist nobility.

Oğuz and Bosnian cinematographer Mirsad Heroviç use their isolated locations to create some striking visuals, showcasing the natural beauty of Turkey. Well paced, the tension is quite acute at times, growing organically out of the story.

While Bliss never mentions the Islamic religion by name, Turkish audiences could easily identify the religious context of the Agha and his malevolent conception of honor. Indeed, Islamic honor killings are still very much a reality, acknowledged even by the United Nations, which estimates thousands of women are murdered each year for perceived crimes ranging from simple flirtation to being the innocent victims of sexual assault. Like the Stoning of Soraya M., Bliss is a film that needs to be seen by a wide audience because it addresses the peril faced by far too many Muslim women in world today.

Even discounting the importance of its subject matter, Bliss holds up very well in pure cinematic terms. It is an absorbing film that incorporates elements of “on-the-run” thriller with a shrewd examination of the uneasy marriage of the modern and the traditional in contemporary Turkey. Highly recommended, it opens Friday (8/7) at the Cinema Village.

Giamatti as Giamatti: Cold Souls

It is all too easy to believe thousands of New Yorkers are walking around without souls. While some professions might regard the soul as an impediment to success (trial lawyers come to mind), for an actor like Paul Giamatti it is indispensable for evoking the emotions of their trade. So when the actor’s soul is misplaced, it jeopardizes his career and his marriage in Cold Souls (trailer here), Sophie Barthes’s post-modern fantasy opening this Friday in New York and Los
Angeles.

In the tradition of Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovich, Paul Giamatti plays Paul Giamatti playing Uncle Vanya. Unfortunately, the tragic Chekhov protagonist is taking a debilitating emotional toll on the Academy Award winning actor. His agent suggests a dubious solution. The Soul Storage Company, a new tech start-up, can physically remove the soul and keep it in cold storage, liberating customers from all their anxiety.

Initially, the de-souling alleviates Giamatti’s depression, but it obviously leaves him soulless, in effect dead inside. Suddenly, he is no fun to live with and not much of an actor either. Yet when he returns to reclaim his soul, his safety deposit box is empty. It turns out soul trafficking is a burgeoning criminal enterprise. Now, after trying to avoid the Russian angst of Vanya, Giamatti finds himself in St. Petersburg, on the trail of the smugglers who stole his soul.

Clearly inspired by Charlie Kaufman’s Malkovich script and maybe a bit of Sleeper-era Woody Allen, Barthes’s premise is undeniably clever, but her pacing sometimes lags. Still, co-producer-cinematographer Andrij Parekh fashions a distinctive visual style for Cold, capitalizing on the stark, frozen Russian locations and sterile retro-ultra-modern sets.

One would certainly expect Giamatti to be convincing playing a fanciful version of himself, but his shrewdly understated performance is surprisingly memorable. He effectively anchors the film, giving soul, if you will, to Barthes’s frosty tale. Among the supporting cast, David Strathairn brings a nice comedic flair to the soul-extracting Dr. Flintstein. However, Emily Watson seems trapped in the underwritten role of Giamatti’s wife Claire and the several soulless characters are by necessity cold and unsympathetic.

If nothing else, the idea of Giamatti playing Vanya sounds like a hot ticket Broadway producers should explore. His intriguing screen work brings a redemptive humanity to Barthes’s coolly stylized vision. It opens this Friday (8/7) at the Sunshine and Lincoln Plaza Theaters.

Cine Fest Petrobras Brasil ‘09: If I Were You 2

Brazilian music has captured the ears of the world. While its cinema has also found an international audience, it is the sound of bossas, sambas, and choros that most readily come to mind when Americans think of Brazilian culture. Shrewdly, this year’s Cine Fest Petrobras Brasil capitalizes on the popularity of Brazil’s musical heritage, programming a number of music documentaries and launching the festival with a free concert from Silvia Machete in Central Park.

There is something refreshingly politically incorrect about watching a performer wearing high heels and a decorative bird in her hair hand-roll and then smoke a cigarette while suggestively spinning a golden hula hoop, as her musicians solo. Silvia Machete has showmanship.

Backed by a combo of trombone, electric guitar, electric bass, and drums, Machete performed an energetic set of Brazilian pop flavored with forró and samba. Her saucy sense of humor comes through both in her stage banter and choice of repertoire, including a silky smooth pop rendition of “Sweet Child of Mine” and a heavy metal cover of “Ipanema.” If not a household name in America, Machete is a real entertainer who had the crowd up on its feet, kicking the festival off in style.

Evidently, every country periodically experiences a body-switching movie craze. We had films like Big and Vice Versa in the late 1980’s. Now Brazil is embracing Daniel Filho’s If I Were You and its aptly named sequel, If I Were You 2 (trailer here), which opened the proper film portion of the festival with a free screening following Machete’s concert.

Married couple Cláudio and Helena already exchanged bodies in the previous installment of the series. However, they seem to have forgotten the lessons of those four days spent in each others shoes. With their marriage teetering on the brink of divorce, simultaneously they mistakenly utter the same old jinxeroo that serves as the film title. Sure enough, once again they switch bodies, which makes their divorce proceedings some awkward.

Aside from a disastrous soccer match, number 2 actually seems somewhat restrained in its physical comedy. After all, they are no longer total strangers in their partner’s bodies. Still, the comedy is certainly broad, aimed at a popular audience. At least, Tony Ramos and Gloria Pires are game enough as the quarrelling body-switchers and Filho keeps the tone light and frothy. Best of all, since it includes a wedding scene, the Central Park audience got to hear “Oh What a Night” in Portuguese.

If 2 is definitely Brazilian popcorn cinema, well suited to a muggy summer outdoor screening. Cine Fest Petrobras continues through Friday at the Tribeca Cinemas, with a diverse bill of popular and art cinema from Brazil, including several music documentaries like Paulo Henrique Fontenelle’s Loki—Arnaldo Baptista.

Sclavis’s Odyssey

Lost on the Way
By Louis Sclavis
ECM Records 2098

The epic poetry of Homer and modern improvised music might seem worlds apart, but there have been at least two jazz-oriented albums inspired by The Odyssey. Bob Freedman’s obscure Journeys of Odysseus featured some appealing Third Stream compositions and several talented soloists, but is somewhat marred the gimmicky excesses added by the producer. Louis Sclavis need not worry about such treatment working with producer Manfred Eicher, whose ECM Records enjoys a peerless reputation among artists and audiophiles. Lost on the Way, the latest fruit of Sclavis’s productive ECM tenure also features familiar Homeric references, as well as the French clarinetist’s restless musical spirit.

While far less electronic than his previous release, L’Imparfait des Langues, Sclavis retains the services of electric guitarist Maxime Delpierre and longtime drummer François Merville, both of whom definitely add a pronounced jazz-rock flavor to the proceedings. Yet Lost feels more intimate and conceptually unified than most rock-influenced improvised music.

The spritely “De Charybde en Scylla” opens the journey with the leader’s bass clarinet and Matthieu Metzger’s soprano saxophone somewhat evoking the spirit of the old world, but counterbalanced by Merville’s funky backbeat. After the brief interlude, “La Première île,” Sclavis darkens the mood on the tempestuous title track, taking a searching solo that quivers and quavers with power.

“Bain D’or” also has an exotic pastoral vibe, fitting to Odysseus’s Mediterranean journey, further distinguished by a striking solo from bassist Olivier Lété, layered over Delpierre’s spare comping and Merville’s hypnotic rhythm. Likewise, Merville’s insistent drumming has a trance-inducing effect on the snaky, distorted “Aboard Ulysses's Boat.” However, his funkiest moments might be represented by his cymbal work on “Des Bruits à Tisser,” which also offers Delpierre the opportunity for a nice power-fusion solo. Sclavis again shifts gears from the preceding ultra-modern sounds, with the brief “L’Absence,” a fittingly elegiac coda to the ancient journey.

Though it has its contemplative moments, Lost is an intense, darkly hued musical statement from Sclavis. Yet despite his experimental impulses, it is melodically accessible, performed with vigor and crispness. Sclavis has long been a musician who can radical alter the way listeners think of the clarinet. Now he also offers a distinctively fresh musical perspective on Homer’s epic with the compelling Lost.

Cine Fest Petrobras Brasil ‘09: Loki—Arnaldo Baptista

Arnaldo Baptista is the perfect artist for a Brazilian Behind the Music treatment. After leading Os Mutantes, a distinctly Brazilian rock band directly involved in the early development of Tropicália, he struggled with drugs and depression in the wake of their break up. It was good for the band while it lasted though—so good musicians and commentators are clearly resisting the temptation to call Os Mutantes the Brazilian Beatles throughout Paulo Henrique Fontenelle’s Loki—Arnaldo Baptista (trailer here), which screens during the upcoming Cine Fest Petrobras Brasil Film Festival.

Os Mutantes took American and British style rock ‘n roll, and added Brazilian musical elements. Their collaboration with Gilberto Gil is considered a seminal moment in the evolution of Tropicália, and laid a foundation for the less defined Música Popular Brasileira (MPB) that followed. Yet given the mop-toppish look Baptista sported during the band’s glory days, the shadow of the Fab Five looms over the Mutantes.

Still, Baptista is quick to distinguish his group from the Beatles, by virtue of the female vocalist Rita Lee. She also played flute and Theremin on Mutantes records, and eventually married Baptista. However, the band’s lurch into prog rock territory left her somewhat marginalized within the group, and probably contributed to their break-up. The excessive LSD abuse probably did not help much either.

Once Lee left, Os Mutantes essentially jumped the shark. Of course, Baptista’s career did not end with Os Mutantes, but he would spend many years in the wilderness. He recorded deeply personally solo records, including the one which lends its name to the documentary. Like Miles Davis and Tony Bennett, painting also became another creative outlet for Baptista, which Fontenelle uses as a touchstone motif in Loki.

Unlike most music documentaries, Fontenelle ends his film on a triumphant note, celebrating Baptista’s re-emergence as an international ambassador of Brazilian music. Along the way, he seems quite diplomatic when documenting the distinctly low points of Baptista’s post-Mutantes career. Though conventional in its approach, Fontenelle gleans some insightful commentary from Baptista’s musical colleagues, including Gil and Tom Zé, as well as most of Os Mutantes. While the Lee’s absence is conspicuous, it becomes clear her split from Baptista and the band was such that her participation just wasn’t going to happen.

It is easy to hear why Os Mutantes made such an impression from the audio samples liberally sprinkled throughout the film. Despite it playful psychedelia, a tune like “Panis et Circenses” has a hauntingly familiar quality that gets into your head after only one listening. However, it is frustrating listening to the talking head speak over vintage performance footage, like Gil’s stirring rendition of “Domingo no Parque” backed up by Os Mutantes and a big band with strings.

Accentuating the positive, Fontenelle clearly has a lot of affection for his subject. The resulting Loki is an informative introduction to the man and his music that Brazilphiles should definitely enjoy. It screens during Cine Fest Petrobras Brasil on Monday (8/3) and Thursday (8/6) at the Tribeca Cinemas.

Art-House K-Horror: Thirst

Vampires typically do not display a lot of angst. Unlike werewolves in human form, they usually enjoy their undead gigs. However, Sang-hyun is not a normal vampire. For instance, he is a Catholic priest who dearly believes in the sanctity of life. Inevitably, this new supernatural condition leads to considerable difficulties for the good Father in Park Chan-wook’s Thirst (trailer here), which opens today in select cities.

Feeling powerless in the face of the death and suffering he sees everyday as a hospital chaplain, Sang-hyun volunteers as a guinea pig in a risky clinical trial developing a vaccine for a deadly rare virus. When the testing goes awry, the priest receives an emergency transfusion tainted with vampire blood. The transfusion reverses the ravages of the virus, but at a mortal price.

Repulsed by his new appetites, Sang-hyun uses his hospital access to obtain blood without the loss of life. Yet this situation clearly will not last when Sang-hyun’s tenuous equilibrium is upset by the desires stirred by Tae-ju, the apparently innocent, put-upon wife of a childhood friend. (As readers of paranormal romance know full well, drinking blood is only one of the vampire’s compulsions.) Tae-ju represents the perfect storm for Sang-hyun, stimulating his new found darker urges as well as his lifelong instinct to protect the weak and vulnerable.

Winner of the Prix du Jury at the Cannes Film Festival, Thirst is far more stylish and ambitious than the average k-horror film. Frequent Park collaborator Song Kang-ho is convincingly anguished as afflicted priest and Kim Ok-vin is quite the seductive and scary femme fatale.
While there is a fair amount of blood-letting it is not nearly as gory as most American splatter movies. Instead, Park tries to disturb viewers with transgressive imagery that conflates the sacred and the erotic.

Park certainly employs some theologically charged themes, like life after death and the corruption of innocence, but it often seems like he is only playing with them for shock value and never really plumbing their dramatic depth. At times, the tone of the film is also oddly inconsistent, alternating between heavy scenes informed by religious and archetypal motifs, and moments of black comedy, like those involving the ghost of a particular victim that feel like they could have been lifted straight out of John Landis’s An American Werewolf in London. Still, by depicting concepts like sin and sacrifice with absolute sincerity, Park elevates Thirst above more standard vampire fare.

A Cannes favorite with a cult following that includes Quentin Tarantino, Park is known for his arty violence. His diehard fans should be well satisfied with his latest helping of dark mayhem, even if it does not fully live up to its early promise. It opens today in New York at the Sunshine Theater.

The Dardenne Brothers: Lorna’s Silence

Liège is a city with a rich cultural history, but the recently naturalized Lorna almost never leaves the industrial quarter. Still, she and her fellow Slavic immigrants will take drastic measures to stay in the Belgian city, the least of which being marriage, in Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s Lorna’s Silence (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York and Los Angeles.

Lorna’s Belgian citizenship papers are the result of a commercial transaction. She married Claudy, a Belgian drug addict whose habit makes him disposable. At least, that is what small-time gangster Fabio is counting on. After paying Claudy to marry Lorna, he intends to arrange a fatal overdose for the guileless junkie, so the newly legal Lorna can in turn marry a shady Russian for immigration purposes.

Initially, Lorna agreed to the scheme to raise the money to open a snack bar with her fiancé Sokol, feeling nothing but disgust for her husband of convenience. However, when Claudy tries to get straight, she begins to develop an unlikely affection for him. Suddenly, she finds herself scrambling to arrange a quickie divorce to save Claudy, allow her to marry to the Russian, and live happily ever after with Sokol. Of course, doing business with the underworld usually does not lead to neat storybook endings.

Though the Dardennes’s Cannes Award-winning screenplay has elements of a gritty crime story, it is a far cry from genre cinema. Instead, it is a stark character study of a woman who reaches her breaking point, and is eventually pushed beyond it. Like many others, she has resorted to commoditizing herself for financial reasons, reducing her humanity to a residency card and a marriage license.

In the challenging lead role, Arta Dobroshi withstands the mercilessly close examination of Alain Marcoen’s unvarnished cinematography. She dramatically conveys the churning fears and stirrings of conscience beneath her frigid façade. However, the standout performance comes from frequent Dardenne collaborator Jéremié Renier, expressing the pain, confusion, and basic humanity of the tragic Claudy.

The Dardennes offer viewers an intimate look into a grim, strife-filled world, where desperation and conscience vie for a woman’s soul. It presents a drab, inhospitable vision of Liège that would probably alarm the Belgian chamber of commerce, if not for the filmmakers’ prestigious international reputation as the country’s leading filmmakers. It is a darkly naturalistic film, but it has a definite moral center that is quite compelling. Recommended for discerning viewers, Silence opens tomorrow (7/31) in New York at the Cinema Village.

The Danish Resistance: Flame & Citron

For the underground resistance of WWII, betrayal and treachery were constant companions during the clandestine struggle against their Nazi occupiers. This will hardly come as a revelation to those who have seen Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows, but it comes as a nasty shock to the heroic real-life protagonists of Ole Christian Madsen’s Flame & Citron (trailer here), which opens in New York this Friday.

Flame and Citron were the code names of the two most celebrated members of the Danish resistance movement. With his bright red hair, Bent Faurschou-Hviid’s alias was obviously quite fitting. The less conspicuous Jørgen Haagen Schmith was known as Citron (or “The Lemon”) because of his work as a Citroën mechanic. One was the disillusioned son of middle-class respectability, while the other was a working class family man. Yet for both men, the 1944 invasion would drive them commit extraordinary acts of courage. They also quickly discovered they had a distinct talent for killing Germans.

As we watch them in action, Flame is usually the triggerman and Citron is the driver, but in a pinch, they can improvise. However, they might be too good at what they do, or at least their superiors in the resistance seem to think so. Though radically different personality types, Flame and Citron were true freedom fighters and patriots. Unfortunately, while they saw the war in absolute black-and-white terms, those around them (at least in the film) were living in the grey areas, working the angles and figuring the percentages. Eventually, the two partners come to question their comrades, trusting only themselves.

Thure Lindhardt and Mads Mikkelsen (best known as the villain from Casino Royale) are both dynamite as the reckless Flame and the tightly-wound Citron, respectively. They display a riveting, sometimes even uncomfortably intense screen presence that makes their selfless dedication perfectly believable in the dramatic context of the film. They are nicely counterbalanced by a great screen nemesis, Hoffman the Mephistophelean Gestapo chief played with icy zeal by Christian Berkel.

With its double and triple-crosses coming fast is furious, F&C is an engrossing historical thriller, yet somehow it still has that cool Scandinavian vibe. Madsen stages the film’s action sequences with gritty realism and Jette Lehmann’s remarkable production design convincingly recreates the stark look and feel of occupied Denmark. In fact Madsen and Lars K. Andersen’s script may well change how some people think of Scandinavia in general. After all, while Flame and Citron were doggedly fighting the National Socialists, we see scrupulously neutral Sweden serving as a non-aligned playground for spies of both sides.

With its effective framing narration, F&C makes it clear that history often demands a choosing of sides, while refusing to take such a stand is itself a de facto choice with moral implications. Eventually awarded U.S. Medal of Freedoms (posthumously), Flame and Citron are now recognized as heroes for the decisions they made. Simply as a story of war and intricate intrigue, F&C is compelling cinema. It is also a darkly fascinating look at an aspect of the war not often seen on movie screens. It opens this Friday (7/31) at the Lincoln Plaza and Sunshine Theaters.

Ozploitation: Not Quite Hollywood

There was a time when scrappy Australian filmmakers churned out low budget films laden with sex, violence, projectile vomiting, and some occasional cruelty to animals—basically just good, clean Aussie fun. The 1970’s and early 1980’s were truly the golden era of Ozploitation, which finally gets its Chuck Workmanlike due in Mark Hartley’s Not Quite Hollywood (“red band” trailer here), opening this Friday in New York.

Hartley essentially divides his survey into four parts: soft-core skin flicks, gory horror films, kung fu and biker actioners, and Ozploitation’s tragic late 80’s descent into cheese, eventually followed by its recent retro Renaissance. Each part has plenty of guilty pleasures to offer, accompanied by insightful commentary by the responsible actors and filmmakers, plus fanboy Quentin Tarantino.

As one might expect, NQH contains plenty of scenes inappropriate for young viewers. Given his subject matter, Hartley takes advantage of the opportunity to show pretty much everything. However, he definitely makes an intriguing case for many of the genre’s high octane films. For instance, George Lazenby getting his one-and-done James Bond butt thoroughly kicked and then burnt to a crisp in Brian Trenchard-Smith’s The Man from Hong Kong just looks like all kinds of awesome. Conversely, many of the grade-Z films Tarantino rhapsodizes over look totally lame, yet the gleeful barrage of bizarre images make NQH relentlessly entertaining.

Serious film scholars can take something out of NQH as well. After all, prestigious filmmakers, like Fred Schepisi (director of Six Degrees of Separation) and John Seale (Academy Award winning cinematographer of The English Patient) started out in the Ozploitation trenches before moving on to proper cinema, but still have fond words for the genre. Indeed, Hartley seemed to have access to just about every surviving Ozploitation veteran, yet his funniest talking head segments come courtesy of a delightfully contrarian Australian writer perfectly willing to unequivocally state on camera that these films are complete rubbish and most of the filmmakers who made them are thoroughly rotten human beings. Let’s hear it for equal time.

Those mere mortals who do not know Hurricane Smith from Mad Dog Morgan might still be interested in the Hollywood stars who turn up to discuss their Ozploitation sojourns, including Jaime Lee Curtis, Stacy Keach, and Dennis Hopper. The film’s only drawback is the omnipresence of Tarantino. Certainly, as the foremost Ozploitation lover, his participation makes sense, but after the first half-hour his pseudo-geeky hipster schtick grows tiresome.

NQH is a breezy, enjoyable documentary made with genuine affection for a class of films that have not gotten much critical love. It also has cool visual style inspired by its drive-in-grindhouse roots. Those who are easily offended should not even think about it. However, if your idea of a good time at the movies involves a giant razorback hog chasing teenagers across the outback, NQH will be your version of That’s Entertainment. Heartily recommended with that major caveat, NQH opens this Friday in New York at the Village East Cinema.

AAIFF ’09: Pastry (and The Eighteenth Birthday Party)

Movie goers well understand the sort of emotional nourishment to be had from sweet confections. In Hong Kong, the simple egg tart can do wonders for young Mui as she watches her four older sisters struggle with difficult marriages and disastrous romances in Risky Liu’s Pastry (trailer here), which screened on the concluding day of the 2009 Asian American International Film Festival.

Mui’s father slips out to the movies on the mornings of his first two daughters’ weddings, yet he always makes it to the church on time. Young Mui is simply waiting for the egg tarts to be served. There is undeniable merit to both their approaches to wedding day festivities/angst. Unfortunately, relationships will prove increasingly problematic for the younger sisters, but at least the family’s neighborhood café is always open, serving their beloved “Portuguese tarts.”

With its bittersweet mix of love and food, Pastry would sound tailor-made for the American indie market. However, it is a much more down-to-earth screen story, portraying characters free of the forced quirkiness of most foodie films, despite director Liu’s whimsical flourishes that often seem at odds with his largely serious material. Mui’s family must face legitimate, every-day problems that are not always resolved entirely happily. Still, even in a highly imperfect world, it seems hard to believe the five attractive sisters keep getting involved with such losers.

Mui herself has a waifish Amelie-like charm, but matures in realistic ways as the film progresses. Based on the work of writer Chan Wei, Pastry gives a slice-of-life flavor of turn-of-the-millennium post-transfer Hong Kong that de-emphasizes politics, aside from showing news footage of Chris Patten, the final British Governor, triumphantly returning on a book signing tour to enjoy some of those egg tarts.

The cornerstone of Pastry is a quite touching connection between Mui and her father. Ironically, it was preceded by Ching-Shen Chuang’s narrative short, The Eighteenth Birthday Party, which features a horrifyingly dysfunctional father-daughter relationship. A weird epistolary film that veers into gothic territory, the disconcerting Birthday boasts a subtly powerful performance from its lead as Emma, a beautiful young woman, kept physically and emotionally isolated by her twisted father. It was the best narrative short of an incomplete sampling of AAIFF’s shorts and one of the best shorts seen in on the New York festival circuit in recent months. Together with Pastry, it made a memorable for a memorable block of programming

AAIFF ’09: White on Rice

Through an incredible forty-eight films, Japanese audiences enjoyed the amorous misadventures of the lovable loser Tora-san and his long suffering family. During his pre-screening introduction at this year’s Asian American International Film Festival, actor Hiroshi Watanabe explained the example of Tora-san inspired his performance as Hajime “Jimmy” Beppu, the luckless protagonist of Dave Boyle’s White on Rice (trailer here).

After his divorce, “Jimmy” has been living with his sister Aiko, sleeping in the bunk-bed above his nephew, Bob. Aiko and Bob are relatively okay with the situation, but his brother-in-law Tak is running out of patience. Supposedly looking for a new wife, Jimmy thinks he has found her when Tak’s niece Ramona temporarily moves in with the happy family, even though he would indeed technically be her uncle as well.

“Jimmy” knows a lot about dinosaurs, but he is out of his depth romancing Ramona. Of course, a series of misadventures follow, which threaten to completely destabilize Aiko’s household. Will Jimmy finally grow up and get the girl? Tora-san spent forty-eight studio films looking for love, can Jimmy pull it off in one indie?

Rice is at least as amusing as most Hollywood comedies and about ten times funnier than the average Judd Apatow movie of the week. Watanabe hits the right endearingly goofy notes as Uncle Jimmy, despite the creepy Woody Allen nature of his character’s romantic obsession. Japanese actress Nae lights up the screen as Jimmy’s indulgent sister, showing an easy rapport with Watanabe. However, Mio Takada and Justin Kwong do what they can as Tak and Bob respectively, but the parts are somewhat underwritten, relying on the stereotypes of workaholic father and over-achieving secret prodigy.

Boyle and Joel Clark’s screenplay has a fair number of laughs, some of which are surprisingly large, but the humor never veers too far into gross-out territory. Likewise, as the family pulls together, the film essentially avoids overly saccharine sentimentality. Still, Rice has some credibility issues, like when Jimmy spurns the advances of Mary (a.k.a. Banana Girl), who as played by Joy Osmanski, is at least as attractive as his niece-by-marriage.

Rice keeps things quick and breezy, wrapping things in just under ninety manageable minutes. If not the deepest film of the year, it was a nicely comedic diversion amongst the serious dramas and documentaries programmed at the 2009 AAIFF, which concludes today with another full day of screenings.

AAIFF ’09: Tibet in Song

It can honestly be said Ngawang Choephel’s first documentary was over six and a half years in the making. That is how long he was unjustly imprisoned by the Chinese for the crime of recording traditional Tibetan folk songs. Of course, they called it espionage. What started as an endeavor in ethnomusicology became a much more personal project for Ngawang, ultimately resulting in Tibet in Song, which recently screened at the Asian American International Film Festival.

Though born in Tibet, Ngawang had lived in exile with his mother since the age of two. However, attending the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts instilled in Ngawang a passion for the traditional music of his country that would temporarily cost him his liberty. Though his mother strenuously advised against it, Ngawang returned to Tibet in hopes of documenting the traditional songs before they were completely lost to posterity.

In Lhasa, Ngawang discovered the unofficial Chinese prohibitions against Tibetan cultural, religious, or linguistic identity had largely succeeded. However, like a Tibetan Alan Lomax, he found some people in provinces, usually the older generations, who were willing to be filmed as they sang and played the music of their ancestors. And then a funny thing happened on the road to Dawa.

Suddenly, Ngawang was arrested and his film was confiscated. For years he endured the abuse of a Communist prison, where he still persisted in learning and singing traditional Tibetan songs. Eventually, the Chinese government relented to the pressure of a remarkable international campaign spearheaded by Ngawang’s mother, releasing the filmmaker, who would finally finish a very different film from what he presumably envisioned.

Song is a remarkable documentary in many ways. It all too clearly illustrates the unpredictable nature of nonfiction filmmaking, as events take a dramatic turn Ngawang was surely hoping to avoid. The film also documents the Communist government’s chilling campaign to obliterate one of the world’s oldest cultures. Particularly disturbing to Ngawang are the ostensive Tibetan cultural revues mounted by the Chinese government that feature plenty of party propaganda but no legitimate Tibetan music. In Orwellian terms, they represent an effort to literally rewrite Tibetan culture.

What starts as a reasonably interesting survey of Tibetan song becomes a riveting examination of the occupied nation. Ngawang and the other former Tibetan prisoners he interviews have important stories to tell, and indeed the significance of song is a theme many of them express. It was an excellent selection for the 2009 Asian American International Film Fest that deserves significant theatrical distribution. The AAIFF continues this weekend with full days of programming today and Sunday.

Restored: All Quiet on the Western Front (Silent)

It might just be the last truly great anti-war film. Nobody begrudged Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front (trailer here) its 1930 Academy Awards for best picture and director, not even in retrospect. Yet, very few saw the picture as Milestone had originally conceived it, because of last minute cuts the studio made to the domestic sound print. However, as was common practice at the time, a silent version was simultaneously shot for the foreign market. Considered much closer to Milestone’s intended cut, the longer silent print has recently been restored and preserved by the Library of Congress, and will play a special one day engagement at Film Forum on August 3rd.

Strictly speaking, the restored silent print of Quiet is not completely silent. In addition to the original score, there are ambient crowd noises and other such effects. Frankly, the nature of Erich Remarque’s story is such that extensive dialogue is not necessary. It simply follows the tragic story arc of Paul Baumer and his fellow students, who are encouraged to enlist by a militaristic professor, only to be disillusioned by the harsh realities of trench warfare.

Nearly eighty years later, Milestone’s film is still probably the most successful cinematic depiction of WWI’s miserable fighting conditions. Its reconstruction of the trenches and tunnels along the front lines has yet to be equaled on film. While nothing explicitly graphic is seen on-screen, the horror of war remains inescapable.

As many have observed, there was only a limited window in which an anti-war film with sympathetic German protagonists could have been filmed before the threat of National Socialism would have rendered it highly distasteful to the general public. Still, Quiet also critiques the warmongering attitudes of the German government, as represented by Baumer’s demagogic professor.

Quiet was Lew Ayres breakout film, and even without dialogue, he is quite compelling as Baumer, expressing his religious piety and basic decency, as well as a growing contempt for the German war machine. In fact, all his brothers-in-arms are played with straight forward effectiveness. Arguably, the film only descends into the realm of melodrama during the civilian scenes.

Ultimately, the silent version holds up remarkably well not just as a historical curiosity but as a film in its own right. Though it was produced during the transitional period between the end of silent pictures and the early days of talkies, Quiet is still an impressive cinematic achievement. It will have three screenings at Film Forum on Monday (8/3).

AAIFF ’09: Fruit Fly

If you envision the Broadway show Rent without the tragedy, you will have a pretty good sense of H.P. Mendoza’s latest movie musical. It might be set in San Francisco’s Castro District instead of Alphabet City, but the Bohemian spirit is the same in Fruit Fly (trailer here), the closing feature of the 2009 Asian American International Film Festival (which starts tonight with Ivy Ho’s excellent Claustrophobia).

In the film, “Fruit Fly” is suggested as a less derogatory term for a woman who befriends gay men almost exclusively. Bethesda suddenly finds it applied to her, after moving to San Francisco and becoming fast friends with her gay roommate Windham and his circle. They do not break it to her gently either, explaining it to her in a song with the more traditional soubriquet “Fag Hag.”

After a sojourn in the Philippines, Bethesda has come to town in hopes of mounting her one-woman performance-art piece about her search for her birth mother. Almost everyone staying in Bethesda’s Real World-like house harbors artistic ambitions, inspiring some amusing cynicism from their decidedly un-hippy landlord, Tracy.

While Mendoza was the composer, lyricist, and screenwriter for the Indie circuit favorite Colma: the Musical, he also takes the directorial reins in Fly. Musically, the results are a little uneven. Frankly, the intentionally comedic songs are not particularly memorable. However, it starts with an enjoyably upbeat opener, “Public Transit,” and can claim at least one legitimate standout song, “You Do This for a Reason,” that should become an anthem for frustrated artists everywhere.

Despite her character’s many annoying moments, L.A. Renigen shows an easy likability and decent vocal chops as Bethesda. Her housemates are more of a mixed bag though. Some turn in quite solid supporting work, like E.S. Park and Theresa Navarro as the resident lesbian couple, while others do not acquit themselves as well. However, there are some truly rich comedic performances by Don Wood as the crusty landlord and Christina Augello as the bane of his existence: “Dirty Judy,” the rent controlled upstairs tenant. “I’m the reason apartments are so expensive,” she profanely gloats in a sharply written, economically informed scene.

Anytime a filmmaker creates an original movie musical, you have to give credit for their ambition. While a bit hit-or-miss, Mendoza still succeeds fairly often in Fly. It closes this year’s AAIFF this Sunday night (7/26) at the Clearview Chelsea Theater.

Spacey Shrink

Hollywood is that strange place where cut-throat business meets New Age psycho-babble. Yet, it must be somewhat self-aware, considering how often it satirizes itself and California’s other neurotic beautiful people in films like The Player, Bowfinger, L.A. Story, and Serial. While those are all far superior films, there are at least some stirrings of life to be found in that shopworn comedic genre, as is sometimes demonstrated by Jonas Pate’s Shrink (trailer here), which opens in select cities this Friday.

Dr. Henry Carter is a respected analyst to the stars and a best-selling self-help author. He is also a complete mess, smoking marijuana like a chimney in order to cope with his wife’s recent suicide. Most of his vapid Hollywood clientele deserve a shrink on autopilot, but he temporarily snaps out of his torpor when seeing a disturbed African American high school student pro bono.

It turns out they suffer a similar grief, but self-medicate in different ways. He smokes dope, young Jemma indulges in repertory cinema. Yet, their scenes together are surprisingly well written and played scrupulously straight. Kevin Spacey never overplays the role of psychologist on the verge of a nervous breakdown, always tempering Carter’s self-destructive behavior with a sense of fundamental decency (which is refreshing). Likewise, Keke Palmer, recognizable as the lead in Akeelah and the Bee, plays another realistically smart, believably troubled teenager.

While Shrink has some unexpected insight into the grieving process, the comedic Hollywood material hardly breaks any new ground. One of Carter’s patients is a germophobic power-agent. Now imagine the most obvious gags for his character and they are probably in Shrink. Somewhat more interesting is a subplot involving an aging superstar trying to overcome his chronic philandering. One of the film’s big surprises is the unbilled appearance of a well known Hollywood star in this supporting role. Wisely, he foregoes his tiresome manic stage persona and is at least adequate in the part.

Shrink is a highly uneven film. At its best, Spacey and Palmer play off each other honestly and directly. However, at other times, it seems like a shallow, glitzy tour of the Hollywood party scene. At least cinematographer Lukas Ettlin makes it all look pretty.

Though imperfect, Shrink is a film that frankly exceeds expectations. It is most successful when it plays it straight, eschewing cynicism while trying to make real human connections. Maybe there’s some kind of self-help lesson in that. It opens in New York this Friday (7/24) at the Sunshine and Chelsea 9 theaters.

(Photo credit: Jihan Abdalla)

AAIFF ’09: Hubad

You can see edgy, erotically-charged theater any night of the week in New York City, even on Sunday. Evidently, that is not necessarily the case in the Philippines. Appearing an explicit, psychologically revealing avant-garde production may rejuvenate the careers of two middle-aged actors, but it also threatens to disrupt their own relationships in Mark Gary and Denisa Reyes’s Hubad (trailer here), which screens during the upcoming Asian American International Film Festival.

Andre Joaquin is a gifted theater director. That means his work is not commercial, forcing him to rely on arts council grants to stage his productions. Unfortunately, his bureaucratic patrons are balking at the explicit nature of his latest work. While struggling to secure funding, he is pushing his actors to their breaking point with his demanding rehearsals. Carmen Manahan and Delfin Bustamante play a bored married couple, who simulate various fantasies during the course of Joaquin’s experimental play, and perhaps reveal something of themselves in the process, if their director has his way.

For Manahan, the play might be the last chance to save her flagging career. Bustamante still finds himself in demand, but for unrewarding gigs, like Disney musical revues. Both are reasonably happily married, just not to each other. However, perhaps as a result of the intimate nature of their rehearsals, they have begun an ill-advised affair.

This is an adult film, but not a prurient one. While Hubad, which translates as “naked” or “stripped,” appears to be about one thing, very little of it is seen in actuality on-screen. However, the many strange stage representations of intimate relations, including s&m sessions, will surely confuse immature viewers.

Hubad also might be a film only its native Filipino audience can really appreciate. While Joaquin’s dramatic vision might well be transgressive compared to say, typical Manilla dinner theater fare, here in New York, it seems pretty pedestrian. There is some fine acting to be found in the film though. Filipino film director Penque Gallaga is particularly memorable as psychologically manipulative director, subtly revealing Joaquin’s vulnerabilities, including his own specific Freudian issues. Nonie Buencamino also brings a real intensity and legitimate screen presence to role of Bustamante. However, Irma Adlawan sometimes strays into melodramatic territory, just like her character, the frequently overwrought Manahan.

Gary and Reyes convincingly capture the hothouse atmosphere of the chaotic rehearsal process. In fact, Hubad seems infused with a genuine affection for the theater. Much like Joaquin’s on-screen production, Hubad is an interesting work, featuring brave performances, but is still more likely to leave audiences intellectually stimulated rather than emotionally satisfied. It screens this Friday (7/24) at the Chelsea Clearview Cinemas as part of the 2009 AAIFF.