Off White Lies: Hezbollah Bombs, Israeli Hospitality

The second war in Lebanon is raging.  As Hezbollah rains down bombs on northern Israel, everyday Israelis respond by pulling together, offering refuge to evacuees.  Shaul is not from the north, but he is in need of shelter, especially now that his underwhelmed daughter has been bundled off to live with him.  He might be problematic, but it is hard to judge the irresponsible “inventor” too harshly in Maya Kenig’s Off White Lies (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Fresh off the plane from America, Libby is pretty appalled by the sight of her slovenly father, Shaul.  She is also confused why he does not take her straight to his home.  Of course, he does not have one.  He was hoping to stay with a buddy up north, but the bombardments scuttled those plans.  A news report gives Shaul a bright idea: accept the hospitality of a family hosting displaced northerners.  This will be Libby’s first time pulling a fast one, but the girl has to learn sometime.

Shaul and Libby land in the well to do home of senior military officer Gidi and his wife Helit.  Unfortunately, both are naturally suspicious.  While the father and daughter’s frequently evolving story ought to offer plenty of red flags, the host family sort of falls for Shaul’s goofy charm.  Nonetheless, exposure always lurks just around the corner.

Obviously, the extraordinary circumstances help the father and daughter repair their relationship.  Kenig and co-writer Dana Dimant clearly are not allergic to a little sentiment, but at least they are not compelled to tie everything together into a pretty bow.  Although Lies hits a lot of quirky notes, it is still interesting to see Israeli life during wartime from the perspective of an indie dramedy.

Gur Bentwich’s goonish likability really is Kenig’s ace in the hole.  Never too manic or shticky, he is just eccentric enough to be real.  Elya Inbar has some nice getting-reacquainted scenes with him, even though Libby’s petulance gets a little wearisome over time.  However, Tzahi Grad gets the lion’s share of the laughs as the gruff but surprisingly pragmatic Gidi.

Featuring several well drawn characters and a comparative sense of restraint, Kenig’s film is a pleasant enough excursion into family dysfunction.  Considerably better than The Fitzgerald Family Christmas (for instance), Off White Lies is recommended for fans of Israeli cinema. It opens today (12/7) in New York at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas.

Fitzgerald Family Christmas: Long Island Cheer

Where are the Griswolds when you need them?  It is the season for sentimentality and Edward Burns intends to indulge.  He returns to Long Island for a big Irish family get together in The Fitzgerald Family Christmas (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Their mother’s birthday is two days before Christmas, but aside from Gerry, her favorite, none of the grown Fitzgerald children want to come home to celebrate.  Grown might be too strong a word.  Let’s say they are over twenty-one.  Gerry is the professional martyr who still lives at home.  He has four sisters whose names are impossible to keep straight.  It is easier to just number them in accordance with how annoying they are, number four being the most insufferable.  He also has two brothers, one of whom would have been forgotten were it not for a handy set of press notes.

There is still a Fitzgerald father out there, but he is dead to Rosie Fitzgerald after he walked out on her when the brood was still quite young.  Unfortunately, Jim Fitzgerald will be dead to everyone soon.  His final wish is to spend his last Christmas with the family.  Gerry tries pleading his case, but his mother and assorted siblings remain steadfastly opposed. 

Various other family dramas crop up, including Sister #1’s pregnancy with her abusive husband.  Brother Quinn and Sister #4 are pursuing significantly younger and older romantic partners, respectively, while Sister #3 sent her husband packing in favor of their landscaper.  Sister #2 actually has a presentable husband and young baby, but she is still absolutely miserable to be around.  Meanwhile, completely forgettable Brother Cyril just got out of rehab.  Right, good luck with that.

Christmas with the Fitzgeralds will make viewers convert to Buddhism.  The only appealing scenes involve Brother Gerry’s awkward courtship of Nora Daugherty, the nurse of a longtime family friend.  It is nice to see realistically flawed, everyday looking (slightly worn even) people develop a down-to-earth relationship.  Reuniting from The Brothers McMullen, Burns and Connie Britton display real romantic chemistry together.  He helms these sequences with a sensitive touch the rest of the middling family chaos lacks.

Granted, it should also be noted Ed Lauter might just give a career performance as the remorseful absentee father.  In fact, there are several very nice supporting turns peppered throughout this overstuffed holiday feast of subplots, each of which is neatly resolved, lest they spoil the turkey.  While not an outright affront to cinema, The Fitzgerald Family Christmas is unlikely to become anyone’s holiday tradition.  More liable to test viewers’ patience, it opens tomorrow (12/7) in New York at the Village East.

SLIFF ’12: The Good Son

Leila Manner is about as Hollywood as you can get in Finland.  Her oldest son Ilmari is her greatest enabler.  It is a small but ragingly dysfunctional family unit that Manner’s would be suitor should steer well clear of in Zaida Bergroth’s The Good Son (trailer here), which screens during the 2012 St. Louis International Film Festival.

Manner just burned another batch of bridges at her latest movie premiere.  Hounded by the press, she whisks off Il Manner and his younger brother Unto for a secluded rest in their vacation home.  Of course, as soon as she arrives, she gets bored and proceeds to invite some deadbeat showbiz friends over for a party.  She immediately clashes with a fellow actress, but there is a bit of chemistry between her and well known author Aimo Marttila, a friend of a friend.  Ilmari Bates does not like the looks of him at all, but for a while he seems to be preoccupied with his ex-girlfriend, the small town floozy Karita.  Yet, his psychological issues only need a slight push to reappear in spades.

In the hands of another director, Good Son could have easily traveled into genre territory.  Instead, Bergroth is more concerned with the family relationship dynamics.  In a way, it could be considered the dark flip side of parental reversal films, like The Descendants, in which precocious children abet the dubious parenting of an immature father or mother.  Ilmari is a rather twisted kid, but what can a self-absorbed, boozy diva like Manner expect?  Why Marttila would want anything to do with her is hard to fathom.

While not dogme per se, Good Son definitely has a modest indie look.  At least, it is sunny by the lake.  In contrast, the psyches on display are rather dark.  A fitting companion to Paprika Steen’s crash-and-burn star turn in Applause, Bergroth stages an uncomfortably intimate chamber drama.  Although not reaching Steen’s level of soul-shredding, Elina Knihtilä is still rather frighteningly convincing portraying Manner’s vain and self-destructive behavior. 

Despite all the warning signs his character ignores, Eero Aho brings an appropriately mature, world-weary presence to Marttila.  However, as the title character, Samuli Niittymäki might be going for slow burning intensity, but largely gives the audience empty stares.

To her credit, Bergroth resists overplaying the oedipal card, suggesting many dimensions to the mother-son codependency.  Not exactly winding up where you might expect, Good Son is surprisingly honest and grounded, considering its potential for sensationalism.  It consistently commands viewer attention even with its weak lead.  Moderately recommended for those drawn to psychological dramas, The Good Son screens this Saturday (11/10) and Tuesday (11/13) as part of this year’s SFIFF.  More highly recommended, Christian Petzold’s Barbara, Michael Roskam’s Bullhead, Pen-Ek Ratanaruang’s Headshot, Valeriy Todorovsky’s Hipsters, H.P. Mendoza’s I Am a Ghost, Tom Shuyu Lin’s Starry Starry Night, and Eric Khoo’s Tatsumi will also screen during the festival.

French Rendezvous ’12: Headwinds

Paul Anderen is a writer, so he must be impossible to live with. His wife Sarah seemed to think so. After a particularly spiteful argument, she might have walked out on him and their two children. While her fate remains a mystery, Anderen will have to become the responsible parent he never was in Jalil Lespert’s Headwinds (trailer here), which screens during this year’s Rendezvous with French Cinema in New York.

Though initially a suspect, Anderen was eventually cleared of any involvement in her disappearance. That provides him little closure, but allows him to move on with his life, at least to extent. Returning to the old family cottage in the coastal city of Saint Malo, Anderen accepts a job with his more dutiful brother Alex. He still has issues, but he begins to make the odd human connection here and there. However, when he befriends one of the laborers who helped move him in, he finds himself once again under police suspicion when the man kidnaps his own son as part of a custody dispute.

Headwinds is sort of like a French version of The Descendants without the entitled sense of Noblesse oblige. It also has the hint of a crime drama sprinkled in here and there, but the focus falls squarely on Anderen and his steadily developing parental chops.

The biggest star in Headwinds disappears after the first ten minutes, but one can easily believe a guy like Anderen would have a hard time getting over the apparent loss of Audrey Tautou. As the bereft husband who will not allow himself to grieve, Benoît Magimel is convincingly human in a myriad of insecure and self-defeating ways. Yet, he also has some rather brutally honest confrontations with Antoine Duléry, quite nicely nuanced as his resentful older brother. The kids are just alright. Descendants probably has the advantage over Headwinds on that score. However, Isabelle Carré adds an intriguingly compassionate note as Josée Combe, the local copper.

Arguably, Headwinds does not hold a lot of surprises in store for viewers, except its willingness to face every difficult scene head-on, without copping out. It is melodrama, but pretty good melodrama. Again, if Alexander Payne’s film had the perfect level of sentimentality for you, then by all means check out Headwinds. It screens as a selection of Rendezvous with French Cinema tomorrow and Friday (3/8 & 3/9) at the Walter Reade Theater.

No Paradise: The Descendants

People really do work in Hawaii. Attorney Matt King does little else. As a result, when tragedy strikes his wife, King is ill-prepared to carry the sole parenting load in Alexander Payne’s The Descendants (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Like his father before him, King represents the responsible branch of one of Hawaii’s mainline families, distantly related to the House of Kamehameha. Unfortunately, his cousins are wastrels who have largely squandered their legacy. However, Occupy Hawaii-style legislation will confiscate the Kings’ ancestral holdings, unless they liquidate before the mandated deadline. Ironically, this will force them to sell a vast swath of pristine coastline to commercial developers.

With the closely scrutinized sale pending, King is already under pressure when his wife suffers a head injury and falls into a coma. She will not revive. Person by person, King must tell her friends and family the bad news. While carrying out this grim duty, he discovers she was having an affair. It also seems his oldest daughter Alexandra already knew, and now deeply resents both her parents for allowing it to happen.

Descendants is considerably better than the maudlin melodrama one might expect. The dialogue is consistently sharp and the astutely observed relationships develop in intriguing ways. Particularly striking is Matt and Alexandra King’s sort of-kind of role reversal, stemming from his boomerish lack of confidence in his own parental authority. Nevertheless, the film falls into something of a repetitive pattern of tell-and-grieve that is admittedly true to life, but could certainly be streamlined for dramatic purposes.

In a way, Clooney’s performance as King plays both with and against his playboy persona. He is still positioned as the smartest, smoothest guy in the room, but he allows himself to look awkward and old at times. His voice-overs are also initially rather clever (“leave your kids enough to do something, but not enough to do nothing”), but risk becoming too pithy as the film progresses. Yet, at times he summons some power we never knew he had in him, most notably when he “confronts” his comatose wife with her infidelity. Raw and brutally honest, it is the kind of scene you rarely see in film.

How depressing would it be to learn your wife was cheating with Matthew Lillard? To be fair, he is probably okay in the part, if Payne was looking to make Brian Speer a decidedly low rent lothario. In contrast, the classy Judy Greer makes the most of a relatively small role as his wife, Julie Speer. As Alexandra, Shailene Woodley definitely holds her own with Clooney, whom she shares considerable screen time as near equals. Yet, it is the old pro Robert Forrester who really lowers the emotional boom as King’s bitterly distraught father-in-law.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the film is notion of the King family as the titular descendants, blessed with good fortune and tied by blood to the enormously photogenic Hawaiian landscape. In fact, it almost makes an old world defense of class privilege, suggesting the state’s rich land reserves can only be entrusted to the enlightened upper-class, as personified by King. Tacky middle class cads like Speer will only exploit it for all its worth. That is unusual territory for a film to unintentionally veer into. Yet, Descendants is a film with several small surprises. Unexpectedly smart and frank, it is a pretty good showcase for Clooney and the mostly excellent ensemble cast, rather worth seeing when it opens tomorrow (11/16) in New York at the Lincoln Square and Union Square Theaters.

Italian Sentimentalism: The First Beautiful Thing

Bruno Michelucci is a miserable louse and it is all due to his mother’s sex appeal. Obviously, this is just his excuse for underachieving. Still, there is no denying her scandalous private life leads to no end of complications in Paolo Virzì’s The First Beautiful Thing (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Like Blanche Dubois, Anna Nigiotti Michelucci heavily relied on the kindness of strangers. After walking out on her husband Marco in suitably dramatic fashion, Nigiotti Michelucci and her son and daughter are constantly on the move, crashing in guest houses and basement hideaways provided by her many admirers amongst Livorno’s adult male population. Of course, gossip is vicious in the small provincial town. Her daughter Valeria is too young to appreciate the malicious whispers, but not Bruno.

Thirty-some years later, Bruno is a basket case, recklessly self-medicating and trying his darnedest to alienate everyone around him. Though he has avoided all contact with his family, his sister strong-arms him into paying one last visit to their dying mother. The same relentlessly upbeat optimist, she has thoroughly charmed the staff of her hospice. She still appears healthy, but time is evidently short. Yet even at this late date, Bruno has difficulty coming to terms with her, as he ruminates over all the embarrassing incidents from his childhood (seen in flashbacks) that made him the man he is today.

Fittingly, Nigiotti Michelucci is a true fan of Sophia Loren. Indeed, she seems to have modeled her life after one of the screen icon’s more passionate films, living large, with equal measures of innocence and worldliness. At times, this is somewhat charming in the spirit of La Dolce Vita. However, after a certain point, one has to wince at scenes Bruno witnesses in sullen silence.

Virzì handles the constant temporal shifts rather adeptly. He also evokes a groovy nostalgia for the early 1970’s, particularly through his use of saccharine pop tunes of the era, such as the one that lent the film its title. Yet, Nigiotti Michelucci’s persistent inability or unwillingness to create a more stable environment for children eventually wears on the film’s credibility.

As Bruno pushing middle-age, Valerio Mastandrea looks and acts like a complete loser. In contrast, Micaela Ramazzotti s 1970’s Nigiotti Michelucci has a genuinely vivacious screen presence. Indeed, she could have stepped out of the free-spirited Italian films of years gone by. However, perhaps the most intriguing turn comes from Claudia Pandolfi as grown-up sister Valeria, the baby of the family forced to act as the adult, by default.

Thing is hardly shy about its melodrama, dropping just about every soap opera revelation imaginable on viewers in its two-hours and a smidge running time. While it is executed with laudable zest, it never reaches the heights of Luca Guadagnino’s I am Love, which Thing somewhat controversially beat out as Italy’s official best foreign language contender at this year’s Oscars. Still, it is all rather engaging in an oh-so Italian way. Nice and sentimental, Thing opens tomorrow (4/15) in New York at the Angelika Film Center.

Belgian Mullets: The Misfortunates

Gunther Strobbe might not live in the most picturesque village in Belgium, but there is plenty of beer. It will not go to waste. While Strobbe’s father and uncles are quite impressive when it comes to putting away the adult beverages, they are far less accomplished at holding down jobs and steady relationships. As a result, the future novelist’s formative years are understandably chaotic in Felix Van Groeningen’s The Misfortunates (trailer here), Belgium’s official candidate for the 2009 best foreign language Oscar, opening this Friday in New York.

When you have a family like this, you have to become a writer. However, as thirtysomething Gunther mines his childhood for material, the rejection letters pile up. As his flashbacks unfold, we come to understand he still has emotional issues rooted in his formative years.

Gunther’s mother turned her back on him when she walked out on his alcoholic father Marcel (or ‘Celle for short). They live in squalor with his three hard-drinking, Roy Orbison loving uncles, and his grandmother, who is the family’s sole breadwinner and stabilizing influence. On a typical day, young Gunther brings his father some hair of the dog to stave off the DTs in the morning, makes the long commute to and from school, and tries to sleep through his youngest uncle’s hook-ups at night, even though they share a room.

Still, there are special occasions for the Strobbes that are certainly cinematic, like the bare-naked bicycle race his uncles enter with appropriate gusto and the town’s annual three day cross-dressing revelry. It is hard to imagine why Gunther’s grades and social skills are suffering, given this sheltering environment.

Misfortunates tries to mix equal parts drama and comedy in one big self-consciously quirky package. Although the tone varies widely, there are several memorably drawn scenes. Indeed, the sum of the film’s parts may well be greater than its whole.

Not a bad young actor, Kenneth Vanbaeden is reasonably engaging as young Strobbe. Though he initially seems inexpressively wooden, Valentijn Dhaenens nicely conveys the grown-up novelist’s conflicting feelings regarding his family. The most energetic performance though, easily comes from Johan Heldenbergh as Gunther’s lunatic uncle Breejen.

It is odd how dingy and depressed Belgium looks in so many of the country’s recent cinematic exports, including the Dardenne Brothers’ Lorna’s Silence, Bouli Lanners’s Eldorado, and Christophe van Rompaey’s Moscow, Belgium. Misfortunates certainly follows in that tradition, scrupulously recreating the grimy grayness of the Strobbes’ working class community. Still, Van Groeningen tempers naturalistic ambiance with some hard-earned sentimentality.

While it usually is not very pretty to look at, Van Groeningen finds some new twists on the familiar eccentric family comedy-drama. Misfortunates is a modest film, but it has its moments. It opens this Friday (4/9) in New York at the Landmark Sunshine and the Clearview 62nd & 1st.

Family Angst: Happy Tears

Father issues abound for Jayne’s mostly dysfunctional family. Her husband has a major inferiority complex as the untalented son of a famous painter, while her father Joe is slowly sinking into senility. Yet, there are plenty of bittersweet Terms of Endearment moments for her and her resentful sister in Mitchell Lichenstein’s indie family drama Happy Tears (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Jayne is happy because she has mastered the art of denial. Everyone else in her family is miserable because they are either ruthlessly self-aware, like her sister, or mentally ill. Refusing to believe her gregarious father could degenerate to the extent her sister Laura claims, she keeps manufacturing excuses not to come home. When she finally relents, her first encounter with old Joe is pretty ugly, but she still labors to maintain her compulsive optimism. However, her sister seems to take perverse pleasure from puncturing her storybook existence, when not sponging off her money.

Indeed, there is enough sibling rivalry in Happy for two or three indie films. In between bickering, they both try to deal with dear old dad’s declining health, as well as “Nurse” Shelly, Joe’s creepy live-in hooker. While Happy is realistic to a fault depicting the challenges of coping with a parent in Joe’s condition, Lichenstein really lays the corn on thick when Jayne starts looking for treasure Joe supposedly buried in the backyard.

Lichenstein pretty much hits all the bases of indie family angst, but Happy’s fine art motif somewhat differentiates it from the pack. The paintings of Jayne’s late father-in-law are actually the work of Cy Twombley, which add some welcomed visual panache to the film. Even though writer-director Lichenstein is in fact the son of the celebrated pop artist Roy, we are told not to confuse him with Jayne’s neurotic husband. Likewise, in light of his recent tabloid headlines, it is tempting to conflate Rip Torn with Joe, his increasingly addled character, but probably the less said about that the better.

Jayne, the princess forced to come down to earth, is a perfect role for Parker Posey. Again, she proves compulsively watchable and consistently endearing despite her character’s manifest faults. Demi Moore turns in at least serviceable supporting work as the martyr sister, Laura. As for Torn, let’s say he is convincing and leave it at that. However, Ellen Barkin just looks and acts distractingly weird as the nurse-prostitute Shelly. You would have to be beyond senile to open up your home to her.

Featuring another strong indie star turn from Posey, Happy is not without some merit, but it feels awfully familiar and has more than a few real groaner moments. Ultimately, its strong cast cannot overcome the clichés they are saddled under. For Posey fans, it opens tomorrow in New York at the Angelika Film Center.

(Photo credit: John Baer)

NYJFF ’10: Happy End

Simon’s family is haunted. Yes, there really is a ghost, though they never see the spirit of his late wife Ada watching over them. It is more their painful memories of the Holocaust which cast dark shadows over the extended Dutch family that has now gathered at what may well be Simon’s deathbed. Director Frans Weisz has revealed their family secrets in a trilogy of films that concludes with Happy End (trailer here), which screens at this year’s New York Jewish Film Festival, presented by the Jewish Museum and the Lincoln Center Film Society.

As End opens, the ghostly Ada provides an overview of the complex family relationships for the benefit of new viewers. Frankly, it brings to mind the deliberately convoluted introductions to the old sitcom Soap. However, the precipitating crisis is clear enough. Simon’s condition is quickly deteriorating and his friends and family are having difficulty coping. While quality of life questions are always difficult to grapple with under such circumstances, it is particularly hard for Simon’s loved ones, because of his experiences during the Holocaust. “One hour above ground is worth an eternity six feet under,” he always told them.

As a man who treasures life, Simon led a full one. He is the father of the fifty-ish Lea and the eighteen year-old Isaac, but by different women. Lea was married to former hospital administrator Nico, who later remarried his first wife Dory. Dory is Isaac’s mother, but she has little time for him, so the teen has essentially been raised by the elderly Simon and his half sister Lea. Confused? Actually, it is even more complicated when Nico’s side of the family is taken into account, but End’s central themes are clearly delineated. As the head of the family, Simon has been the glue holding everyone together, but he is in his twilight years. Conversely, Isaac is awkwardly finding his way in the world as a young man. Yet, even he is deeply affected by the family’s survivor legacy.

A film about a dysfunctional family paying their last respects to their Holocaust survivor patriarch might sound utterly depressing, but End is surprisingly life-affirming. As we encounter Simon in flashbacks, the message that life is to be celebrated comes through clearly and persuasively. Though the ending might seem more than a bit contrived, it is still satisfying in an unabashedly sentimental way.

Weisz’s approach is admirably restrained and sensitive, but the pace never falters. Indeed, the ensemble cast is quite remarkable, keeping the audience fully invested at all times, but never overplaying material that could easily lend itself to melodrama. They truly look and sound like people with decades of shared history (as is indeed the case, since most appeared in the previous installments, Qui vive released in 2001 and Polonaise from 1989). Particularly effective are the scenes between Simon and his unlikely son Isaac, nicely turned by Peter Oosthoek and Jip Loots, respectively.

End presents a consistently interesting cinematic family well worth meeting, despite their many faults. Though it initially suggests a bit of a TV movie vibe, End is a refreshingly mature and nuanced drama, brought to life by a truly fine ensemble cast. It screens during the 2010 NYJFF at the Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater this coming Sunday (1/17) and Tuesday (1/19).