LAFF 2011: THE SEDUCTION OF INGMAR BERGMAN

The booklet of The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman.

Sparks fly 

By Miranda Inganni

Probably the event of 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival, on Saturday night at the Ford Amphitheatre the musical group Sparks (Kimono My House) and film director Guy Madden (The Saddest Music in the World) presented The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman.

Based on an original story, written and staged by Sparks' Ron and Russell Mael and directed by Madden, the performance was based on the eponymous 2009 album by Sparks, which chronicles the imaginary travels and temptations of Swedish auteur, Ingmar Bergman (Wild Strawberries), on an imaginary trip to Hollywood, California.

It's 1950-something and a Hollywood film mogul (Russell) has the idea to lure Bergman (Peter Franzen) to Tinseltown to direct blockbusters. He sends limos and ladies to help convince the practical quintessential existentialSwede. While black-clad minions move scenery in the shadows, back at his Hollywood headquarters Bergman tosses and turns on his upright, red-sheeted bed, all the while contemplating his next move or movie.

The brothers Mael are pitch-perfect (in every sense of the term) and Franzen turns in a great(ly), conflicted Bergman. Should the writer-director stay to enjoy the warm weather yet endure the torment of tourists, or return home to a chilly climate yet critical acclaim (a lá his Cannes Festival win for Smiles Of a Summer Night)?

With Warhol-colored images projected on the screen behind the action, this brilliant bit of deconstructed musical theater is like a hyper staged reading -- all of it worth a viewing, seeing, listening and experiencing.

FILM REVIEW: LEAP YEAR

Laura (Monica del Carmen) and Arturo (Gustavo Sánchez Parra) in Leap Year.

Belle die blur

By Don Simpson

Not to be confused with the Anand Tucker’s overtly saccharine Leap Year (2010), starring Amy Adams and Matthew Goode, Michael Rowe’s Mexican import focuses on the bleak life of Laura (Monica del Carmen). 

Except for the opening scene, in which Laura goes grocery shopping, the camera does not leave her Mexico City apartment. Laura, a freelance journalist, only leaves her apartment to stock up on food and find new men to lure back to her lair. We gaze upon Laura as she puts away groceries, cooks dinner, talks on the phone, masturbates, has sex with a random guy, talks on the phone some more, types on her laptop, watches television, has more sex with other random guys...rinse and repeat. The monotony of Laura’s life is strangely lulling yet utterly depressing.

One fateful night Laura brings Arturo (Gustavo Sánchez Parra) back to her apartment. Arturo takes her from behind, slaps her ass, and Laura takes it all in stride. Arturo comes back another night for more, this time he slaps her across the face then nearly strangles her. Arturo comes again and again, each time the sex becomes more and more violent; and Laura continues to accept Arturo’s increasingly sadomasochistic behavior as if a form of penance for sins she has committed in the past. For both Laura and Arturo, sex is a recreational activity, not an emotional connection. Despite Arturo’s perceived dominance during their sexual trysts, Laura always maintains full control (golden showers and all). Arturo may not realize it, but he is merely a puppet submitting to Laura’s will.

Rowe -- an Australian-born writer who has been living in Mexico for 16 years -- has formulated a heartbreaking account of hopelessness, self-isolation, and sexual aggression. The winner of the Camera d’Or prize at Cannes 2010, Leap Year is a subtle and subdued character study about an intelligent and doughy young woman whose calendar suggests that something wicked this way comes. The hashed-out days on Laura’s calendar are quickly approaching February 29th, a day that is menacingly designated in blood red.

DVD REVIEW: BEDWAYS

 Hans (Matthias Faust) and Marie (Lana Cooper) in Bedways.

Here we come

By Don Simpson

In a dilapidated and sparsely furnished Berlin apartment, an aspiring director named Nina (Miriam Mayet) and her two thespians -- Marie (Lana Cooper) and Hans (Matthias Faust) -- screen test for a yet-to-be-scripted film. The video project is is based upon a simple premise: Nina intends to capture authentic feelings, authentic love and authentic sex.

Nina attempts to maintain full directorial control by maniacally manipulating her actors as if they are puppets and she is pulling their strings. The borders between fiction and reality are promptly blurred as Marie and Hans try to decipher what their director really wants from them. According to Nina, Marie and Hans should not play themselves or anyone else -- but what does that mean?

The sexual histories between Nina and both of her subjects further complicates the on- and off-camera scenario. The project quickly evolves into a warped seduction in which Nina pushes everyone’s emotions, including her own, to the limit. Nina, Marie and Hans experience a titillating tilt-a-whirl of emotions and desires, a disorienting ride that thrives off of jealousy, grief and anger.

Can cinematic authenticity be faked? Do Marie and Hans really need to fall in love with each other in order for Nina’s film to succeed? Can two people fall in love in front of the unblinking kino eye and an authoritative voyeur?

Nina is not the only voyeur in the equation as German filmmaker RP Kahl often positions the camera statically at distance in order to form a voyeuristic perspective for the audience. The camera does occasionally venture in for a closer view of the sexual encounters as if to verify for the audience that the penetration is authentic -- like Nina, his onscreen avatar, Kahl is incredibly fascinated by cinematic realism.

By utilizing the film-within-a-film narrative format, Kahl creates a world in which it is practically impossible to decipher when the actors are acting for Nina and when we are witnessing the actors’ reality. In doing so, Kahl discusses how cinema blurs the identities of its actors and contemplates the relationship between their on- and off-screen persona.

Bedways is an experimental chamber piece that concentrates on three actors encased for the most part in one location. This incredibly intimate narrative technique is cleverly juxtaposed with the mental and spacial distancing of intimacy and sex. One of the more telling scenes -- that purposefully bookends Bedways -- is when we witness Hans and Nina masturbating in separate rooms while observing each other via monitors; eventually they reach their limits of torture, the separation becomes too much, and Nina commands for Hans to come to her.

A worthy attempt to merge the worlds of art house and erotic cinema (a la Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience; Michael Winterbottom’s 9 Songs; Atom Egoyan’s Exotica and Chloe; the films of Joe Swanberg; etc.), Bedways aptly blurs the definition of erotic cinema by giving us a well-crafted and incredibly dramatic film with some penetrating sex thrown in.

FILM REVIEW: ONE LUCKY ELEPHANT

Flora in One Lucky Elephant.

Tusk tusk

By Don Simpson

After 16 years as the namesake and centerpiece of David Balding’s Circus Flora, it is time for Flora, an African elephant living in St. Louis, to retire. Lisa Leeman’s documentary, One Lucky Elephant, begins in 2000, as Balding searches for a suitable new home for Flora. At first, Balding is convinced that it would be best for Flora to return to Africa, but when a chance to ship Flora to Botswana falls through, Balding places Flora in the Miami Metro Zoo.

Once settled in her new home, Flora begins to exhibit antisocial and aggressive behavior at the Miami Metro Zoo. David then fights to have Flora accepted into the Elephant Sanctuary, a nonprofit property in Tennessee that attempts to mimic the natural habitat of its Asian elephants. It is not long before psychologists begin to suggest that Flora's erratic personality is due to post traumatic stress disorder stemming back to her youth. As part of Flora’s treatment, Balding must agree not to visit his “daughter” any longer.

Balding purchased Flora when she was two years old. Flora was born in the wild and then brought into captivity after her mother and other members of her herd were slaughtered right in front of her. Upon taking ownership of Flora (if one can ever “own” an elephant), Balding regretfully admits to abiding by cruel -- yet traditional -- practices to “break” Flora into a trainable circus elephant.

Once she was broken, he spoiled her with fatherly love and affection. Balding is riddled with guilt, especially for never socializing Flora with other elephants and for making Flora perform in his circus far past her prime. Balding seems to recognize that his mistakes and misjudgements have harmed Flora and now he finds himself stuck in the middle of a fiery animal rights debate over the ethical treatment of elephants.

Similar in subject to James Marsh’s far superior Project Nim, Leeman's documentary aptly discusses interspecies relationships and the dangers of becoming too friendly with wildlife. One Lucky Elephant alternates between being a love story between a man and his elephant, a wildlife documentary, a character portrait of Balding, and a public service announcement about animal rights. Unfortunately, One Lucky Elephant shies away from truly criticizing the captivity of elephants -- and other wildlife -- in circuses.

LAFF 2011: DETECTIVE DEE

Detective Dee (Andy Lau) in Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame.

A reason to explode

By John Esther

Once upon a peg tale in 7th Century China, a giant Buddha statue was being built for the coronation of China's first female emperor, Empress Wu (Carina Lau). It would be a great day in Chinese herstory, but there were many misogynistic men who did not take kindly to the notion of Miss Lady "wacky eyebrows" Boss.

With just a few days away from the equal-rights event, important men started bursting into flames. Nobody could figure out why. Clearly this was a case for Detective Dee (Andy Lau).

In prison for treason, Detective Dee is released and appointed head of the case by the Empress herself. Of course, the Empress does not trust him so she sends her spy, who might be a double agent, to watch Detective Dee as he finds the bad guys or bad gals.

But this was to be no ordinary adventure. Detective Dee will have to visit places like Spooky Pandemonium in order to find Donkey Wang for information on Fire Turtles and other crazy characters. And just when you think Detective Dee has caught the culprits, a more menacing figure is lurking behind the next clue.

Stuffed to the sensory gills with stunning set designs, elaborate costumes, flamboyant martial art scenes, sneaky sounds, absurdly-sexual innuendos, fantastic photography, masterful special effects and an array of images conducive to multiple viewings under different methods of intoxication (for the record, I had just one beer before the screening), Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame would be a wildly entertaining film on your typical movie screen. However, in a stroke of brilliant programming, the single screening of the film at the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival was at the Ford Amphitheatre. 

Outside and under the stars, the neighborhood's frogs, birds and other creatures accentuated the atmospheric film-going experience. The real and the reel meshed into a synchronicity, breaking common film-viewing experiences. A bird catches on fire in the film; a second later a real bird makes a sound. Dogs barking in the distance may as well have come from "off screen" in the film. At one particularly precious moment, a live plane flew by the Ford Amphitheatre as the screen showed the gigantic Buddha against the blue sky.

Sometimes art and life just jive right and, as a result, it was the most fun I have had at the movies in years.

And then I attended LAFF's theatrical event, The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman, the next night. Oh my!

 

LAFF 2011: NATURAL SELECTION

Raymond (Matt O'Leary) and Linda (Rachael Harris) in Natural Selection.

Problems of the flesh

By John Esther

Bewitched and bewildered, Linda White (Rachael Harris), is a good, doting Christian wife who blames herself for wanting to get down with her husband (John Diehl) in a biblical way to such a degree that when he has a stroke while stroking at a sperm bank – albeit a very desperate and deregulated one – the seemingly-barren woman feels it is her godly duty to find her husband's missing bastard son.

After trekking from Texas to Florida (a "bush" correlation?), Linda finds a young man, Raymond (Matt O' Leary), who happens to be on the run from the law. (Raymond's introduction in the opening scene of the film is a mise-en-scène tour-de-force.) Raymond, the super-seed monster, agrees to be her son, thus setting off a road trip back to Texas.

Along the way, the couple endures several mishaps, misfires and even, uh oh, a marital mistake .

Marked by Harris' stellar and adorable performance, writer-director Robbie Pickering's SXSW award-winning Natural Selection offers enough credibility, satire and laughs that, despite some visually incredulous images regarding sex, make this delightful indie film worthy of watching. 

LAFF 2011: THE DYNAMITER

Robbie (Patrick Ruffin) and Fess (John Alex Nunnery) in The Dynamiter.

Stealing time

By Don Simpson

The ramshackle old cottage in the back woods of Mississippi where Fess (John Alex Nunnery) and Robbie (William Patrick Ruffin) live with their aged grandmother is almost identical to the homes in Winter’s Bone and Two Gates of Sleep.

Twenty-plus miles from town, we meet 14-year-old Robbie as he frolics in a field near his home teaching his younger half-brother, Fess, how to battle hay bales with hand-carved spears and knives. Left to their own devices, things do not seem all that bad for the two footloose and fancy-free young lads. The boys lack any adult supervision, their absentee mother is reportedly in California nursing some sort of mental breakdown while their seemingly senile grandmother (Joyce Baldwin) utters nary a syllable as her glassy-eyes stare blankly; and who knows or cares where their fathers are. Robbie is not adverse to thievery when he and Fess need something to eat and the brothers have mastered the manipulation of small change in order to coax Cokes from a gas station vending machine.

Robbie stands out at school as a sweaty and smelly white trash kid and he has a difficult time staying out of trouble. It is the end of his eighth grade term and he is hauled into office of the Principal (Layne Rodgers) for stealing. Plagued by failing grades, the principal offers Robbie a ticket to high school: Robbie must write an essay over the summer; if the essay is deemed well-written, he will graduate eighth grade and proceed to high school. In turn, Robbie pens a series of letters which he reads aloud via voiceovers throughout the remainder of the film.

Out of the blue, Lucas (Patrick Rutherford), a sibling ten years Robbie’s senior, appears back at home. In his prime, Lucas was a star high school quarterback; he has since de-evolved into low-life parasite who dates women who are naive enough to support him. Whenever Lucas is unable to find a willing female host to suck dry, he goes home to clear his mind. Robbie worships his older brother, so when Lucas instructs Robbie to find a job in order to support their family, Robbie jumps to task. Robbie thus begins waking up at the (ass)crack of dawn in order to work a shit-job at a local gas station for a measly wage.

Robbie eventually discovers that Lucas is not worth idolizing. It also becomes increasingly obvious that the boys’ mother is never coming home. Worst of all, there is an ever-looming threat that social services will become cognizant of the lack of adequate adult supervision in the household. Forced to grow up much earlier than most boys, Robbie must take these burdens and responsibilities by the horns in a last-ditch attempt to retain his and Fess’ freedom.

Writer-director Matthew Gordon’s The Dynamiter personifies the struggles of the poor as they attempt to claw their way up from their non-existent income bracket. Robbie is destined to remain poor because of his failure in the education system, his family history and lack of a support structure at home. His only chance to escape this poverty is to leave town and start over somewhere else. The inherent class conflict becomes most apparent during Kissy’s (Sarah Fortner) graduation party. Just like at school, Robbie stands out like a sore thumb. Kissy has a crush on Robbie but he seems to recognize that the caste system would never allow them to come together. Instead, Robbie befriends a poor black girl, Mamie (Ciara McMillan) -- it is worth noting that her race never factors into the equation. Both kids have been beaten down and have the bruises to prove it; together they are looking for a way out of their current predicament.

LAFF 2011: BAD INTENTIONS

Cayetana de la Heros (Fatima Buntinx) in Bad Intentions.

Death to the bourgeoisie

By Don Simpson

Writer-director Rosario Garcia-Montero’s The Bad Intentions is a coming-of-age story which centers around a quirky-yet-morose nine-year-old girl, Cayetana de la Heros (Fatima Buntinx). Cayetana’s parents (Katerina D'Onofrio and Jean Paul Strauss) are divorced -- which, as she learns at her Catholic school, means they are going to hell. Cayetana is raised primarily by the servants (Liliana Alegría, Tania Ruiz, Melchor Gorrochátegui) at her Valium-popping mother’s bourgeois home in Lima, Peru. Whenever Cayetana does spend time with her mother, she devises new and interesting ways to play torturous mind games with her. And though Cayetana’s father seems too preoccupied with life -- especially attractive young women -- to pay her much mind, Cayetana idolizes him nonetheless.

As her surname suggests, Cayetana is obsessed with heroes. It seems most of Peru’s heroes are losers and Cayetana is specifically interested in their heroic deaths. Cayetana’s fascination with death, especially violent deaths during battle, lends her the morbid air of a Peruvian Wednesday Addams. Death’s allure becomes even more personal when Cayetana suddenly -- and quite irrationally -- concludes that she will die on the day that her pregnant mother gives birth. Cayetana is not very worried about dying, but she seems utterly frightened of being rendered invisible.

Of her entire family, Cayetana’s most sane and rewarding relationship is with her cousin, Jimena (Kani Hart). When Cayetana becomes too much for her mother to handle, she is sent to spend the summer at the beach with her cousin. When Jimena becomes mysteriously ill, Cayetana is snapped back into reality. Death is more than just a magic realism-tinged dream; death becomes real for Cayetana.

The Bad Intentions takes place in 1982 and the brutal guerrilla attacks of the Maoist group, the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso), hover around the periphery of the narrative. The terrorists always seem to be lurking around the corner; as the violence creeps closer to Cayetana, her mind is catapulted into more frequent and fervent daydreams about Peru’s past war heroes.

Garcia-Montero’s film functions as an absurd allegory for bourgeois feelings of ambivalence towards an uncertain future. The invisible yet always-present threat of death has warped repercussions in the mind of a nine-year-old child; Cayetana is riddled with Catholic guilt, consciously for her parents’ unholy divorce and subconsciously for being a part of a bourgeois household that is quite similar to the colonialists that her favorite revolutionary heroes fought against.

FILM REVIEW: The NAMES OF LOVE

Baya Benmahmoud (Sara Forestier) in The Names of Love.

A well laid plan

By Ed Rampell

George Carlin, that brilliant comic wordsmith, once quipped that if he had invented the slogan “make love, not war,” he would have gone to the beach for the rest of his life, presumably because he would have already made such an important contribution to humanity that his life would be justified and would no longer require any further contributions from him. 

In the daffy The Names of Love leftwinger Bahia Benmahmoud (the to-die-for Sara Forestier) takes this expression to its extreme, making love with reactionary men precisely so they won’t make war, and otherwise exploit, oppress, etc., their fellow human beings. This is only natural for this activist, a political extremist (although not of the bomb tossing variety -- despite the fact that she’s what used to be quaintly called a “sex bomb”), who calls people she disagrees with “fascists” with the frequency American teenagers say “like.”

Simply put, this lefty madcap comedy may very well be the best new movie your erstwhile reviewer has seen on the big screen in years. Michel Leclerc’s The Names of Love has everything Francophiles and those of us who fancy ourselves to be cinephiles -- instead of fans or buffs! – expect and love in French films: Sexual obsession, nudity, gauchiste (leftist) politics, visual panache, tenderness, poignancy, etc. It is a worthy successor to that venerable French film movement called “Nouvelle Vague,” sort of combining Francois Truffaut’s tender romantic sensibility with Jean-Luc Godard’s agitprop politicking with Jacques Tati’s zany drollery. (Although in the context of this sexy movie morsel, the title of Truffaut’s The 400 Blows would take on a completely different meaning.) Going further back in the French arts, I wouldn’t be surprised if Moliere himself might have felt that this was the type of play he would have written, sans censorship.

The Names of Love is about the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, Algeria’s liberation struggle against French colonialism, being Arab in today’s France, sex, romance, the movement against French President Nicholas Sarkozy, but most of all it is about Bahia, a sexually emancipated half-Algerian beautiful young woman full of love (literally and figuratively) for all humanity. (Intriguingly, this is the second recent movie to depict a sexually free part-Algerian woman, the other being Now & Later, starring Shari Solanis.) Bahia is sort of the incarnation of that essential ingredient in French cinema: Joie de vivre. After her cute meets with the middle-aged Arthur Martin (Jacques Gamblin), the free spirited Bahia knows she cares about the animal-disease control government bureaucrat because she has sex with him, even though Arthur isn’t a rightwinger and he votes for the Socialists! (The Socialist party’s former presidential candidate, Lionel Jospin, has a very funny cameo.)

The Names of Love also deals with the post-traumatic stress disorders of Holocaust survivors and their offspring. Arthur’s mom Annette (the moving Michele Moretti) physically survived the Shoah, but she has never psychologically come to grips with the cost of losing her parents in Hitler’s death camps, a pain that has been passed down to Arthur. Similarly, Bahia’s father Mohamed still deals with surviving Algeria’s anti-colonial war for independence, and is thwarted from pursuing his true avocation, as a painter. (In the same way, a childhood trauma has affected Bahia, who sublimates her dream of playing piano into sexuality.)

This comedy is a laugh a minute and unlike most puritanical pictures in America, has lots of graphic nudity. (For instance, the U.S. documentary Orgasm Inc., about the quest for female Viagra, doesn’t reveal any nudity; a puppet is used as a stand in for vaginas. Good grief!) Bahia may be a bit ditzy, but this “political whore” (as Bahia calls herself) with a heart of gold and sexually liberated revolutionary may just be the Reichian dream girl, the ideal woman! Best of all, this sexually free woman isn’t made to “pay” for enjoying sex, which is one of the oldest, most tired clichés under the sun.

I have had some concerns about Bahia’s childhood incident and the treatment of it and of that other cliché – the older man with the much younger woman (no wonder Leclerc is such a Woody Allen fan!). But these are mere quibbles. Forestier deservedly won the Best Actress Cesar Award (France’s equivalent to the Oscars), while Leclerc and Baya Kasmi won the Best Original Screenplay Cesar. Leclerc says Love is autobiographical. If so, lucky him! And lucky you, dear viewer, if you go see this uplifting, lovely, lefty, French sex farce.

LAFF 2011: FAMILIAR GROUND

A scene from Familiar Ground.

Non-Firma future

By Don Simpson  

Familiar Ground takes the LAFF 2011 cinema-goers who have seen The Salesman to very familiar territory -- the wintry snow-blanketed environs of Quebec -- but Familiar Ground abides by a far more quirkier and absurd approach to cinema. Additionally, The Salesman and Familiar Ground both feature a lead character named Maryse and a car crash plays prominently in both stories.

Benoit (Francis La Haye) is frozen in a perpetual state of adolescence residing with his father (Michel Daigle) -- his mother died five years ago -- in his suburban childhood home. One possibility of snapping Benoit out of his stagnant situation: Nathalie (Suzanne Lemoine), a single mother with whom Benoit is smitten (though his “I Like Girls Who Like Girls” t-shirt sends a different message) and hopes to cohabitate. The main hurdle for this endeavor is Nathalie's son, who strongly disapproves of Benoit's presence.

A dinner accented with wayward shards of glass ends in a heated argument with Nathalie. Benoit then takes out his aggression on an unsuspecting snowman and winds up with frostbite. Chapped hands soon become the least of Benoit's concerns, as a mysterious car salesman (Denis Houle) from the not-so-distant future (September, to be precise) delivers a chilling prophesy of Benoit's next few months: a blizzard, the death of a relative and a pleasant summer.

All the while, Benoit's sister, Maryse (Fanny Mallette), and her husband, Alain (Sylvain Marcel), are desperate to sell a backhoe. Winter is not the season for backhoes, so it sits unused in their suburban front yard. Already on edge as the result of a co-worker's accident at the local paper factory (prompting Maryse's strange fascination with the preservation of dismembered appendages), Maryse is frustrated by the constant sight of the machine and irrationally decides to rent a car to pick-up a trailer from her family's cabin in order to haul the backhoe away.

The news received by Benoit from the future leaves him concerned about Maryse taking the trip to the cabin on her own. Maryse and Benoit have historically not gotten along with each other -- they have never even had coffee together -- so the sibling road trip will certainly test their familiar bonds and is destined to change the trajectory of their lives.

Once at the cabin, Benoit is incapable of getting the heater to function or find suitable firewood. Benoit's foibles with his father's snowmobile provide us with another glimpse of Benoit's emasculating inadequacies. The siblings venture to a party next door; it is someone's birthday and fireworks are anticipated, yet Benoit dislikes fireworks almost as much as he hates watching his married sister flirt with guys who use shovels to open their beer bottles.

Writer-director Stéphane Lafleur's Familiar Ground is a stylistic mash-up of science fiction, absurdly off-kilter humor and the mundanity of everyday reality. The complexity of the tone is exaggerated even further by the eerie electronic score (by Sagor & Swing and We Are Wolves) and it is Lafleur's knack for odd comedic timing that truly drives the borderline surreal narrative structure of Familiar Ground.

Lafleur's comedic ingenuity is sublimely highlighted in the opening and closing of Familiar Ground. By listing the character name “L'Homme du futur” (Man from the future) in the film's opening credits, Lafleur thus spurs our anticipation of the revealing of this ambiguously named character. The closing image of a towering blue blow-up stick figure blowing in the wind while synchronized with an inspired musical choice (“The Bells of the Night” by The Red Army Choirs) spreads a finishing coat of quirkiness on Familiar Ground.

LAFF 2011: YOU HURT MY FEELINGS

A scene from You Hurt My Feelings.

Unknown pleasures


By Don Simpson


Writer-director Steve Collins’ (Gretchen) You Hurt My Feelings begins in the winter as John (John Merriman) takes care of two young girls -- Lily (Lily Collins) and Violet (Violet Collins). John’s rapport with the toddlers is not quite fatherly. It is more like that of a favorite uncle -- someone with whom the girls can climb all over and play doctor, someone who is willing to make compromises with the girls in the hope that they will listen to his commands when necessary. As it turns out, John is a male nanny, a job that serves two purposes for him: a source of income in a dire economic environment and a desperate ploy to win his ex-girlfriend Courtney (Courtney Davis) back.

Courtney -- a disgruntled waitress with some seemingly hefty emotional baggage -- has already moved on to Macon (Macon Blair). Though Macon comments to John that they are similar enough to be brothers, there is nothing further from the truth. John is a walking blob of somberness and gentle tranquility; Macon is a playful yet irresponsible drunk, eternally happy and boyishly charming. After jump-starting John’s awkwardly stalled vehicle (a metaphor for John’s life), Macon begins man-crushing on John. The two men get wasted together at a local bar and John ends up having to babysit Macon just like he does Lily and Violet. A bizzare love triangle commences with John and Macon lackadaisically competing for Courtney and Macon vying for John’s friendship.

John repeatedly tries and fails to wrangle Lily and Violet, just as he seems unable to gather control of his life in general. Happiness (and the kids) is always just out of his reach and unresponsive to his pleading calls. Brief spurts of happiness -- a fun day at the beach, a drunken late-night swim in a random backyard pool, watching Courtney choose a wedding dress -- are random hiccups in the overall downward trajectory of John’s life. Seasons may change as the world turns, but it seems John’s hopes for change have been flattened. We often watch John -- perpetually riddled with worry, guilt and inadequacy -- as he lays flat on the ground, staring hopelessly at the ceiling or into space.

An example of in medias res, Collins’ film begins and ends almost mid-thought and the scenes in between appear to be aimless and random; but Collins aptly binds the narrative together as a cohesive whole by emotion and imagery alone. Impressionistically lensed by Putty Hill cinematographer Jeremy Saulnier, You Hurt My Feelings takes its audience through the emotional kaleidoscope of the four seasons; though visually stunning, the images are just as economically restrained as the wallets of the characters. Collins has developed a narrative that circumvents all dramatic plot points -- an injury that results in a neck brace, a wedding engagement, an illness and death, countless arguments and break-ups -- assuming that the audience will fill in the blanks. Only the emotional aftermath remains. You Hurt My Feelings internally portrays its characters’ senses of despair and isolation; like a silent film (Merriman probably has less than a page of dialogue, Davis and Blair have significantly less), feelings are never expressed verbally, only via the actors’ rich expressions.

LAFF 2011: THE FATHERLESS

A scene from The Fatherless.

Paternal disfigures

By Ed Rampell 

Written and directed by Marie Kreutzer, Austria's The Fatherless is sort of a cross between John Sayles’ 1980 Return of the Scaucus Seven, Lawrence Kasdan’s 1983 The Big Chill, Mike Leigh’s stellar 1996 Secrets & Lies, the 2000 Swedish commune movie, Together, and the recently concluded HBO plural marriage series, Big Love. 

The story opens with the death of the enigmatic Hans (Johanness Krisch), who owned the house where a very extended family lived collectively during the 1980s. His scattered children converge for the occasion, including Kyra (Andrea Wenzl, giving a standout performance in her film debut), who was mysteriously banished 23 years ago when she was still a child.

At this rather odd family reunion, Mizzi (Emily Cox), who has a strange disability, discovers for the first time that she has an older sister, Kyra. In the wake of their father’s death, they, and the rest of the tribe, try to come to terms with one another and to unravel the many mysteries.

One of the more talked about films at LAFF 2011, The Fatherless is a superbly well acted ensemble film that’s also quite well crafted, as it shifts from the present back to the past. It also probes the nature of communal living in a consumer society where materialism and ultra-individualism are accentuated and valued. With The Fatherless, Kreuzer's debut is the mother of an insightful, thought provoking, family drama squared.    

FILM REVIEW: PASSIONE

Pietra Montecorvino in Passione.

Turturro's take on Naples

By Don Simpson 

Passione is not a documentary and it is certainly not a narrative; Passione is a series of musical postcards proclaiming writer-director John Turturro’s unwavering love for Naples. Whether or not Turturro will convince you to love Naples as he does is totally reliant upon your acceptance of his absurd yet strangely poetic cinematic technique.

Between seemingly random song and dance routines, Turturro directly addresses the camera to recount seemingly random factual tidbits about Neapolitan history. The structure of Passione seems completely nonsensical. At times it plays like a collection of music videos, other times like a cinematic recreation of an opera or musical theater.

The scenic shots of the city are saturated with biased reverence, while some of the musical performances are so absurdly choreographed that Passione seems like it might actually be a form of parody. If Christopher Guest had directed Passione, I would be much more certain that it is a parodic mockumentary; but I am fairly certain that Turturro wants us to take this film seriously.

Turturro describes Passione as “a musical adventure that comes directly out of the people and the volcanic land they inhabit." He obviously loves the Neapolitan music featured throughout Passione, but he is unable to convince me of why? Passione might be better suited for someone who approaches the film with a pre-existing fascination with Naples.

Passione features Mina, Spakka-Neapolis 55, Avion Travel, Misia, Pietra Montecorvino, Massimo Ranieri, Lina Sastri, M’barka Ben Taleb, Gennaro Cosmo Parlato, Peppe Barra, Angela Luce, Max Casella, Raiz, James Senese, Fausto Cigliano, Fiorello, Enzo Avitabile and Pino Daniele.

LAFF 2011: THE SALESMAN

Marcel Lévesque (Gilbert Sicotte) in The Salesman.

A man and his moose head

By Don Simpson

Marcel Lévesque (Gilbert Sicotte) is a 67-year-old car salesman living in Dolbeau-Mistassini, Quebec. But he is not just any car salesman, Marcel has been deemed “Salesman of the Month” for the last 16 years at the dealership where he has spent his entire career. A product of a bygone era of salesmanship, Marcel learned to dress his lies up nicely in order to make his customers happy -- a strategy that obviously still works for him even in Dolbeau-Mistassini’s bleak economic climate.

The town of Dolbeau-Mistassini’s economic backbone is the pulp and paper industry which writer-director Sébastien Pilote’s debut feature film finds in a rapid decline. The one and only local plant has laid off a majority of its workforce -- a complete closure is looming -- and the skyrocketing unemployment rate is effecting all of Dolbeau-Mistassini’s businesses, especially car sales. Nonetheless, Marcel trudges onward through the literal and figurative blizzard, even selling cars to the local plant’s recently unemployed.

Work is such an important part of Marcel’s life that he lives directly across the street from the dealership. Marcel is a widow and, besides work, the only other meaning in his life is found in his daughter, Maryse (Nathalie Cavezzali), and grandson, Antoine (Jeremy Tessier). It is quite obvious that Pilote is determined to challenge his protagonist’s stagnant life.

The Salesman opens with a dead moose and a totaled car yet with no explanation of the relationship between these images and the overall narrative. Being that Marcel sells cars, it seems almost too presumptuous that we will discover that Marcel is tied in some way to this accident. Pilote lays out more than enough clues early on that it becomes quite obvious where this film is going...and let’s just say it is not a happy place.

LAFF 2011: AN ORDINARY FAMILY

A scene from An Ordinary Family.

Out to dinner

By Don Simpson

Seth (Greg Wise) and his boyfriend, William (Chad Anthony Miller), show up at the lake house while Seth's unsuspecting family members are enjoying their annual week-long vacation. Before they announce their arrival, Seth confesses to William that his family does not know they are coming. As it turns out, Seth has been estranged from his family ever since he abandoned working beside his older Christian minister brother, Thomas (Troy Schremmer), and ran away to live with William, whom he met on Chatroulette. The Biederman family presumably does not know that Seth is gay and they certainly do not know that he has been sharing a bedroom (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) with William.

Seth’s arrival with William in tow catches the Biederman clan off guard. The tension -- stemming from the most socially conservative member of the family, Thomas -- reaches its boiling point during dinner. Presumably, Thomas, a straight-laced minister and family man, does not like Seth and William discussing how they met in front of his young and impressionable children, but we know there is more to this story that is fueling his outrage.

The Biederman family comes around to accepting Seth and William fairly quickly, and Thomas remains the only holdout. (Admittedly, I am a little surprised by how quickly their mother, played by Laurie Coker, comes around to accepting Seth.) Mattie (Janelle Schremmer) -- Thomas’ significantly more open-minded better half -- tries to convince him to open his heart to Seth, but it seems that Thomas will never get beyond his homophobic Christian biases.

Seth and Thomas’ sister (Megan Minto) is married to a rotund husband, Chris (Steven Schaefer) and it seems Chris’ primary purpose is to provide some much needed comic relief-- especially when paired with William -- to the otherwise serious family drama.

The chemistry between the real-life married couple Troy and Janelle Schremmer is undeniable, thus contributing to Akel’s obvious desire to achieve cinematic realism. That said -- Akel and Patterson’s script is so well-written that it sometimes plays in detriment to the film’s sense of realism.

Writer-director Mike Akel’s (Chalk) An Ordinary Family conveys the age-old conflict between religion and homosexuality from a relatively unbiased perspective. Akel -- who co-wrote the script with Matt Patterson -- never gets too preachy, though it is quite obvious that Akel is of the opinion that Christians should be more accepting of gays; otherwise the portrayal of the Christian minister is just as favorable as that of the gay characters. Accordingly, An Ordinary Family will be enjoyable for Christians and gays alike -- though there is no denying that its target audience is gay Christians, a niche crowd if ever there was one. I fit into none of these categories yet applaud An Ordinary Family for its open-mindedness and its ability to intelligently discuss (without ever becoming argumentative) the acceptance of gays by Christians without offending either side of the equation. Also, An Ordinary Family is one of the few films that prominently features gay characters in leading roles that I would not consider a gay film, which is something I wish there will be more of in the future.

LAFF 2011: ON THE ICE

Qalli (Josiah Patkota) in On the Ice.

The frozen ones

By Ed Rampell

What if playwright Eugene O’Neill had been an Inuit? His classics such as The Iceman Cometh may have been set in another culture and environment, but their universal themes could still find expression, even in Barrow, Alaska, where most of writer-director Andrew Okpeaha MacLean’s On the Ice takes place. Indeed, the substance abuse that plagues O’Neill’s barflies also ravages Inupiaqs, Natives of Alaska, in MacLean’s feature film debut.

Americanization has been a disaster for many of the indigenous people conquered, swallowed up and spit out by the racist American empire. From the genocide of the so-called “Indians” to the overthrow of the independent Kingdom of Hawaii to the nuclear testing at Bikini atoll, and so on ad infinitum, aboriginal inhabitants have been uprooted and displaced by endless expansionism. Now Alaskan Natives are saddled with that latest affront called “Sarah Palin” -- no wonder those alienated teens at Barrow turn to drink and crack and, like Bristol Palin, contend with unplanned pregnancies.

On the Ice focuses on two Inupiaq teens as they are leaving high school. Qalli (Josiah Patkotak) is preparing to attend college far from Barrow. His stalwart father (Teddy Kyle Smith) is an efficient emergency responder who performs a delicate balancing act, with one mukluk in the white man’s world and the other in the Inupiaq’s realm, which is still dominated by endless vistas of tundra. Qalli’s classmate and close friend since boyhood, Aivaaq (Frank Qutuq Irelan), is a substance abuser with an alcoholic mother; his father died of booze before he reached 30. Aivaaq has also apparently knocked up his girlfriend, and the irresponsible teen can barely be a boyfriend, let alone a blubber-winner and father.

Tragedy befalls the friends during a snowmobile seal hunting expedition. But the story rests more on how they deal with what happened rather than on exactly what did occur. (As conventional wisdom has had it since Watergate, the cover-up is always worse than the original scandal. If you don’t believe me, go ask disgraced ex-congressman Anthony Weiner.)

During a Q&A following Sunday's LAFF screening, MacLean stated that he was half-Inupiaq, Barrow is his hometown and he’s related to about half of the cast, which largely consists of non-professionals. (MacLean, however, went to film school.) They were recruited after a talent hunt that scoured the Canadian and American Arctic in search of indigenous talent at the top of the world.

Truth be told, at first glance MacLean’s depiction of Inupiaqs is unflattering; aside for Qalli’s father, who is eventually ensnared by the misdeeds, noble savages a la Robert Flaherty’s 1922 docudrama, Nanook of the North,need not apply. With its crack cocaine, liquor, ramshackle hovels and blaring rap songs (one number is called, appropriately, "Arctic Thug") the Barrow of On the Ice comes across like a stereotypical ghetto. (Perhaps the film should have been called Soul on Ice?) Talk about the Barrow gang! In particular, Aivaaq comes across as a totally out-of-control loser, jerk and menace to society.

There has been a trend in world cinema for indigenous filmmakers to make their own movies and tell their own stories. But this doesn’t mean that the Native depictions are always flattering.