FILM REVIEW: REACHING FOR THE MOON

Elizabeth Bishop (Miranda Otto) and Lota de Macedo Soares (Gloria Pires) in Reaching for the Moon.

Lunacy and love

By Ed Rampell

I really liked this movie, mainly because of its unusual characters based on actual historical figures. Directed by Brazilian Bruno Barreto, Reaching for the Moon is a biopic about the Pulitzer Prize winning poet Elizabeth Bishop (Miranda Otto). The film focuses on the long lasting affair between Bishop and Lota de Macedo Soares (Gloria Pires). As breakthroughs in same sex marriage continue to make headlines, this tale of a lesbian romance that began back in 1951 is especially timely.

The script by Matthew Chapman, Julie Sayres and Carolino Kotscho, inspired by Carmen Oliveira’s novel, Rare and Commonplace Flowers, has what this critic considers to be a hallmark of good writing: Lots of twists and turns the viewer doesn’t see coming. Succeeding sequences serve to explain previous scenes. The film opens at Central Park, but soon Bishop is on the road to Rio de Janeiro, where events conspire to keep her there for decades as she encounters Soares.

No frail lotus blossom, Soares is arguably the biopic’s most interesting, original character, and throughout this two-hour feature your mystified reviewer continued to change his evolving opinion of her as Soares' character developed. On the one hand, Soares' is an out of the closet lesbian in the Catholic, Portuguese-influenced, patriarchal Brazil of the 1950s. On the other, she is a charter member of the ruling class, so despite her sexual preference she is used to getting her way. After all, if wealth is our international language, then money talks -- regardless of one’s sexual preference.

It’s interesting that Soares' lesbianism is not made much of in Brazil, nor is her ensuing affair with the far more repressed, secretive Bishop. This seems true both when they are at Soares' modernist refuge in the Amazon jungle or staying at her posh penthouse in Rio. There is lush, sumptuous cinematography by Mauro Pinheiro Jr. of the tropics, Copacabana Beach, Sugarloaf, etc., and the  degree of acceptance of the screen couple’s Sapphic sexuality and same sex relationship from the 1950s through the 1960s is indeed eye opening, especially considering how they most likely would have been treated in the staid U.S.A.

It’s interesting to note that currently another great American writer -- Glenn Greenwald, that fierce champion of civil liberties who brought Edward Snowden’s revelations about NSA über-snooping to the world’s attention -- is an expat who has left America to live in Brazil with his male Brazilian lover. Perhaps Brazil is ahead of the supposedly “advanced” United States?

This critic has no idea how historically accurate this biopic is, but according to the movie Bishop chafes under the rule of the military junta that overthrows the democratically elected Brazilian government in 1964. As a charter member of the land owning elite Soares' position is different, and it’s interesting to see how political events shape the lovers’ lives.

Director Barreto helmed 1997’s fact-based Four Days in September, which starred Alan Arkin as a U.S. diplomat kidnapped by the MR-8 “terrorist” group, which supported armed resistance to Brazil’s brutal military dictatorship (which, BTW, tortured Brazil’s current President, Dilma Rousseff, a former Marxist guerrilla, who is currently fighting against the NSA surveillance of her, which Snowden revealed). Barreto also directed the popular 1976 erotic ghost comedy, Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, and along with Otto attended the private screening for Reaching for the Moon. His pithy introductory remarks put his finger on Moon’s message, saying: “This is a love story.”

Indeed, straight, gay, trans or whutevah, love is what inspires the poet in all of us -- whether or not we’ve won Pulitzers -- and makes the world and moon go round. Reaching for the Moon is an absorbing, insightful psychological drama with political overtones which won an OutFest Audience Award and is one of the year’s best movies about the love.

 

THEATER REVIEW: THE MAGIC FLUTE

A scene from The Magic Flute.

Sigh-lenses and breath

By Ed Rampell

The current version of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Magic Flute presented by LA Opera raises two essential artistic questions (plus, perhaps, eyebrows). Pouring vintage works into new bottles can be problematic, and in this reviewer’s opinion, more often than not they are not successful. This year I saw three modern dress Greek tragedies and, sans togas, only the Getty Villa’s Prometheus Bound worked. Resetting the other two myths in modern times served solely to detract from the original intents of the creators, and did absolutely nothing to enhance the banal productions.

On the other hand, every once in a while, a Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents, Jerome Robbins, Stephen Sondheim and company come along, updating Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, whipping up a whole new, relevant concoction like West Side Story. It was a stroke of genius to replace Juliet’s balcony with a Manhattan fire escape. So I’m happy to say that the British “1927” theatre company and Komische Oper Berlin rendition of Mozart’s 1791 Flute -- the planet’s most produced German-language opera -- falls into this latter category of reconfigured and re-jiggered classics.

The company’s artistic conceit is to draw upon the conventions and aesthetics of silent films in order to express the fairy tale by Mozart and librettist Schikaneder. As such, we have some Hollywood studio slapstick and German expressionist elements, with references from Clara Bow’s “It Girl” to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to Fritz Lang’s Dr. Mabuse.

To be specific, the character Monostatos (tenor Rodell Rosel), who is identified (perhaps in a racist way?) as a “Moor” and chief of the slaves of the temple, is straight out of Nosferatu, F.W. Murnau’s 1922 creepy forerunner to Dracula. Pamina (soprano Janai Brugger) is suggestive of those Jazz Age sexually liberated flappers, such as Louise Brooks, the American-born actress who starred in G.W. Pabst’s 1920s German films, such as the daring Pandora’s Box -- one half expects her to burst out dancing the Charleston. Papageno (baritone Rodion Pogossov) is dressed like none other than that king of silent comedians, Buster Keaton (BTW, French Stewart is reviving the stellar bioplay Stoneface in June 2014 at the Pasadena Playhouse).

In addition to the innate artistry pertaining to and peculiar to silent movies, the 1927/Komische Oper Berlin production uses lots of 1927’s Paul Barritt-designed animation, which is the format the non-live action imagery is actually projected in, onto the wall Esther Bialas (who is also the costume designer) had constructed, in lieu of LA Opera’s usually lavish sets. This backdrop has elevated portals with sort of revolving doors out of which the various characters appear (strapped in harnesses, as they are on high). The visuals are often witty, and reminiscent of the type of animated images seen in the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, Monty Python, Betty Boop Max Fleischer cartoons, and Dumbo -- although they never attain the polished perfection of works by Disney or Pixar.

This production is gloriously and very precisely, painstakingly co-directed by Suzanne Andrade, an Englishwoman, and Australian Barrie Kosky, who is the Intendant (chief administrator) of the Komische Oper Berlin. Viewer/listener beware: One misses it at his or her own peril, and an extra performance has been added. In our violent world, Mozart’s opera persuasively argues in favor of less Glocks -- and more glockenspiels. This rapturously imaginative Magic Flute is nothing less than -- well -- magical.

 

The Magic Flute runs through Dec. 13 at LA Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. For more info: 213-972-8001; www.laopera.com.

FILM REVIEW: SAL

Sal Mineo (Val Lauren) in Sal.

He, we, were robbed

By Don Simpson

James Franco’s bio-pic of Sal Mineo (Val Lauren), the teen idol and co-star of Rebel Without a Causeand Exodus, Sal is most likely destined to suffer the same cultish fate as most films about gay protagonists (Howl being an all too perfect example). This is extremely unfortunate, because this beautiful, sexually ambiguous portrait of a gay film star’s final day of existence deserves a lot more attention than it is expected to get.

Making a film that takes place within the rigid confines of the final day of its protagonist’s life places one hell of a burden on a filmmaker — especially when the protagonist’s death is foretold on a title card — but it also adds a certain amount of, well, je ne sais quoi to the narrative. As much as I hate knowing how a film is going to end before it even begins, Franco’s narrative builds upon the fact Mineo had a happy, productive and fulfilling last day on earth. For one, Mineo finally secures a deal to direct his first feature film — an adaptation of Charles Gorham's McCaffery. He is also in the final days of rehearsal as a lead actor in a theatrical adaptation of James Kirkwood, Jr.’s P.S. Your Cat Is Dead at the Westwood Playhouse; under the direction of Milton Katselas (James Franco), the play is all but ready for an audience…despite Keir Dullea’s (Jim Parrack) inability to remember his lines.

Christina Voros’ handheld vérité camerawork ogles Mineo, observing every movement of his immaculately buff body as he tirelessly works out at a gym or as he lounges around his apartment in various states of undress. If Mineo loved one thing, it was his body, and Sal functions as a testament to that. With no trace of expository dialogue, we are never privy to what Mineo is thinking or feeling; our only insight into Mineo is what we can piece together from watching him. Mineo spends at least half of his screen time alone; since he does not talk to himself or to inanimate objects, this means his dialogue is very limited. Sure, there are a few phone conversations — of which we only hear his side — but they are not very revealing, other than Mineo really wants to get people out to attend the upcoming premiere of his play.

Sal is not an entry into the cannon of queer cinema; other than focusing on a prominent gay figure, there is absolutely nothing “gay” about Sal. Franco avoids social commentary and political activism. (By the way, Mineo's killer served less than half of his 57-year prison sentence.) Instead Franco opts for this project to be a scholarly exercise in authenticity and realism. Handcuffed by an unspoken pledge that seems to resemble the “Dogme 95 Manifesto”, Sal is stripped of any entertainment value, but it is quite a commendable testament to the contemporary neo-realism movement nonetheless.