OUTFEST 2014: LIFE PARTNERS

A scene from Life Partners.

Single out

By Miranda Inganni

The opening night film at this year's Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival, Life Partnerstells the somewhat typical story of the trials and tribulations of two best friends when love comes between them. The main difference between this and any other Rom-Com with a similar premise is that one of the friends is a lesbian.

Uptight Paige (Gillian Jacobs) is an environmental lawyer, who is best friends with free spirited Sasha (Leighton Meester). The girls have great times gallivanting about Pride parades and sharing cocktails with their eclectic group of gal pals. That is until handsome and successful Doctor Tim (Adam Brody, Meester's husband off screen) enters the picture.

Hold up. Here’s where I have a slight problem. I just referred to the two leads as girls. The characters are both 29 years old, not little girls, but they often act so childish that it is hard to believe that Paige owns a home or that either is capable of being a fully formed woman. But perhaps that is part of the story.

It is often a tricky transition for young women to go from having best girl-friends to having serious romantic relationships. Figuring out how to divide one’s time between a new lover and an old friend can be challenging. Is there a “correct” way to mature? Does it mean following one’s dreams or a preconceived notion of what exactly mature life is supposed to be? Paige and Sasha tackle these issues from opposite ends of the spectrum. As Paige slides into domestic comfortability with Tim, Sasha finds herself falling for increasingly immature women (who all still live at home). No longer can Paige and Sasha spend the night at the other’s house on a whim (usually because they are too tipsy to drive to their own abode). And gone are the weekly sessions of watching Top Modelwhile drinking wine and quipping at the TV.

But both characters come to a kind of maturity during the course of Life Partners and realize the strength of what their friendship meant to them.

Co-written by Joni Lefkowitz and Susana Fogel, Life Partners is Fogels’ feature directorial debut. The film is an adaptation of a play the two wrote with the same name based on their friendship. The entire cast is chock full of talent --with excellently written and acted supporting characters played by the likes of Gabourey Sidibe, Greer Grammer, Kate McKinnon, Beth Dover and Abby Elliott, among others. It’s also interesting to see real life husband and wife duo of Brody and Meester play against eachother.

PSIFF 2013: LORE

Lore (Saskia Rosendahl) in Lore.

(N)eins kinderverhaal

By Miranda Inganni

Set at the end of World War II in Germany, Lore is the story of five siblings who must fend for themselves when their SS officer father (Hans-Jochen Wagner) and Nazi sympathizer mother (Ursina Lardi) are off to prison for war crimes.

The eldest child, 14-year-old Lore (Saskia Rosendahl), must lead younger sister Leisel (Nele Trebs), her twin brothers, Günter (André Frid) and Jürgen (Mika Seidel), along with baby Peter (Nick Leander Holaschke) through the forests and mountains from their home to Hamburg and their awaiting Grandmother (Eva-Maria Hagen). Along the way, they meet Thomas (Kai Malina), a mysterious man with Jewish papers. Lore knows they need Thomas’ help in order to survive, but she struggles with her hatred for the Jews.

While the younger siblings can barely grasp the reality of what has caused them to be in this situation, Lore slowly comprehends her family’s new position and what it means. Once important and admired in Hitler's Germany, they are now the enemy.

All the children suffer, but it seems that only Lore is allowed to express it. While her character initially is unsympathetic, through her journey to save herself and her siblings, Lore's quest for survival brings out a sensitivity that can only be brought on through experiencing deep pain.

Lore looks at the toll of war from a perspective most audiences have not seen. Additionally, the cast does a remarkable job, especially considering their youth. Rosendahl is expertly cast as Lore and she strikingly captures her character’s physical and emotional journey. Kudos also goes Adam Arkapaw's lush, beautiful cinematography.

Based on “The Dark Room” by Rachel Seiffert, director and co-writer Cate Shortland’s Lore is Australia’s Official Selection for the 85^th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. (It did not make the short list.) The film is a co-production between Australia and Germany and the dialog is almost entirely in German.

 

Lore screens at the Palm Springs International Film Festival: Jan. 7, 7:30 p.m., Camelot Theatres; Jan. 9, 10:30 a.m., Camelot Theatres. For more information: PSIFF 2013.

 

LAFF 2012: ALL IS WELL

A scene from All is Well.

The girls I used to know

By John Esther

A rather impressive directorial debut, director Pocas Pascoal’s film tells the semi-autobiographical tale of two sisters trying to survive in a foreign country as they await the arrival of their mother.

It is 1980 and Alda (Alda Ciomara Morais) and her sister, Maria (Cheila Lima), have escaped the civil-war strife of Angola for Lisbon, Portugal. With very little money and no parental guidance, the two are left to fend for themselves. As the older sister, Alda takes on the majority of responsibilities while Maria comes to grips with her new surroundings and her sexual awakening (although she is younger, Maria has more experience).

Forced to dwell in one rundown room after another, the sisters finally find some stability in a home of sorts, and work of sordid sorts, only to be challenged by fate once again.

The title, All is Well, may be a personal nod to the sister left behind – rather than the filmmaker’s general sentiment over the lost of loved ones – but there is something rather affirming about the way the sisters handle their predicament – especially in light of anti-immigration hostilities in this country. Co-writers Pascoal and Marc Pernet hit the right notes without be mawkish or macabre. Moreover the two leads are fine young actors emitting a universal sympathy even if they mess up on occasion (Although the casting of Lima as an often-starving immigrant raises an eyebrow as she seems to get bigger as the film progresses).

However, the film’s highest attribute is the exquisite framing and direction by Pascoal and director of photographer Octávio Espírito. Michelangelo Antonioni’s films sprung to mind more than once during the film.

Recommended.


All is Well screens at the Los Angeles Film Festival: June 16, 5 p.m., Regal Cinemas; June 19, 8:10 p.m., Regal Cinemas.

SXSW 2012: TCHOUPITOULAS

A scene from Tchoupitoulas.

We have a contender!

By Don Simpson

Bill and Turner Ross’ Tchoupitoulas does a tremendous job of defying classification. It functions as both a surreal documentary that borrows from narrative storytelling techniques and a narrative film that paints a realistic portrait of its protagonists by utilizing documentary devices. The narrative unfolds like an improvised jazz album with various tangents that flow seamlessly away from and towards the forward-moving primary thread. The tempo continuously alternates as well as the sublime, impressionistic cinematography alternates between running, walking and pausing. We are fully immersed into the surrounding environment from the perspective of three young brothers as they embark upon an adventure deep into the heart of New Orleans.

Tchoupitoulas feels like a fairy tale as the three boys enjoy absolute freedom without any parental supervision, experiencing firsthand the entrancing New Orleans nightlife — something that is typically limited to adults. Every sequence brings new emotions, ranging from ecstasy and joy to fear and sadness. When the new day rises, the magical cinematic sedation quickly wears off. We are awoken from the meditative dream-state and the story ends, yet the entire cinematic experience is left lingering in our subconscious like a fading childhood memory.

No one makes films like the Ross brothers -- at least not anymore -- and Tchoupitoulas is no exception. A cerebral experience like none other, Tchoupitoulas is certainly going to be one of my favorite films of 2012.

FILM REVIEW: SUBMARINE

Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) in Submarine.

Keeping head above w(h)at(h)er

By Don Simpson

Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) is the cinematic sibling of Harold Chasen and Max Fischer, the young male protagonists from Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude and Wes Anderson’s Rushmore respectively. A 15-year-old Welsh boy with a geeky penchant for reading the dictionary, Oliver dourly trudges around Swansea outfitted in a black duffel coat with leather briefcase in hand. Solipsistically fancying himself as a fully-formed gentleman with superior tastes and sensibilities, Oliver is the cinematic reincarnation of The Catcher in the Rye’s (Oliver’s favorite modern American novel) protagonist, Holden Caulfield.

Oliver pines over a blissful obsession, despite her eczema, with an iconic first-love character, Jordana (Yasmin Paige), a classmate who bears a remarkable resemblance to Chantal Goya circa Jean-Luc Godard’s Masculin Féminin (one of many film's references to the nouvelle vague). Jordana professes a severe disdain for emotions and romance, preferring a boy who would be willing to allow her to burn his leg hair with matches and co-conspire schemes of petty arson, a role Oliver would not object to playing. 

Oliver causes enough of a splash to gain Jordana’s attention when he collaborates with her in bullying a doughy classmate, Zoe (Lily McCann). Though the guilt from this incident seems to haunt Oliver for the remainder of the film, the event nonetheless leads him to meet Jordana under a railway bridge with a Polaroid camera and diary in tow where Jordana promptly orders Oliver to his knees and their romance commences with a first kiss that tastes like “milk, Polo mints and Dunhill International.”

He may start off as Jordana’s pet, but soon Oliver’s pubescent fantasies of having a girlfriend and losing his virginity are realized. Their iconic young love is presented to us by Oliver via soft focus Super 8 memories propagated by fireworks, sunsets, beaches and bicycles. The superficial first two weeks of their relationship gives way to Jordana and Oliver dealing with family issues -- Jordana’s mother (Melanie Walters) has been terminally diagnosed with a brain tumor while Oliver’s parents’ (Sally Hawkins and Noah Taylor) relationship is on the skids -- that drive a wedge between them.

Incessantly monitoring his parents' sex life by way of their bedroom dimmer switch, Oliver has determined that it has been a long time since his parents have turned the lamp down low, so he takes it upon himself to save his parents’ marriage. First, Oliver plots to pull his mother away from the clutches of her cheesy ex-boyfriend, Graham (Paddy Considine), a cartoonish representation of a New Age-y self help guru who makes a living lecturing about the enlightening benefits of light. Next, Oliver must rescue his father from the oceanic depths of depression, a state of mind that Oliver quickly finds himself slipping into.

Never delving too far into Oliver’s fantastical daydreams, Submarine conveys the teenage wasteland of Wales in the 1980s with a lugubrious backdrop of deteriorating industrial plants, garbage dumps and urban decay. By avoiding the modern teenage rom-com tendency of relying upon overt quirkiness or gross-out jokes to propel the narrative, writer-director Richard Ayoade’s morbidly mundane perspective of pubescence captures the realistic behavior of 15-year olds, specifically the forced pretense of their actions, their incredibly fickle behavior and their all-so-serious dramatizations of seemingly minor events. Despite his hyperactive teenage mind’s knack for self-delusion, Oliver is a precocious and idiosyncratic teen with big, brown puppy-dog eyes and a perspicacious outlook on life.

A series of alternating blue and red, Godard-esque intertitles, separate Ayoade’s feature-length debut into distinct chapters -- including a prologue and epilogue -- thus establishing a literary structure that serves as a nod to Ayoade’s source: Joe Dunthorne’s novel, Submarine. Ayoade makes one significant alteration to Dunthorne’s novel, staging his film in the 1980s (rather than the 2000s). The production design promotes a reverential nostalgia of bygone teenage years which will probably play most effectively for viewers who were teenagers in the 1980s. (As luck would have it I am part of this target audience, which might be why Submarine was so enjoyable to me.) Teenagers pass handwritten notes in class (rather than text messaging or emailing) and keep diaries (rather than posting their every thought on Facebook); and Ayoade fills the screen with antiquated technologies such as typewriters, Polaroids, VHS tapes, Super 8 film footage, clunky cordless telephones, and audio cassette tapes as if creating an ode to the analogue ways of the not-so-distant past. Erik Wilson’s cinematography, which abides by the same primary-colored palette of Raoul Coutard, and the jump cuts and freeze frames of Chris Dickens and Nick Fenton’s editing also lends Submarine the reverential (and referential) air of a film that is submerged in the past. 

However, Ayoade steers clear of a period-defining soundtrack, opting for a new-yet-timeless soundtrack performed by Arctic Monkeys’ frontman Alex Turner.

SFIFF 2011: CHILDREN OF THE PRINCESS OF CLEVES

A scene from Children of the Princess of Cleves.

Text-ing times

By Miranda Inganni

In director Régis Sauder’s documentary, The Children of the Princess of Clèves (Nous, Princesses De Clèves), teenagers from a Marseilles high school learn about life and love from the classic French novel, The Princess of Clèves. Using the students to read excerpts from the book, reenact selections and discuss the subject matter with their friends and families, Sauder brings the 17^th century book to life in the 21^st century.

Proving some things are timeless, this documentary is an age-old story of children growing up – testing their boundaries and their parents patience and exploring their own emotions. Instead of the 16^th century royal court of Henri II, the backdrop is a contemporary working class community, but the themes are the same: love, passion, duty, disappointment, jealousy, betrayal, angst, et cetera.

And when the parents get involved in the discussion, it is clear that the kids, being teenagers, are not used to having these issues talked about at home. It’s quite laudable that Sauder gets the conversation going between parent and child during a time when the child is less like to talk and more likely to walk away. There are raw and revealing scenes where it’s clear that some of these young adults still want their parents’ affection and attention, all the while reaching out on their own and rebuking their elders.

Enriched by the ensemble of students featured in the film, The Children of the Princess of Clèves, culminates in the results of their baccalaureate exams. Some pass, some fail, some skip the exam entirely (without his or her parent’s consent or knowledge). In the end, the mobile texting kids seem to have learned a little more about themselves through the exploration of this text -- disproving what French President Nicholas Sarkozy said about it.

FILM REVIEW: HANNA

Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) in Hanna.

Wolfing down the candy

By Don Simpson

See Hanna hunt. See Hanna shoot. See Hanna run. See Hanna kill! Kill, Hanna, kill!

When we first meet the titular Hanna (Saoirse Ronan), she is hunting reindeer for survival in the harsh wintry environment of snow-swept Finland. All the while, her father Erik (Eric Bana) challenges Hanna to kill better, run faster, and get stronger in order to protect herself from the big bad wolf...I mean, world.

We come to learn that Erik has shielded Hanna from the outside world ever since her mother died. Together they have been hiding completely off the grid in a secluded forest cottage in Finland while Hanna has been tirelessly training. Now 16-years old, Hanna begins to get itchy to experience more than just life with her father; so Erik promptly unearths a box -- a transmitter of sorts -- with a switch. When Hanna feels as though she is totally ready, all she needs to do is flip the switch. Erik warns Hanna that her life post-switch will not be easy. Hanna will have to go at it alone. There is an evil CIA agent, Marissa (Cate Blanchett), who is allegedly responsible for the three bullets that killed Hanna's mother. Once the switch is flipped, Marissa will know that Erik and Hanna are alive, and she will go to the extremes to hunt and kill them.

The switch is officially flipped and the game begins. Hanna is off, traveling from one exotic locale (Morocco, Spain, Germany) to the next with Marissa and her evil henchmen -- the ridiculously flamboyant, Isaacs (Tom Hollander), and his two neo-Nazi sidekicks (Sebastian Hülk and Joel Basman) -- never far behind. Run faster, Hanna! Run faster!

Hanna was raised in complete isolation; suddenly as a 16-year old she is catapulted into the modern world, making Hanna a female coming-of-age metaphor on steroids as Hanna goes from being a sheltered little daddy's girl to full independence in ten seconds flat. 

Hanna is remarkably intelligent and a hyper-polyglot, but when it comes down to it, Hanna is an empty vessel who must immediately begin to consume the wonders of the world around her with the same childlike naiveté of Being There's Chance and  The Man Who Fell To Earth's Thomas. Hanna welcomes electricity and magic with much trepidation, but she certainly adapts to navigating the Internet on a computer quickly enough. 

Unfortunately, it soon becomes apparent that Hanna has been training all of her life, not for her own safety, but for the sole purpose of killing Marissa. It is never really explained why Erik believed it to be prudent to raise a child to murder his nemesis, rather than doing it himself (something he seems more than capable of doing). Maybe I am not supposed to ask questions about this -- perhaps I am supposed to sit back and be in awe of la petite femme fatale -- but I really want to know why?

Before I proceed, I need to get something off of my chest: Ronan is absolutely amazing. If not for her, I more than likely would have hated Hanna. Ronan's high caliber of acting lifts this high octane "girl kicks ass" flick to somewhat respectable heights. It also helps that director Joe Wright admirably keeps Ronan in respectable attire, never once allowing the camera to sexualize her. Hanna quickly develops into a carefully nuanced character whose strength and rage actually seem logical, and except for her unrealistic speed and catlike reflexes, Hanna's fighting skills seem relatively grounded and realistic. And, yes, it is nice to see a young, independent girl handle herself so skillfully in the real world as she takes on men two or three times her size, squashing them like little girlie ants.

Unfortunately, Wright (whose previous directing credits -- Pride & Prejudice, Atonement, and The Soloist -- could not be farther from the cinematic hyperactivity of Hanna) is presumably having too much fun providing the audience with a relentless shock and awe barrage of eye candy (some of which is quite magnificent, I must admit) to care about the narrative. Hanna, my friends, is a hyper-stylized action flick through and through. Most of the non-action sequences are inconsequential, except for Ronan's eerily powerful presence which carries each and every scene. For one reason or another, some of the action sequences are better choreographed and directed than others. The editing and the visual bravado of the prison escape sequence alone is worth the admission price. Come to think of it, from the opening titles until Hanna emerges from the prison, Hanna is near perfect, but from that point onward, the film dillies and dallies way too much (with little meaningful plot development). The most disappointing action sequence of them all takes place during the anticlimactic climax at Grimm's house in Berlin (a reference to the absurd fairy tales Hanna was raised on) which then leads directly into the incredibly predictable ending in which a big bad wolf metaphor falls flat on its furry face -- too bad Hanna is not donning a red hoodie -- and the opening lines of dialogue (“I just missed your heart”) turn out to be the most heavy-handed use of foreshadowing in film since Alfred Hitchcock.

There is very little music in Hanna, but as soon as each action sequence is about to commence the block-rockin' beats of The Chemical Brothers are predictably raring to go. It is like clockwork, and it is all part of Wright's annoying formula: music kicks in, a chase begins, then a fight, music stops, the scene ends. Unfortunately, the soundtrack (The Chemical Brothers' lackluster attempt at German techno?) makes Hanna's action sequences play out a hell of a lot like Run, Lola, Run (analogies to Salt and Æon Flux are also just waiting to be noticed).

Last, but certainly not least...the accents! Hardly anyone in Hanna speaks in their native accent. (I trust that this is a purposeful decision on Wright's behalf to add another level of falsity to the mix.) Blanchett speaks in an irritatingly inconsistent American Southern belle accent that lacks of any particular purpose other than to be like nails on a chalkboard. (The only aspect of Hanna that is more annoying than Blanchett's accent is the Isaacs character, who fulfills every single cheesy cliché from the 1980s action film villain's handbook...but not in a good way.) Bana's German accent fares a little better but he constantly slips in and out of it. Really the only non-native accent that is truly convincing is Ronan's. I would have never guessed she was born in New York and raised in Ireland.