LAFF 2013: FOREV

A scene from Forev.

Too early to be securely

By Don Simpson

Sophia (Noël Wells) is the type of girl who drunkenly brings random guys home to her apartment with the naïve hope that it will be the beginning of a beautiful long-term relationship. Her neighbor, Pete (Matt Mider), is a socially awkward computer support technician who works from home, therefore he rarely leaves his apartment. Hence he is hopelessly single.

Nonetheless, Sophia and Pete spontaneously find themselves engaged to be married. (Nope, she isn’t even preggers!) They go on a road trip across the Southwest to pick up Pete’s sister (Amanda Bauer) from college. Mayhem ensues, as the trip puts their (non-)relationship to the test.

Forev is a somewhat typical, yet smartly written, rom-com that quickly evolves into a quirky road movie which contemplates the meaning and significance of marriage in our modern world and whether or not dating (or sex, for that matter) should be a required precursor. Not all that long ago, Sophia and Pete’s rapid-fire engagement would not be all that surprising. Nowadays, they seem a bit nuts; yet within the cinematic universe of Forev, Sophia and Pete are given ample motivation to justify their sense of desperation.

At Sophia and Pete’s age, everything seems like an eternity. They are stuck in a purgatory between college graduation and settling down into family life, and they are both growing increasingly impatient with the pace of their lives. They have been waiting forever (in the figurative sense) to take the next step in life — in this case, marriage — yet it never comes. Of course, if and when they do get married, that means being with their significant other forever -- if they take their vows seriously. That is a lot of forever for two people in their 20s.


Forev screens at the Los Angeles Film Festival, tonight, 9:50 p.m., Regal Cinemas. For more information: Forev at LAFF 2013.

LAFF 2013: POLLYWOGS

Sarah (Kate Lyn Sheil) and Dylan (Karl Jacob) in Pollywogs.

Minne me

By Don Simpson

Recovering from yet another failed relationship, Dylan (co-director Karl Jacob) retreats back to his rural Minnesota hometown for a family reunion. In cinema and literature, an urban protagonist often returns to their rural hometown out of necessity, and they do so with apprehension and fear. These characters are stereotypical patronizing urban elitists, who are eventually forced to learn that the town they left behind is not all that bad. In the case of Pollywogs, however, Dylan has returned home to reboot his life, to get back on track again. While he may not be able to work in a lucrative career here, this quaint Minnesota lake community serves as a magical respite from his not-so-happy adult life.

Upon arrival, idyllic memories of Sarah — Dylan’s first love at age ten — rush straight to his head; then, as fate would have it, Sarah (Kate Lyn Sheil) appears at Dylan’s family reunion. They have not seen each other for 18 years, yet they both have held onto idealized fantasies about what it would be like to reunite. That is a heck of a lot of pressure for two single people who may or may not be wanting to fall back in love.

Dylan and Sarah form a cute foursome with Dylan’s cousin, Julie (Jennifer Prediger), and her husband, Bo (Larry Mitchell), which temporarily eases the romantic pressure. Luckily, they have plenty of booze and weed to calm their nerves and a sauna to steam things up. The drastic juxtaposition of sweating in the hot sauna and shivering in the frigid lake seems like a perfect metaphor for the fluctuating hot and cold feelings between Dylan and Sarah.

They are obviously confused and who can blame them? They were once so close, but that was so long ago. Dylan and Sarah barely know each other any more. Eighteen years have passed. Dylan is now a full-fledged New Yorker, while Sarah seems temporarily content with taking care of her ailing grandmother in Minnesota. As their pasts begin to inform their present, Dylan finds himself desperately pawing at Sarah because he is the type of person who anxiously jumps from one relationship to the next, but Sarah immediately regrets reciprocating his affections and begins to cower away. Having once been forced by her parents into living on a Branch Davidian commune in Colorado, Sarah is wary of doing anything that she does not want to do. David may be primed to jump off the (literal and figurative) cliff, but Sarah pauses and eventually chickens out.

Co-directors Jacob and T. Arthur Cottam approached this project with story points, then developed the characters and dialogue during a six month rehearsal process. The result is a foursome of fully realized characters whose actions are all backed up by motivations. That is not to say that the script is saturated with expository dialogue, because whenever characters are interrogated about their feelings or past, it is done so with the utmost level of naturalism.

The emotional honesty of Pollywogs is much too powerful for this story not to be rooted in some sense of reality. While we might not all have romantic crushes from age ten to fondly look back upon, most of us have some sort of idealized notion from our past that we would like to somehow reinstate into our present lives. The problem is that our ten-year-old selves are hopefully nothing like our fully-matured selves, so something that enraptured us back then will probably not have the same effect on us now. That is why the resolution of Pollywogs is so important. Jacob and Cottam could have very easily chosen to go with an overtly saccharine Hollywood ending, but they opt to conclude the film in a manner much more true to real life.

FILM REVIEW: AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF HER BEAUTY

Terence Nance in An Oversimplification of Her Beauty.

Some scenes the reflex does

By Don Simpson

There is nothing overly simple about Terence Nance's visualization of love and beauty; rather, An Oversimplification of Her Beauty is a complex form of poetry that requires images and music to complete it. Using the rhythmic repetition of narration and dialogue, Nance lulls the audience into a deep meditative state. The hope, of course, is that the film will have the same transcendental effect on Nance's love interest, Namik Minter.

While a film about a filmmaker making a film to convince a woman of their love for each other is not necessarily new territory, Nance's cerebral take on the genre is quite unique. Cleverly utilizing a second-person perspective of narration, Nance places "you" in his situation; then replays key events over and over again, continuously deconstructing and reconstructing them, until "you" have most of the pertinent details.

A meta-narrative in the most heady sense of the term, An Oversimplification of Her Beauty deals with the collection of memories and perspectives in an effort to ascertain the truth. By omnipotently manipulating the editing and structure of the film, Nance transports "you" into his headspace and convinces "you" to believe his version of the truth. Nance instantly becomes "your" overly emotional best friend who gushes incessantly about the woman he loves. As cute and energetic as a puppy, Nance sees precisely which toy he wants to play with, but he cannot understand why the answer is always "no." I doubt he will listen to "your" reasoning right now, so it is best to just sit back and let him ramble on.

Other than allowing Minter to have a voice via intertwined footage of her unfinished short film, Subtext, "you" never quite get to know Minter's side of the story. "You" can only guess that Nance is a bit too overbearing or overanxious (like that aforementioned puppy) for her tastes. Guess is the operative word there, since that is all "you" can do -- because as much as Nance replays the footage, the answer is not anywhere to be found.

"You" have probably replayed "your" past relationships over and over again, like fading home movies in "your" head, doing a scene-by-scene analysis to determine the precise reason for the eventual break-up. That is what An Oversimplification of Her Beauty is -- Nance's attempt to discover the real reason that Minter is not interested in him. Of course "you" must realize that the footage in An Oversimplification of Her Beauty is not real. It has all been reconstructed for "your" viewing pleasure. It may not even be based upon real events. "You" may assume that it is, because Nance seems so honest and forthcoming, but maybe that is all just part of the magnificent poetry of this story.

THEATER REVIEW: THE FLYING DUTCHMAN

Tomas Tomasson in The Flying Dutchman.

Pop Cultured

By Ed Rampell

There is a popular misconception regarding so-called “high art,” like plays by Shakespeare and operas are elitist, only able to be fully understood and appreciated by the hoity-toity. But is this reputation deserved? What is Hamlet other than a revenge tale worthy of Quentin Tarantino and a ghost story? And what is Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman (Der Fliegende Holländer) if not a rip roaring ghost story, highly charged by greed, and lest we forget, sexual frisson?

The composer adapted his 1843 opera from 17^thcentury seafaring folklore, about a phantom ship roaming the high seas, never able to return to its home port. Only one thing can spare the ship’s captain -- the eponymous Dutchman (Icelandic baritone Tomas Tomasson) -- from his eternal nautical roaming: true love. Due to a storm off the coast of Norway the Dutchman encounters Daland (bass James Creswell), and they strike a sort of Faustian bargain: The Dutchman offers the Norwegian captain a treasure chest in exchange for his daughter’s hand in marriage.

Senta was to be played by Portuguese soprano Elisabete Matos, but according to L.A. Opera’s publicist, 12 minutes before the curtain was scheduled to rise on opening night, March 9, in a scene straight out of a 1930s Hollywood musical, Matos “had suddenly become indisposed, and would be unable to perform. Instead, soprano Julie Makerov would.

As the old saying puts it, “the show must go on!”, and boy, did it ever -- and marvelously so. Maerov flew right into The Flying Dutchman. Fortunately, according to her website bio, Makerov had previously played Senta at Canada and Salzburg, and she performed peerlessly at the premiere. Makerov brought the wronged Senta vividly to life with song and acting, as she tried to defend her honor and purity to two suitors: The Dutchman and the hunter Erik (American tenor Corey Bix). Senta’s sonorous, spirited self defense might even make a Shakespeare write “methinks the lady doth not protest too much.” Whether singing “Senta’s Ballad” or the famous duet with the nautical specter she is betrothed to, Makerov admirably rose to the occasion -- especially given her 12-minute notice to report for duty aboard the HMS Chandler.

The sets by Bavarian scenery designer Raimund Bauer, costumes by his fellow German Andrea Schmidt-Futterer and lighting design by Duane Schuler, strike the right imaginative, eerie chords in expressing this shadowy, supernatural saga. During the emotion laden 10-minute overture, a scrim of surging seas is accompanied by music that could best be called “Wagnerian,” conveying a sense of turbulent, crashing waves. Act I transports us out to sea aboard creatively evoked ships near a Norwegian harbor. Later in this three-acter the entire ensemble gathers at Daland’s Scandinavian village, and the mass mise-en-scene is quite impressive and at times appropriately ghoulish. During these scenes the work of choreographer Denni Sayers -- with some balletic moves -- and chorus director Grant Gershon especially shine.

As well it should be, the production is quite Germanic -- Schmidt-Futterer’s costumes are at times extremely suggestive of German silent cinema’s Expressionism, with period apparel reminiscent of the demonic title character of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and F.W. Murnau’s telling of the Dracula fable, Nosferatu. In other scenes the costuming reminded me of L.A. Opera’s highly stylized re-telling of Wagner’s Ring Cycle a few seasons back, with its pseudo-Star Wars panache.

And what of The Flying Dutchman’s music and of the librettist and composer, who about 30 years later would complete The Ring of the Nibelungen? The Flying Dutchman’s theme of exile would psychologically appeal to Wagner -- not only because he was a globetrotter himself, but in only five or so years after presenting The Flying Dutchmanhe would himself become a stateless wanderer due to his taking part in Europe’s 1848 workers revolution. Wagner was forced to flee Germany and live abroad in Switzerland for around 12 years. Like the Dutchman, Wagner would be “banished from his homeland.” The phantom mariner was the first of Wagner’s exile characters, and on a metaphorical, metaphysical level one can perceive that this genius would identify with the outcast. Wagner knew what it felt like to be a persona non grata. And given his tumultuous private life Wagner could presumably relate to the turmoil of the relationship between the Dutchman, Senta and Erik -- a rather messy ménage-a-trois, if ever there was one, with that fourth partner named “fate.”

The sonorous score, deftly conducted by James Conlon, is full of Wagner’s hallmark sonic sturm und drang: brassy refrains, drums, dramatic outbursts and the like, which some might consider to be bombastic. But the earnest music also conveys a powerful, transcendent sense of yearning and longing -- to belong, be loved and for home.

Please note: The two and a half hour-plus opera is performed sans intermission.



The Flying Dutchman runs through March 30 at L.A. Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. For more info: 213-972-8001; www.laopera.com.

 

DVD REVIEW: SENTIMENT OF THE FLESH

Héléna (Annabelle Hettmann) and Benoît (Thibault Vinçon) in Sentiment of the Flesh.

One to (se)x-ray you

By Don Simpson 

Love makes people -- especially characters in films -- do some really crazy things. In the case of Héléna (Annabelle Hettmann) and Benoît (Thibault Vinçon), they decide that attraction to each other's external features is not quite enough; they want to delve deeper into each other, and not metaphorically either, they literally want to peruse each other's innards, bones, muscles, organs, every nook and cranny.

Their mutual interest in the human anatomy stems from different perspectives, Héléna is pursuing a degree in anatomical drawing, while Benoît is a medical doctor and professor. Héléna and Benoît meet while Héléna is getting x-rays in an attempt to diagnose a lower back pain. In addition to the x-ray of her back, Héléna discovers that Benoît has inexplicably taken an x-ray of her thorax as well. From there, the duo delve into a discussion about how every human being is unique; their individual quests to acquire absolute knowledge about human anatomy (according to Benoît, "1000 painters died not knowing the sentiment of the flesh. Many more will die not knowing...") are fatefully (or fatally) intertwined. When a date in the MRI lab does not totally quench Benoît's thirst for completely penetrating Héléna's intimacy, their desire to continue down this path spirals totally out of control.

I am not quite sure I believe that Héléna and Benoît would have free reign of a hospital to use x-ray and MRI machines as their sex toys. The most unfathomable scenes, however, are when Benoît and Héléna are each caught red-handed on separate occasions, yet no punishment in enacted upon either of them. Then again, I do not work in a French hospital, so maybe security is much more lax than I would expect.

David Cronenberg comparisons are unavoidable, as writer-director Roberto Garzelli's feature-length debut The Sentiment of Flesh reveals a certain kinship with the erotic perversity represented in Dead Ringers and Crash. The primary difference is that Garzelli revels in the eroticism while Cronenberg amps up the perversity. 

FILM REVIEW: TREE OF LIFE

Father (Brad Pitt) and R.L. (Laramie Eppler) in Tree of Life.

"Dear God"

By Don Simpson 

I am still attempting to digest The Tree of Life a week after seeing the press screening, making some sense of it all and figuring out exactly what writer-director Terrence Malick is trying to communicate (or maybe I am just having a difficult time getting beyond the CGI dinosaurs). When it comes down to it, The Tree of Life‘s cup runneth over with metaphoric imagery and references to Judeo-Christian scriptures (primarily the Book of Job) and I am desperately trying to wrap my head around it all.

There are essentially three distinct yet intertwined segments of The Tree of Life that play like movements in a symphony: The O’Brien family in the 1950s; Jack O’Brien, the eldest son, 30 years later; and what I loosely refer to as “dawn of time” imagery.

Malick dedicates a majority of the film’s screen time to the O’Brien family and their idyllic Texas home. Mr. O’Brien (Brad Pitt) and Mrs. O’Brien (Jessica Chastain) have three sons: Jack (Hunter McCracken), R.L. (Laramie Eppler) and Steve (Tye Sheridan). On the surface, their household appears to be as perfect as Leave It to Beaver. Mr. O’Brien has a good, secure job as an engineer (with several patents under his name) and he plays the pipe organ at church on Sundays while Mrs. O’Brien has the middle-class privilege of cleaning the house and raising the boys. The O’Brien family resides in a beautiful and spacious home with fresh air and daylight gushing through the open windows. It is the quintessential life for a white middle-class American family, but once you peel away the top layer -- the facade of suburban tranquility and happiness -- an ugly underbelly of a family ruled by the dictatorial iron fist of Mr. O’Brien is revealed. Mrs. O’Brien is rendered voiceless in the household and the three sons live in a constant state of fear of their father.

Thirty years later, Jack O’Brien (Sean Penn) resides in an aesthetically cold and sterile home and works in an aesthetically cold and sterile architecture office in Houston, Texas. The uninviting nature of both postmodern environments work in purposeful juxtaposition to the comforting openness of Jack’s modernist childhood home. Jack does not say or do much (Penn has approximately 15 minutes of screen time and very little on screen dialogue despite his second billing), other than recollect his past. It is the 30th anniversary of R.L.’s death (we are told that R.L. was 19-years old when he died, yet the timeline is so fractured that it is difficult to know for certain), and that event still renders Jack a listless zombie. (Note: Malick’s youngest brother, an aspiring guitarist, committed suicide in the late 1960s.) 

Jack struggles to make peace with his youth, particularly his relationship with his father and his brother’s premature death. Jack recalls several moments that still haunt him to this day, such as when he: tied a frog to a rocket; threw rocks through a window of a neighbor’s shed; broke into a neighbor’s house; shot R.L.’s finger with a BB gun; talked back to his mother; and prayed that God would kill his father. The Tree of Life is intended to be Jack’s own meditations on his childhood all the while contemplating God’s existence and the meaning of life. Jack perceives himself as the bad son and R.L. as the good (the righteous) son -- so why did God take R.L.’s life? Or, as Job often pondered: Why do the righteous suffer?

The “dawn of time” imagery showcases a psychedelic fantasia of bizarre cosmological phenomena a la the “The Dawn of Man” and “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” chapters of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. First, the Big Bang; then, primordial ooze and molten magma; next, unicellular organisms evolve into multicellular organisms...and eventually there are a couple of dinosaurs. In theory, these visual head-trips represent Jack’s contemplation of the universe (thus revealing the triviality of his selfish concerns). In reality, these scenes are more likely to just conjure up inquiries into "what was Malick on?” while he imagined all of this.

The final coda brings all three segments of the film together, well sort of. We witness the earth’s demise and then a bevy of lost souls (including the O’Brien family) wandering along a beach to an endless echo of “amen” from “Berlioz: 10. Agnus Dei [Requiem, Op. 5 (Grande Messe des Morts)]” as conducted by Sir Colin Davis and performed by Wandsworth School Boys Choir, London Symphony Chorus and London Symphony Orchestra.

Malick has historically kept his affinity for metaphorical imagery somewhat in check, but his cerebral tendencies run rampantly wild within The Tree of Life. I have absolutely no complaints with the deliberately obtuse nature of Malick’s choices in imagery; in fact, it is cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s (who earned a Best Cinematography Oscar nomination for Malick’s The New World) unabashed eye candy that is the strongest element of The Tree of Life. Lubezki adroitly conveys Malick’s transcendentally dreamy vision. Several scenes play out with no spoken dialogue -- just sporadic lines of voiceover and a heavy dose of classical music (Bach, Holst, Goreckí, Mahler), so the images are left shouldering the burden of meaning. For that reason alone, The Tree of Life will certainly be one of my favorite visual films of 2011.

Three subjects that are readily discussed in Malick’s other films -- Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, and The New World -- are also quite prominent in The Tree of Life: humankind’s constant struggle with nature; the inherent violence found within all humans; and the tug-of-war of gender roles. Yet in The Tree of Life Malick wraps these three subjects into a greater discussion on the battle between the way of nature (the selfish pursuit of earthly ambitions) and the way of grace (living a life of love and compassion for all).

Malick truly hits his stride when focusing on the subconscious conflict that occurs during childhood -- when young personalities are being shaped into their adult equivalent -- between the forces of good and evil. Children are prone to make poor choices during childhood, and sometimes those choices (like several of Jack’s) continue to haunt one’s memories long into adulthood. The adult Jack would never purposefully shoot his brother’s finger with a BB gun or tie a frog to a rocket, yet the adult Jack still feels guilty for the poor choices he made as a child. Like his father, Jack dishonored nature and never noticed “the glory”; he chose a selfish and violent path, rather than following his mother’s path of love.

An over-reliance on voiceovers has always been Malick’s one weakness and The Tree of Life seems to rely even more heavily upon voiceovers than his other four films. Understandably, Malick utilizes whispery and ethereal voiceovers to place the audience inside Jack’s mind as he regurgitates his childhood memories and waxes existentially (Malick is a disciple of Martin Heidegger), but Malick is simultaneously synopsizing the Book of Job for us, and this is enough to clear the seats of any atheists in the audience. There will certainly be accusations that The Tree of Life is a shameless proselytising of Judeo-Christian doctrine, but I interpret The Tree of Life as being quite the opposite. 

The title of the film references a non-denominational symbol that spans the breadth of religion, science, philosophy and mythology. Jack (like Malick) was raised as a Christian, so it only makes sense that Jack (and Malick) would turn to the Old Testament when attempting to come to terms with his brother’s death; Job -- a character who directly challenges God -- is chosen to convey Jack’s (and Malick’s) theological quandary. Jack (and Malick) doubts the existence of God, but at the same time he chooses to address God directly, challenging him (as Job did) to answer his accusations and questions. 

The Tree of Life reportedly received a conflicting chorus of boos and applause after its world premiere at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. Nonetheless, Malick’s film received the Palme d'Or, but the infamously reclusive director was nowhere to be found.

NBFF 2011: THE LIFE OF FISH

Andrés (Santiago Cabrera) in The Life of Fish.

Moments across childhood rooms

By John Esther

When he was younger, Andrés (Santiago Cabrera) had close friends, a special girl named Bea (Blanca Lewin) and a general sense of communal security. But that was more than 10 years ago. Andrés is now 33, living abroad, working around the world as a travel writer and living a life of noncommittal relationships – most likely constantly communicating in a language not his first (or theirs).

In general, Andrés probably enjoys his modus vivendi, but when the expatriate returns home, what he left behind drowns him in a seductive/reductive whirlpool of remorse and regretful moments.

Set in near-real time, and shot in a singular Santiago, Chilé home, Andrés attends a birthday party he is already trying to leave as the film starts. Yet, there is no exit. Other people, at least the memories associated with them, are heaven and hell. As Andrés meets aged persons of times past, he realizes how different his life has become from those he knew when he was young. They have kids, he has travel plans. They live where they grew up whereas he currently resides in Berlin, Germany. Their narratives continue to grow together as his is a monologue signifying a lack of lifetime companionship. He has spread up and out; they have sprawled sideways.

While many moments pang the life and losses of Andrés' heart, nothing seems to hurt him more – even more than the death of a dear mutual friend – than letting Bea go. He wants her back and maybe she wants him, too, but life's grand amorous opportunities are precious few.

Suggesting we all live inside our own aquariums -- at varying, accreting external levels -- writer-director Matías Bize's exquisite film also manages to summon the interior emotions of his characters. The power of suggestion found in The Life of Fish sometimes reaches Bressonian heights, only Bize uses the faces of some good, and good looking, actors to convey that which is not being said, but is definitely present. And the moment flees.

A fine film in general, Chilé's recent Oscar submission for Best Foreign Language Film will particularly poke (pain?) those who have traveled the more unfamiliar roads, whereupon you left behind the spaces people still dear to you continue to dwell in and maintain within and without you.