OUTFEST 2014: SARAH PREFERS TO RUN

Sarah (Sophie Desmarais) in Sophie Prefers to Run.

That running and loneliness thing

By Miranda Inganni

Sarah (Sophie Desmarais) doesn’t just prefer to run, the 20-year-old lives to run in director Chloe Robichaud’s feature film debut, Sarah Prefers to Run.

Sarah’s mother (Hélène Florent) opposes her daughter’s plans on moving to Montreal to run at McGill University, pointing out that running will not pay the bills. Fortunately for Sarah, her coworker, Antoine (Jean-Sébastien Courchesne), has enough money to get both of them to Montreal and into an apartment. However, once there Antoine suggests they marry to take advantage of government grants. Affable Antoine gets more domestic and comfortable with his roommate/wife, but Sarah seems oblivious and continues to focus on running. 

One of her teammates, Zoey (Geneviève Boivin-Roussy), catches Sarah’s eye and a slightly awkward friendship begins. Once Sarah begins to explore, or at least acknowledge, her sexuality, it becomes clear that she is not running toward anything, but rather away from herself. Things are further complicated when Sarah develops a heart condition, but will it stop her from running?

Desmarais does an exceptional job portraying the titular character in all of her youthful innocence cum lack of mindfulness. Sarah seems so removed from everything other than running. She is obsessively focused, even to the potential detriment to her health. 

Robichaud creates an ambiance of dullness for Sarah to live in, replete with a beige- gray color scheme and little dialogue. Sarah Prefers to Run is more of a character study than a typical dramatic narrative, but Sarah (well acted by Desmarais) is an interesting enough character to take a close look at as she follows the course of her life.

OUTFEST 2014: BFFS

A scene from BFFs. 

Friends and lovers

By Miranda Inganni

When Kat (Tara Karsian) receives an all-expense paid trip to a retreat entitled Closer to Closeness, Kat and her best friend Samantha (Andrea Grano) cannot pass up the offer. The only catch is that it is a couples retreat and both ladies are single.  Or are they?

Posing as a lesbian couple at the retreat, Kat and Samantha work through various group sessions – performing trust and communication exercises with the rest of the couples – in order to take advantage of the beautiful scenery, fabulous food and fun of this free weekend getaway. But somewhere between the ropes course and an exercise in self-expression, the two friends realize that they might have more than a friendship. 

Of course, this is not that surprising. How often do we hear of someone describing their partner as their “best friend?” The difference being that usually those couples already know about their sexual orientation.

BFFs stars Karsian and Grano co-wrote and produced this exceptionally well written and acted film. Directed by Andrew Putschoegl, and with help from an excellent supporting cast -- including Jenny O’Hara, Pat Carroll, Richard Moll, Sigrid Thornton, Sean Maher, among many others --  BBFs explores the answers to pesky questions such as what is important in a friendship and how is that different in a romantic relationship? Karsian and Grano have exceptional chemistry with each other. Between that, the witty writing and massive talent of the supporting cast, BFFs is a sharp-tonged, slyly subversive exploration of love.

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.

LAFF 2014: RECOMMENDED BY ENRIQUE

The Star (Sarah Swinwood) in Recommended by Enrique.

Demons and such

By Miranda Inganni

Two individuals with their own agendas find themselves biding their time in Del Rio, Texas, in this quirky, enigmatic film "based on actual events."

An aspiring actress (Sarah Swinwood) comes to town to shoot a no-budget horror film, which she believes will be her big break into Hollywood stardom. Despite being told each day that the director is stuck in meetings in Los Angeles, she and the teenaged cast and crew continue to make the film. Meanwhile, a cowboy with a secret (Lino Verela) is held up in town awaiting a colleague. He is there to ostensibly deliver some plants and is bored out of his mind with the small, dusty town. Both the starlet and the cowboy pass the time in their own distinct way – the starlet swims with the local kids and sticks to the shooting schedule; the cowboy drinks himself to sleep at night, desperately missing his dead wife. When their projects are complete, both cowboy and actress move on.

Based on another film that was never completed, there is a quietness to Recommended by Enrique, written and directed by Rania Attieh and Daniel Garcia. Both lead characters spend much time in solitude, despite (or in spite of) merriment around them. They each have their own inner monologues, with the cowboy’s acting as a narration and the actress’s manifesting itself in her video blog entries. Though they are staying a couple of rooms away from each other in the same small motel, they never interact.  

Newcomers Swinwood and Verela both give excellent performances in this film hinting at mystery and nuance.

LAFF 2014: LAKE LOS ANGELES

Cecilia (Johanna Trujillo) in Lake Los Angeles.

Dusts in the wind

By Miranda Inganni

Set in the desolate high desert of California’s Antelope Valley, Lake Los Angeles is a story of struggle and survival for two incongruous, but quietly complementary characters.

Francisco (Roberto Sanchez) is a Cuban immigrant long since distanced from his wife and family. When he is not doing various day labor jobs and writing poetic love letters to his wife, he uses his house as a temporary holding place for immigrants crossing into the US from Mexico. One such person is young Cecilia (Johanna Trujillo) whose mother has purchased her passage with a promise that her father will collect her upon her arrival.

Things do not go according to plan on these vast arid plains pricked with Joshua trees and littered with abandoned houses.

Francisco and Cecilia both came to this land in search, or with a promise, of something better, only to face disappointment. Cecilia’s promised life with a father who she has never met is turned topsy-turvy when she, in a sudden act of self-preservation, runs off into the expansive desert. To keep herself occupied and comforted, she whispers stories, legends she has heard, to an imaginary friend as she wanders in search of her father, any father – a little girl lost in an expanse of grit.

Directed by Mike Ott and written by Ott and Atsuko Okatsuka, Lake Los Angeles uses the location almost as another character. The area drives the actors to various actions. It elicits a practically palpable, desperate dryness that gets into everything and sets the tone carried throughout the enjoyable film.

LAFF 2014: EVOLUTION OF A CRIMINAL

Darius Clark Monroe in Evolution of a Criminal.

Easy come, difficulties grow

By Miranda Inganni

When he was 16, Darius Clark Monroe and two of his classmates decided to rob a bank at gunpoint. Ten years later, Monroe’s film, Evolution of a Criminal, depicts this criminal episode of his life, what lead up to the robbery and how it affected him, his family and the victims of his crime.

Growing up in the outskirts of Houston, TX, Monroe was a good student and loving child. Unfortunately, he learned a little too much about his parents’ financial woes. He heard too often his mother complain about their mounting credit card debt and the struggles of living from paycheck to paycheck. Trying to be a good son, Monroe got a job at a local big box store and kept his nose to the high school grindstone. After a frightening home break-in, in which all of the family’s valuables -- most notably the VCRs, a gun and his stepfather’s full paycheck -- were stolen, something changed for Monroe. 

The brazen thieves had kicked in the basement door, climbed through the attic and busted a hole in Monroe’s bedroom ceiling to gain entry to the house. Monroe reasoned that he could simply replace the stolen VCRs with some from the store at which he worked and easily made that happen. Shortly thereafter, Monroe and his friends came up with the plan to rob a small, local branch of a bank. Armed with a shotgun, Monroe and his friend stormed the bank, while their other buddy waited in the getaway car.

Due to the severity of the crime, in which they stole about $140,000 and held a number of people at gunpoint, Monroe was tried as an adult and found guilty. He was incarcerated. 

But that is not where the story ends. Rather than become a criminal for life, Monroe had more creative plans. 

Evolution of a Criminal combines home movies, interviews with family members, former teachers and some of the victims, plus some reenactments to explore what happened and what it lead to Monroe's criminal enterprise. 

One of the many documentaries offered at Los Angeles Film Festival 2014, Evolution of a Criminal offers a sobering exploration of what can (and all too often does) go wrong for young men trying to better their lives through “easy” means.

SFIFF 2014: PELO MALO

Junior (Samuel Lange Zambrano)in Pelo Malo.

Hairs looking at you, kid

By Miranda Inganni

To what lengths will a young boy go to get the attention and love he so desires from his mother? In Mariana Rondón’s film Pelo Malo (Bad Hair) the more appropriate question might be, just how short is he willing to shear?

Nine-year-old Junior (Samuel Lange Zambrano) is fixated on straightening his hair for his school photo. You could say Junior sways to his own music. Sadly, his single mother is more concerned about her son’s perceived sexual orientation, which causes her great consternation.

In desperate need for child care, the mom of two young boys, and a recently unemployed security guard, Marta (Samantha Castillo) turns to her former mother-in-law, Carmen (Nelly Ramos) for help. Carmen allows Junior all the freedom he thinks he wants to straighten his hair and dance around all day. Unfortunately, tough Marta strongly dislikes her son’s pursuits of song, dance and comfort and takes matters into her own rough hands. Junior cannot win -- it is always a battle of wills with his mother. He constantly falls into the traditional binary of being too feminine or too masculine for Marta’s taste, but never just his mother’s loved little boy. Marta fears that her son is gay because she never touches him, and yet she never reaches out to him. Quite to the contrary, Marta pulls away from her son frequently -- at home, on the bus, walking through the neighborhood. She is so removed from him yet is constantly trying to teach him lesson; sadly, usually in the worst kind of way.

Set in the gritty, overcrowded high rise apartment blocks in Caracas, Venezuela, Rondón (Postcards from Leningrad) tells the story without an overbearing sense of judgment. All the actors perform wonderfully, with young Zambrano turning in a heartbreaking performance and Castillo embodying his tough-as-nails mom. Rondón puts a twist on what many perceive as the traditional masculine and feminine rolls in this touching film.

SFIFF 2014: MARY IS HAPPY MARY IS HAPPY

Suri (Chonnikan Netjui) and Mary (Patcha Poonpiriya) in Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy.

Tongue Thai-ed 

By Miranda Inganni

 
Finding inspiration in 410 consecutive tweets by a teenager, Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit's Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy fuses social media and filmmaking in this wonderfully whimsical movie.

Deftly intertwining the tweets (originally posted by Mary Malony) with the drama, we follow moody Mary (Patcha Poonpiriya) and her more evenly keeled best friend Suri (Chonnikan Netjui) as they navigate their way through their final year of high school. Mary is impulsive  -- ordering a jellyfish in the mail, booking a quick trip to Paris which she subsequently sleeps through because of jet lag -- and a frustrated creative  -- forever chasing the “magic hour” in which to take her pictures. But mostly she is a mercurial, seemingly hopelessly romantic, teenager.

Mary and Suri are in charge of creating the school’s yearbook, which provides for many distractions and obstacles that they must overcome to complete the book.
 
Accident prone Mary traipses through her days, despite her cell phone blowing up repeatedly, getting poisoned by mushrooms while on a quick camping trip and even a terrible tragedy. All the while, she pines for M(Vasuphon Kriangprapakit, a young man she meets near a pancake cark next to the train tracks.
 
While Mary goes through what is for so many the awkward transition into adulthood, Thamrongrattanarit capitalizes on the limitations -- and lack thereof -- of the original tweets allowing Mary to mature in the face of adversity during the course of the film.
 
As director Thamrongrattanarit creates the story line around the tweets, plot points can seem eclectic. But the feature has a groove that flows smoothly once you suspend all reality and give in to the film's playfulness. It's got to be hard for a grown man to create a story out of a bunch of tweets written by a teenaged girl. But Thamrongrattanarit pulls it off with aplomb.

FILM REVIEW: GMO OMG

A scene from GMO OMG.

Corn-you-and-dystopia

By Miranda Inganni

From the director of DIVE!, Living Off of America’s Waste, Jeremy Seifert’s latest documentary, GMO OMG, delves into the subject of GMOs, or genetically modified organisms, and how they are affecting our planet, our bodies and our culture.

Available science has made “conventional” farmers (i.e. non-organic farmers) in the US comfortable in their choice to use pesticides and herbicides to make a “safe and abundant” food supply. (Safe and abundant in this context means a food supply that would reduce hunger around the world, but that is obviously not the case.) The companies producing the pesticides and herbicides are the same companies that are producing the GMO seeds: Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, DuPont, etc.  The corn or soy that grows from these seeds becomes, in and of itself, a pesticide. Subsequently, lack of regulation allows these pesticides to be food, or get into our food. 85 percent of all US grown corn is GMO corn, which means that consumers are ingesting a lot of these chemicals.

The impact of GMO farming on small farmers cannot be overlooked, either. If an organic farmer is growing corn, for example, next to a GMO corn field and some of the pollen or seeds from the GMO farm cross-pollinates, or seeds itself, the organic farmer can be sued by the GMO farm due to the fact that the GMO plant had a patent. Sadly this happens far too often. Yet another way that huge corporations can keep independent businesses down.

Additionally, much like how antibiotics have helped to create the superbugs that now exist as a threat to humans and animals, GMOs are assisting in the creation and/or production of super weeds and super insects that are resistant to herbicides and pesticides. To combat these problems, farmers have to use these chemicals in greater abundance. And so the cycle continues ad infinitum.

While the physical effects of GMO products have not been definitively proven to be harmful or not (the companies supporting the research stating that GMOs are not harmful just so happen to be the companies making the GMOs and will not release the raw data for peer review), we do know that these chemicals are in our bodies, our food source and our water system.

Seifert clearly believes strongly that GMOs need to be brought to the public’s attention, but the way he goes about it in GMO OMG feels a bit off. While his family is very photogenic (even if I really did want to reach through the screen and brush the hair out of those boys’ eyes!), they are too much of the focus of the film. The scare tactics he uses – like making his kids don hazmat suits and breathing masks before running through a corn field -- feels like exploitation. And while he may care what cattle on a farm are being fed, he does not seem to care about the condition the cattle are in. When Seifert learns that his beloved mountain fishing ponds are being stocked with fish from fisheries that were being fed pellets made with GMOs, his concern seems to be more about the loss of his pastime than the fish’s health. If Seifert is going to get up in arms about his family eating healthfully and being concerned about the future of the worlds’ agriculture, he might start thinking about sustainable farming, among other things. (And, hey, try vegetarianism!)

Nonetheless, there is a lot of frightening information about GMOs in Seifert’s film and this is an important subject demanding discussion.

FILM REVIEW: WADJDA

Wadjda (Waad Mohammed) in Wadjda.

Wheels on fire

By Miranda Inganni

Wadjda is the story of a spunky, charming, strong-minded, feisty 10-year-old girl, Wadjda (Waad Mohammed), who dreams of beating her best friend in a bicycle race. In many countries this would be a simple goal, but for the theocratic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the obstacles she encounters while trying to fulfill this dream are manifold.

To begin with, Wadjda’s best friend, Abdullah (Abdullrahman Algohani), is a boy, and girl's ought naught associate with boys in this misogynistic country. Secondly, Wadjda’s mother (exceptionally acted by Reem Abdullah) refuses to buy the bike for her, as it is extremely frowned upon in Saudi Arabia for women and girls to ride bicycles. But neither of these impediments stops Wadjda. To raise money so she can buy the bike herself, the determined entrepreneur decides to sell contraband -- homemade mixed tapes and soccer-team-colored braided bracelets. Such decadence!

When that scheme fails Wadjda signs up for her school’s Koran-recitation contest. Far more difficult than selling bracelets, Wadjda begins the arduous process of not only memorizing the Koran, but also learning how to recite it properly.

Meanwhile her mother is preoccupied trying to convince her husband, who is Wadjda's father, not to take a second wife.

Wadjda is the first feature-length film by a female director in Saudi Arabia (one of the most oppressive countries in the world). Per Saudi law, writer-director Haifaa Al-Mansour was not allowed to be in public with male crewmembers, which meant extra challenges, such as she often had to film from the back of a van, monitoring remotely. This meant she needed the actors  to rehearse extensively since she could not direct directly. This does pay off as performances she elicits from her actors, especially those of first-timer Mohammed and Abdullah are phenomenal.

Without ever outright criticizing Saudi law or Islam, the film subtly but decisively addresses female suppression, which Wadjda in her “Tween” stage is beginning to experience all around her. Al-Mansour handles this aspect of the story (and her culture) delicately and strategically. All the signs of oppression are there, but as Wadjda is the focus of the movie, she is, for now, content with the dream of beating her friend at a bike race.

LAFF 2013: LEVITATED MASS

A scene from Levitated Mass: The Story of Michael Heizer's Monolithic Sculpture.

Rock and road

By Miranda Inganni

Energetic and highly enjoyable, director Doug Pray’s Levitated Mass: The Story of Michael Heizer’s Monolithic Sculpture brings to life the 2012 journey of a giant piece of granite through darkened city streets that caught the attention of mainstream media and sleepy communities alike.

In the late 1960s artist Michael Heizer envisioned the idea for “Levitated Mass,” a hulking rock balanced on top a long walkway. Decades later, Heizer received a call from his friends at Stone Valley Quarry in Riverside, CA saying that they had found Heizer his rock. Blasted out of the ground, the enormous mass sat where it was until a suitable location was found and the money raised to attempt to move it. No small feat, indeed. Step in Los Angeles County Museum of Art director Michael Govan and the art-loving donors who helped fund the $10 million transportation project.

Pray’s film does not try to explain Heizer’s vision, though Pray includes many clips from previously recorded interviews and shows a number of Heizer’s other installations and exhibits. And though it took over a year to figure out the engineering and logistics, the rock only traveled for 11 nights. Along the way, something seemingly magical happened, wherever the rock went, people followed. The public’s response was overwhelming. Some folks were bewildered, others saw a conspiracy, but mostly people were impressed at the largesse of it all.

With cinematography by Christopher Chomyn, Edwin Stevens and Pray that expertly captures the scale of the rock and the undertaking and a score by Akron/Family which highlights the drama and suspense (literal and figurative) of the film, Levitated Mass is a movie that will be sure to get audiences discussing the meaning of art and the amazing feats that humans continue to accomplish.

 

LAFF 2013: ALL TOGETHER NOW

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A scene from All Together Now.

Into the woods they go

By Miranda Inganni

All Together Now narrates roughly 24 hours at a noise-rock concert in the woods (with a parking lot), where the teens and young adults have gathered to navigate through their aspirations, sexual inclinations and lots of libations.

Co-written and directed by Alexander Mirecki, All Together Now intertwines the tales of numerous attendees at this decidedly indie event that Ron (Lou Taylor Pucci) has cobbled together. Underage, gothy Ashley (Hannah Sullivan) and her friends are dropped off by her dad, Bruce (Hal Dion). Before heading to the parking lot to wait for his daughter and aliens, Bruce leaves Ashley (who is documenting the scene with her phone) with his trusty employee, Richard (Will Watkins), and his girlfriend, Tegan (Monika Jolly), to keep an eye on the youngsters.

Meanwhile, Michelle (Lindsey Garrett) muses about what she wants to be when she grows up while falling for Ron. Additionally, young Gulliver (Jerry Phillips) screams along to his father’s instrumentation as the first performers of the evening. When his father, George (James C. Burns), tries to kill the soundman, and is himself subsequently subdued, Gulliver is taken under the wings of two attractive twenty-something year old groupies to party the night away. Anon (Luke Stratte-McClure) hitches in -- looking out of place in his clean suit – until he is confronted by Able (Tucker Bryan), who doesn’t seem to know when to quit. Most excitingly, however, Ron’s overwhelmingly enthusiastic friend, Zeke (James Duval), has shown up with two anvils and enough gun powder to send one of them flying into the night sky. (What could possibly go wrong?)

Shot by Zoran Popovic in gritty super 16, the film feels like footage from a makeshift outdoor concert, and the lighting leaves a lot to be desired. (Who is the mysterious third person holding the flashlight on Anon and Able as they walk away from the show?). Mirecki does a good job of weaving the music in and out of the story -- the audience never spends too much time in the corrugated tin shack in which the bands actually perform, but there are too many moments of meandering in the film.


All Together Now screens at Los Angeles Film Festival June 20, 7:10 p.m., Regal Cinemas; June 22, 9:50 p.m., Regal Cinemas. For more information: ATN at LAFF 2013.

LAFF 2013: MY SISTER'S QUINCEANERA

Silas (Silas Garcia) in My Sister's Quinceanera.

Slow summer days

By Miranda Inganni

Set in a small town in Iowa, writer-director-producer Aaron Douglas Johnston's My Sister’s Quinceaneradetails the daily life of one Mexican-American family. Johnston uses the real-life Garcia family (non-professional actors) in this film that mixes fiction with reality.

Big brother Silas (Silas Garcia) is the de facto man of the house, but dreams of escaping the dreary life of his home town. Helping his single mom, Becky (Becky Garcia), with the cooking and care of his younger siblings, Silas is a considerate and compassionate older brother. The film focuses on his especially close relationship with younger sister, Samantha (Samantha Rae Garcia), as the whole family prepares for his sister Elizabeth’s (Elizabeth Agapito) big birthday.

While the movie is a work of fiction, the casting of the family makes it feel almost like a documentary told in a narrative format. Some could argue that the movie is a soft-spoken meditation, simply taking a glance at the Garcias as they go about their lives. But nothing really happens in the film. Silas wants to leave town and go to college, but one senses that this will never happen, and he and his buddy (Tanner McCulley) seem way too old to get into the teenage-like mischief they do around town. Samantha, while young and silly, is exceptionally bratty toward her older sister, who in turn, like many a moody teen, is completely self-absorbed.

Boring and trite, this is vulgar naturalism. Who cares for or about any of these people? They are not interesting enough to warrant our attention. Moreover, I would imagine that My Sister’s Quinceanera might make a lot of kids believe they should have movies made about them, too. It is not enough to just turn on cameras and record the banal.

As my "teachy" said, "Of course the director and writer is also the producer. You could not sell this script to somebody else."


My Sister's Quinceaneara screens at the Los Angeles Film Festival, June 18, 7:50 p.m., Regal Cinemas. For more information: MSQ at LAFF 2013.

 

 

LAFF 2013: ALL OF ME

A scene from All of Me.

The weight of the girls

By Miranda Inganni

Director-producer Alexandra Lescaze’s documentary film, All of Me, chronicles the trials and tribulations of a group of friends as they struggle with weight loss. But this is no small feat – the majority of the women in this film are morbidly obese.

Zsalynn, Judy and Dawn and the rest of the “Girls” rely on their Austin, Texas-based group of BBW, or Big Beautiful Women, for support and friendship. Most of the women have tried traditional diets, pills and other measures to reduce their sizes, yet to no avail. While some of the gals are comfortable with their size and appearance, they are all tired of the stigma and “fat shaming.” The obese women in All of Me want to find “normal” men to date and hopefully marry, only to end up with men who fetishize obese women. And, most importantly, the women want to live long, healthy lives. That is when some of them turn to surgery. Be it gastric bypass or gastric-band surgery, the ladies strive to lose hundreds of pounds. But there is no quick fix and surgery, when available as an option, is not a guarantee. With the failures and successes come some unexpected psychological ramifications. While some of the women may gain confidence as they lose weight, confidences are broken as the group’s numbers dwindle.

Over 200,000 Americans have weight loss surgery every year often at a great financial and psychological cost. All of Me does not try to tackle why so many Americans are overweight, nor does it delve into the mental anguish with which this group of women all seemingly struggle. While it touches on some of the ladies’ backgrounds on why they are obese, it mostly reports the weight loss surgeries that Judy and Dawn go through and Zsalynn’s effort to find the balance between what she wants and what is attainable. All of Me sensitively shines the light on one group of overweight women and how they try to adjust not only their bodies, but their self-images as well.


All of Me screens at the Los Angeles Film Festival, today, 4:40 p.m., Regal Cinemas. For more information: All of Me at LAFF 2013.

PSIFF 2013: CAUGHT IN THE WEB

Ye Lanqiu (Yuanyaun Gao) in Caught in the Web.

Spinning yarns

By Miranda Inganni

Caught in the Web tells the tale of a terminally ill woman’s online character assassination in director Chen Kaige’s (Farewell My Concubine) latest film.

One day, budding news reporter Yang Jiaqi (Luodan Wang) secretly records on her phone a seemingly rude and selfish woman on a bus. Through Jiaqi’s cousin’s girlfriend (and Jiaqi’s housemate), Chen Ruoxi (Chen Yao) -- a young woman establishing herself as a reporter -- the video goes viral and becomes the topic of the day. Unbeknown to them, the video’s subject, Ye Lanqiu (Yuanyuan Gao), has just learned that she has advanced lymphatic cancer.

Lanqiu becomes an Internet villain overnight. Known simply as “Sunglasses Girl,” until her jealous colleague identifies her online, the scandal sends Lanqiu into hiding, but not until Jiaqi and her cousin, Yang Shoucheng (Mark Chao) film Lanqiu’s sincere apology for the ordeal.

In the meantime, Lanqiu has asked her boss, company president Shen Liushu (Xuegi Wang) for a loan and time off from her executive assistant position. Unfortunately for all involved, Mr. Shen’s wife (Chen Hong) interrupts the tearful moment and misreads the situation.

Lanqiu ends up hiring Shoucheng to ostensibly protect her from herself and to experience as much as possible out of the time that she has left.

And that’s only the first part of this China's most recent Oscar submission for Best Film in a Foreign Language. Whew!

With more plot twists and turns than any historic (or histrionic) romance, Caught in the Web is entertaining and intriguing. Mrs. Shen finds herself in a loveless marriage to a husband who relishes his power more than his wife or wealth. Mr. Shen enjoys manipulating the lives of those who he believes have caused him some harm, including his wife. Ruoxi will stop at nothing to establish her career in the industry while Jiaqi merely wants to play ball in the big league. Shoucheng wants to be a loyal boyfriend to Ruoxi, but finds himself falling for Lanqiu. Lanqiu on the other hand, as the only one who knows that her time is limited, doesn’t want to allow herself to get too close to anyone, even at the cost of her own reputation.

The performances throughout this drama/comedy are equally as excellent as the levels of intrigue. The human capacity for a knee-jerk response to even perceived gossip is an overwhelming theme to Caught in the Web, as is the point that anyone at any time can be destroyed by the power of the inter-webs.

 

PSIFF 2013: KON-TIKI

A scene from Kon-Tiki.

No our way

ByMiranda Inganni

On the Academy’s short list for Best Film in a Foreign Language, Norway’s Kon-Tiki takes viewers back to 1947 when Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl (Pal Sverre Hagen) and five other men travelled 4300 nautical miles across the Pacific Ocean on a balsawood raft.

A visionary who insisted Polynesia was first found by indigenous people from South America (namely, Peruvians) Heyerdahl could not convince anyone that the much-held notion that Asians from the East founded and populated the area was incorrect. If he wanted scientists, journalists and the world to take him seriously, he would have to make the journey they made some 1500 years ago using the same materials. Proving to the world that his theory was correct was worth risking everything to Heyerdahl and so they set sail from Peru.

Once on their way, the six men have to face the reality of their journey and the real possibility that they might not survive, or end up nowhere near their destination. Between fights, fending off sharks and men falling overboard, Heyerdahl documents the trip (the resulting documentary film won the Academy Award in 1950).

While there are a few overly dramatic moments and a few unnecessary CGI shots, co-directors Espen Sandberg and Joachim Ronning’s Kon-Tikiis an extravagant, energetic and entertaining film depicting an epic historical journey.

 

PSIFF 2013: JUST THE WIND

Birdy (Katalin Toldi) in Just the Wind.

Branded outsiders

By Miranda Inganni

A Romani neighborhood is the target of violent attacks in this year’s Oscar entry from Hungary.

Influenced by a real racist crime spree that occurred in a Romani (AKA gypsy) neighborhood in Hungary in 2008-2009, Just the Wind (Csak a szél) is a “day in the life of” tale of a family similar to the one that was brutally murdered. It focuses on hard working Birdy (Katalin Toldi) and her two children -- adolescent Anna (Gyöngyi Lendvai) and not-quite teenage son, Rio (Lajos Sarkany).

Anna is studious, dutiful and keeps her head down – sometimes to a fault. Rio is sinewy, defiant and breezy, skipping school to stock his secret emergency bunker. Just what he is expecting is unclear, but he is a boy prepared. He steals from nearby houses, including the one of the recently murdered family -- bloodstains still seemingly dripping on the walls -- but is thoughtful enough to include items, such as nail polish, for Anna. (It’s during this break-in that he overhears two policemen discussing what kind of Romani are the “right” ones to kill.) Brassy Birdy works two manual labor jobs and not only cares for her children, but also her father (Gyorgy Toldi), who is unable to care for himself. The four live together in close, dark quarters with no running water. With the tightknit community on high alert after the viscous attacks, Birdy and her family try to go about their day and night like nothing has changed. But it has.

Director Benedek Fliegauf’s Just the Windsinks its teeth into the true grit of this family’s life for one day, bouncing between each one’s activities for that day. The three main actors, each of who is making their movie debut, are remarkably adept at bringing their characters to life. Sadly, the plight of this family (as is true of so many Romani families) is a tragic one.

Just the Wind is as tense as it is intense. Its somber realism is jarring, but telling at least this tale of Hungary’s largest minority is a necessary one.

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.

 

FILM REVIEW: THE GUILT TRIP

Andy (Seth Rogan) and Joyce (Barbara Steisand) in The Guilt Trip.

 

 

Aged and never green

By Miranda Inganni

While visiting his mom, Joyce (Barbara Streisand), in New Jersey, Andy Brewster (Seth Rogan), learns that he was named after his widowed mother’s first love. Believing that he has tracked this man down, and trying to cheer up his mother -- who, by the by, seems perfectly content with how her life is, aside from her son living 3,000 miles away -- Andy impulsively invites her to join him on his cross country road trip. Andy has business meetings set up along the way to try to sell his invention: an organic cleaning product that is safe enough to drink. While Andy’s product may be a best seller, Andy is not the best salesman. His pitch is hard to swallow even if his product is not.

Directed by Anne Fletcher (27 Dresses) and written by Dan Fogelman (Crazy, Stupid, Love) The Guilt Trip is a tepid, mediocre comedy set mostly in a car. I chuckled once. maybe twice. The idea that Joyce would be happier with a man in her life is boring and absurd. While she admits that her biggest thrill is shopping at Gap (decidedly boring), the only man she wants more of in her life is her son.

Streisand’s Joyce is a stereotypical, overbearing mom to Rogan’s underachieving son. As predictable as any movie can be, The Guilt Trip offers little more than a few chuckles. Considering the talent Rogan and Streisand possess, both actors deserve better material -- and so do discerning viewers.

FILM REVIEW: THE CLOWN

A scene from The Clown.

Go with what you know

By Miranda Inganni

Brazil’s submission to the 85^th Academy Awards is a sweet and thoughtful, almost quiet film.  Unlike many Brazilian usually arriving on these shores -- i.e, City of God, Elite Squad, Manda Bala, -- there is no violence, no sex, no drugs, no gangs or guns here. The Clown (O Palhaço) tells the story of a clown comedy duo of father, Valdemar (Paulo José), and grown son, Benjamin (Mello), as they lead their travelling circus troupe to villages to entertain the locals.

Directed and co-written by Selton Mello, The Clown also stars Mello as Benjamin, a clown unsure of his identity, figuratively and literally (he has no social security number or proof of residence) and he cannot find anyone who makes him laugh. Feeling that his talents may lie outside of their Circus Esperanza (Circus of Hope), sad clown Benjamin sets off in search of another life.

Mello is an accomplished actor, writer and director and his performance in The Clown is understated and sincere. Additionally, he has surrounded himself with a superb cast, including José as his father and Larissa Manoela as the precociously tuned-in Guilhermina.

While the movie takes its time introducing the audience to the players and then resolves the film a little too abruptly at the end, the journey is worth taking with Benjamin and his friends.