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 2011: TABLOID

Joyce McKinney in Tabloid.

Thrash trash that talk

By Don Simpson

Former Miss Wyoming and S&M call girl with an IQ of 168 and a penchant for cinnamon massage oil, kidnaps and rapes a rotund Mormon. Years later, she clones her dog…creating five new Boogers! Boy, it sure does not get much better that that. That is the stuff that tabloids -- and Errol Morris’ Tabloid -- are made of!

By way of McKinney (it turns out that you just need to point a camera at her and she will run and run and run with her story), the snarky and sardonic documentarian Morris unearths a subject that allows his off-kilter sense of humor to run rampant. As is typically the case with Morris, Tabloid reveals that his technique is not malicious (unless you’re a Mormon, then you will certainly take offense); Morris allows his subjects to dig their own graves, as he frequently catches the various interviewees flagrantly embellishing their stories and contradicting each other.

This brings us to the favorite subject of the 2008 recipient of SFIFF's Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award: the truth. In Tabloid, thanks to all of the contradictions and untrustworthy commentary, Morris is unable to reveal an absolute truth. Instead it seems that the truth does not really matter in the context of this documentary (though if you want it, the truth is probably located somewhere in between the interviews). Here, Morris is more interested in how truth can be mediated and distorted. It is often apparent that McKinney’s version of the story is not true, yet she appears to believe her story completely. As McKinney explains, “You can tell a lie for long enough that you believe it." She is not talking about herself, though the statement certainly fits her as snug as her see-through blouse.

Morris is a documentarian, but first and foremost he is an entertainer. No matter how serious his subject, Morris has proved time and time again that he possesses an obvious knack for comedic timing and punctuation -- as with the flashes of words like “Spread-eagle!” and “Barking mad!” on screen in order to further accentuate his interviewee’s verbal flourishes. His other strong suit is his utilization of humorous archival material, which often features quirky film clips from the 1950s and 60s. In Tabloid, Morris utilizes clips from The God Makers (1982), an animated film that takes a highly critical view of the beliefs of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

McKinney certainly proves that people with a sensational sense of self are engagingly entertaining, but what makes a documentary about McKinney any better than a reality show about the Jersey Shore? Is McKinney’s story strong or meaningful enough to justify a 90-minute documentary about it? Is there anything to be learned from Tabloid? (Besides the obvious “fact” that Mormon’s are incredibly silly!) Is Tabloid a vessel for Morris to comment upon gossip rags, tabloids and “reality” entertainment? Or is this all just for shits and giggles? (Admittedly, I shat and giggled simultaneously when McKinney stated that her raping a man would be like “trying to stuff a marshmallow into a parking meter.” Uh, what?!)

In case you are wondering, the infamous manacled Mormon, Kirk Anderson, declined to be interviewed for Tabloid.

Tabloid screens May 3, 9:30 p.m, Sundance Kabuki Cinemas; May 5, 2:45 p.m., New People. For more information: Tabloid.

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.

SFIFF 2011: SHE MONKEYS

Emma (Mathilda Paradeiser) in She Monkeys.

Persona non-grata

By Miranda Inganni

Set in a rural Swedish town, Lisa Aschan’s first feature film, She Monkeys, centers on Emma (Mathilda Paradeiser) and her bid to land a spot on the local horse vaulting team. It’s at the tryouts that she meets the beautiful, pouty Cassandra (Linda Molin), who pulls Emma out of her shell, only to push her around.

Emma’s life seems to be all about control – from perfecting her vaulting moves, to “click” training the family dog, to tightly plaiting her hair – so much so that her coach comments, “it’s not all about strength and control…it’s about presence.” Cassandra, on the other hand, has an abundance of presence. As the two girls flirt, with local boys (Adam Lungren and Sigmund Hovind) and each other, their friendship turns from one of frivolity to jealously to love then hatred.

Initially, Emma enjoys being told what to do by Cassandra, but the increasingly perverse trust games the girls engage in forces Emma to realize her own seductive power (and the power of seduction). The control volleys between the two, with the quiet but tough Emma eventually showing a slightly sadistic side.

While Emma toys with the idea of being in love with Cassandra (or just wanting to be Cassandra), her younger sister, Sara (Isabella Lindquist), a preternaturally sexual yet pudgy child, tries to seduce her much older babysitter, Sebastian (Kevin Caicedo Vega) who happens to be her cousin.

Nothing scares Emma or Sara, but both are filled with anger -- and though it is never mentioned in the film, perhaps it is because there is no mother? -- some of which is finally released when each expresses their rage and frustration through violence.

Conveying the idea that one must hide one’s feelings or risk getting hurt – something often found in Swedish films – She Monkeys (by the way, a lousy title) is a concisely lensed film with some strong performances by young actors.

SFIFF 2011: THE TROLL HUNTER

A scene from The Troll Hunter.

Bridges upside down 

By Don Simpson

Writer-director André Øvredal provides us with the set-up: 283 hours of mysterious footage has been found. After extensive investigation, the footage is concluded to be authentic. (Cue rolling of eyes, it is one of those films…) Said footage was shot by a group of Norwegian university students who were working on a documentary story about bear poaching, but stumbled upon something significantly larger…and smellier.

When we first meet the three co-eds — Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud), Kalle (Tomas Alf Larsen) and Johanna (Johanna Mørck) — they are tracking the movements of a suspicious woodsman named Hans (Otto Jespersen). They suspect that Hans is an evil bear poacher, but after following him into the woods one night they discover that Hans’ game is way bigger than an average bear.

Hans, exhausted from decades of troll hunting, does not have the energy to chase away the young filmmakers; instead he sees it as an opportunity to spill the beans, allowing the students to follow him while he provides them with priceless information concerning the mythology of trolls, the most effective ways to kill them and how the Norwegian government has covered-up the troll problem.

This Norwegian found footage mockumentary comes from the same pseudo-verite, shaky-cam tradition of Cloverfield and The Blair Witch Project (Øvredal also pays homage to Jurassic Park), but it opts to delve deep into the fascinating “the truth is out there” underbelly of government conspiracies. Portraying Hans as an employee of the Troll Security Service with the thankless job of dutifully abiding by the mercy of an over-authoritative government bureaucrat (Hans Morten Hansen), Øvredal sarcastically comments on the relationship between the government and the life-risking, under-paid, blue collar labor force responsible for carrying out the government’s ridiculous demands on a daily basis. It is impossible not to have sympathy for Hans as he is repeatedly being used and abused by his government employer.

The Troll Hunter has the shocking audacity to take this entire premise seriously and that is precisely why it succeeds. Unlike most found footage films, Øvredal has the wherewithal to stay true to the film’s first person perspective, never once falling back on establishing shots or relying upon footage that could have never been photographed by the protagonists. The found footage is obviously edited — whittled down from the purported 283 hours of source material — thus allowing for the pacing to be streamlined. It is also readily apparent that Øvredal concentrated on the quality of the special effects, making The Troll Hunter a surprisingly well-produced addition to the found-footage genre.

The Troll Hunter screens April 23, 11:30 p.m., Sundance Kubuki Cinemas; April 25, 6:15 p.m., New People. For more information: Troll Here.