FILM FESTIVAL

Love, angst & mole rats

Our reviewers are quite giddy with the thrill of it all

GALA

ARTEMISIA

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Starring Valentina Cervi, Michel Serrault. Roy Thomson Hall, Sept. 10, 9:30 p.m.; Varsity, Sept. 11, 9 a.m.

It's a pity that so few people have heard of the passionate and powerful Renaissance painter Artemisia Gentileschi, now recognized as one of the first important female artists. But French writer/director Agnes Merlet aims to change all that. This biography tells of Gentileschi's apprenticeship to her painter father, Orazio, and her formative love affair with an older colleague who taught her -- I kid you not -- perspective. To "save" his daughter's honor, Orazio enmeshes her in an ill-conceived "rape" trial, which ends only after Artemisia herself is tortured. It's an epic story, but Merlet does it justice, as does young Italian actress Valentina Cervi in the title role. With vivid physicality, Cervi expertly embodies Artemisia's intelligence, talent and commitment to her personal quest: to master the male-centric world around her -- in all its alien glory -- by first analyzing it, then reproducing it. -- GEMMA FILES

 

GALA

THE SWEET HEREAFTER

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Starring Ian Holm, Maury Chaykin, Sarah Polley. Uptown, Sept. 4, 7:30 p.m.

As every critic on the planet has already noted, The Sweet Hereafter marks a major change for director Atom Egoyan. Instead of concentrating on one or two characters who try to exorcise their sexual or psychological demons by obsessively re-enacting the past, Egoyan focuses on an entire town trying to come to terms with a seemingly insurmountable tragedy.

The citizens of Sam Dent, B.C., are haunted by the loss of 14 school children in a bus accident, and are divided by the smooth-talking lawyer who tries to convince them to launch a massive lawsuit against the town council. Egoyan hits a couple of false notes in his attempts at strict realism, and the darkness-which-lurks-at-the-heart-of-a-small-town story has been told many times before.

But the shifts in time make it seem new, the ironies are subtle and complex, the performances are excellent and the threads of the various narratives have been seamlessly interwoven with the Pied Piper fable to create the dreamlike state one expects from an Egoyan film. -- TOM LYONS

 

CONTEMPORARY WORLD CINEMA

CLANDESTINS

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Starring Ovidiu Balan, Moussa Maaskri. Varsity, Sept. 4, 6:30 p.m.; Sept. 6, 11:30 a.m.

Clandestins examines the plight of six stowaways trapped in a cramped cargo container on board a ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean. As their supplies dwindle, the Gypsy, Arab and Russian refugees turn on each other in a life-and-death struggle for the few crumbs of food that remain.

Films taking place in "contained situations" like this are often boring, but co-directors Denis Chouinard and Nicolas Wadimoff seek and achieve a brutal sense of realism.

The agony of the stowaways is gut-wrenching, and their brief moments of hope are as moving as their violent struggles are sickening. And with just a few shots of the ship and the ocean, the filmmakers are able to convey the greater horrors which lie outside the cargo container. If they are discovered on the high seas, the stowaways face almost certain death at the hands of the ship's crew, because they are heading to a supposedly civilized country -- Canada -- which fines ships $5,000 for each refugee found on board. -- T. L.

 

THE GIRL WITH BRAINS IN HER FEET

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Starring Joanna Ward, Amanda Mealing. Cumberland, Sept. 6, 8:30 p.m.; Sept. 8, 11: 15 a.m.

There's nothing particularly novel or groundbreaking about this coming-of-age film set in early '70s Britain, but it does capture the wild energy of youth as it slams headlong into the difficulties of adulthood. The 13-year-old protagonist is a budding track star who runs non-stop, both literally and figuratively, through most of the early stages of the film, as Slade and T-Rex boom out of the loudspeakers at decibel levels usually reserved for summer blockbusters and construction sites. The scenes with her overly strict mother, nosy friends and dull-witted teachers give a clear sense of what she is running from, and her early bursts of rebellion are so exhilarating that the movie seems to drag, by comparison, when she finally gets tangled up in the consequences of her experiments with sex and drugs.

But although director Roberto Bangura's first feature is not very likely to win any awards for consistency or originality, it is funny and realistic, and it never takes the easy way out by indulging in nostalgia or sentimentality. -- T. L.

 

GUMMO

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Starring Jacob Reynolds, Nick Sutton. Varsity, Sept. 8, 10 p.m.; Cumberland, Sept. 10, 4 p.m.

Considered as a whole, this semi-improvised film about depraved white trash has to be classified as a failure. Director Harmony Korine (Kids) has tried to dispense with traditional plotting altogether, and the novelty wears off about halfway through, when you finally realize that the various scenes aren't going to add up to anything. As well, many of the scenes themselves are simply inane -- like the shots of a mildly retarded woman shaving her eyebrows -- while others are outright disasters, like the preposterous, pseudo-symbolic shot of a kid in bunny ears running in the rain while Roy Orbison bellows on the soundtrack. But the 30 per cent or so of the scenes that do work are genuine excursions into the grotesque. Korine has a great ear for the random flow of everyday conversation, and some of his bizarre low-rent characters and settings are indeed sad and vicious enough to be considered alongside those of Diane Arbus. -- T. L.

 

HEAVEN'S BURNING

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Starring Russell Crowe, Youki Kudoh. Uptown, Sept. 6, 6 p.m.; Varsity, Sept. 8, 9:30 a.m.

Australian director Craig Lahiff's new feature is a screwball Kabuki film noir that splices the hairpin-curve plot twists of Something Wild (1986) with the main premise of Excess Baggage. While honeymooning in Sydney, a young Japanese woman (Youki Kudoh) tries to extricate herself from a disastrous marriage by pretending she's been kidnapped, and soon ends up really being taken hostage by a bunch of inept bank robbers. After the gang falls out, she escapes with their driver (Russell Crowe), pursued by his irate bosses and her former husband (Kenji Isomura), a mild-mannered salaryman driven literally crazy by the shame of his wife's deception. Naturally, Crowe and Kudoh pair up, and much reckless romanticism ensues -- but considering its frothy premise, the movie's denouement is a surprisingly ruthless one. (And that's a point in its favor -- for me, at least.) -- G. F.

 

JUNK MAIL

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Starring Robert Skjoerstad, Andrine Soether. Uptown, Sept. 6, 8:45 p.m.; Cumberland, Sept. 8, 1:30 p.m.

Roy is not exactly employee of the year at the Norwegian postal service. He lazily throws half the mail away, he reads other people's letters as a matter of fact, he gets beaten up on his route. And when he finds a bunch of keys left in a mailbox in one of the run-down highrises where he delivers mail, he doesn't hesitate to break into the apartment to look around. This leads to a series of events he cannot begin to control.

The feature debut from director/co-writer Pål Sletaune is a low-key, humorous look at the dregs of society (all of which have long, stringy, greasy hair and wear cheap, ill-fitting leather jackets). Sletaune has no doubt watched a lot of Aki Kaurismäki films -- the Oslo dreariness is almost indistinguishable from the Helsinki dreariness -- but he is overall a much more optimistic chronicler of hopelessness. -- MALENE ARPE

 

THE MYTH OF FINGERPRINTS

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Starring Julianne Moore, Hope Davis. Uptown, Sept. 6, 9:15 p.m.; Cumberland, Sept. 8, 10:30 a.m.

Just what the world needed. Another movie about a seemingly perfect middle-class family which is -- surprise! -- actually plagued with all sorts of horrible angst.

As in Hannah And Her Sisters or Home For The Holidays, siblings and their partners gather for a holiday dinner. Everyone is handsome or beautiful and the happy homestead echoes with the sounds of couples making love. But, alas, everything is not as wonderful as it sounds. The father, it turns out, actually tried to kiss one of his son's girlfriends three years earlier! The curse of this dreadful act hangs heavy over the family's celebrations, and the audience is expected to wonder breathlessly, "How could the father do such a terrible thing? Will Warren and Daphne ever start dating again?" Julianne Moore and Hope Davis both have funny moments, but writer/director Bart Freundlich is asking for huge amounts of pity for characters who don't really need it. -- T.L.

 

SPECIAL PRESENTATION

NIL BY MOUTH

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Starring Ray Winstone, Kathy Burke. Uptown, Sept. 5, 9:15 p.m.; Cumberland, Sept. 7, 1:45 p.m.

If you heard that actor Gary Oldman, responsible for bringing us cinematic portraits of self-destructive eccentrics like punk rocker Sid Vicious -- and just plain freaks like Zorg in The Fifth Element -- had written and directed a movie, what do you suppose such a film would include? Drinking? Profanity? Characters so inarticulate they have to beat each other up in order to communicate?

Well, Nil By Mouth -- Oldman's emotionally naked, but entirely unsentimental, debut feature -- contains all of the above, and more. It's a wild ride into the domestic heart of darkness, as a working-class South London family slowly implodes under the weight of its own unchecked addictions and unvoiced affections... and long before the lead actress gets her head stomped on by the man who thinks he loves her most, you may have already realized that you're not going to walk out of this one unaffected. So fair warning.

-- G. F.

 

SPECIAL PRESENTATION

FAST, CHEAP & OUT OF CONTROL

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Starring Dave Hover, Ray Mendez. Uptown, Sept. 7, 6 p.m.; Varsity, Sept. 9, 4:15 p.m.

After he got a guy off death row with The Thin Blue Line and mapped the known universe in A Brief History Of Time, one might think documentarian Errol Morris had left the gentle eccentricism of his earlier works behind forever. But Morris' latest effort Fast, Cheap & Out Of Control, interweaves interviews with four men who've spent their lives mastering some highly specific areas of expertise: a circus lion tamer, an M.I.T. robot scientist, a topiary gardener and a specialist on hairless African mole rats. Subtly, Morris points out the parallels between each obsession -- how, by working with things that are inherently "inhuman," the men reinforce all those unique, ridiculous, impermanent qualities which define their own humanity. Hypnotic and hilarious, punctuated with slapstick visual metaphors, Fast, Cheap is as perfect a film -- in its sly mixture of thesis and entertainment -- as I've seen this year. -- G. F.

 

LOVED

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Starring William Hurt, Robin Wright Penn. Varsity, Sept. 5, 7 p.m.; Sept. 6, 11:30 a.m.

Director/writer Erin Dignam's Loved tries to pass itself off as a serious exploration of abusive relationships, but it resembles a slow-motion, middlebrow version of the staged cry-fests on Sally and Geraldo. Most of the movie is taken up by soporific courtroom scenes in which a lawyer gently questions the ex-girlfriend of a violent rapist and gets her to admit that he was a monster who beat her and lowered her self-esteem. Since the boyfriend has already been established as a monster in the opening scenes of the movie, there is little in the way of actual suspense. And since the monster himself isn't allowed to speak at the trial, there is none of the genuine exploration of evil that has always been the mark of serious drama. Just a never-ending flow of women's tears, and a kind Phil Donahue type to make everything okay again. -- T.L.

 

YEAR OF THE HORSE

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Starring Neil Young & Crazy Horse. Uptown, Sept. 7, 11:15 p.m.; Sept. 9, 10 a.m.

Here are the two highlights of this two-hour hagiography-cum-sentimental journey through the, uh, past: (1) A mesmerizing Young leads the Horse through a spooky rendition of his painful ode to drug overdose, "Tonight's The Night"; and (2) director Jim Jarmusch neatly splices the '96 Horse's indulgent Coltranesque/Metal-Machine self-abuse on "Like A Hurricane" with the '76 Horse's immaculate reading of the same tune (and Young looks every bit the aloof, mysterious, brooding genius, sporting his famous flannel 'n' hair look that would launch grunge fashion 15 years later). Lots of arty, Super-8, low-definition imagery courtesy of Jimbo; meanwhile, second guitarist Pancho deflates any high-mindedness in the proceedings by incessantly poking fun at the director. Wow, the best band since... Creedence? -- BILL REYNOLDS

 

MIDNIGHT MADNESS

SICK: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF BOB FLANAGAN, SUPERMASOCHIST

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Starring Bob Flanagan, Sheree Rose. Uptown, Sept. 9, midnight; Cumberland Sept. 11, 1:45 p.m.

I remember cringing in my seat when I saw Nine Inch Nails' video Happiness In Slavery at Midnight Madness a couple of years ago. Now, with director Kirby Dick's documentary Sick: The Life And Death Of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist, we get a closer look at the torture victim in that particular Too Much For Much item.

Visual and performance artist Bob Flanagan was born with the painful, no-known-cure disease cystic fibrosis. Instead of succumbing to that particular pain, he chose instead to embrace a more welcome pain via masochism. Sick is explicit in showing what Bob and his partner Sheree Rose got up to. But the cringe factor (not once, but twice do we see Bob merrily nailing his manhood to a two-by-four) becomes unimportant. What the submissive Bob ends up representing is total empowerment. Through sheer will, humor and love -- both given and received -- Flanagan kept himself alive to the age of 43, afflicted with a disease that seldom lets its victims live past 25.

What you're left with at the end of this remarkable film is a real sense of loss. -- M.A.

 

PERSPECTIVE CANADA

LA COMTESSE DE BATON ROUGE

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Starring Robin Aubert, Genevieve Brouillette. Cumberland, Sept. 8, 9 p.m.; Sept. 9, 3:15 p.m.

Freakery, fantasy, filmmaking and how these three things often interact, to the enduring delight and sorrow of all involved. That's the ambitious philosophical ground that La Comtesse De Baton Rouge, the new film from Quebec director André Forcier (A Wind From Wyoming), attempts to cover -- and does, though not always successfully. When a projectionist claims there's an extra character in a Montreal director's most autobiographical film, he realizes that the screen is being haunted by the ghost of his long-lost true love, self-titled "Countess" Paula Paul de Nerval, "the sexiest bearded woman in the world." The audience must pick and choose between the "real" past, and its various cinematic re-interpretations, and a present-tense narrative which quickly becomes almost as odd as either -- a cross-cut mnemonic steam bath that's occasionally incoherent, but never boring. -- G.F.

 

COSMOS

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Starring Igor Ovadis, David La Haye. Uptown, Sept. 7, 9 p.m.; Cumberland, Sept. 8, 1 p.m.

In Cosmos, six Montreal directors (Jennifer Alleyn, Manon Briand, Marie-Julie Dallaire, André Turpin, Denis Villeneuve and Arto Paragamian) attempt -- successfully -- to combine their very disparate styles into one long, complex, wholly fulfilling story, loosely held together by occasional interaction with the title character (Igor Ovadis), a taxi-driving Greek immigrant. The component tales cover an enviable range of human activity: Two old lovers negotiating a morally questionable deal; a lonely serial killer seeking new victims; a man avoiding finding out whether or not his HIV test came out positive; a sweet flirtation between a very old man and a very young woman; a haplessly serious film director's interaction with a painfully hip TV show. The result? A whole new cinematic universe of black-and-white visual beauty and emotional perspicacity, involving some of the funniest intentional comedy I've witnessed all year. Already well received at Cannes, this one's a true Festival must-see.-- G.F.

 

KITCHEN PARTY

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Starring Scott Speedman, Laura Harris. Uptown Sept. 8, 8:45 p.m.; Sept. 9, 12:30 p.m.

Due to the usual vagaries of Canadian distribution, The Suburbanators -- Gary Burns' debut feature -- was doomed from day one to remain one of last year's best-kept secrets. Fans of well-observed social humor should fear not, however: Burns' sophomore effort, Kitchen Party, is a more than worthy successor. A sharp-edged comedy of bad manners, the film revolves around a suburban teenager who decides to use his parents' absence as an excuse to throw a party, then spends more time obsessing over keeping their impossibly anal house clean than actually having fun. Wisely, Burns has chosen to invest his increased budget in all the right places (professional actors, slicker production values), while leaving the things that never needed fixing (a smart, inventive ensemble script) alone. Let's hope he stays this smart forever. -- G.F.

 

MASTERS

MOON OVER BROADWAY

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Starring Carol Burnett, Philip Bosco. Varsity, Sept. 7, 4:30 p.m.; Sept. 8, 11:30 a.m.

Huddled in a darkened theatre, a producer and playwright lock horns: "That's the pact you make -- a star to sell tickets" hisses the playwright, distraught at the choice of lead actress. "We've got over 2 million riding on this," snaps the producer. "Reality check!"

It's a scene worthy of Bullets Over Broadway. Except this is Moon Over Broadway, an astonishing account of the making of a Broadway play, filmed by the team of D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus who last made The War Room (about the 1992 U.S. Presidential race).

Their genius is in the editing suite -- Moon, like War Room, has no narration. The characters (in this case Carol Burnett and Ken "Crazy For You" Ludwig) speak for themselves. As with fiction, the drama can be intense. The intimate access they've achieved is no less startling. Every essential moment in big-budget playmaking is represented here, in revealing, often unflattering anecdotes.

The film's conclusion, however, is anticlimactic. But that may just reflect the usual let-down after the rush of opening night.

-- CHRISTOPHER WINSOR