Filmfest
DC
2001
Fumbling Towards Ecstasy
Celebrating
its 15th year of satisfying the demand for foreign film in the
nation’s capital, the 2001 edition of Filmfest DC ran from April 17-29. With a volunteer staff numbering over 250, the Filmfest gave
cineastes a chance to sample from 80 movies from 30 countries. Few of the films shown will receive commercial distribution,
making this a rare opportunity for relief from Hollywood fare that’s overly
dependent on violence, special effects and dumbed-down comedy.
The relief came at a particularly opportune time, as this
year’s mainstream offerings have elicited little excitement from audiences and
critics alike.
Filmfest
selections are made by a committee that reviews submissions and combs film
festivals worldwide for deserving entries.
The committee includes Tony Gittens, the festival’s Executive Director,
Peter Brunette, a George Mason University professor and critic for film.com, and
Eddie Cockrell, film critic for Variety. Filmfest DC unpretentiously eschews juries and other
such elitist trappings, giving out only one prize, the Audience Award, which is
determined by popular ballot.
The
festival this year focused on the oeuvre of Argentinean director Eliseo Subiela, whose passionate, vivid films have been favorites of Filmfest
audiences since the festival’s inception.
Aided by an interpreter, Subiela attended the Filmfest and answered
questions after screenings of his films.
With such a large number of films being screened, it’s difficult to choose which to attend. I was able to catch 15 screenings, which I selected partly based on convenience (i.e., screening locations and show times), and partly based on the descriptions provided in the festival catalog (which are of limited value, seeing that they shower praise on every entry). I favored the few films I had heard of and those with “known” actors, while also trying to include films from a variety of countries. Festival attendance was healthy; early evening screenings were mostly full and later shows generally sold out. Tickets were $8 each, with a book of ten admissions going for $70.
I managed to miss not only the winners of the Audience Award competition (there was a tie), but all of the runners-up. Here are the audience's picks:
1. (tie) Lumumba (Raoul Peck; France/Belgium/Germany/Haiti); Himalaya (Eric Valli; France/Switzerland/United Kingdom)
2. Divided We Fall (Jan Hrebejk; Czech Republic)
3. Dust to Dust (Juan Carlos de Llaca; Mexico)
4. Bread and Tulips (Silvio Soldani; Italy)
5. Wake Up, Love (Eliseo Subiela; Argentina)
The films I saw ran the gamut from sublime to inane.
My favorite was Captain
Pantoja and the Special Service
(Pantaleón y las visitadoras), a delightful Peruvian comedy directed by
Francisco J. Lombardi. Captain Pantoja’s initial scenes play like
a broad sex farce, as a straight-arrow, married Peruvian military officer
(Salvador Del Solar) is sent to a remote jungle outpost to stem the tide of
unwanted pregnancies by providing female "visitors" for troops.
But it blossoms with sweet poignancy as one of the “visitors,”
scorching hottie "La Columbiana" (played by stunning Angie
Cepeda, who makes most Hollywood starlets look plain--especially naked) falls
for el capitan and he struggles in vain to resist her charms. Captain
Pantoja features a dozen putas with hearts of gold, who emerge
with dignity intact. It’s vibrant, sophisticated, and distinctly Latin,
tugging at the heartstrings in much the same way as the sparkling films of
Pedro Almodovar.
Along
similar lines thematically, but less satisfying, was Eliseo Subiela’s The
Dark Side of the Heart (El lado oscuro del corazon), a Filmfest rerun of a
1992 Canadian-Argentinian production that was nominated for the Best Foreign Pic
Oscar. Here love, whimsy, passion and sex are so unfettered they smash the
strictures of reality and enter the realm of the supernatural and fantastic, as
a carnal, poetic figure searches for love and conducts a running debate with
death (personified as a woman). The film is a paean to the revered poet
Mario Benedetti, who has an ironic cameo as a German patron of a brothel. The
Dark Side of the Heart is sparked by some hilarious gags (such as a trapdoor
bed the Latin lothario uses to dispose of his conquests and an artist who
sculpts gigantic genitalia), but it gets too metaphysical and
loosey-goosey. It glorifies—indeed, idolizes—prostitutes, but I’d
not complain about that; womanly charms being what they are, meretricious
or not.
In his latest feature,The Adventures of God (Las aventuras de Dios), Subiela goes off the surrealistic deep end, borrowing heavily from Buñuel and from Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad. Suffused with bizarre imagery, intentional ambiguity and religious symbolism, it’s a tale of a man in dreamlike state who doesn't know where he is, how he got there, or what he's doing. Making sense of it was simply impossible for me, and I didn't much care to try.
Another couple of Hispanic comedies also failed to resonate. The festival’s opening night feature, Laura Mañá’s Sexo por Compasión (Compassionate Sex), was a fatuous, one-note Mexican sex comedy, poking toothless fun at sexual mores and religious dogma with a frumpy, saintly woman who, intent on committing sin, screws every last rustic bumpkin in the whole town, eliciting goofy rapture and turning monochrome into brilliant color a lá Pleasantville. Sentimental Teaser (El sentimental chacotero), a Chilean entry from director Christián Galaz, was a trilogy of lurid stories based on confessional phone calls to a manic Chilean DJ. One is a muy loco tryst with a twist; one is a spooky tale of family dysfunction; one is an odd pastiche of sex comedy and relationship drama. It was enthusiastically rendered, but unsophisticated and overwrought.
My
second favorite film of the festival was Aberdeen, a Norwegian/British
production directed by Hans Petter Moland. The actors threw themselves
headlong into this gutsy, character-driven drama; damn the plot malfunctions!
A coked-up career girl (played by wiry, dark-haired beauty Lena Headey (rhymes
with speedy),
repeatedly and unselfconsciously baring her pert small-to-medium-size breasts)
drags her drunkard father (Stellan Skarsgård, making Nic Cage in Leaving Las
Vegas look downright functional, and going full-frontal himself) from Norway
to Scotland to visit her dying mother (Charlotte Rampling), and unexpected (and
improbable) reversals of character ensue. The
film’s raw scenes stop thankfully short of suspension-killing excess.
The Luzhin Defence, directed by Marlene Gorris (Antonia’s Line), is a Merchant-Ivory- style period piece that has already opened in New York and will be rolled out nationwide soon. Based on a novel by Vladimir Nabokov and set in 1929 Italy and Budapest, it’s sparked by bravura acting by John Turturro as a brilliant but eccentric and troubled chess champion, and by Emily Watson as the uncluttered soul who falls in love with him. The story is implausible, however, and is marred by an incongruent, tacked-on ending.
I also caught a couple of French flicks, the most noteworthy being Beau Travail (Good Work), directed by Claire Denis. Isn't it fitting that the triumph of aesthetics and style should come in a French film? Based on Melville's Billy Budd, the barest thread of plot connects poetic images of sinewy French Foreign Legion soldiers baking under the North African sun. See them negotiate obstacle courses! See them doing calisthenics! Peeling potatoes! Playing chess! Submitting to brutal discipline! It's an artistic success, if not a narrative one.
Not
triumphant in aesthetics or anything else, They Call This ... Spring (On
appelle ça ... le printemps) (Hervé Le Roux), is a flavorless bouillabaisse,
a lead-balloon slapstick comedy about three Parisian women on the run from
spouses and boyfriends. A goofy tone is set by the faux-baroque musical
introduction with foppish singers, and things don't improve. It traffics
in cheap sex gags like a a phallus that casts an enormous shadow and a porno
aficionado with a 600-title film library.
Faat
Kine, directed by Sembene
Ousmane, is a bouncy portrait of contemporary Senegalese life, a curious blend
of the modern and the primitive. It recounts a middle-aged woman's
dealings with social and family issues, but amateurish acting and mundane
dialogue sap any charm that the lively characters and colorful milieu might have
generated.
The
Big Animal (Duz r zwierz'),
a black-and-white Polish entry directed by Jerzy Stuhr, from an unfinished 1973
screenplay by Kryzstof Kieslowski, is an unpretentious, fairy tale-like story of
a middle class couple in a dour Polish town who adopt an abandoned camel.
While the other townsfolk are bent on exploiting the hapless two-humper,
the couple treats the gentle, plodding creature with dignity and affection.
It’s touching, but the premise wears thin. Plus, this is a strikingly
beautiful animal--why would the circus owner simply walk away from it?
A pair of films addressing grim subject matter are No Place to Go (Die
unberührbare) (Oskar Roehler), an account of a suicidal German author, and Downtime
(Bharat Nalluri), one of those uplifting Irish films where everyone lives in
squalor, swears at each other a lot (fook off!), and does their level
best to self-destruct. Despite the characters’ trials and tribulations,
both of these films were obtuse and lacking in realism.
One
of the few American entries in the festival, Startup.com goes from
business plan to burnout in 18 months. This cinema verité-style
documentary traces the brief, mercurial life of an Internet startup, as
hand-held cameras shadow hubris-fueled
twenty-something founders through the vertiginous highs of media stardom and
big-bucks VC funding to the crushing lows of business failure and deteriorating
friendships. It’s refreshingly unvarnished, and is slated for theatrical
release.
The festival ended on an up
note with Together (Tillsammans) (Lukas Moodysson), a likable Swedish
mess in which members of 1975 Stockholm commune, imbued with vigorous, youthful,
naïve idealism, cope with swirling eddies of politics, sex and relationships,
as they are joined by a woman and her two children fleeing from an abusive
husband. What develops is part
coming-of-age saga, part ribald comedy, and part extended family drama. While
somewhat hit-or-miss, Together never stands still long enough to become
dull, and the colorful ensemble cast is a hoot. The well-chosen soundtrack
includes music by Abba (of course!) and Nazareth.
On the whole, I was a little disappointed by the quality of films at
Filmfest DC, but there were enough strong entries to make me look
forward to coming back next year. I
also have the nagging feeling that I picked more than my share of duds, but that
sort of risk comes with the territory, I suppose.
Until next year, support your local film festival!