Frameline34 2010 Preview

This year's edition of Frameline, the world's oldest and largest LGBT film festival, is set to kick off this Thursday, June 17 and will run until Pride Day on Sunday, June 27. Venues include the Castro, Roxie and Victoria Theaters in San Francisco as well as the Rialto Cinemas Elmwood in Berkeley. Here are capsule write-ups of 10 films I've previewed on DVD screener (except where noted), followed by a quick overview of several more.





Elvis and Madona (Brazil, dir. Marcelo Laffitte)
Certain to be one of Frameline34's biggest crowd-pleasers is this charmer about the unlikely romance between a dyke pizza deliverygirl and a transvestite beautician. Elvis delivers a pizza on the fateful night Madona's boyfriend, "Tripod" João, robs her of the life savings she's squirreled away for staging a super-spectacular Copacabana drag show. Elvis, who's also an aspiring photographer, is instantly enamored of Madona and offers to shoot her publicity stills. Next thing you know, Elvis is pregnant by Madona and the drug-dealing João is in jail because of an incriminating Elvis-snapped newsphoto. Will Madona make one more porno with João to finance her show? Will Elvis forgive her for it? Will the menacing João kill them both? Not if the girls at the beauty parlor have anything to say about it. Effortlessly fun with flawless lead performances and colorful art direction, I won't be surprised if this takes the festival's audience award.





Plan B (Argentina, dir. Marco Berger)
After getting dumped by his girlfriend, scruffy slacker Bruno plans to get her back by seducing Pablo, her soft-spoken rumored-to-be-bisexual new boyfriend. It's a shaky premise requiring a heap of viewer patience, as the story twists its way through murky motivations and psychosexual machinations. It's two steps forward and one step back, as the guys develop a mutual Man Crush, but then repeatedly retreat to hetero safety. In other words, you'll be tearing your hair out right up until the end, wondering if they're gonna "do it." Sweet, smart and sexy, this film is everything last year's similarly-themed, infantile U.S. indie Humpday was not. One caveat – Plan B's narrative is strangely punctuated by still shots of desolate industrial landscapes. These aren't uninteresting in and of themselves and are perhaps meant to reflect the characters' internal something-or-other. But they're unnecessary and may prove to be the proverbial straw for some exasperated viewers. (Seen at the 2010 Palm Springs International Film Festival)





Beautiful Darling: The Life and Times of Candy Darling, Andy Warhol Superstar (USA, dir. James Rasin)
This lovely and moving portrait is a swell addition to the pantheon of documentaries about those who've been immortally name-checked in Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side." In the back room at Max's Kansas City, Candy was everybody's darlin'; the smart, witty and gorgeous blonde transvestite who saw herself as a throwback to a Hollywood studio system that didn't quite translate into the world of New York underground cinema. Rasin's film incorporates a wealth of archival materials, plus interviews with suspects both usual (John Waters, Holly Woodlawn, Paul Morrissey) and unexpected (Fran Lebowitz, Michael Pollard, Julie Newmar) to understand both Darling and the era in which her star burned. The film is equally about one Jeremiah Newton, who as a young man was Darling's closest friend and confidant. After her death from lymphoma at age 29, Newton had the forethought to tape audio interviews with practically everyone who ever knew her, including Tennessee Williams who had starred her in his off-Broadway play "Small Craft Warnings." These interviews, along with letters, diaries (both lovingly voiced by Chloe Sevigny) and other ephemera Newton rescued from Darling's childhood home, occupy a big chunk of the film. Newton also became the keeper of Candy's ashes, and we watch as he places them in the burial plot he'll eventually join her in. Newton is expected to attend the Frameline screening, along with director Rasin and my personal fave Warhol superstar, Holly Woodlawn, herself long overdue for the feature documentary treatment already accorded Jackie, Joe and now Candy.





Dzi Croquettes (Brazil dir. Tatiana Issa, Raphael Alvarez)
For some, they were the first manifestation of a gay movement in Brazil, and to others they were a catalyst for ending that country's military dictatorship. This extraordinary and inspiring documentary recounts Dzi Croquettes' spectacular rise and fall as Brazil's preeminent ragtag-drag troupe of musical performance artists. Initially inspired by San Francisco's own Cockettes, they would surpass them both creatively and professionally – thanks in large part to the contribution of celebrated American dancer/choreographer/singer Lenny Dale. My favorite part of the film details their conquest of Europe, for which they set sail with two tons of costumes and three kilograms of marijuana hidden in rubber balls. Through the efforts of Liza Minelli, they became the toast of Paris with the likes of Jeanne Moreau, Omar Sharif and Catherine Deneuve flocking to their shows. The directors had a dizzying amount of archival footage to work with, but unfortunately only five of the 13 original members are still around to recount their adventures. That responsibility falls upon several key characters instrumental to the scene, including Nega Wilma, the black woman who ruled the troupe's unruly São Paulo commune with a whip and a water hose. Oddly, Frameline has relegated the lone screening of this marvelous doc to an 11 a.m. Monday time slot. If you can catch it, it'll be worth it. (Seen at the 2010 Palm Springs International Film Festival)





Uncle Bob (USA, dir. Robert Oppel)
Each year at Frameline there's a biographical documentary I like to file under "who knew?" In 1974, 36 million people watched Robert Opel streak by David Niven during the Oscars telecast. Thirty-six years later, Opel's nephew has made this tribute to his Uncle Bob – photographer, performance artist, theatrical producer (Divine's The Heartbreak of Psoriasis) and gallery owner (S.F.'s Fey-Way Gallery, one of the first in the country to exhibit Robert Mapplethorpe and Tom of Finland). Opel was murdered in his gallery in 1979 under extremely sketchy circumstances. To put it mildly, his nephew has long been obsessed with that event, and we see footage of him at age 13 conducting a mock murder trial. While the doc does a fine job at preserving Opel's legacy, it's equally about the nephew/director grasping for catharsis and proving himself a chip off the block. That becomes both the film's greatest weakness and its greatest strength.





The String (France/Belgium, dir. Medhi Ben Attia)
The last person I expected to find in a Frameline film was 72-year-old Italian screen legend Claudia Cardinale (8 1/2, The Pink Panther). Yet there she is, resplendent as a Tunisian matriarch adjusting to the return from Europe of her arrogant, gay architect son. In the film's two loveliest moments she recalls her rebelliousness as a Catholic girl marrying into an Arab family, and dances with her son's male lover on the son's wedding day to a lesbian family friend he's impregnated so that she and her girlfriend can have a baby. Yes, you read that right. The most interesting element of this film is its portrait of an Arab society that seemingly co-exists with lesbian moms, gay sons who bed their mother's handyman, booze, discos, poppers and rough trade assignations in abandoned buildings. One keeps waiting for a violent, fundamentalist retribution to arrive. Happily, it doesn't. Otherwise, the Tunisian scenery is splendid, the titular metaphor is a bit creaky and the appearance of French-Arab actor Salim Kéchiouche (Criminal Lovers, Grand école) as the son's love interest is most welcome.





The Sea Purple (Italy, dir. Donatella Maiorca)
Purple is the perfect color to describe this outlandish, but highly watchable gender-bending melodrama set in 19th century Sicily. The plot is too convoluted – I mean complex – to recount here (the Frameline capsule does an excellent job), except to say that it involves two young women who are permitted to marry because of a bizarre set of circumstances. The script lays the drama on thick – bound breasts, a baby fetus in a jar, a blackmailed priest, imprisonment, drownings, beatings, death by childbirth, gender illusion – and it's all allegedly "inspired by a true story." Lots of handheld camera and a partial electro-rock score give it a contemporary feel, and the whole affair is handsomely photographed. Gay guys looking to see at least one lesbian feature in the festival should check it out – half-naked Sicilian quarry workers abound.





From Beginning to End (Brazil/Argentina/Spain dir. Aluízio Abranches)
If the Lifetime Channel were to make a weirdly idyllic, R-rated movie about incest between two hunky, privileged Brazilian half-brothers, it might come off something like this. Born six years apart to different fathers, Francisco and Thomas sail through childhood despite concerns that their relationship is "too intimate." Two out of three parents get abruptly bumped off mid-film, leaving the smitten siblings, now young adults, to unashamedly do their thing. "To understand our love they'd need to turn the world upside down," they opine. After much anguish, the younger bro is sent off to Russia (?!) for three years of Olympic training. Wedding rings are exchanged and we're asked to believe they remain chaste throughout the separation. What makes this overwrought affair watchable are the performances of Rafael Cardoso and João Gabriel Vasconcellos, who are smokin' hot and 100% convincing as half-brothers obsessively in love with each other.





The Sisters (Austria, dir. Manfred Hoschek)
Until the definitive Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence documentary comes along, this one will do nicely. Highlights include a peek inside the Sisters' San Francisco archives, plus footage of the Union Square exorcism of Pope John Paul II performed during a 1987 Bay Area papal visit. Sisters from Germany, Uruguay and of course, San Francisco (the fabulous Sister Dana and Sister Vicious Power Hungry Bitch) get profiled, while the bulk of the film spotlights the group's 2009 thirtieth anniversary celebration in Dolores Park. Even at a short 74 minutes, however, there's still too much extraneous material here. I could have easily done without all the shopping trips for beauty products. The film's post-script apologizes to those Sisters left out of the doc, which would include infamous Sister Boom Boom – a former S.F. mayoral candidate who converted to Islam in 2001.





Baby Jane?(USA dir. Billy Clift)
I prepped for this locally produced drag parody/remake by watching Robert Aldrich's 1962 original for the first time in 20 years. The sublime art direction belies the film's low-budget and the script is dotted with clever send-ups of its source material. Jane warbles "I've Scribbled a Postcard to Daddy," Bette/Joan movie titles get name-checked in the dialogue, and best of all, the part of nosy neighbor Mrs. Bates has been amplified to accommodate the talents of SF drag impresario Heklina. Unfortunately, the overall result is kind of flat, which will likely go unnoticed by an amped-up Frameline audience. Knock back a few pre-screening beers to get in the mood.



Quick Takes

I can heartily recommend Frameline34's Opening Night film (The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister), an absorbing British TV biopic about an 18th century landowning lesbian whose lusty, coded diaries were recently decrypted. I was equally taken by the fest's Centerpiece Film (Undertow), a poignant, metaphysically-tinged Sundance prize-winner from Peru about a life-changing love between a married fisherman and a vacationing artist. Both were screened for journalists at the Castro following the festival's press conference a few weeks back. Back in January I caught two of last year's most acclaimed LGBT films at the Palm Springs International Film Festival and was impressed by both. Nineteen-year-old French-Canadian Xavier Dolan wrote, directed and stars in I Killed My Mother, a scabrously funny and ultimately touching mother-son verbal slugfest, which I'm dying to see again at the Castro. The other is Eyes Wide Open, a compelling Israeli film about the clandestine love shared between a married, ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem butcher and the young man he takes on as an apprentice. At that same festival, I was less impressed with Brotherhood, a Danish gay-neo-Nazis-in-love movie that comes off as pure exploitation. Finally, I previewed two more films on DVD screener. Sasha is a fairly contrived My Big Fat Balkan Coming Out about a piano student madly in love with his teacher, which nonetheless makes some interesting observations about generational conflict in immigrant families. Then there's Norway's The Man Who Loved Yngve, a messy, directionless love story about confused teens in the 1980s.



Cross-published on The Evening Class and Twitch.

Frameline34 2010 The Line-Up

The queer cinema aesthetics of Andy Warhol, a bounty of LGBT films from South America and a documentary about yodeling twin lesbians from New Zealand are among the highlights of the 34th edition of Frameline, the oldest and largest festival of its kind in the world. Executive Director K.C. Price and Festival Director Jennifer Morris took turns delivering an overview of this year's fest at a press conference last Tuesday. They've programmed everything that's popped up on my cinephilic gaydar in the past 12 months save for one film, Pietro Marcello's The Mouth of the Wolf, which won the Berlin Film Festival's 2010 Teddy Award for Best Documentary. I suspect it'll now show up at the SF Film Society's New Italian Cinema series this fall. Several films have already screened at other Bay Area festivals, but it's nice they've been brought back for the many people who don't attend any other film festival besides Frameline. What's more, the organization has managed to hold ticket prices steady for yet one more year. The following is my subjective overview – meaning an emphasis on the "G" and light on the "L," "B" and "T" – of 2010's massive line-up.



Frameline34 opens on June 17 with The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister, a British TV biopic about an 18th century landowning lesbian whose lusty, coded diaries were only recently decrypted. Director James Kent and actress Maxine Peake are expected to attend. Those who want to learn more about Lister will want to catch the following day's Castro matinee screening of the documentary, The Real Anne Lister. The festival closes on Pride Day, June 27 with Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Freidman's Howl, a genre-bending meditation on Allen Ginsberg's revolutionary poem. The film got mixed reviews when it premiered at Sundance, but I wouldn't dream of missing this screening with the celebrated filmmakers (The Times of Harvey Milk, The Celluloid Closet) and star James Franco in attendance. The San Francisco Botanical Garden in Golden Gate Park will serve as venue for both opening and closing night parties.



Perhaps inspired by the adulatory appearance of Joe Dallesandro at 2009's festival, Frameline34 will survey Andy's Warhol's output as pioneer of the queer underground cinema movement. Yale University Senior Lecturer and Programming Director Ronald Gregg will be on hand to deliver a lecture with clips and stills titled Gay Aesthetics and Iconography in the Films of Andy Warhol. Supplementing that event will be two retrospective programs of rarely seen Warhol films, Hustlers and Exhibitionists (featuring Haircut #1 and My Hustler) and Sex, Leather Jackets and Cigarettes (featuring Mario Banana #1, Mario Banana #2 and Vinyl). Topping off the Warhol focus is Centerpiece Documentary Beautiful Darling: The Life and Times of Candy Darling, Andy Warhol Superstar, about the actress immortalized in the lyrics of Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side" ("Candy came from out on the Island. In the backroom she was everybody's darling. But she never lost her head, even when she was giving head.")


There were enough films from Brazil, Argentina and Peru this year to warrant their own festival sidebar, South America's New Queer Cinema. Be sure and check out the fine introductory essay on page 24 of the festival catalog, written by Lucho Ramirez from Cine + Mas. Plan B is a sweetly unnerving Argentine "bro-mance" that goes where infantile U.S. indie Humpday didn't dare. Also from Argentina is The Fish Child, Lucía Puenzo's follow-up to Frameline32's audience award winner XXY. (The Fish Child also screened at Frameline last year in a TBA slot). The theme of intersex adolescents explored in XXY shows up this year in another Argentine film, The Last Summer of La Boyita.


From Brazil you shouldn't miss the fabulous documentary about Dzi Croquettes, a drag troupe inspired by SF's own Cockettes who ultimately surpassed, both creatively and professionally, their American counterparts. Too bad the lone screening of this is at 11 a.m. on a Monday. One Brazilian film I'm anticipating, albeit for the beefcake factor alone, is Aluízio Abranches' From Beginning to End. This story of half-brother incest was a controversial box office smash in Brazil last year. At the Frameline press conference, Jennifer Morris declared Brazil's Elvis and Madona to be one of her "absolute favorites" of the fest. It's about the romance between a dyke pizza deliverer/photographer (Elvis) and a transwoman cabaret performer (Madonna). Rounding out the Brazilian selection is Paulista, which concerns three tenants in a São Paulo apartment building all searching for love. Finally, we have this year's Centerpiece Film from Peru, Undertow. Winner of the audience award for Best World Narrative Feature at this year's Sundance Film Festival, this is a poignant, fanciful tale of a life-changing love between a married fisherman and a vacationing artist.


LGBT films and filmmakers have gained increasing influence in the world of international art cinema, as evidenced at the recent Cannes Film Festival. An openly gay Thai director took the fest's top honor, the Palme d'or (Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives), and the fest awarded its first ever Queer Palme to Frameline alum Gregg Araki's Kaboom. At last year's Cannes, a 19-year-old queer French-Canadian named Xavier Dolan won three prizes in the Directors' Fortnight side-bar with his stunning debut film I Killed My Mother. If I had to name one must-see film at this year's Frameline, this scabrously funny and ultimately touching mother-son verbal slugfest would be it. Dolan returned to Cannes this year with another film, Heartbeats, which we'll no doubt be seeing at Frameline35.


François Ozon (8 Women, Swimming Pool) and Sébastien Lifshitz (Come Undone, Wild Side) are two French filmmakers with names familiar to Frameline audiences. I missed Ozon's new film, Hideaway, when it screened as a sneak preview at the recent SF International Film Festival. French pop music star Louis-Ronan Choisy plays a young gay man who takes care of his dead brother's pregnant junkie girlfriend. The original French title was Le Refuge, and I don't quite understand the clunky name-change. Did Le Refuge, The Refuge or simply Refuge not have the right ring? In Lifshitz' Going South, a brooding Yannick Renier (older brother of European art film habitué Jérémie Renier) drives to Spain in his Ford with a pregnant girl, her gay brother and a macho stranger in tow – imagine the possibilities. I'm also excited to see The String, in which a gay architect returns to Tunisia to live with his mother and falls in love with the family handyman. Mom is played by Tunisian-born, Italian screen legend Claudia Cardinale and the handyman by French-Arab actor (Ozons's Criminal Lovers) and former Pierre et Gilles model Salim Kéchiouche. A fourth French film, Out of the Blue, is about a woman who walks out of a 22-year marriage and into the arms of a beautiful antiques dealer.


I can't remember the last time Frameline had so few films from Asia. Fortunately, they've programmed the one I really wanted to see, Lou Ye's Spring Fever. In 2006, Lou was banned from filmmaking for five years by pissed-off Chinese authorities. It was punishment for submitting his film Summer Palace to the Cannes Film Festival without government approval. He circumvented the ban by shooting Spring Fever on the sly and submitting it to Cannes in 2009. The film, in which is woman hires a private detective to follow her husband and his male lover, got decidedly mixed reviews. But to everyone's surprise, the Cannes jury awarded the film its prize for Best Screenplay. The only other Asian narrative feature in Frameline34 is Mateo Guez' Off World, about an adopted Canadian-Filipino who returns to Manila in search of family and reconnects with a gay hustler brother.


Of the remaining World Cinema features, I can strongly recommend Eyes Wide Open, a tale of clandestine love between a married, ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem butcher and the younger man he takes on as an apprentice. I wasn't so crazy about the Danish gay-neo-Nazis-in-love movie, Brotherhood, despite its win as Best Film at the 2009 Rome Film Festival. I'll be writing more about these later. I certainly won't miss the rare revival screening of 1958's Mädchen in Uniform, starring the fabulous Romy Schneider as a schoolgirl with a mad crush on teacher Lilli Palmer. I heard very good things about 19th century Sicilian lesbian melodrama The Sea Purple, when it screened last year as part of the SF Film Society's New Italian Cinema series. Another one that sounds promising is The Consul of Sodom, a biopic on Spanish writer Jaime Gil de Biedma which was nominated for five Goya Awards (Spain's Oscar). Should time and energy permit, I'll also check out Norway's The Man Who Loved Yngve and a rare gay film from the homophobic Caribbean, Children of God from the Bahamas.


I spend so much time at Frameline seeing foreign films that I give short shrift to the U.S. features. This year will probably not be an exception, although there's no way I'll miss Baby Jane?, a locally produced drag recreation of Robert Aldrich's 1962 classic What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? I'm also intrigued by The Stranger in Us, after reading Michael Guillén's interview with director Scott Boswell at The Evening Class. BearCity looks like a crowd-pleasing comedy and should be the perfect lead-in to the Castro neighborhood's night-before-Pride street celebration, Pink Saturday. Just don't confuse the film with Bear Nation, a documentary by Malcolm Ingram (Small Town Gay Bar). Director Cheryl Dunye (Watermelon Woman) returns to Frameline with The Owls (short for Older Wiser Lesbians), which reunites the cast of 1994's seminal indie hit, Go Fish. If you like it, you'll probably want to see the film's 'making of' documentary Hooters, which screens the following evening. Finally, I've read interesting things about Andy Blubaugh's The Adults in the Room, a meta-narrative about the director's efforts to make a film about a teenage relationship he had with an older man.


Every year I look at the Frameline documentary line-up and realize I could happily spend the festival seeing nothing else but. Topping my list this year is The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls, which profiles a pair of yodeling lesbian twins whose stand-up musical-comedy act is all the rage in New Zealand. I'm dying to see the Topps perform live on the Castro Theater stage and you should be, too. Other docs that sound like fun include a Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence profile (The Sisters), a look at the history of gay Mardi Gras (The Sons of Tennessee Williams), a bio-doc about the man who streaked the Oscars ceremony in 1974 (Uncle Bob), a long overdue bio-doc on writer William S. Burroughs (William S. Burroughs: A Man Within) and a close-up on drag cabaret singer Joey Arias and his collaboration with puppeteer Basil Twist (Arias With a Twist: The Docufantasy). Those hoping to see a little flesh in their documentaries should make a date with The Adonis Factor, which deals with gay male body image issues, and All Boys, which gazes in on the world of Czech gay porn.


Every year Frameline takes place during the 10 days leading up to Gay Pride Day and this year there are four Pride-related documentaries. Stonewall Uprising purports to be the most thorough examination yet of that pivotal event, and On These Shoulders We Stand explores the early gay rights movement in Los Angeles. Gay Days traces the evolution of Pride in Israel, and Beyond Gay: The Politics of Pride is a sober reminder of how awful things are for us in places like Sri Lanka, Poland, Jamaica and Russia. Relatedly, Other Nature takes on the fight for LGBT rights in Nepal. Two documentaries look back on the early years of the AIDS pandemic, The Cockettes' co-director David Weissman's We Were Here: Voices from the AIDS Years in San Francisco and a history of the safe sex movement, Sex in an Epidemic. Preceding the latter is a short by director Ira Sachs (The Delta, Forty Shades of Blue) called Last Address, "a simple, touching reflection on the many wonderful artists we've lost to the disease." Also taking a look back is acclaimed German director Rosa von Praunheim's New York Memories, which compares the sterile NYC of today with the wild place she loved in the 1970s and 1980s. And finally, there's the self-explanatory 8: The Mormon Proposition and Mountains That Take Wing: Angela Davis & Yuri Kochiyama – A Conversation on Life, Struggles and Liberation.


Cross-published on The Evening Class and Twitch.

SFIFF53 2010 Wrap Up – The Films

It's been three weeks since the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF) ended, and partly because of a distraction named Cannes, it's taken me this long to assemble a parting overview. I've already written about the films I saw before the festival and a few that were associated with this year's special events. Now here are star ratings and some brief commentary for the other 30 films I (mostly) had the pleasure of watching from April 22 to May 6, 2010. For no particular good reason, they're listed in the order I saw them.



Nymph **** (Thailand dir. Pen-ek Ratanaruang)
My festival got off to a fine start with this metaphysical fable about the primal force of human sexual desire. It begins with a stupefying tracking shot that rushes through and above the jungle, and its unnervingly eerie, musique-concrète sound design was the most memorable I'd hear during the fest. A main character's speech in the final reel, however, brings things back to earth and slightly diminishes the overall effect.


My Dog Tulip *** (USA dir. Paul and Sandra Fierlinger)
I'm not so much into animation, but SFIFF programmer Sean Uyehara recommended this for people who don't like dogs and that would be me. I was entertained by this acerbic man-dog love story by gay British writer J.R. Ackerley, who once wrote "Unable to love each other, the English naturally turn to dogs." The film is made of an amazing 800,000 single cell drawings in different animation styles, and producer Norman Twain was on hand to talk about getting his friends Christopher Plummer, Lynn Redgrave and Isabella Rossellini to do the voices.


Around a Small Mountain ** (France/Italy dir. Jacques Rivette)
I hated the opening scene in which Sergio Castellitto silently repairs Jane Birkin's broken down car (later I'd learn that particular scene was everyone else's favorite). I struggled to remain conscious for at least another 10 minutes after that, before succumbing to temptation and conking out. It wasn't the first Rivette film to put me to sleep, but at age 82 – Rivette's age, not mine – it might be the last. At least now I was rested and invigorated for my two evening films, both of which I'd been highly anticipating.


Between Two Worlds *** (Sri Lanka dir. Kumukthi Jayasundara)
I flipped when I learned the festival had programmed this, as I loved The Forsaken Land, the director's Cannes Camera d'or-winning first feature. His new film is another poetic string of disturbing imagery, much of it colored by his country's lengthy civil war. Oddly, though, it seemed less mature and cohesive than his debut. The director was on hand, reluctantly revealing that the titular two worlds represent city vs. forest, imagined world vs. reality.


The White Meadows **** (Iran dir. Mohammad Rasoulof)
From the director of 2005's acclaimed Iron Island comes this fanciful political allegory that's every bit as original and arresting as its predecessor. Trading that film's abandoned Persian Gulf oil tanker for the blinding, chalk white islands of Iran's Lake Urmia, we travel with a boatman who collects the tears of the lake's inhabitants. Rasoulof's societal critiques, a mix of obtuse and obvious (at least to western viewers), were enough to land him a stint in the same prison as filmmaker Jafar Panahi.


Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky **** (France dir. Jan Kounen)
This was a fairly standard biopic depicting the years during which Coco and Igor's lives converged, with enough stylistic flourishes to make it interesting. The film's beginning, in which we get to relive the riotous 1913 Parisian premiere of "The Rite of Spring," was perhaps the most thrilling 20 minutes of entire festival. The art direction and costume design are to die for, as is Mads Mikkelsen's butt and Anna Mouglalis' no-nonsense portrayal of Coco (the actress would turn up later as chanteuse Juliette Gréco in Gainsbourg (Je t'aime, moi non plus).


Domain **** (France dir. Patric Chiha)
Personal fave Béatrice Dalle shreds the screen as a rapidly descending alcoholic mathematician in a film written specifically for her by first-time director Chiha. We witness her decline through the eyes of a gay teenage nephew who makes a compelling and controversial moral choice in the final reel. Unfortunately, the screening was nearly ruined by a festival VIP and two gal pals who jabbered at each other and at the screen itself, while frequently checking their phones for what I'm sure were very important messages. Grrrrrrrrr.


Cold Weather **** (USA dir. Aaron Katz)
Experience has made me leery of most American independent films, but this fresh, character-driven piece about sister-brother amateur sleuths in Portland had many charms. Those included clever dialogue, an interesting percussive score, gorgeous Red One videography and nifty performances – particularly by NYC stage actor/playwright Raúl Castillo as the siblings' partner in crime-solving. The image quality was above average for digital projection, but still flawed, i.e. slow camera pans had a stuttering quality. Katz' 2006 Dance Party, USA just got booted to the top of my Netflix queue.


Everyone Else **** (Germany dir. Maren Ade)
This has got be the all-time Date Movie From Hell. A lot of people hated it, but I think they confused hatred of the characters for hatred of the film itself. For two hours we watch in prickly detail as the relationship between a painfully flawed young couple comes apart during a Sardinian holiday. Ade's screenplay is flat-out brilliant, as are the two lead performances.


Way of Nature *** (Sweden dir. Nina Hedenius)
I wasn't hepped-up about seeing this narration-and-dialogue-free documentary about one year in the life of a remote Swedish farm, which is perhaps why I unconsciously got the start time wrong and arrived 30 minutes late. Then I napped through much of what remained. I liked what little I saw, but Green Acres ain't the place for me.


14-18: The Noise and the Fury **** (France/Belgium dir. Jean-François Delassus)
This scathing examination of the wholesale human slaughter that was WWI was one of two great French documentaries I'd see during the fest. Some objected to the colorization, lip-synched dialogue and addition of ambient sound to the archival footage, but I thought it gave those materials greater immediacy. I'm more sympathetic to complaints about the English language voiceover – the film is narrated by a fictitious French soldier – but I got used to it quickly. What didn't quite work for me was the insertion of clips from more current narrative features about that war.


Soul Kitchen ** (Germany dir. Fatih Akin)
I really wanted to love this restaurant comedy which stars my two favorite German actors and is directed by my favorite German filmmaker. It had a manic energy and you could tell everyone involved had a blast making it, but man was this thing ever broad and predictable. I hope director Akin got it out of his system and will return to making complex dramas like Head-On and The Edge of Heaven. For what it's worth, many I know got the biggest kick out of this one.


Frontier Blues ** (Iran/England/Italy dir. Babak Jalali)
Apart from showing me slices of life in a faraway place – in this case the mundane goings-on of an Iran-Turkmenistan border town – I was diverted but untaken by this series of revolving deadpan vignettes. The festival's FIPRESCI jury disagreed and gave the film its award. Phantoms of 1960s French pop music popped up throughout the festival, here in the form of Françoise Hardy's "Tous les garçons and les filles" being repeatedly played on one character's cassette player.


Colony * (USA/Ireland dir. Ross McDonnell, Carter Gunn)
I urgently wanted to see a documentary about the scary phenomenon of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), but instead saw this film about the trials and tribulations of a bible-thumping family of Mennonite beekeepers. Perhaps at this point, too little is known about CCD to fill a feature-length doc? This film does have some good info, but to my surprise, not a word about the existence of CCD outside the USA.


Linha de Passe **** (Brazil dir. Walter Salles)
Why did this gritty and humane film about a São Paolo maid and her four sons take two full years to reach the Bay Area, especially in light of having a well known director and a best actress prize from the 2008 Cannes Film Festival? I would have asked Salles myself, but he didn't return for a post-screening Q&A. At any rate, well worth the long wait.


Wild Grass *** (France/Italy dir. Alain Resnais)
For a good half hour I thought this might end up being my favorite film of the festival, or who knows, perhaps of the year. I had a grin on my face brought on by enigmatic characters, a who-knows-where-this-might- go storyline, candy-colored cinematography, swooping crane shots, a jazzy Mark Snow (The X-Files) score and other delights. By the final reel, however, its increasingly cock-eyed antics caused my admiration to flag.


White Material ** (France dir. Claire Denis)
This was the first time I couldn't engage myself with a Claire Denis film on any level, except perhaps, in its sheer absurdity. A friend called it "unfelt." I'm willing to concede that I just didn't get it. It was a hoot watching Isabelle Huppert drive a tractor and I certainly dug the Nicolas Duvauxchelle nude scene. In a festival first, at least for me, the person intro-ing the film got hooted off the stage by an audience anxious to get on with it.


Vengeance *** (Hong Kong/China dir. Johnnie To)
Despite some amusing set pieces and a stoic, stony performance from 1960's French rock n' roll idol Johnny Hallyday, this was pretty ludicrous and did little to reignite my waning interest in Asian genre films.


Gainsbourg (Je t'aime…moi non plus) ***** (France dir. Joann Sfar)
By far my favorite film in the festival, this was the thrilling E-ticket ride for which I wanted to jump back in line and go again and again. In his filmmaking debut, graphic novelist Sfar takes key moments from Serge Gainsbourg's life and turns them into richly-conceived mythical fantasias, aided in no small part by an astounding lead performance by Eric Elmosino. My obsession for the man's music no doubt colored my appreciation. Unfortunately, at the beginning and end of each reel change in the Kabuki Theater's House 5, the sound would completely cut out for several excruciatingly long seconds. I wanted to scream.


Susa *** (Georgia dir. Rusudan Pirveli)
The spirit of neo-realism was evident in two fest films I caught, one being this grim, affecting look at a youngster forced to work as delivery boy for a bootleg vodka distillery. It reminded me a good deal of the Dardenne Brothers' Rosetta, but without that film's ultimate suggestion of hope.


Ordinary People *** (Serbia/France/Switzerland dir. Vladimir Perisic)
I appreciated this film because it portrayed Balkans-style ethnic cleansing in a way I hadn't previously conceived of – slow, systematic and banal. Unfortunately, the lead actor was unable to bring any interest to the long close-ups of his character lost in thought. Mercifully short at 80 minutes.


La Pivellina **** (Italy/Austria dir. Tizza Covi, Rainer Frimmel)
An extended family of benevolent small-time circus performers (think spinning plates and trained goats) take in an adorable, abandoned two-year-old girl in the festival's other nod to neo-realism. The naturalistic performances by the non-pro cast were almost shocking in their unselfconsciousness. A real gem.


Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno **** (France dir. Serge Bromberg, Ruxandra Medrea)
I was so exhausted from being out until 3 a.m. – thank you Peaches Christ – that I feared I might not be able to stay awake through this. Not even close. This tantalizing and expertly assembled doc examines what happens when a brilliant director gives himself freedom to run amok and brilliantly fails. I'd happily watch it again just for Clouzot's downright freaky camera experiments, Romy Schneider's wardrobe tests and mustachioed Jean-Claude Bercq in a swimsuit.


Lourdes *** (France/Austria/Germany dir. Jessica Hausner)
While I was intrigued by the issues of faith raised in this tale – an essentially non-believing, wheelchair-bound young woman goes to Lourdes for a miracle and gets one – what really grabbed me was its detailed portrait of Lourdes itself as tourist destination/miracle factory.


Alamar **** (Mexico dir. Pedro González-Rubio)
This wasn't my favorite of the dozen films in competition for the festival's New Director's Prize, but it's a choice I'm happy with. What I liked most was the refreshing lack of any drama or conflict whatsoever. It's just a gorgeously filmed, tender narrative about a young boy spending one final summer on the Yucatan coast with his fishermen father and grandfather.


Lebanon *** (Israel dir. Samuel Maoz)
Winner of the top prize at last year's Venice Film Festival, this intense anti-war film is set completely inside a crippled Israeli tank stuck in enemy territory during the 1982 Lebanese War. Director Maoz based the film on his own experiences in the war known as Israel's Vietnam, and in introducing the film told us which character represented himself. It's a powerful work, if a bit heavy-handed and manipulative when it doesn't need to be.


Woman on Fire Looks for Water *** (Malaysia/South Korea dir. Woo Ming-jin)
This was a perfectly fine, laconic and bittersweet tale of folks who make a living from river wildlife harvesting. I'd never seen a live frog get its head cut off with scissors before and will be quite happy if I never do again. The washed-out digital projection at the Clay Theater made me wish I'd watched it on DVD screener.


Last Train Home **** (China/Canada dir. Lixin Fan)
I was expecting a documentary about the world's largest human migration, an annual phenomenon in which 130 million Chinese workers return home for New Year. What I saw instead was a moving film about the dark side of China's economic miracle, specifically, what happens when parents work for many years in factories thousands of miles away from their children. Few images in the festival were as disturbing as this one's father/daughter Springer-esque slugfest. Or as harrowing as the family's five-day wait in an insanely mobbed Guangzhou train station. Director Lixin Fan was on hand to give a revelatory Q&A.


Winter's Bone *** (USA dir. Debra Granik)
While the film takes place in the US, its setting amongst the rural poor of the Ozark Mountains is as exotic as any Iranian salt lake or Thai jungle. It's a place where kids get lessons in skinning and frying up squirrels. And where weather-beaten women throw a mean punch and your Uncle Teardrop is never without his baggie full of blow. In this absorbing, Sundance Jury Prize-winning film, a 17-year-old girl has one week to track down her meth-cooking father or lose the house she shares with her out-of-it Mom and two siblings. I liked everything, but was uneasy about Jennifer Lawrence's lead performance which too often rendered her character snotty and petulant, as opposed to the gutsy and determined I think she was aiming for.


Hadejwich ** (France dir. Bruno Dumont)
I hoped this might be the film to bring me back into the Dumont fold, after the disappointments of Twentynine Palms and Flanders. Alas, this alternately bland and overheated story of religious nuts of different feathers flocking together didn't do it.


The Little White Cloud That Cried! *** (Germany dir. Guy Maddin)
This is a short Maddin created for a Jack Smith tribute in Germany last year. I couldn't see it as part of the festival's Pirate Utopias shorts program, so I watched it in the press screening room (essentially four computer viewing stations set up in the Kabuki's house 8). Once the XXX-rated tranny porn kicked in, I made sure to keep my hands where everyone could see them.

SFIFF53 2010 Special Events Wrap-Up

The 53rd edition of the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF) came to a close on May 6, having sold out 92 screenings during its successful 15-day run. While I'm still mulling over the three dozen films I saw during those two weeks – all of which I hope to write about – here's a look back at five of this year's special events.



I've been coming to the SFIFF for a few decades now, and 2010 was only the second time I've attended the opening night festivities. Someday I might feel blasé about the event, but for now I can't help but get caught up in the glamour of it all. My suit came out of the closet for the first time since last year's opening night, and despite a major MUNI snafu I was second in line and able to secure myself a choice, unreserved aisle seat in the Castro Theater. After perusing the contents of my goodie bag – which I placed under my seat and regrettably forgot at evening's end – I spent 90 minutes chatting with friends who were equally amped up for two weeks of movies, movies, movies.

The program started 20 minutes late, presumably to accommodate late arrivals from the aforementioned MUNI delay. Late that afternoon, a man either jumped or fell onto the Castro St. Station subway tracks and was killed, effectively terminating all train service until mid-evening. Finally at 7:20 p.m., SF Film Society Executive Director Graham Leggat took the stage and welcomed everyone, reminding us that this was his fifth year at the festival's helm – "the best five years of my life." The resounding applause and cheers hopefully told Leggat that the feeling is mutual.

(Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet considers having his nails done while his film Micmacs screens at the opening night of the SFIFF. Photo by Pamela Gentile)

This year's opening night film was Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Micmacs, which the director assured us had nothing to do with Big Macs, and everything to do with his new favorite English word, shenanigans. I've enjoyed all of Jeunet's films, except the one everybody adores (yes, Amelie, I'm talking about you). Reviews for Micmacs have been mixed, but it turned out to be a perfect opening night film – inventive, fast-paced, comical, crowd pleasing. I couldn't remember much about it the next day, but I did recall how much fun I had while watching it. After the screening, the festival's new Director of Programming Rachel Rosen interviewed Jeunet and conducted an audience Q&A. We learned that the director "wanted to put everything I love in this film," which ranged from animator Tex Avery to Mission Impossible, and that he's "not interested in realism." When asked if he might ever work again with Marc Caro (co-director of Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children), Jeunet diplomatically replied, "it's so good to work alone." With the final question, Jeunet got off the best line of the evening in regards to Micmacs poor reception on his home front: "In France they love to hate what they loved before." With that, the ebullient crowd adjourned to the Regency Center for a swinging after-party. The nibbly things I sampled there were delicious, and I washed them down with the beer everyone who frequents Landmark Theaters loves to hate.




I hadn't attended the festival's Founder's Directing Award program since it was given to Arturo Ripstein in 1999 (when it was still known as the Akira Kurosawa Award). In the interim years I've skipped honorees both deserving (Coppola, Leigh, Lee, Herzog, Forman, Altman, Kiarostami) and imho, questionable (Eastwood, Beatty, Hackford). When I unexpectedly found myself with a free night on April 28, I high-tailed it over to the Sundance Kabuki Cinema for this year's tribute to Brazilian director Walter Salles (Central Station, The Motorcycle Diaries).

Firstly, I wish someone had clued me in on how handsome this guy is so I could have ogled him from the front row. But from my seat in the Kabuki's large House One it was easy to perceive the man's warmth and self-effacing intelligence. The evening began with introductory remarks by Leggat, followed by a clips reel of career highlights. Then came the on-stage conversation with Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, who started things off by saying, "Let's put the guns down before we start, and talk about the sex life of Mr. Walter Salles." Hear, hear! I loved hearing about Salles' early life as a diplomat's son living atop a Parisian arthouse theater. 12-year-old Walter frequented that cinema so often, the ticketseller began letting him in for free. But he longed for Brazil: "I hated the drizzle, the cold, the croissants." During the talk it was also revealed that Salles spent a full year casting the boy in Central Station , that Latin Americans do not make good genre films (i.e. his own remake of Hideo Nakata's Dark Water), and that Argentina currently has the strongest cinema in Latin America (little to argue about there). He also acknowledged that "Antonioni is the director who brought me to cinema," specifically 1975's The Passenger.

(Directors Walter Salles and Alejandro González Iñárritu at the SFIFF's Founder's Directing Award program. Photo by Pamela Gentile)

Before getting to the evening's main event, Salles shared a short film that had been screened only once before – for the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival. In it, he addresses his six-month-old son, saying, "If I could choose just one film for you to see before any other, it would be this one." Then we saw an infant entranced by Chaplin dancing with the globe balloon in The Great Dictator. Salles remarked that they screened a DVD projection for the first take, and his son just wasn't interested. For the second take they projected it in 35mm and this time he became fully engaged by Chaplin's antics. What a smart, discerning kid!

As a special treat made exclusively for the SFIFF, Salles next showed us a one-hour work-in-progress documentary about his efforts to film Jack Kerouac's "On the Road." It was edited in just one week from 100 hours of mini-DV and super-8 interview and location footage. Salles, who first read the book as a 15-year-old, feared that showing an incomplete film about The Beats in San Francisco might be a "suicidal act," but the festival audience ate it up. In its current state, the film gives an impressionistic overview of Kerouac's work and the times from which it sprang. An off-camera Matt Dillon intermittently reads passages from the book, and contemporary figures ranging from Laurie Anderson to Johnny Depp to David Byrne reflect on its influence. There are terrific interviews with key players who are still with us (Michael McClure, Carolyn Cassady), as well as vintage screen tests by Brendan Fraser, Ashley Judd, Mathew McConaughey and others made for a previous attempt at filming the book. Directors as diverse as D.A. Pennebaker and Jean-Luc Godard have been interested in the project, but based on the evidence presented that night, Salles is clearly the man for the job. Indeed just one week after this event, it was announced that shooting for Salles' On the Road (the narrative feature) will begin in August. The next day at the festival, Salles would conduct a master class, as well as introduce a screening of his 2008 film, Linha de Passe.



On Saturday, May 1st, I must have changed my mind a dozen times. Should I spend the early evening at the Kabuki watching a French orangutan documentary (Nenette) and a Brazilian movie (The Famous and the Dead) before heading over to the Castro for the late-night world premiere of All About Evil? Or should I catch Roger Ebert receiving this year's Mel Novikoff Award at the Castro. I chose the latter and it turned out to be a smart move. The combination of Roger Ebert and Peaches Christ made for one of the most fabulous evenings I've experienced in 35 years of attending this festival.

Ebert and his wife Chaz were brought onstage and seated while four directors delivered heartfelt and hilarious tributes to the man they call "The Thumb." Terry Zwigoff recalled Ebert being the first person in line for a 1985 Telluride screening of Louis Bluie, and later sold him a soundtrack LP in the theater lobby. He also told a great story about a Crumb test screening. The audience survey cards were overwhelming negative – they thought the storyline about brother Charles should be dropped – so Zwigoff "fixed" the cards with the help of Wite-Out and a late-night trip to Kinko's. Ebert would become a steadfast champion of the film, going so far as to record a commentary track for the DVD release (much of which would be used for the text-to-speech software that allows the now "speechless" Ebert to speak through a computer.) Next, documentarian Errol Morris called Ebert, "not just a film critic, but a cultural icon." He was followed by Jason Reitman who, commenting upon Ebert's social networking prowess, declared "I know teenage girls who tweet less than Robert Ebert." Reitman would also add that, "It's hard to put Roger Ebert's work into context when it's him who puts us into context."

(Terry Zwigoff, Jason Reitman, Roger Ebert, Errol Morris and Philip Kaufman at the festival's Mel Novikof Award program. Photo by Pamela Gentile)

Last up was Philip Kaufman, who took a seat next to Ebert and Chaz and read a mayoral proclamation declaring May 1, 2010 "Roger Ebert Day" in San Francisco. Then the man himself fired up his laptop and brought the house down with his first sentence, "My little man is standing on his chair and applauding." The rest of Ebert's speech railed against Hollywood's current output of sequels and so-called blockbusters ("The studios are running like lemmings to 3-D") while films like Erick Zonka's Julia, featuring a tour de force performance by Tilda Swinton, gross a measly $65,000 in U.S. release. (Locally, the film ran for one week last summer on the SF Film Society's Kabuki Screen before moving over to the Roxie). The tribute audience then got to see and judge Julia for itself, having been specifically chosen by Ebert to accompany his appearance at the festival. A letter of regret from Swinton was read to the crowd – she had hoped to attend the screening but was stuck filming on the East coast. I was thrilled to watch it a second time, especially on the Castro's big screen. It's a tough little film and there were a few walkouts, but the applause at the end was booming.



I darted out of the Castro and was greeted by the sight of blood-splattered klieg lights clawing the night sky. Then I noticed a dead body flopped across the base of the lights and a ticketholders line already around the block a full two hours before showtime. This could only mean one thing – the world premiere of Peaches Christ's All About Evil! From my vantage point in the press line, I was able to watch the red carpet parade of outlandish costumes and mile-high hairdos, praying that none of those 'dos ended up sitting in front of me. (This was a movie theater, after all, and not a planetarium.) As Peaches would remark at some point in the evening ("Peaches" being the beloved late-night movie hostess alter-ego of one Joshua Grannell), a movie only gets one world premiere. And boy did he/she pull out the stops to ensure All About Evil's would be momentous.

(Peaches Christ (aka director Joshua Grannell) is flanked by evil twin usherettes Jade and Nikita Ramsey. Photo by Pat Mazzera)

The All About Evil preshow consisted of no less than four musical production numbers, the first one featuring Peaches and a dozen pom-pom shaking monstrosities performing, "I'm a Gore-Gore Girl." Afterwards, she threatened the audience with a three-hour preshow in which she would single-handedly act out the entire movie onstage. Next she brought out All About Evil cast member Mink Stole and the duo croaked out the theme song from John Water's film, Female Trouble. Peaches and Mink go way back, the latter having been the first "celebrity" to appear at Peaches' Midnight Mass film series at San Francisco's Bridge Theater. Waters was also in the house that night and stood for a round of applause. Teen heartthrob and All About Evil co-star Thomas Dekker was next on board, performing the movie's rocking theme song, "Welcome to the Horror Show." Then Natasha Lyonne, who stars as mousy theater-owner turned murderous film director Deborah Tennis (pronounced De-BOR-ah Ten-NIS) wrapped things up with a final number.

After all that hullabaloo, one almost expected the film itself to be anti-climactic. But no, All About Evil delivered the sicko thrills and chills. Two scenes in particular had all 1400 audience members screaming their collective heads off in disbelief, and neither was the film-within-the-film, A Tale of Two Severed Titties. By the time the Q&A wrapped up – with Peaches now out of drag and onstage as plain old Joshua Grannell – it was two in the morning. Everyone was handed a commemorative All About Evil world premiere poster upon exiting the theater, which I'll surely treasure for the rest of my days. It was Saturday night and the Castro Street bars were emptying out – a phenomenon I hadn't witnessed in many years. I was satisfied and spent and had no hope of making it to the next morning's surprise SF Film Society members screening.

If you weren't there that night, here's good news. Comes October, Peaches will be presenting the film, complete with a preshow, at San Francisco's Victoria Theater (where All About Evil was actually filmed). She promises a full-on William Castle-like experience – I think her exact words were "we're gonna stab you and chainsaw you." Meanwhile, check out Dennis Harvey's recollection of the evening at SF360, and don't miss The Evening Class' Michael Guillén and his interviews with Grannell, special effects artist Aurora Bergere and five cast members. Now for a special treat, the evening's complete opening number.




I spent the next few days singing, "I'm a gore, I'm a whore, I'm a gore-gore girl" and desperately needed a new earworm. One came in the form of the rousing and repetitive chorus that greeted each new chapter of Stuart Paton's 1916 silent screen adaptation of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. This May 4 Castro Theater screening was also the world premiere of a new score composed and performed by The Magnetic Fields' frontman Stephin Merritt, with help from Daniel Handler on accordion, David Hegarty on the Castro's Mighty Wurlitzer and a gentleman playing tuba and trumpet. Merritt was clearly having a goof with it, blending his customary old-timey vibe with injections of electronic bleeping and screechy freakouts. Speaking and singing through megaphones, Handler gave voice to the female roles in an abrasive Olive Oyl-y falsetto while Merritt handled the male parts in a low register that was mostly inaudible. The film itself is kind of unremarkable – a flatly directed mash-up of Verne's "20,000 Leagues" and "The Mysterious Island," with underwater photography that was stunning for its time but is now merely quaint. Merritt exploited the film's campier aspects, such as a sarong-clad "child of nature" who sings a ditty about not wanting to wear pants and who turns out to be Captain Nemo's long lost daughter. I thought it was all good-natured fun and Merritt's legion of fans seemed satisfied, but I know some likened the performance to a bad episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I was glad I went, but it paled compared to last year when Dengue Fever blew the dome off the Castro with their score for the stop-motion dinosaur epic, The Lost World.

(Stephin Merritt before the world premiere of his score for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Photo by Pamela Gentile)

Cross-published on The Evening Class and Twitch.