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The San Francisco Silent Film Festival's (SFSFF) one-day winter program has become a welcome tradition, helping silent film fanatics endure the long months between the organization's main festival held each July. While last year's winter event took the form of a triumphant mounting of Abel Gance's Napoleon at Oakland's Paramount Theatre, this year it's back to the Castro Theatre for a single 13-hour marathon of silent era classics. Transpiring on Saturday, February 16, Silent Winter 2013's five programs – a silent Snow White, a trio of Buster Keaton shorts, a Douglas Fairbanks blockbuster, Mary Pickford's last silent and F.W. Murnau's Faust – are all SFSFF premieres and I can't imagine missing out on any of them. Here's a closer look at what's in store.
10:00 A.M. Snow White (1916, USA, dir. Searle J. Dawley)
Legend has it that a 16-year-old newsboy named Walter Elias Disney attended a free screening of this movie at the Kansas City Convention Center in 1917, and it became the prime inspiration for his 1937 feature debut, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Director Dawley already had film versions of Hansel and Gretel (1909), Frankenstein (1910) and A Christmas Carol (1910) under his belt when he adapted Winthrop Ames' popular 1912 Broadway stage play. Actress Marguerite Clark, who starred in the original stage version, returned to portray Snow White at the age of 33. Standing 4' 10" tall, the diminutive Clark was Hollywood's second biggest movie star in the years immediately following WWI (Mary Pickford being first), and of the 40 movies she made only three exist today. Snow White was also considered lost until materials discovered in a Dutch film archive led to a new restoration by the George Eastman House. This screening will be introduced by J.B. Kaufman, author of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: The Creation of a Classic," which was released in conjunction with the Walt Disney Family Museum's ongoing exhibition of the same name. While the film is considered static and stagey even by 1916 standards, it is appreciated today for its imaginative art direction and Clark's spritely performance. Incidentally, the dwarfs in this early version of Snow White are named Blick, Flick, Glick, Snick, Plick, Whick and Quee. Accompaniment will be provided by Donald Sosin on grand piano.
12:00 Noon Think Slow, Act Fast: Buster Keaton Shorts
One Week (1920), The Scarecrow (1920), The Playhouse (1921) (USA, dir. Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton)
Almost every SFSFF event includes a movie spotlighting the comic genius of Buster Keaton, and rightly so. This program gathers three shorts made immediately after The Great Stone Face outgrew the aegis of Fatty Arbuckle and began directing his own films. One Week is the hysterical tale of newlyweds attempting to build a house from a do-it-yourself kit and is the only one of the day's films I've seen previously. (I first encountered One Week at a 2003 screening in Paris that was introduced by Japanese director Hideo Nakata (The Ring, Dark Water) and saw it more recently at 2012's SF International Film Festival, with rock band tUnE-yArDs providing musical accompaniment.) The Scarecrow is best known for the Rube Goldberg-ian space and labor-saving devices that share a cramped house with Keaton and actor Big Joe Roberts, as well some spectacular chase sequences. The Playhouse's claim to fame is a variety show in which Keaton, through some extremely innovative camera trickery, plays all the performers and audience members. This program will be introduced by SFSFF board member and Keaton acquaintance Frank Buxton. Donald Sosin again accompanies on grand piano.
2:30 P.M. The Thief of Bagdad (1924, USA, dir. Raoul Walsh)
After being thrilled by the daring-do of Douglas Fairbanks' The Mark of Zorro at last summer's festival, I'm psyched that SFSFF has programmed another of his famous vehicles this soon. Thief was Hollywood's first million dollar production and was supposedly Fairbanks' favorite amongst all his movies (he was 40 at the time of filming.) Apart from seeing Fairbanks himself, I can't wait to spend two hours and 40 minutes savoring William Cameron Menzies opulent set design, numerous special effects which include flying carpets, winged horses and sea monsters, and last but not least, Anna Mae Wong as the princess' Mongol slave. I've heard some grousing about the film's digital projection, albeit in a new 2K restoration, but the opportunity to see this on the big Castro Theatre screen, at least for me, trumps any quibbles I might have over format (everything else at the SFSFF Winter Event will be in 35mm). Introducing the film will be Jeffrey Vance, author of the definitive 2008 biography, "Douglas Fairbanks," and Fairbanks "aficionado extraordinaire" Tracey Goessel. Accompaniment will be by the incomparable Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.
7:00 P.M. My Best Girl (1927, USA, dir. Sam Taylor)
Following a short dinner break, the evening's program begins with Mary Pickford's farewell to silent cinema. Released just three weeks after The Jazz Singer, this romantic comedy is considered by film scholars to be one of her best. (Pickford would win a Best Actress Oscar® for her first talkie, Coquette, but it was considered more of a testament to her power in Hollywood than a vote for the performance itself.) My Best Girl finds "America's Sweetheart" playing a Five and Dime stock clerk forced to train a handsome new employee (Charles "Buddy" Rogers), who in short order is revealed to be the boss' son in disguise. Pickford claimed to have prepared for the role by working as a salesclerk disguised with horn-rimmed glasses, until customers started getting wise. Rogers, fresh from his triumph in the previous year's Oscar®-winning Wings, would marry Pickford in 1936 following her divorce from Douglas Fairbanks, a marriage that lasted until Pickford's death in 1979. Be on the lookout for an uncredited appearance by Carole Lombard as a "Flirty Salesgirl." Once again, Donald Sosin accompanies on grand piano.
9:00 P.M. Faust (1926, Germany, dir. F.W. Murnau)
As it so often does with the SFSFF, a long day at the Castro Theatre fittingly ends with something dark and creepy. This time it's Murnau's acclaimed adaptation of the Faust legend, in which a learned man sells his soul to the devil. Coming just four years after his equally eerie Nosferatu, this masterpiece of German Expressionism would turn out to be Murnau's last European film. Indeed, when Faust premiered in Berlin, Murnau was already in Hollywood shooting his immortal Sunrise. Due to its elaborate production design and numerous special effects, Faust took six months to shoot and was German studio UFA's most expensive film to date, at least until the following year when they took on Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Actor Emil Jannings, who worked with Murnau previously on The Last Laugh (1924) and Tartuffe (1925), is said to give a "brilliantly nuanced, subtly comic performance" as the devil Mephisto. Accompaniment on the Castro's Mighty Wurlitzer will be provided, not by Dennis James, but by Christian Elliott, who is to the best of my knowledge making his SFSFF debut.
Cross published on The Evening Class.
The San Francisco Independent Film Festival, a.k.a. SF Indiefest, celebrates its 15th birthday this year and has appropriately dubbed the occasion, ¡Fiesta Quinceañera! Running from February 7 to 21 and mostly headquartered at the Roxie Theater, 2013's festival boasts 34 features and 43 shorts from 17 countries. I've attended practically every Indiefest to date and declare that in terms of highly anticipated, edgy big buzz films, this line-up promises to top them all. Luckily, I've been able to preview much of it via DVD screeners and on-line streaming.
Topping the list is Peter Strickland's Berberian Sound Studio – arguably the most critically acclaimed UK film of 2012 – in which Toby Jones gets perfectly cast as a British sound editor hired to work on a gruesome Italian giallo flick. This milquetoast-y momma's boy, more accustomed to working on nature documentaries, is forced to create sound effects for a movie about tortured witches in a girls' equestrian academy, all while being simultaneously coddled and tormented by his Italian co-workers. It's a classic fish out of water scenario that ultimately jumps down a Mulholland Drive-like rabbit hole. The resultant ending doesn't easily satisfy, but Berberian Sound Studio is much less about plot than it is about atmosphere, mood and tongue-in-cheek humor. I can't wait to experience it again, but with an audience on a big screen.
While we never actually see the gross stuff of Berberian's movie-in-a-movie, there's gore galore in Brandon Cronenberg's Antiviral. The apple hasn't fallen far from the tree in this auspicious feature debut from David's son, which contains more "body horror" than any Cronenberg Sr. film since 1999's eXistenZ. In a future dystopia where butchers sell "meat" grown from the cells of celebrities, and where people pay to acquire the diseases of the rich and famous, Antiviral's protagonist smuggles celebrity maladies from a high-security clinic by injecting them into his own body. What could possibly go wrong? Up until a convoluted final act, young Cronenberg's direction is extremely assured. He's hleped by an inspired production design and creepy lead performance by pasty-skinned redhead Caleb Landry Jones (Breaking Bad, Friday Night Lights). The film competed in Cannes' Un Certain Regard sidebar last year and was written by the director following a nasty case of flu.
Also having competed at Cannes, but in the Director's Fortnight sidebar, is Ben Wheatley's morbidly hilarious third feature, Sightseers. Like his first two films Down Terrace and Kill List (the latter screening at Indiefest14), grisly criminal behavior is discomfortably raked with savage humor, although this outing finds Wheatley capably directing material written by others. Tina, a sheltered young woman with a spiteful mum, takes off with new boyfriend Chris on an "erotic odyssey" – actually a road trip via mobile home visiting banal Yorkshire tourist spots. After a confrontation with a litterbug unmasks Chris as a volatile psychopath, Tina discovers her own inner assassin and the pair fuck and feud their way across the British countryside. Combining elements of The Honeymoon Killers and Serial Mom, Sightseers is more of an outright comedy than Down Terrace or Kill List, albeit one with plenty to offend genteel sensibilities.
SF Indiefest's 2013 Centerpiece Film is Everardo Valerio Gout's debut feature Days of Grace, a slick thriller that world premiered as a special Cannes midnight screening in 2011. The movie earned 15 Ariel Award nominations (Mexico's Oscar), won eight of them and stretches the boundaries of what might generally be considered "indie." Highly stylized, intricately constructed and steeped in violence and corruption, Days of Grace cross-cuts between three kidnappings which occur during three different World Cups. I found it difficult keeping track of the three threads, (even though different composers, including Nick Cave, are employed for each section), but I'm not always the brightest bulb in the marquee when it comes to navigating complex plotlines. The showy soundtrack utilizes three interpretations of "Summertime" – by Janis Joplin, Nina Simone and Scarlett Johansson – to nice effect.
Paul Bunnell's Greaser sci-fi musical, The Ghastly Love of Johnny X, returns to the Bay Area nearly a year after its 2012 world premiere at San Jose's Cinequest. Despite shortcomings, it's easy to enjoy this ambitious labor of love for the cheesy special effects, clever musical numbers and eye-grabbing B&W cinematography (shot with the very last of Kodak's B&W Plus-X film stock.) And then there's Kevin McCarthy's final screen appearance as the Grand Inquisitor who banishes Johnny X to planet Earth. TGLOJX has the distinction of being the country's lowest grossing film of 2012, earning the pauperly sum of $117.00 during its U.S. theatrcial run. The final narrative feature I previewed was Wrong, Quentin Dupieux's much anticipated follow-up to 2010's "killer tire" spoof, Rubber. As with any gag-filled, absurdist comedy, one's mileage will vary greatly. It was the hangdog charm of actor Jack Plotnick's shell shocked ex-travel agent pursuing his kidnapped pooch that stuck with me at the end.
Amongst the narrative features I did not get to preview, I'm most anxious to catch Davide Manuli's The Legend of Kaspar Hauser. Vincent Gallo plays two roles in this surreal, B&W Italian "techno-western" which reimagines the classic 19th century foundling story. The festival kicks off with Michel Gondry's latest, The We and the I, which also opened Cannes' Director's Fortnight sidebar last year to mixed reviews. The film follows a group of Brooklyn teenagers (all played by non-pros) as they ride the bus home on the last day of school. The trailer resembles many insufferable weekday afternoons I've spent riding MUNI. Closing Indiefest 2013 will be a new work from prolific Mumblecore pioneer Joe Swanberg (LOL, Hannah Takes the Stairs). All the Light in the Sky stars Jane Adams (Happiness, Hung) and both she and 
Swanberg are expected to be in attendance. (The film reappears at the Roxie as part of a three-day, 12-film Joe Swanberg retrospective from February 22 to 24.) Other narrative features perhaps worth considering include Ghosts with Shit Jobs (a dystopian faux-doc in which six Caucasian slum dwellers find themselves subservient to the Asian new world order), The Last Elvis (about a delusional Argentine Presley impersonator from director Armando Bo, who co-wrote the script for Alejandro González Iñárritu's Biutiful), and Simon Killer, a controversial new film from the gang that produced Martha Marcy May Marlene.
As always, Indiefest digs up a few fabulous repertory titles, which are presented this year in a sidebar titled, House of Psychotic Women. That's also the title of a new book by Kier-la Janisse, described as an "autobiographical exploration of female neurosis in horror and exploitation films." Ms. Janisse will be on hand to introduce screenings of Born Innocent, the legendary 1974 made-for-TV women's prison movie starring Linda Blair (in a rare 16mm print) and an even rarer 35mm print of "unnerving, squirm-inducing" 1972 teen prostitute pic, Toys Are Not For Children.
There aren't many documentaries at Indiefest because the organization presents its own non-fiction showcase, SF DocFest, each autumn. I count five in this line-up, two of which I missed at last month's Palm Springs International Film Festival and was relieved to find here. Leslie Zemeckis' Bound by Flesh tells the astounding tale of conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton, who were among vaudeville's highest paid performers during their between-world-wars heyday. From their 1908 birth to a Brighton barmaid to their 1969 death from Hong Kong flu in a South Carolina trailer park, this sympathetic portrait surveys two truly inseparable lives that survived exploitative guardians, detention at Angel Island, carnival sideshows, appearances in Tod Browning's Freaks and (very) loose biopic Chained For Life (available on YouTube), publicity stunt marriages to gay men, hard-drinking years in burlesque, grinding tours of the drive-in movie circuit and finally, legit work as supermarket produce clerks. Actresses Nancy Allen and Lea Thompson narrate as the Hilton Sisters, while various authorities and distant relatives provide the talking heads. My only complaint is the film's overuse of certain archival materials.
The fest's other highly recommended bio-doc is Jorge Hinojosa' utterly fascinating and insightful Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp. Executive-produced by rapper Ice-T, it tells the story of Robert Beck, an emotionally wounded university drop-out who at age 50 transformed a lifetime of criminality into a wildly successful writing career under the pen name Iceberg Slim (selling over six million books prior to his death in 1992.) Hinojosa and editor Danny Bresnik engagingly assemble extensive archival materials, poignant animation sequences, pulp fiction artwork and interviews with admirers like Henry Rollins, Leon Kennedy, Snoop Dogg and Quincy Jones. Most importantly, we hear plenty of firsthand testimony from Beck's first wife Betty, the Caucasian speed-typist who encouraged her then roach exterminator husband to dictate his wild tales in their South Central L.A. kitchen.
As I've only touched upon half the feature films which make up SF Indiefest 2013, be sure and check out the rest of the line-up. There are also seven programs of shorts to sample. And don't forget, Indiefest is one Bay Area festival that's known for its parties as well as its film programs, which include a 10th Annual Big Lebowski Party (with mini-bowling, White Russians and 35mm midnight screening), an 80's Power Ballad Sing-a-long Party and a Roller Disco Party.
Cross published on The Evening Class.
2012 Ten Favorite Narrative Features
Beyond the Hills (Romania, dir. Cristian Mungiu)
This would have topped the list even if these films weren't listed alphabetically. A riveting drama about the secular vs. the sacred which is even better than the director's Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days.
Damsels in Distress (USA, dir. Whit Stillman)
The archly deadpan campus musical-comedy that was loved by a few and loathed by many, but was still the funniest movie I saw in 2012. Mr. Stillman, please don't make us wait another 14 years for a new film.
Facing Mirrors (Iran, dir. Negar Azarbayjani)
Shayesteh Irani (the most fervent female soccer fan in Jafar Panahi's Offside) gave one of the year's great performances in this quietly intelligent and non-didactic drama about a FTM transsexual's friendship with a female taxi driver. This was the discovery of Frameline36, where the post-screening appearance by the film's director and producer nearly brought the house down.
The Giants (Belgium, dir. Bouli Lanners)
Three abandoned teens fall under the sway of a psychotic marijuana farmer and then hit the road in this sweet, unpredictable, heartbreaking, hilarious, and visually arresting survival tale with more than a few nods to The Night of the Hunter. My favorite film at this year's San Francisco International Film Festival.
In the Family (USA, dir. Patrick Wang)
Finally, an American indie film even I can love. Kudos to Mr. Wang for having the audacity and talent to write, direct and star in this nearly three-hour gay child custody drama set in the South without villains or heroes. Your loss if you if you missed one of the film's three swings through the Bay Area in 2012.
Lincoln (USA, dir. Steven Spielberg)
The world didn't come to an end in 2012, but a Spielberg film did make it into my Top Ten. (In all fairness, last year's The Adventures of Tintin was also pretty fabulous). Thanks to Tony Kushner's brilliant script, Daniel Day Lewis' performance of the year, a great supporting cast and composer John Williams turning the schmaltz w-a-y down.
Michael (Austria, dir. Markus Schleinzer)
This is the last film added to my list, and I re-watched it two nights ago to see if it made as strong an impression as when first viewed last January. This debut feature from renowned casting director Schleinzer (the films of Michael Haneke, Michael Glawogger and many others) is a brave, unnerving and methodical study of a bland 30-something office dweeb who keeps a 10-year-old old boy locked up in his basement.
Moonrise Kingdom (USA, dir. Wes Anderson)
The alleged charms of Wes Anderson were completely lost to me until 2009's The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Now once again, he has hit all the right buttons with this New England 1965 coming-of-age charmer. Even better the second time around in 35mm at the Castro Theatre.
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Turkey, dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
A slow-burning police procedural-cum-long night's journey into day laced with magnificent character studies, this was the only film on the list I felt compelled to watch three times. While acclaimed as a masterpiece elsewhere, it was dismissed by San Francisco's lead film critic as "colossally, memorably and audaciously boring."
The Turin Horse (Hungary, dir. Béla Tarr)
The end of the world as experienced in a wind-blown, dilapidated farmhouse by a father and daughter subsisting on boiled potatoes. The director has claimed this exercise in hypnotic formalism will be his final work, and really, what could there possibly be left to say. It supplants Damnation as my all-time favorite Tarr film.
2012 Narrative Feature Honor Roll
Amour (Austria/France, dir. Michael Haneke)
Beauty (South Africa, dir. Oliver Hermanus)
A Bottle in the Gaza Sea (France/Israel, dir. Thierry Binisti)
Bullhead (Belgium, dir. Michael R. Roskam)
Chicken with Plums (France/Germany, dir. Vincent Paronnaud, Marjane Satrapi)
The Conquest (France, dir. Xavier Durringer)
Death for Sale (Morocco, dir. Faouzi Bensaïdi)
Django Unchained (USA, dir. Quentin Tarantino)
Donoma (France, dir. Djinn Carrénard)
Dreileben: One Minute of Darkness (Germany, dir. Christoph Hochhausler)
Elite Squad: The Enemy Within (Brazil, dir. José Padilha)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (USA, dir. David Fincher)
Guilty (France/Belgium, dir. Vincent Garenq)
Here and There (USA/Mexico, dir. Antonio Méndez Esparza)
Holy Motors (France, dir. Leos Carax)
In Another Country (South Korea, dir. Hong Sang-soo)
Las Acacias (Argentina, dir. Pablo Giorgelli)
Neighboring Sounds (Brazil, dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho)
Omar Killed Me (France/Morocco, dir. Roschdy Zem)
Oslo, August 31st (Norway, dir. Joachim Trier)
The Other Son (France, dir. Lorraine Levy)
Rebellion (France, dir. Mathieu Kassovitz)
The Salesman (Canada, dir. Sébastien Pilote)
Sister (Switzerland/France, dir. Ursula Meier)
Sleeping Sickness (Germany, dir. Ulrich Köhler)
Smuggler's Songs (France, dir. Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche)
The Snows of Kilimanjaro (France, dir. Robert Guédiguian)
Tabu (Portugal, dir. Migues Gomes)
The Woman in the Septic Tank (Philippines, dir. Marlon Rivera)
*note – I've yet to see The Master or Zero Dark Thirty.
2012 Ten Favorite Documentary Features
The Ambassador (Denmark, dir. Mads Brugger)
The Central Park Five (USA, dir. Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, David McMahon)
Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey (USA, dir. Ramona S. Diaz)
Give Up Tomorrow (USA, dir. Michael Collins)
Joann Sfar Draws from Memory (USA, dir. Sam Ball)
Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present (USA, dir. Matthew Akers, Jeff Dupre)
Only the Young (USA, dir. Elizabeth Mims, Jason Tippet)
Under African Skies (USA/South Africa, dir. Joe Berlinger)
Vito (USA, dir. Jeffrey Schwarz)
The Waiting Room (USA, dir. Peter Nicks)
2012 Documentary Feature Honor Roll
Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (USA, dir. Alison Klayman)
Ben Lee: Catch My Disease (Australia, dir. Amiel Courtin-Wilson)
Benda Bilili! (Congo/France, dir. Renaud Barret, Florent de la Tullaye)
Caesar Must Die (Italy, dir. Paolo Taviani, Vittorio Taviani)
Call Me Kuchu (USA/Uganda, dir. Katherine Fairfax Wright, Malika Zouhali-Worrall)
Crossfire Hurricane (UK/USA, dir. Brett Morgen)
Ethel (USA, dir. Rory Kennedy)
Golden Slumbers (France/Cambodia, dir. Davy Chou)
The Sheik and I (USA/United Arab Emirates, dir. Caveh Zahedi)
Whore's Glory (Germany/Austria, dir. Michael Glawogger)
*note – I've yet to see Searching for Sugarman or How to Survive a Plague
2012 Favorite Repertory/Revivals Screenings
Yellow Submarine (1968, UK/USA, dir. George Dunning, Castro Theatre)
As best as I can remember, this new restoration is the only film on the list that was projected digitally. And as much as I hate to admit it, was all the better for it. A trippy, eye-popping joyride.
Napoleon (1927, France, dir. Abel Gance, Paramount Theatre)
Kevin Brownlow's restoration of this silent classic presented by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival was, of course, the repertory event of the year. While I can't say I was enraptured by all 330 minutes, Part I (Napoleon's childhood) and the grand three-screen finale were more thrilling than anything else I watched all year.
American Graffiti (1973, USA, dir. George Lucas, Pacific Film Archive)
I hadn't seen this in over 30 years and it held up shockingly well. The screening featured a conversation with costume designer Aggie Guerard Rodgers, for whom this was a first film. Rodgers shared dozens of anecdotes, my favorite being the great lengths taken to keep Richard Dreyfuss' sweat from bleeding his madras shirt, all in the service of continuity.
Quadrophenia (1979, UK, dir. Franc Roddam, Castro Theatre)
The experience of seeing this San Francisco International Film Festival late-show presentation of The Who's second filmed rock opera began while waiting in line, with two dozen motor-scooters with costumed riders pulling up in front of the Castro Theatre. During the screening, drunk and unruly wanna-be Mods and Rockers cheered and hurled insults at each, while others sang along to The Who's anthems. The new, pristine 35mm print was being projected for only the third time, and the highlight, as it was when I first saw the film 33 years ago, was Sting's nearly wordless, uber-cool performance as the king of the Mods.
Underworld USA (1961, USA, dir Sam Fuller, Castro Theatre)
I was lucky enough to catch all but one of the 26 flicks on offer at 2012's Noir City. Most were pretty darn fabulous, but this gritty revenge tale starring Cliff Robertson managed to stand out. Other highlights included the inane slapstick of Frank Tashlin-scripted The Good Humor Man, the slatternly haughtiness of Beverly Michaels in Pickup and the Angie Dickinson double bill of The Killers and Point Blank (with Dickinson herself on-stage in conversation with Eddie Muller).
Animal Crackers (1930, USA, dir. Victor Heerman, Castro Theatre)
Monkey Business (1931, USA, dir. Norman Z. McLeod, Castro Theatre)
Horse Feathers (1932, USA, dir. Norman Z. McLeod, Castro Theatre)
There were plenty of terrific revivals going on at the Castro outside the realm of 2012's film festivals, including this revelatory triple bill of the Marx Brothers' second, third and fourth features – and all for the price of one movie. Another memorable 3-way for the budget conscious was a Saturday marathon of Wong Kar-wai's Days of Being Wild, In the Mood for Love and 2046.
Possession (1981, France/West Germany, dir. Andrzej Zulawski, Castro Theatre)
The Tenant (1976, France, dir. Roman Polanski, Castro Theatre)
More love for the Castro Theatre, this time for their inspired double bills, and in particular this Isabelle Adjani creep-fest with gorgeous 35mm prints which looked like they'd been struck yesterday. I was also thrilled to partake in 2012 double bills of Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and 2, and Boogie Nights with Pulp Fiction.
The Cheat (1931, USA, dir. George Abbott, Roxie Theater)
As a Tallulah Bankhead obsessive, this was of course my favorite of the eight films I caught during programmer Elliot Lavine's springtime pre-code series, "Hollywood Before the Code: Nasty-Ass Films For a Nasty-Ass World." Another highlight was finally getting to see the "Sweet Marijuana" production number from Mitchell Leisen's très risqué 1934 flick, Murder at the Vanities, complete with bare-breasted chorines posing as singing cactus flowers.
Come Back Africa (1959, USA, dir. Lionel Rogosin, Roxie Theater)
Seeing and hearing Miriam Makeba sing two songs in an intimate living-room setting was the high point of this film about one black man's struggles in apartheid-era South Africa. The screening I attended was followed by a live performance by the Vukani Mawethu Choir, who sang a selection of South African freedom songs. Talk about your value-added in-cinema experience! Other memorable 2012 revivals at the Roxie include Shirley Clarke's The Connection and 60's live-concert movie, The Big T.N.T. Show.
The Docks of New York (1928, USA, dir. Josef Von Sternberg, Castro Theatre)
Last, but certainly not least was this utterly exquisite love story set in a shabby waterfront saloon, my favorite of the 15 programs I saw at this year's better-than-ever San Francisco Silent Film Festival. There wasn't a single dud in this year's line-up, although I regret having to miss the Alloy Orchestra accompany The Overcoat, due to the REALLY late start time of the festival's Centerpiece Film, Pandora's Box. Other standouts included my first exposure to Pola Negri in The Spanish Dancer, the beautiful heartbreak of The Wonderful Lie of Nina Petrovna, the dashing antics of Douglas Fairbanks in The Mark of Zorro and of course, Buster Keaton in the closing night film, The Cameraman.
The San Francisco Film Society (SFFS) reaches the mid-point of its 2012 Fall Season Wednesday night with their fifth annual French Cinema Now (FCN) series. The line-up for this year's seven day, 10-film celebration could be summarized thusly: three crowd-pleasers, five feature directorial debuts and two new works from a pair of arthouse notables. Here's a closer look at what's in store at Landmark's Embarcadero Center Cinema from October 24 to 30.
FCN 2012 keeps it light on opening night with Noémie Lvovsky's Camille Rewinds, a comedy that puts a time-traveling French spin on Coppola's Peggy Sue Got Married. While Lvovsky has directed six features going back to 1994's Oublie-moi, Camille Rewinds represents her first effort as both director and star. Lvovsky the actress is best known stateside for her remarkable supporting roles, of which we've seen plenty in recent months. She appeared in three films at the 2012 San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF) (Guilty, 17 Girls and Farewell, My Queen) and played the bordello madam in House of Tolerance, which SFFS screened this summer. Camille Rewinds premiered in Director's Fortnight at Cannes and won that sidebar's SACD Prize for best screenplay, which was co-written by Lvovsky. Reviews have been generally kind, with warm praise for the film's winning performances and 1980's art direction. Jean-Pierre Léaud and Mathieu Amalric appear in cameos and Yolande Moreau (Séraphine) plays Camille's mother. Noémie Lvovsky is expected to attend FCN opening night.
Last year's FCN opened with the delightful Copacabana, starring Isabelle Huppert as a middle-aged hippie-chick getting serious about life. She's in comic mode again with My Worst Nightmare, a new film by Anne Fontaine (Coco Before Chanel), this time playing a snooty art gallery owner who gets turned around by a randy handyman. While I'd willingly watch Huppert recite the proverbial phone directory, reviews for this outing give pause. From Robert Koehler's dismissive, two-paragraph Variety review: "Trucking in the standard situation of an uptight, bourgeois woman letting go around a lusty, clownish working-class man, pic is dated, clunky, indifferently staged and markedly unfunny. It's not all that commercial, either, though it tries so hard to be." Ouch. My Worst Nightmare began its US theatrical run in NYC this past weekend – Bay area audiences must wait until Xmas – and the NY Times' Stephen Holden joined the pile-on, adding that the film's "one joke…yields steadily diminishing returns." Only Lisa Nesselson at Screen Daily offers encouragement: "Huppert, of course, can do control freak narcissism and insensitive bitchery in her sleep and (Benoît) Poelvoorde can personify boorish bonhomie with his eyes closed. But both actors find new riches in stock characters, making them more like real people and less like the caricatures they arguably are." I refuse to believe this won't be some kind of fun.
FCN's third unabashed crowd-pleaser, Stéphane Robelin's All Together, also began its U.S. theatrical run in NYC this weekend and received kinder notices. This dramedy closed the 2011 Locarno Film Festival and concerns five aging, 70-something friends who decide to live out their sunset years under the same roof. Jane Fonda and Geraldine Chaplin make up two-fifths of the quintet, and anthropology student Daniel Bruehl becomes a sixth roommate when he chooses senior communal living as his thesis subject. Variety's Leslie Felperin praises the film's "unfussy, ribald briskness that's characteristic of middlebrow-in-a-good-way Gallic films" and the NY Times' Stephen Holden liked how this "agreeably chipper comedy steers a careful middle ground between sentimentality and farce." This is Fonda's first French-speaking role since Godard's 1972 Tout va bien and I for one am looking forward to hearing her yammer away in American-accented French for 96 minutes.
As I've already mentioned, an unprecedented 50 percent of this year's FCN offerings come from debut feature directors, which would be of concern if it weren't for the festival's track record on spotlighting terrific new talent. (Last year's hilarious Bachelor Days are Over, for example, turned out to be one of my top films of 2011). Sharing opening night honors with Camille Rewinds this year is Djinn Carrénard's Donoma, which won the prestigious Louis Delluc Prize for a first film and was purportedly made on a budget of 150 euros. The Hollywood Reporter's Jordan Mintzer describes the film as lying "somewhere between mumblecore, Cassavettes and Abdellatif Kechiche (Secret of the Grain)" as it "follows the amorous entanglements of various young Parisians – many of non-French origin – as they cope with issues of class, religion and identity in the less-traveled byways of the City of Light." The semi-improvised, 136-minute film is said to be full of long takes, tight close-ups and dialogue so infused with slang it was released in French cinemas with subtitles. So even if you parler français couramment, expect to do a bit of reading.
Director Guillaume Brac still hasn't made his narrative feature debut because his A World Without Women is only 54-minutes long, and is therefore technically a short. Set in a seaside resort town in Northern France, the film follows the exploits of a 30-something schlub named Sylvain as he and his best friend flirt with a vacationing mother and daughter (the latter played by Constance Rousseau, who made her memorable debut in Mia Hansen-Løve's All is Forgiven). The only English-language write-up I could find for the movie was a capsule description for Montreal's Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, which called it "a comedy of gallant seduction" with "magnificent acting" and "a freshness and urgency that calls to mind the films of Jacques Rozier." As someone who fondly recalls the Rozier retrospective that graced 2001's SFIFF, I'm sold right there. When A World Without Women was released in French cinemas, it was double-billed with Brac's previous 24-minute short, Stranded, which also features the character of Sylvain (again played by actor Vincent Macaigne). That's how it will be exhibited at FCN as well.
What would a French film festival be without a heartbreaking portrait of a poor soul struggling on the margins of society? (…he asks without condescension or derision). Louise Wimmer reps the narrative feature debut of documentary filmmaker Cyril Mennegun, heretofore known as the director of 2005's Tahar, the doc which profiled a then-penniless student and future star of A Prohpet, actor Tahar Rahim. In Louise Wimmer, TV actress Corrine Masiero gives a critically acclaimed performance as a proud woman who lives in her car, works at menial jobs and battles to secure herself an apartment in public housing. The film, which premiered in the Critics Week sidebar at Venice last year, is described in most reviews as being "Dardenne-esqe," which I'll take as a good sign. I'm particularly intrigued to hear that the music soundtrack largely consists of Nina Simone's "Sinnerman," which plays from a cassette that is permanently jammed in Louise's car stereo.
The two remaining FCN entries from tyro helmers – pardon my Variety-ese – are Elie Wajeman's Aliyah and François Pirot's Mobile Home. The former earned glowing reviews when it premiered in Cannes' Director's Fortnight, and is the story of a Jewish Parisian drug dealer who contemplates a move to Israel as a means to escape his troubled life. The lead role of Alex is played by Pio Marmaï, who impressed as the criminally seductive lothario in Living on Love Alone (SFIFF 2011). He's supported by director Cédric Kahn (Red Lights), making his second-ever on-screen appearance as Alex's mooch of an older brother. Critics appeared less enthusiastic about Pirot's gently comic Mobile Home, in which two immature best friends hit the road in rural Belgium. Reviews run the gamut from "whisper thin" to "pleasantly respectable" to "moderately watchable," although all praise the genial lead performances. Pirot, who is scheduled to attend FCN, is known for the scripts he co-wrote for a pair of Joachim Lafosse-directed pervy psycho-dramas (Private Property and Private Lessons). Personally, I wish the festival was bringing us Lafosse's Our Children¸ a prolicide-themed drama starring Émilie Dequenne (Rosetta) and Tahar Rahim, which received unanimous rave reviews at Cannes and is now Belgium's Oscar® submission.
"Maddening, pretentious, hypnotic and transcendent in roughly equal measure."
"At once utterly direct and infuriatingly opaque."
"Slow cinema at its rawest and most austerely uncommunicative."
Such pronouncements could only have been lifted from the reviews of one filmmaker, Bruno Dumont, arguably the only auteur represented in this year's FCN line-up. One and a half years after its Cannes premiere in Un Certain Regard, his sixth and latest feature Hors Satan is finally coming to the Bay Area, as did its two predecessors, courtesy of the SFFS. To be honest, I haven't really cared for a Dumont film since 1999's Humanité (although Twentynine Palms was great for a laugh), but his vision remains so compellingly singular that I wouldn't dream of not seeing where he's taken it next, given the opportunity. It's interesting to note that in 2012, a year signified by the death of 35mm film exhibition, Hors Satan will be the only FCN film screened in that beloved format (at least according to the Film On Film Foundation's Bay Area calendar). Compare that to last year's festival, where only three out of eleven movies were digitally projected.
Alas, time marches on and so-called "progress" prevails. Even Agnés Godard, whom many consider Europe's greatest living cinematographer, has done the digital deed with FCN's closing night film, Ursula Meier's Sister. The results are pretty damn impressive, or at least they were at a press screening I caught at San Francisco's Variety Screening Room. (Godard talks about the experience of shooting digital in a recent NY Times profile). Sister is Meier's awaited follow-up to Home, a delightfully weird fable about a family living spitting distance away from a super-highway. While that film's final act disappointingly descended into aimless absurdist melodrama, her latest is rock solid and reality grounded. Kacey Mottet Klein, who played the rambunctious kid in Home, is now a cagey 12-year-old thief named Simon who steals and re-sells expensive ski equipment from a luxurious mountain resort. He does it to support his aimless and slighter trashy older sister, played by Léa Seydoux (last seen here as Marie Antoinette's reader in Farewell, My Queen). In the many ski gondola trips Simon takes to and from "work" each day, Meier and Godard make magnificent metaphorical use of the physical space separating the high altitude haves of the ski resort and the have-nots living in the dingy town below. X-Filers take note – Gillian Anderson has a significant supporting role as a foreign tourist. Meier is expected to attend FCN's closing night and anyone who experienced her generous, forthcoming Q&A for Home at the 2009 SFIFF knows this isn't to be missed. Sister is also scheduled to open at the Sundance Kabuki on November 9.
Cross published on The Evening Class.
The 35th Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF35) opens this Thursday night and for my money, it's the best line-up they've had since I began paying attention in 2004. That's the year auto-less me anxiously boarded my first Golden Gate Transit bus and headed north for a do-or-die MVFF screening of Ousmane Sembene's Moolaadé. What excites me about 2012's lineup is the presence of fewer unknown "discoveries" and post-Toronto "prestige" movies and a lot more of the noisemakers from top 2012 festivals like Cannes and Berlin. Meanwhile, MVFF's eye-popping list of expected festival guests continues to have no equal in Northern California, with this year's red carpet getting stepped on by the likes of Dustin Hoffman, Ben Affleck, Ken Burns, Billy Bob Thornton, Ang Lee, Walter Salles, Mira Nair, John Hawkes, Helen Hunt, David O. Russell, Bradley Cooper, Martin McDonagh, Sam Rockwell and Allison Anders.
So let's begin this line-up overview with Cannes. Whereas past MVFF editions have featured one or two films from Cannes' main competition, this year boasts a whopping seven, including many of the prize winners. Taking it from the top, you've got Michael Haneke's Palme d'Or-winning Amour (a late entry you won't find in the fest catalog) and Reality, Matteo Garrone's second consecutive film to earn Cannes' Grand Prix (following 2008's Gomorrah). Then there's Beyond the Hills, Cristian Mungiu's follow-up to 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, which copped prizes for its screenplay and lead actresses. MVFF35's co-opening night film will be Walter Salles' screen adaptation of Jack Kerouac's On the Road, said to have been considerably re-edited since its Cannes world premiere. Master Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami is represented by his latest, the Japan-set Like Someone in Love, and Holy Motors is the first feature film in 13 years from outré French director Leos Carax. The latter is said to be wonderfully weird and a possible career-high for Carax.
The only one of the seven I've previewed (on DVD screener, as with all MVFF35 films sampled) is Hong Sang-soo's In Another Country. For years I found Hong's films obnoxious, but the relative mellow-ness of recent works like Hahaha and The Day He Arrives has brought me around. In Another Country has the added bonus of starring my favorite game-for-anything actress, Isabelle Huppert, playing three different French women in three interlocked stories, all set in the same South Korean beach town. Seeing Huppert operate within Hong's insular world is charmingly incongruous, as she's three times pursued by a hunky young lifeguard and three times drunk on soju – this being a Hong Sang-soo film. Now the question is, which brave Bay Area programmer will bring us 2012's other Huppert-starring Asian film, Brilliante Mendoza's Captive, which bowed at Berlin?
While Captive may elude us for the moment, a number of films from the Berlin Film Festival have made it to MVFF35, including a boatload of prize winners. Veteran Italian directors Paolo and Vittorio Taviani (The Night of the Shooting Stars, Padre Padrone) won the fest's top award, the Golden Bear, for Caesar Must Die, a stylized documentary in which maximum security prisoners stage a production of "Julius Caesar." The film I'm anticipating more than any other in the festival is Miguel Gomes' Tabu, which took Berlin's FIPRESCI Prize and the prestigious Alfred Bauer Award (given to a movie which "opens new perspectives in film art.") I was wowed the Portuguese director's previous effort, Our Beloved Month of August, and by all accounts Tabu is said to be even more amazing.
Berlin's Best Actress prize went to newcomer Rachel Mwanza for her riveting performance as an African child soldier in Kim Nguyen's War Witch. Mwanza is in virtually every frame of this haunting and brutal (but not unbearably so) road movie, which begins with an act of forced parricide and ends with a poignant return home. War Witch also won prizes at Tribeca for Best Narrative Feature and Best Actress, and was just announced as Canada's Foreign Language Film submission for the Oscars®. A second worthy Africa-set film I previewed from Berlin's competition is Tey, a poetic and disquieting allegory about mortality from French-Senegalese director Alain Gomis.
Perhaps it was just lowered expectations, but I was quite charmed by Billy Bob Thornton's Jayne Mansfield's Car, which garnered very mixed reviews at Berlin. Thornton, who plays a soul-damaged WWII vet, will be at MVFF35 for an on-stage interview and screening of this movie he directed and co-wrote. Set in 1969 Alabama, it co-stars Robert Duvall as an 
irascible Southern patriarch whose recently deceased ex-wife is returning home for burial, with her "new" British family in tow. The film's highlight is a delightfully kinky relationship that evolves between Thornton and a British relative (a lovely performance by Frances O'Connor). I promise you'll never think of Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade" in the same way again. The rest of the cast is a treat, from Kevin Bacon's aging hippie and Katherine LaNasa's Southern sexpot housewife, to John Hurt as Duvall's Brit counterpart. Regrettably, things take a nosedive in the final act – or should I say drive under a tractor-trailer – with a chain of mawkish and clunky resolutions. When Duvall drinks the LSD-spiked iced tea, you may consider it your cue to leave.
Perhaps my biggest beef about Bay Area film programming is the lack of attention paid Latin American cinema, or at least the Latin American films deemed significant by international critics and festival juries. Could it really be that no local programmer considered it important to bring us Post Mortem, Pablo Larraín's acclaimed follow-up to Tony Manero (thankfully now available to stream on Netflix)? Or Pablo Giorgelli's intimate and heartbreaking Las Acacias, which won Cannes' 2011 Camera d'or for best first feature? Or in genre-crazy San Francisco, Alejandro Brugués' much-discussed Cuban political zombie flick, Juan of the Dead? I could go on and on, but for now I'll simply extend deserved kudos to MVFF35 for its fine selection of Latin American films, four of which I've previewed.
The must-see from the region is unquestionably Antonio Méndez Esparza's Here and There, which earned the top prize in Cannes' Critics Week sidebar. Set in a Mexican mountain village, this is a lyrical and melancholic document of a musician's time spent with family in between stints of working in El Norte. I was also taken by Dominga Sotomayor's quietly observed Thursday Till Sunday, in which a couple on the verge of breakup take a road trip with their kids to Chile's barren north. The film was co-winner of this year's Tiger Award at Rotterdam and its memorable cinematography is by one of South America's most accomplished DPs, Bárbara Álvarez (Whiskey, The Headless Woman). From Chile there's also Andrés Wood's Violeta Went to Heaven, a freewheeling biopic about Violeta Parra, the volatile and contradictory singer/composer/artist and national 
treasure who lived a fabulously messy life up until her 1967 suicide at age 50. Outside of Chile she's best known as the composer of "Gracias a la Vida," which curiously isn't heard until the end credits. The film won the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema at Sundance this year and was also Chile's 2011 Oscar® submission. Another MVFF35 biopic is Cao Hamburger's Xingu, a straightforward drama about Brazil's Villas-Boas brothers and their decades-long struggle to establish a permanent homeland for indigenous peoples. While the film lacks artistic vision, it has heart and ably compensates with extremely high production values. During the festival proper, I'm hoping to catch the latest from favorite Argentine director Daniel Burman (All In) and a provocative-sounding Mexican entry, Kai Parlange's Richness of Internal Space.
As mentioned earlier, MVFF35 is a bit lighter in post-Toronto, Awards Season bait this year, but not by much. Along with On the Road, the festival opens Thursday with David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook, which won Toronto's People's Choice Award. Conversely, Toronto's opening night film, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, will screen as part of a MVFF Tribute to its director, Mira Nair. From actor/director Ben Affleck comes Argo, his well-reviewed thriller set during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. Director Martin McDonagh follows 2008's massively popular In Bruges with an all-star cast of Seven Psychopaths. Sitting atop MVFF35's totem pole of celebrity guests is Dustin Hoffman, who'll receive the festival's 35th Anniversary Award in a tribute that will include career clips, a conversation with 
Variety's Steven Gaydos and a screening of Hoffman's directorial debut Quartet, starring Maggie Smith. Which is not to be confused with A Late Quartet, an 11th hour MVFF addition about the inner feuding of a long-established string quartet (with a fun-sounding cast that includes Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken and Catherine Keener). Also screening direct from Toronto, albeit without an appearance from its director or stars is Juan Antonio Bayona's tsunami drama, The Impossible, with Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor.
Two other major MVFF35 events warrant special mention. Actor John Hawkes will be on hand for a MVFF Spotlight tribute, accompanied by a screening of The Sesssions. Titled The Surrogate when it premiered at Sundance, the film won that festival's Audience Award for best U.S. drama and a special jury prize for ensemble acting. Hawkes stars as Berkeley writer Mark O'Brien, a man confined to an iron lung who seeks the help of a sex surrogate. (O'Brien was also the subject of Jessica Yu's 1996 Oscar®-winning documentary short, Breathing Lessons). The surrogate is played by Helen Hunt, who will be at the screening along with director/screenwriter Ben Lewin. On October 14, MVFF35 comes to a close with Ang Lee's much anticipated Life of Pi, fresh from its world premiere as the New York Film Festival's opening night selection.
Documentaries remain an important part of MVFF, as the two dozen selections in this year's Valley of the Docs sidebar attest. The one I'm most anticipating is Ken Burns' The Central Park Five, which concerns the five youths of color wrongly convicted of the 1989 "wilding" assault on a white female jogger. While most of the festival's docs seem focused on political and environmental issues, a number are aimed squarely at music fans. The most popular is certain to be In Your Dreams – Stevie Nicks, for which the ex-Fleetwood Mac singer is expected to make a personal appearance. Others include looks at guitarist John Fahey (In Search of Blind Joe Death: The Saga of John Fahey), singer Tony Bennett (The Zen of Bennett) and a valentine to Mill Valley's own beloved and legendary record store, Village Music (Village Music: The Last of the Great Record Stores).
While it would be impossible to mention all of the nearly 100 feature films in this year's festival, here are a final half dozen that caught my eye. Three appear on the recently compiled list of 2012 Foreign Language Academy Award submissions. Iceland has nominated The Deep, from that country's most celebrated director Baltasar Kormákur (101 Reykjavik, Jar City). Kormákur is expected to attend the festival and I'm disappointed that I can't make it to either screening. Nikolaj Arcel's A Royal Affair, a piece of 18th century political intrigue starring Mads Mikkelsen, will be the Oscar® submission from Denmark, and Australia has nominated Cate Shortland's Lore, a drama set in post-WWII Germany. Another promising Australian film is Wayne Blair's The Sapphires, based on a true story 
about a 1960's Aboriginal girl group who performed for U.S. troops in Viet Nam. In Gilles Bourdos' Renoir, veteran actor Michel Bouquet plays painter Pierre-Auguste, and one of my favorite young French actors, Vincent Rottiers portrays his filmmaker-to-be son Jean. The story is set on the French Riviera during WWI and cinematography is by the incomparable Mark Lee Ping-bing. Lastly, I'm completely unfamiliar with the works of French actor/writer/director/comic Pierre Étaix and am grateful that MVFF35 is presenting a revival of his 1965 film, Yoyo, in a newly restored 35mm print from Janus Films.
Cross published on The Evening Class.
Amongst the narrative features I did not get to preview, I'm most anxious to catch Davide Manuli's The Legend of Kaspar Hauser. Vincent Gallo plays two roles in this surreal, B&W Italian "techno-western" which reimagines the classic 19th century foundling story. The festival kicks off with Michel Gondry's latest, The We and the I, which also opened Cannes' Director's Fortnight sidebar last year to mixed reviews. The film follows a group of Brooklyn teenagers (all played by non-pros) as they ride the bus home on the last day of school. The trailer resembles many insufferable weekday afternoons I've spent riding MUNI. Closing Indiefest 2013 will be a new work from prolific Mumblecore pioneer Joe Swanberg (LOL, Hannah Takes the Stairs). All the Light in the Sky stars Jane Adams (Happiness, Hung) and both she and 
Swanberg are expected to be in attendance. (The film reappears at the Roxie as part of a three-day, 12-film Joe Swanberg retrospective from February 22 to 24.) Other narrative features perhaps worth considering include Ghosts with Shit Jobs (a dystopian faux-doc in which six Caucasian slum dwellers find themselves subservient to the Asian new world order), The Last Elvis (about a delusional Argentine Presley impersonator from director Armando Bo, who co-wrote the script for Alejandro González Iñárritu's Biutiful), and Simon Killer, a controversial new film from the gang that produced Martha Marcy May Marlene.
FCN 2012 keeps it light on opening night with Noémie Lvovsky's Camille Rewinds, a comedy that puts a time-traveling French spin on Coppola's Peggy Sue Got Married. While Lvovsky has directed six features going back to 1994's Oublie-moi, Camille Rewinds represents her first effort as both director and star. Lvovsky the actress is best known stateside for her remarkable supporting roles, of which we've seen plenty in recent months. She appeared in three films at the 2012 San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF) (Guilty, 17 Girls and Farewell, My Queen) and played the bordello madam in House of Tolerance, which SFFS screened this summer. Camille Rewinds premiered in Director's Fortnight at Cannes and won that sidebar's SACD Prize for best screenplay, which was co-written by Lvovsky. Reviews have been generally kind, with warm praise for the film's winning performances and 1980's art direction. Jean-Pierre Léaud and Mathieu Amalric appear in cameos and Yolande Moreau (Séraphine) plays Camille's mother. Noémie Lvovsky is expected to attend FCN opening night.
Last year's FCN opened with the delightful Copacabana, starring Isabelle Huppert as a middle-aged hippie-chick getting serious about life. She's in comic mode again with My Worst Nightmare, a new film by Anne Fontaine (Coco Before Chanel), this time playing a snooty art gallery owner who gets turned around by a randy handyman. While I'd willingly watch Huppert recite the proverbial phone directory, reviews for this outing give pause. From Robert Koehler's dismissive, two-paragraph Variety review: "Trucking in the standard situation of an uptight, bourgeois woman letting go around a lusty, clownish working-class man, pic is dated, clunky, indifferently staged and markedly unfunny. It's not all that commercial, either, though it tries so hard to be." Ouch. My Worst Nightmare began its US theatrical run in NYC this past weekend – Bay area audiences must wait until Xmas – and the NY Times' Stephen Holden joined the pile-on, adding that the film's "one joke…yields steadily diminishing returns." Only Lisa Nesselson at Screen Daily offers encouragement: "Huppert, of course, can do control freak narcissism and insensitive bitchery in her sleep and (Benoît) Poelvoorde can personify boorish bonhomie with his eyes closed. But both actors find new riches in stock characters, making them more like real people and less like the caricatures they arguably are." I refuse to believe this won't be some kind of fun.
FCN's third unabashed crowd-pleaser, Stéphane Robelin's All Together, also began its U.S. theatrical run in NYC this weekend and received kinder notices. This dramedy closed the 2011 Locarno Film Festival and concerns five aging, 70-something friends who decide to live out their sunset years under the same roof. Jane Fonda and Geraldine Chaplin make up two-fifths of the quintet, and anthropology student Daniel Bruehl becomes a sixth roommate when he chooses senior communal living as his thesis subject. Variety's Leslie Felperin praises the film's "unfussy, ribald briskness that's characteristic of middlebrow-in-a-good-way Gallic films" and the NY Times' Stephen Holden liked how this "agreeably chipper comedy steers a careful middle ground between sentimentality and farce." This is Fonda's first French-speaking role since Godard's 1972 Tout va bien and I for one am looking forward to hearing her yammer away in American-accented French for 96 minutes.
As I've already mentioned, an unprecedented 50 percent of this year's FCN offerings come from debut feature directors, which would be of concern if it weren't for the festival's track record on spotlighting terrific new talent. (Last year's hilarious Bachelor Days are Over, for example, turned out to be one of my top films of 2011). Sharing opening night honors with Camille Rewinds this year is Djinn Carrénard's Donoma, which won the prestigious Louis Delluc Prize for a first film and was purportedly made on a budget of 150 euros. The Hollywood Reporter's Jordan Mintzer describes the film as lying "somewhere between mumblecore, Cassavettes and Abdellatif Kechiche (Secret of the Grain)" as it "follows the amorous entanglements of various young Parisians – many of non-French origin – as they cope with issues of class, religion and identity in the less-traveled byways of the City of Light." The semi-improvised, 136-minute film is said to be full of long takes, tight close-ups and dialogue so infused with slang it was released in French cinemas with subtitles. So even if you parler français couramment, expect to do a bit of reading.
Director Guillaume Brac still hasn't made his narrative feature debut because his A World Without Women is only 54-minutes long, and is therefore technically a short. Set in a seaside resort town in Northern France, the film follows the exploits of a 30-something schlub named Sylvain as he and his best friend flirt with a vacationing mother and daughter (the latter played by Constance Rousseau, who made her memorable debut in Mia Hansen-Løve's All is Forgiven). The only English-language write-up I could find for the movie was a capsule description for Montreal's Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, which called it "a comedy of gallant seduction" with "magnificent acting" and "a freshness and urgency that calls to mind the films of Jacques Rozier." As someone who fondly recalls the Rozier retrospective that graced 2001's SFIFF, I'm sold right there. When A World Without Women was released in French cinemas, it was double-billed with Brac's previous 24-minute short, Stranded, which also features the character of Sylvain (again played by actor Vincent Macaigne). That's how it will be exhibited at FCN as well.
What would a French film festival be without a heartbreaking portrait of a poor soul struggling on the margins of society? (…he asks without condescension or derision). Louise Wimmer reps the narrative feature debut of documentary filmmaker Cyril Mennegun, heretofore known as the director of 2005's Tahar, the doc which profiled a then-penniless student and future star of A Prohpet, actor Tahar Rahim. In Louise Wimmer, TV actress Corrine Masiero gives a critically acclaimed performance as a proud woman who lives in her car, works at menial jobs and battles to secure herself an apartment in public housing. The film, which premiered in the Critics Week sidebar at Venice last year, is described in most reviews as being "Dardenne-esqe," which I'll take as a good sign. I'm particularly intrigued to hear that the music soundtrack largely consists of Nina Simone's "Sinnerman," which plays from a cassette that is permanently jammed in Louise's car stereo.
The two remaining FCN entries from tyro helmers – pardon my Variety-ese – are Elie Wajeman's Aliyah and François Pirot's Mobile Home. The former earned glowing reviews when it premiered in Cannes' Director's Fortnight, and is the story of a Jewish Parisian drug dealer who contemplates a move to Israel as a means to escape his troubled life. The lead role of Alex is played by Pio Marmaï, who impressed as the criminally seductive lothario in Living on Love Alone (SFIFF 2011). He's supported by director Cédric Kahn (Red Lights), making his second-ever on-screen appearance as Alex's mooch of an older brother. Critics appeared less enthusiastic about Pirot's gently comic Mobile Home, in which two immature best friends hit the road in rural Belgium. Reviews run the gamut from "whisper thin" to "pleasantly respectable" to "moderately watchable," although all praise the genial lead performances. Pirot, who is scheduled to attend FCN, is known for the scripts he co-wrote for a pair of Joachim Lafosse-directed pervy psycho-dramas (Private Property and Private Lessons). Personally, I wish the festival was bringing us Lafosse's Our Children¸ a prolicide-themed drama starring Émilie Dequenne (Rosetta) and Tahar Rahim, which received unanimous rave reviews at Cannes and is now Belgium's Oscar® submission.
Alas, time marches on and so-called "progress" prevails. Even Agnés Godard, whom many consider Europe's greatest living cinematographer, has done the digital deed with FCN's closing night film, Ursula Meier's Sister. The results are pretty damn impressive, or at least they were at a press screening I caught at San Francisco's Variety Screening Room. (Godard talks about the experience of shooting digital in a recent NY Times profile). Sister is Meier's awaited follow-up to Home, a delightfully weird fable about a family living spitting distance away from a super-highway. While that film's final act disappointingly descended into aimless absurdist melodrama, her latest is rock solid and reality grounded. Kacey Mottet Klein, who played the rambunctious kid in Home, is now a cagey 12-year-old thief named Simon who steals and re-sells expensive ski equipment from a luxurious mountain resort. He does it to support his aimless and slighter trashy older sister, played by Léa Seydoux (last seen here as Marie Antoinette's reader in Farewell, My Queen). In the many ski gondola trips Simon takes to and from "work" each day, Meier and Godard make magnificent metaphorical use of the physical space separating the high altitude haves of the ski resort and the have-nots living in the dingy town below. X-Filers take note – Gillian Anderson has a significant supporting role as a foreign tourist. Meier is expected to attend FCN's closing night and anyone who experienced her generous, forthcoming Q&A for Home at the 2009 SFIFF knows this isn't to be missed. Sister is also scheduled to open at the Sundance Kabuki on November 9.
The only one of the seven I've previewed (on DVD screener, as with all MVFF35 films sampled) is Hong Sang-soo's In Another Country. For years I found Hong's films obnoxious, but the relative mellow-ness of recent works like Hahaha and The Day He Arrives has brought me around. In Another Country has the added bonus of starring my favorite game-for-anything actress, Isabelle Huppert, playing three different French women in three interlocked stories, all set in the same South Korean beach town. Seeing Huppert operate within Hong's insular world is charmingly incongruous, as she's three times pursued by a hunky young lifeguard and three times drunk on soju – this being a Hong Sang-soo film. Now the question is, which brave Bay Area programmer will bring us 2012's other Huppert-starring Asian film, Brilliante Mendoza's Captive, which bowed at Berlin?
While Captive may elude us for the moment, a number of films from the Berlin Film Festival have made it to MVFF35, including a boatload of prize winners. Veteran Italian directors Paolo and Vittorio Taviani (The Night of the Shooting Stars, Padre Padrone) won the fest's top award, the Golden Bear, for Caesar Must Die, a stylized documentary in which maximum security prisoners stage a production of "Julius Caesar." The film I'm anticipating more than any other in the festival is Miguel Gomes' Tabu, which took Berlin's FIPRESCI Prize and the prestigious Alfred Bauer Award (given to a movie which "opens new perspectives in film art.") I was wowed the Portuguese director's previous effort, Our Beloved Month of August, and by all accounts Tabu is said to be even more amazing.
Berlin's Best Actress prize went to newcomer Rachel Mwanza for her riveting performance as an African child soldier in Kim Nguyen's War Witch. Mwanza is in virtually every frame of this haunting and brutal (but not unbearably so) road movie, which begins with an act of forced parricide and ends with a poignant return home. War Witch also won prizes at Tribeca for Best Narrative Feature and Best Actress, and was just announced as Canada's Foreign Language Film submission for the Oscars®. A second worthy Africa-set film I previewed from Berlin's competition is Tey, a poetic and disquieting allegory about mortality from French-Senegalese director Alain Gomis.
irascible Southern patriarch whose recently deceased ex-wife is returning home for burial, with her "new" British family in tow. The film's highlight is a delightfully kinky relationship that evolves between Thornton and a British relative (a lovely performance by Frances O'Connor). I promise you'll never think of Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade" in the same way again. The rest of the cast is a treat, from Kevin Bacon's aging hippie and Katherine LaNasa's Southern sexpot housewife, to John Hurt as Duvall's Brit counterpart. Regrettably, things take a nosedive in the final act – or should I say drive under a tractor-trailer – with a chain of mawkish and clunky resolutions. When Duvall drinks the LSD-spiked iced tea, you may consider it your cue to leave.
The must-see from the region is unquestionably Antonio Méndez Esparza's Here and There, which earned the top prize in Cannes' Critics Week sidebar. Set in a Mexican mountain village, this is a lyrical and melancholic document of a musician's time spent with family in between stints of working in El Norte. I was also taken by Dominga Sotomayor's quietly observed Thursday Till Sunday, in which a couple on the verge of breakup take a road trip with their kids to Chile's barren north. The film was co-winner of this year's Tiger Award at Rotterdam and its memorable cinematography is by one of South America's most accomplished DPs, Bárbara Álvarez (Whiskey, The Headless Woman). From Chile there's also Andrés Wood's Violeta Went to Heaven, a freewheeling biopic about Violeta Parra, the volatile and contradictory singer/composer/artist and national 
treasure who lived a fabulously messy life up until her 1967 suicide at age 50. Outside of Chile she's best known as the composer of "Gracias a la Vida," which curiously isn't heard until the end credits. The film won the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema at Sundance this year and was also Chile's 2011 Oscar® submission. Another MVFF35 biopic is Cao Hamburger's Xingu, a straightforward drama about Brazil's Villas-Boas brothers and their decades-long struggle to establish a permanent homeland for indigenous peoples. While the film lacks artistic vision, it has heart and ably compensates with extremely high production values. During the festival proper, I'm hoping to catch the latest from favorite Argentine director Daniel Burman (All In) and a provocative-sounding Mexican entry, Kai Parlange's Richness of Internal Space.
As mentioned earlier, MVFF35 is a bit lighter in post-Toronto, Awards Season bait this year, but not by much. Along with On the Road, the festival opens Thursday with David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook, which won Toronto's People's Choice Award. Conversely, Toronto's opening night film, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, will screen as part of a MVFF Tribute to its director, Mira Nair. From actor/director Ben Affleck comes Argo, his well-reviewed thriller set during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. Director Martin McDonagh follows 2008's massively popular In Bruges with an all-star cast of Seven Psychopaths. Sitting atop MVFF35's totem pole of celebrity guests is Dustin Hoffman, who'll receive the festival's 35th Anniversary Award in a tribute that will include career clips, a conversation with 
Variety's Steven Gaydos and a screening of Hoffman's directorial debut Quartet, starring Maggie Smith. Which is not to be confused with A Late Quartet, an 11th hour MVFF addition about the inner feuding of a long-established string quartet (with a fun-sounding cast that includes Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken and Catherine Keener). Also screening direct from Toronto, albeit without an appearance from its director or stars is Juan Antonio Bayona's tsunami drama, The Impossible, with Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor.
Two other major MVFF35 events warrant special mention. Actor John Hawkes will be on hand for a MVFF Spotlight tribute, accompanied by a screening of The Sesssions. Titled The Surrogate when it premiered at Sundance, the film won that festival's Audience Award for best U.S. drama and a special jury prize for ensemble acting. Hawkes stars as Berkeley writer Mark O'Brien, a man confined to an iron lung who seeks the help of a sex surrogate. (O'Brien was also the subject of Jessica Yu's 1996 Oscar®-winning documentary short, Breathing Lessons). The surrogate is played by Helen Hunt, who will be at the screening along with director/screenwriter Ben Lewin. On October 14, MVFF35 comes to a close with Ang Lee's much anticipated Life of Pi, fresh from its world premiere as the New York Film Festival's opening night selection.
Documentaries remain an important part of MVFF, as the two dozen selections in this year's Valley of the Docs sidebar attest. The one I'm most anticipating is Ken Burns' The Central Park Five, which concerns the five youths of color wrongly convicted of the 1989 "wilding" assault on a white female jogger. While most of the festival's docs seem focused on political and environmental issues, a number are aimed squarely at music fans. The most popular is certain to be In Your Dreams – Stevie Nicks, for which the ex-Fleetwood Mac singer is expected to make a personal appearance. Others include looks at guitarist John Fahey (In Search of Blind Joe Death: The Saga of John Fahey), singer Tony Bennett (The Zen of Bennett) and a valentine to Mill Valley's own beloved and legendary record store, Village Music (Village Music: The Last of the Great Record Stores).
While it would be impossible to mention all of the nearly 100 feature films in this year's festival, here are a final half dozen that caught my eye. Three appear on the recently compiled list of 2012 Foreign Language Academy Award submissions. Iceland has nominated The Deep, from that country's most celebrated director Baltasar Kormákur (101 Reykjavik, Jar City). Kormákur is expected to attend the festival and I'm disappointed that I can't make it to either screening. Nikolaj Arcel's A Royal Affair, a piece of 18th century political intrigue starring Mads Mikkelsen, will be the Oscar® submission from Denmark, and Australia has nominated Cate Shortland's Lore, a drama set in post-WWII Germany. Another promising Australian film is Wayne Blair's The Sapphires, based on a true story 
about a 1960's Aboriginal girl group who performed for U.S. troops in Viet Nam. In Gilles Bourdos' Renoir, veteran actor Michel Bouquet plays painter Pierre-Auguste, and one of my favorite young French actors, Vincent Rottiers portrays his filmmaker-to-be son Jean. The story is set on the French Riviera during WWI and cinematography is by the incomparable Mark Lee Ping-bing. Lastly, I'm completely unfamiliar with the works of French actor/writer/director/comic Pierre Étaix and am grateful that MVFF35 is presenting a revival of his 1965 film, Yoyo, in a newly restored 35mm print from Janus Films.
