If there was any question as to the changing face/function of the studio-dependent art house division, the just-announced 2009 New York Film Festival line-up offers compelling proof that the concept of the indie label-as-Oscar bait factory is losing currency. The last two NYFFs featured the US or North American premieres of studio-division-distributed eventual Oscar nominees The Queen, The Wrestler, Happy-Go-Lucky and I’m Not There (as well as red carpet and/or press conference appearances from the likes of Hollywood movie stars such as Nicole Kidman and Angelina Jolie and American cinema stars such as Wes Anderson and Steven Soderbergh). Though the NYFF 2009 lineup is full of films with US distributors, it’s notably lacking in excuses for Oscar campaigns (with the exception of Lee Daniels’ Push, which is hardly a fresh choice — it’s basically played every major festival in the world since winning Sundance, though it was pulled from what should have been its Film Society debut) and, with the exception of Penelope Cruz in Pedro Almodovar’s Broken Embraces, is virtually star-free. I’m not complaining — the kind of film I’m talking about often ranks amongst NYFF’s biggest disappointments — but it does seem like a notable swerve away from business as usual. (And will I *ever* see The Road?)
What the NYFF 2009 lineup lacks in Hollywood-friendly star power, it makes up for in auteur weight. The festival will screen newish films (many first screened at Berlin, Cannes, Venice or Toronto) from Lars Von Trier, Pedro Costa, Jacques Rivette, Alain Resnais, Todd Solondz, Claire Denis, Michael Haneke and more. Cannes favorites Vincere and Police Adjective will be there. Catherine Breillait’s Bluebeard and Maren Ade’s Everyone Else, both missing in action since Berlin, will be there, too. But if NYFF is going to function as a near-year-end best of the fests, there are still some titles that seem noticeably omitted — will *you* ever see Dogtooth?
The full line-up is here.
After Che premiered at the New York Film Festival last week, Glenn Kenny wrote two blog posts in which he criticized anonymous critics for their criticism of Che’s lack of “human drama.” I knew I was implicated in the complaint –– In his first post, Kenny directly quoted a phrase I used in my write-up of the film but didn’t link to said write-up; in the second, he said he found it “exasperating” to see such a complaint from “people who position themselves as new voices, with new perspectives, in cinematic discourse” –– but I didn’t intend to respond. Not only do I stand by my take on the film and have little else to say beyond what I’ve already written, but when somebody criticizes something I write on the internet without linking, that’s basically equivalent to talking behind my back, and I’m usually content to pretend like I don’t know the talk is going on until I’m invited to defend myself.
But over the past few days, as reviews of the film far more considered than my own have started to stack up online, I’ve noticed something that I do think is worth commenting on. …Read more
If the titles of the three films mentioned in the title don’t evoke a sense of anxiety about the present, I’m not sure what will. At the same time, they’re all immensely different films. Fernando Meirelles’s new film, Blindness, opens tonight. Will it replace Children of Men as our favorite recent film about societal collapse?
Karina joins us to talk about one hit and one miss from the New York Film Festival thus far. While Happy-Go-Lucky inspired homicidal thoughts, I’m Gonna Explode did not disappoint.
The financial mayhem of the day made us remember a little known documentary from 2006, In Debt We Trust (which can be viewed for free on SnagFilms.com). We call director Danny Schechter to talk about what’s been going on in the two years since his nearly prophetic film was released.
(Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday)
0:00 - Intro, is the world ending?
3:26 - Blindness
16:00 - Karina reports from the New York Film Festival on Happy-Go-Lucky and I’m Gonna Explode
23:52 - In Debt We Trust, Danny Schecter interview
filmcouch-90
Darren Aronofky’s handheld camera follows Mickey Rourke from behind for the first several scenes of The Wrestler. It’s apparently impossible for contemporary directors to use this technique without someone suggesting that they ripped it from a Dardenne film, but its use in The Wrestler feels very different from its use in, say, L’Enfant: it doesn’t produce the same sense of a tension that could break if the camera ever allowed its subject to get too far away. In fact, several times, the camera just stops while Rourke keeps moving, allowing us to appreciate the full physicality of the actor’s performance long before we ever see his face. There must be a cerebral component to the way Rourke approached becoming aging wrestler Randy “The Ram” Robinson, because otherwise I doubt he’d have been able to so deftly navigate the character’s expansive emotional arc while still nailing all the jokes. But this performance goes way beyond the brain, or the precision with which Rourke transformed his appearance, or even the naturalism with which he performs the wrestling choreography. This is a performance that seems to start and end in the cardiovascular system, making everything Rourke actually does seem effortless. As if he’s just breathing it.
A wrestling superstar in the 80s (famous enough, at his peak, to have his own 8-bit representation jumping off the ropes in a Nintendo game), 20 years later Randy is barely holding it together, sleeping in a van when his trailer is padlocked for failure to pay rent, unloading boxes at a supermarket to make the cash from small-time meets stretch to cover his bleach, tanning and human growth hormone habits. Randy remains fiercely committed to the sport, even though his body’s not what it used to be, and even though the sport –– at least on a mainstream, big-money level –– no longer has much interest in him. With the 20th anniversary coming up of Randy’s biggest fight, a face-off with an Iranian flag-waving wrestler by the name of The Ayatollah, Randy’s producer approaches him with “two words: Re. Match.” This gives Randy something to work on other than the hot-and-cold affections of aging stripper Pam (Marisa Tomei), but when a particularly intense fight results in serious injury, Randy has to turn off autopilot and reevaluate his options.
That this all manages, for the most part, to avoid sports film fall-rise cliches and veer into unexpected directions whilst exploring a wide range of feeling, is a minor miracle. It’s a cliche to say that Rourke’s performance is “fearless” but, well, it is. But it only works as well as it does because of the economy of The Wrestler’s construction, and the stealthiness of Aronofsky’s craft.
…Read more
I’ve been sitting here for two hours trying to figure out how to shoehorn press conference quotes into a review of The Wrestler, the NYFF closing night film which screened for the press this morning. But Stu at Defamer already beat me to posting the money quotes from star Mickey Rourke. Here’s the part that I planned to use to great dramatic effect, which Rourke spat out in response to the last question of the session, all the while gesticulating with what appeared to be a half-smoked, unlit cigarillo:
“I mean, if I knew it would take me 15 years to get back in the saddle and work again because of the way I handled things, I really would have handled things differently,” he told the crowd. “I just didn’t have the tools. I’m doing things differently this time around — understanding what it is to be a professional, be responsible and to be consistent. Those are things that weren’t in my vocabulary back then. Change for me didn’t come easy; I didn’t wanna change until I lost everything until I realized that you better change, or, you know, blow your fucking brains out. Either you change and go on with life, or you’re just a piece of shit.”
The film finds interesting ways to invert that life lesson. More in a bit. In the meantime, you can read Stu’s full report here.
Voy a Explotar (I’m Gonna Explode) is the contemporary Mexican teenage Pierrot le Fou. It knows this, and it wants you to know it, and it doesn’t care if this makes you hate it on principle. The third feature by Gerardo Naranjo (director of Drama/Mex, co-writer and star of Azazel Jacobs’ The GoodTimeskid), it’s the rare love letter to influence that’s infused with enough personal style and sentiment to transform the stolen into something thrilling and moving.
15 year-old Maru (Maria Deschamps) is a prep school bad girl with a mangy mane of hair and, apparently, a drinking problem. When Roman (Juan Pablo de Santiago), the spoiled little rich boy son of a right-wing politician gets kicked out of his school and introduces himself at Maru’s suburban Mexico school via faking his own hanging at a talent show, the girl is instantly besotted. “He exists, but I also made him up,” she writes in a letter to a friend which doubles as internal monologue. “The best part is that he’s angry.” Roman is equally smitten, and soon the pair are scheming to run away together.
Or so they want their parents to think; really, they’re camped out in a tent on the roof of Roman’s father’s mansion. Maru’s hysterical mother and sister come over to the house to become part of the rescue effort––which, under the oversight of Roman’s distant dad, consists mainly of drinking tequila and waiting for clues to come to him. With a stolen cell phone, Roman calls daddy’s security detail with false leads to get the grown ups out of the house so that he and Maru can crawl downstairs and collect provisions. It’s only when the pair decide to finally really leave home that their saga starts to hew to the traditional tropes of love-on-the-run.
…Read more
You can’t say that Steven Soderbergh’s Che isn’t beautifully shot and scored. You can’t say that Benicio Del Toro doesn’t give himself completely to the title role. You can’t say that it’s not an extremely daring piece of cinema –– in fact, it takes incredible balls to make a film this long, this wonky, while giving the audience this little to actually care about. In four-plus hours, across which Del Toro transforms from mild-mannered 20-something physician to dutiful soldier to full-on disciplinarian bad ass, then pops up in Bolivia after Intermission as a crazed, wheezing optimist who leads a doomed mission fueled purely by his unshakable faith that past glories are repeatable, Soderbergh manages to show an almost complete lack of concern for the inner life of his protagonist. If the traditional biopic is felled by forced emotional touchpoints that exaggerate or misrepresent their real-life equivalents, Che has the opposite problem: in producing a versimilar portrait of two temporally disconnected chunks of Che’s public life, Soderbergh has made a movie called Che that tells us nothing about Che, which largely relies on that lovely cinematography and dynamic score to fill in the emotional beats that the director hasn’t brought out of the material.
Soderbergh, who showed up to today’s post-NYFF screening press conference wearing a scruffy Che-reminiscent beard, admitted that he began working on the film (he and Del Toro started discussing the project in 2000) long before he managed to define his attraction to his subject. “Sometimes you say yes, and you’re not sure why you said yes,” the director said. “I went in with more of an idea of what I didn’t want to do than what I did want to do.”
“It wasn’t until the films were finished, right around Cannes, that I realized…it was about engagement versus disengagement. Every day in our lives, we’re making decisions. Do we want to participate, or do we want to observe? And I realized that what was compelling to me about Che was that when he decided to engage, he engaged fully.”
If only the same could be said of the filmmaker. …Read more
If the New York Film Festival marks the beginning of fall for local press and industry like a grown-up back to school, the Festival’s annual black tie opening night party at Tavern on the Green (and the ritual afterparty in the West Village) is like the prom. With indie film legends walking around amongst us cinephile nerds. That, of course, is John Waters above. More photos on Flickr.
Yes, there’s a new Eric Rohmer movie, and yes, it’s premiering in New York tonight. How come you didn’t know about it? I don’t know, but I barely knew about it (or at least, about its scheduled premiere), so don’t feel too bad. The Romance of Astree and Celadon screened last year at the Toronto and New York Film Festivals, and then sat on the shelf for awhile until Koch Lorber picked it up; its one-week run at Anthology Film Archives is probably a run up to an impending release on DVD. But as all signs point to this being the 88 year-old French master’s final film, you’ll probably want to take your final chance to see a new Rohmer film on a big screen.
…Read more
If I was Nikki Finke, I’d start this headline with a “TOLDJA!”, but I’m too obsessed with search engine optimization for that.
So as I predicted, Steven Soderbergh’s Che, which has gone MIA since controversially premiering in a two-part, 4.5 hour cut at Cannes, has made the lineup for the Lincoln Center event. Also of note, Darren Aronsofsky’s The Wrestler, which will close the festival.
Otherwise, it’s basically Cannes Redux–giving lie to the whispers that this year’s installment of the French festival was sub par, I guess. Clint Eastwood’s The Changeling will serve as its Centerpiece, and will join a whole ton of Cannes cherry picks, including Gomorrah, Tony Manero, Waltz With Bashir, Serbis, A Headless Woman, A Christmas Tale, 24 City…I could go on for awhile. There’s really only a handful of films which didn’t premiere at Cannes (one of which, I’m Going to Explode, was directed by the star of Azazel Jacobs’ The GoodTimesKid, and also Mike Leigh’s Berlin fave Happy-Go-Lucky). I’ve pasted their titles and synopses after the jump. I guess, refreshingly, there are few slots filled by star-studded indie-arm Oscar bait…but then, there are few indie arms left to fill slots. indieWIRE has the full schedule.
…Read more
What’s going on with Steven Soderbergh’s Che? Heard anything recently? I haven’t seen any hard news published in any half-way reputable outlet since Cannes (aside from this report from IndianTelevision.com that Che will soon premiere on––wait for it––Indian television, but the film’s international release has never been in doubt). But that hasn’t put an end to the speculation.
On June 14, Jeff Wells did a post based on a conversation a friend of his had with some other guy who’s “familiar with the comings and goings of” Wild Bunch, the sales agency who funded Che and have been looking for a buyer for it since Berlin. The gist, as Wells passes it along through the various degrees of distance, is that Wild Bunch has given up trying to sell the current cut to a U.S. distributor, and Soderbergh’s too busy shooting his next movie to worry about refining his cut, and everyone’s just sort of shrugging their shoulders and cutting their losses.
I didn’t come across this story until today, when I finally decided to do some digging on a rumor I heard about the film last month when I was in Las Vegas. …Read more
I first saw Margot at the Wedding, Noah Baumbach’s follow-up to The Squid and the Whale, in September at Telluride. I generally disliked it, but I vowed to see it again at the New York Film Festival and, if my opinion had changed, update my original review. If anything, the second viewing solidified many of my initial, negative feelings about the movie, but I did gain deeper respect for the performances, particularly that of Nicole Kidman, who creates a magnificent villain with a vivid backstory, despite the fact that Baumbach gives her very little to work towards. I’ve updated my review to include some thoughts based on a second viewing; you’ll find the old version here, and the new version after the jump.
…Read more
Noticing a fair amount of thematic overlap amongst the films selected for this year’s New York Film Festival, Filmbrain has created a visual aid, awarding 15 of the Festival’s official selections unhappy faces for their representations of things like divorce, adultery, and daddy issues. The exercise reveals that, amongst the 30-something films on this year’s schedule, not only was there a marked lack of “traditional” romance on display, but the Festival as a whole trafficked in “an almost universally negative (and even cynical) view towards marriage, and a preponderance of infidelity.”
Which causes Filmbrain to wonder:
Is cinematic love, like, so last century? Has that infernal machine on the left coast that continues to pump out one cloying RomCom after another sullied the waters forever? Or are these films a genuine reflection of a post-whatever malaise that has succeeded in driving us apart from one another?
To Filmbrain’s disclaimer that he missed Eric Rohmer’s The Romance of Astree and Celadon, which “sounds like it could have been a genuine love story”––yes, I guess it is. It just comes at through the Shakespeare back door of communication breakdowns ameliorated via cross-dressing.
In her two films at the 2007 New York Film Festival, Asia Argento plays two sexual outlaws, two centuries apart. In Catherine Breillat’s The Last Mistress, she’s a kept woman who can’t keep away from her now-married former lover; in Abel Ferrara’s Go Go Tales, she’s a stripper and a whore. In Ferrara’s film, she cavorts with a wild dog on stage, for cash; in Breillat’s, Argento is the wild dog, in spite of her money and title, and she clutches the head of a tiger while in the throes of orgasm as if to prove it. In both films, Argento is tough and toxic; her body is on display constantly and yet there’s a never a sense that she’s in anything less than total control. In both films, Argento is at once ultra-feminine and masculine, sexy and “scary”, in a way that maybe hasn’t been seen on screen to this extent since the height of Marlene Dietrich.
In fact, The Last Mistress feels very much like a Dietrich film, with various themes and plot threads borrowed from The Blue Angel and Morocco. Breillat’s method of directing actors is also not totally dissimilar to that of the director who made Dietrich’s Hollywood career, Josef Von Sternberg, in that both tend to privlege physical choeography over the development of a character’s inner life. But saying that Argento plays the Dietrich role in Go Go Tales is essentially like imagining the gorilla suit number from Blonde Venus digitally inserted into the middle of 42nd Street. Ferrara’s made an almost happy-go-lucky glorification of sleaze, with Argento as its dark heart.
…Read more
