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Everyone Else is a film in which a German couple travel to Sardinia and watch, almost as if helplessly, as their seemingly solid relationship erodes upon contact with foreign forces. Director Maren Ade, in her second feature, shows an uncanny ability to produce a queasy irony from the twinning of surface beauty and interpersonal ugliness. Ade bathes her pale, freckled actors in ultra-hot golden light, and the camera casually lays in wait, watching them burn. It’s an unforgettable look for a film that stands as a new standard bearer in the hardly marginal genre of films aiming to mirror a certain kind of post-romantic passive-aggression between young lovers who, despite all mounting evidence to the contrary, persist in the delusion that they’ve found a partner for life.
Pasadena, 1928. Single mom Angelina Jolie is a switchboard supervisor who glides around the telephone company on rollerskates. It’s adorable, but her signature smoky eyes and blood red lips mean she’s probably moonlighting as either a tramp or a clown. Scenes confirming one option or the other were, unfortunately, left on the cutting room floor.
The LAPD is corrupt –– so corrupt that the holiest man in town is John Malkovich. So when Angie’s son goes missing, they give her back a “fake boy,” and the evil detective (Jeffrey Donovan) can’t figure out if the ensuing scandal means he should have an Irish accent or not.
We drink every time Angelina hysterically proclaims, “He’s not my son!” We get very drunk, and this may be why we can’t figure out why Clint Eastwood made a cheap-looking Lifetime movie that eventually turns into an “And justice for all!” episode of SVU. Just when the drinking game is starting to get really out of control, there’s a twist so shocking that it’s punctuated by two inches of ash falling off a policeman’s cigarette … in slow motion.
This sobers us up pretty quick. “Really, Clint?” we say out loud, right in the middle of the screening. But no one can hear our cry, they’re so overwhelmed by the sound of Angelina’s constant tears, which just keep flowing, long after the stakes have vanished, because Eastwood can’t help but indefinitely extend the misery. So we shrug. “Oscars for all!” Now for another drink.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
New York Film Festival:
Chicago Film Festival:
I didn’t even know there *was* a trailer for Silent Light, but I stumbled across a double-subtitled version on YouTube, and now it’s embedded above. Admittedly, I’m just sickeningly in love with this movie so my opinion probably can’t be trusted, but I can’t imagine it being represented by a better trailer. In just eight shots, the above clip truly manages to mirror what it feels like to watch the film. I’m almost ready to step up and distribute Silent Light myself––how much do you think Reygadas wants for it? Do you think I could spread it over a couple of credit cards?
Sigh. I think my heart actually stopped for a second.
I did it: I survived Peter Bogdanovich’s 4 hour and 15 minute Tom Petty documentary, Running Down A Dream. I cannot call myself a Tom Petty fan–In fact, I’d probably be more inherently receptive to a four hour documentary about Peter Bogdanovich–but there’s something about this film that fascinates me. I think maybe it’s that, in terms of the nature and total efficiency of the production, it actually achieves Bogdanovich’s apparent lifelong ambition to emulate Howard Hawks.
But more on that in a future episode of FilmCouch. Right now, here’s what you need to know: it feels shorter than four hours, it’s gonna be a wet dream for Tom Petty fans, it’s screening in 20+ cities on October 15 (you can find out where and buy tickets at TomPetty.com), the DVD will be available at Best Buy only the next day, and it premieres on the Sundance Channel October 29.
Bogdanovich did a press conference after the screening, and surprisingly, in forty minutes he lapsed into just one impersonation of a dead film icon. It makes sense that he’d want to make most of his time on stage at Lincoln Center to promote the movie–after all, this is his first appearance at the New York Film Festival in almost forty years. “This is the first time I’ve had a film in the New York Film Festival since 1971, when I had two films at the festival, The Last Picture Show and my first version of Directed By John Ford,” Bogdanovich said. “Which [together] totaled about four hours. So every 37 years, I get four hours at the New York Film Festival.”
The director is well aware that the film’s length lends it a bit of stigma–and he’s more than prepared to defend it. Listen to him do so here. We’ll have more Bogdanovich soundbites on next week’s podcast.
Eamonn Bowles, president of Magnolia Pictures and key player in yesterday’s Redacted press conference dust-up, responds to the chatter that the incident was a publicity stunt on Movie City Indie. As I noted earlier, DePalma has been milking the issue at a number of festivals, and it appears that Bowles finally reached a breaking point:
there was absolutely no calculation involved at the press conference yesterday. depalma has been on a toot about how we’ve compromised his film, and then he stated publicly at the official nyff press conference that in no uncertain terms mark cuban, for aesthetic reasons, wanted the photos out of the film. i had just arrived and this was one of the first things i heard. in an almost tourette’s like moment, i just blurted out out that it wasn’t true. [...] the fact of the matter is, none of the companies that have released depalma’s work in the last 30 years would ever touch this film. and because our company, which has had it’s fair share of controversial, uncompromising films, actually was the one stupid/brave/committed enough to do so, we end up being the evil force trying to shut down a director’s vision.
Bowles also notes that the Director’s Guild has sided against DePalma on the matter. You can read Bowles’ full comments here. Jurgen Fauth also has video of the press conference, which I’ve embedded above; you can here his take on the fracas here.
UPDATED 10/10: Last night, a commenter at Movie City Indie calling himself “A. Nonymous” disputed Bowles’ note that the DGA voted against DePalma, and stating that “an arbitrator ruled the company could use redacted photos in the film, rather than the unredacted photos Mr. De Palma wanted to include”–so it’s not so much that the DGA voted *against* DePalma, but that they sided *with* Magnolia/Mark Cuban.
And in the comments to this post, Matt V writes: “Check out the TypeKey profile name of the anonymous commenter on the mcindie site. DKorduner - Who, since he has a “DGA email address” is probably David Korduner, who is the General Counsel for the DGA. Why is he making (or at least trying to make) anonymous comments on a blog site?” A fair question, although perhaps the bigger issue, is what kind of lawyer tries to make anonymous blog comments using his work email address?
Several film blogs have posted Jamie Stuart’s thoughts on yesterday’s NYFF press conference for Brian DePalma’s Redacted. In a nutshell: DePalma mentioned that the film’s final montage (which consists of real photographs of real victims of real terror and war-associated violence, and which is thought by many to be the most powerful portion of the film) is in danger of being “redacted” by the film’s distributor, Magnolia Pictures, at the request of the Magnolia/HD Net founder Mark Cuban. According to Stuart, DePalma’s comments were discredited yesterday by Magnolia’s president:
As [DePalma] began discussing the film’s use of actual war photographs and their graphic nature, Eamonn Bowles from Magnolia began shouting from the rear of the Walter Reade Theater to refute De Palma’s claims that Mark Cuban was trying to, well, redact them from the picture’s release. Then, just as the press conference was coming to a close, producer Jason Kliot rushed the stage and grabbed moderator Jim Hoberman’s mic to offer the crowd his version of this distribution controversy. I was left wondering how spontaneous this all was or whether they knew it would be immediately blogged upon to stoke media attention.
I was less inclined to see this as a pure stunt. I knew DePalma had been pushing this button at press conferences as far back as Telluride, where his statements were vague enough to be misinterpreted but loud enough to be difficult to miss. If this fighting between filmmaker and distributer started as a ploy for attention, then it doesn’t make sense that Magnolia would wait this long to publicly respond. Still, unsure how to interpret this latest event, I sent an email this morning to Mark Cuban to get the official word. Cuban confirmed to me that Magnolia has, indeed, asked DePalma to remove the images from the film, and will not release Redacted unless the final montage is cut. More details after the jump.
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We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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