Saw five films in the last three days, so forgive my lack of the in-depth filmlove you’ve come to expect.
Kissing on the Mouth
“Directed” by Joe Swanberg, but this is really one of those films that tends to deny authorship: four individuals starred in the film, wrote the film, and shot the film with whomever wasn’t onscreen manning the camera. Basically, they were the sum total of the crew. They had a Q&A after the film, and I saw them again the next day at another screening, but I felt no need whatsoever to chat them up because…
…um…
The film sucked. I saw it because it was a no-budget DV indie shot in Chicago, and I wanted to support my peers. But, good lord. It was a tedious, talky whinefest, about the inability of 20somethings to have, simultaneously, physically gratifying and emotionally fulfilling sexual relationships. Which is a dangerous theme, in addition to a stupid one. Lots of explicit sex scenes, which I morally support, but they were very boring.
The most satisfying element of this film was that on balance, the acting, writing, directing, cinematography, set design, editing, and thematic content of this film all proved inferior to a little DV feature some guy I know made in Evanston a while back. So I have no reason to believe that Confusions of a Wasted Youth will fail to get into the Chicago Film Fest, if I ever fucking get song rights.
Garpastum
Agonizingly slow-moving film about soccer and WWI in Russia. Two young men, brothers, spend more time playing the game than caring about the world, until the world comes by and kicks their ass. There’s really no plot, and it’s ugly. There’s a film-developing process called “bleach bypass”; this was more like “mud bypass.” Some nice compositions, though.
Oh, and the film was nothing like its description in the festival guide.
No sos vos, soy yo
The highest-grossing Argentinian film of 2004, a neat little breakup comedy. It’s the kind of film that could never, ever get made in this country, because it’s a well-observed romantic comedy without teen-friendly leads. I have to admit that while it was fun, it was pretty disposable.
P
Say it with me: “This delightfully creep tale of demonic possession craftily exposes the racist exploitation of young girls in the Thai sex industry.” All I can add to that is, wow was this a sleazy movie. My filmgoing companion got it right in saying it leered like a thirteen-year-old boy, never actually showing anything, but positively wallowing in pushing the camera at gyrating women in skimpy tops. I would add that it’s a really pristine example of the camera-as-male-gaze that we all learned about in film class.
Shorter: it’s exactly the movie that would come out of the pitch meeting, “Let’s do Showgirls meets The Exorcist!”
U-Carmen eKhayelitsha
Bizet’s opera reset in South Africa, in the Xhosa language. I don’t know what to think about it, really; I liked it, but I think everything I liked about it was based on the opera itself. I feel if you’re going to do so much to reset a story, you need to make it mean something, and this film really doesn’t: there’s no reason it’s in South Africa besides, “it can be.” None of the themes of the piece seem to reflect the setting. There’s a half-assed stab at using the opera to explore gender roles in a post-Apartheid society, but the filmmakers seem to forget about this after the first act.
La moustache
One of those wacky French comedies we hear so much about. Here, a man shaves his mustache to annoy his wife, but she – and indeed, everyone he knows – denies that he ever had one. Eventually, he is convinced that he’s imagined virtually every aspect of his life, and he flees to Hong Kong. Very Kafkaesque, and the end is unsettling without violating the snarky tone of the whole: but there’s a lot of deadwood in this one, even at 86 minutes. Too much of the film is repetition, especially in the second act. It goes by fast enough that it’s easy to forgive.
Next up: Judi Dench runs a nudie show.