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HITS (AND MISSES) OF THE 1999 NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL Send This Review to a Friend
The showcasing of numerous superior films at the 37th NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL made the event very worthwhile despite some films that not even a director's mother should have to watch. Festival films are never all good, and it's always a matter of taste anyhow. But there were major triumphs starting with the opening night film ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER, directed by Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar.
To be sure, his film is akin to a soap opera, but Almodovar directs schmaltz in a grand style and with such passion that he elevates the story he scripted to dynamic heights. He also has cast three gifted stars whose acting is so powerful, moving or entertaining, depending on what the director chooses to emphasize, that they are a sparkling show unto themselves.
The film is also stunningly photographed. In the opening scene cinematographer Affonso Beato surprisingly imparts unusual beauty to life-support tubes and equipment in a hospital, hardly objects one would normally see in an aesthetic light. But the main strength lies in the performances.
Cecilia Roth richly explores the character of Manuela, whose son with whom she is close meets with a sudden fatal accident. As one whose job it is to help process the donation of organs, she now is faced with that grim decision regarding her son. Without going into plot detail, the aftermath brings her into contact with Huma, a stage actress playing Blanche du Bois in "A Streetcar Named Desire." Marisa Paredes is in top form as the demanding yet eventually compassionate performer, who has a lesbian relationship with the drug-addicted actress Nina (Candela Pena), who is playing Stella.
When Manuela goes to Barcelona in hope of finding the son's father with whom she has lost contact, she meets Agrado, a transvestite hooker, played by Antonia San Juan, who would steal the film completely if Roth and Paredes were not equally good. San Juan has the most showy role, and makes the most of it, whether tossing off sure-fire laugh lines or mining underlying sadness from the part. Manuela and Agrado become close friends, and Manuela also strikes up a friendship with Sister Rosa (Penelope Cruz), who tries to help unfortunates and finds herself in her own desperate situation.
Agrado's dialogue is colorfully raunchy, which gives the film an amusing earthiness. As events unfold, it is clear that Almodovar is determined to instill respect for his characters whatever their sexual orientation and however they earn a living. He wants his characters to be themselves and to aid one another with understanding and compassion despite their differences. "All About My Mother" is a loving film chock full of exuberance and humanity.
One of my other favorites, which opened commercially shortly after being shown at the festival, is BOYS DON'T CRY, based on the true story of Brandon Teena, a young woman who felt she was really a man and was brutally raped and murdered after exposure of her pretense at being of the opposite sex. (See review in the Film section.)
In a festival press conference, director Kimberly Peirce, who co-wrote "Boys Don't Cry" with Andy Bienen, said she did considerable research and stayed close to the facts but wanted to tell "the emotional story." Peirce said she spent three years looking for the right person to play Brandon before she settled on Hilary Swank, who told how she tried out for the role: "I put on tape [over her breasts] and wore my husband's clothes." Chloe Sevigny, who plays the woman with whom Brandon, masquerading as a man, falls in love, noted of Swank at the press conference: "I still can't see her as a girl. It freaks me out."
Another favorite is the sumptuous TOPSY-TURVY, Mike Leigh's unusual film that deals with the lives of Gilbert and Sullivan and their staging of "The Mikado." Versatile actor Jim Broadbent is a standout as librettist William Schwenck Gilbert, as is Allan Corduner playing Arthur Sullivan, the composer of the team. Leigh gives us the flavor of the 19th century period in which they wrote, and better yet, offers a look at the backstage maneuvers involving rehearsals and actors negotiating for salaries from Richard D'Oyly Carte, slyly played by Ron Cook. There are rampant clashes and manipulations of egos, all very entertaining and sometimes poignant.
In one hilarious sequence Japanese women who seem to understand little of what's happening are called in to demonstrate to the actresses playing the "Three Little Maids" of "The Mikado" how to walk. The actual production of the operetta at the Savoy Theatre becomes a major portion of the film, and the result is delightful. "Topsy-Turvy" not only is appealing as an entry into the world of the renowned team that created works widely performed to this day, but as a colorful, musical entertainment revealing an awareness of the social and economic factors in the theater of that era.
The film provides a sad note as well in its close-up of the respective lives of Gilbert and Sullivan, portraying Gilbert's marriage as lacking sexuality and his wife as lonely, and showing Sullivan in a relationship with his mistress, who indicates to him that she is pregnant but that she is taking care of it once more.
Mike Leigh, known for working out his films in sessions with his actors rather than relying on a pre-written script, said at a press conference that the film evolved in the customary pattern, which is hard to believe, given its elaborate nature. "There was no script," he asserted, describing the long period of working with his cast. "I don't think we could have arrived at as interesting a film as we hoped and as truthful a film without evolving it that way."
I also think highly of the Iranian film THE COLOR OF HEAVEN, Majid Majidi's sensitive story of a widower's desperation in trying to cope with the burden of caring for his blind eight-year-old son. The film contrasts two emotional viewpoints, the urgent need of the boy for love and assistance and the desire of the father to recast his own life and take a new wife.
Majidi, who wrote the screenplay as well as directed, is not judgmental, although the film does lean gently toward criticism of the father as somewhat selfish, particularly through the eyes of his elderly mother, who is more attuned to the problem of her grandson. The over-all effect is poignant and reminiscent of the Italian neo-realist films of Vittorio De Sica. The acting is especially convincing, as are the settings.
Majidi previously directed the excellent "Children of Heaven," which was nominated for an Oscar. His latest is yet another example of the vitality to be found in Iranian cinema, at least in the depiction of intensely personal stories.
The whimsical BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, directed by Spike Jonze, deserves recognition as the most inventive film of the festival. The premise is that Craig (John Cusack), who gets a job as a file clerk in a weird company on the 7 1/2th floor of an office building--the ceilings are so low that employees have to walk stoop-shouldered--discovers a secret passageway through which one can for a brief period become actor John Malkovich.
This leads to a slew of complications. Malkovich himself is cast and the actor is a good sport about it all, allowing himself to be used in an array of odd situations and states of dress. As one might expect, there's comedy to be extracted from the inevitable sexual complications involving Craig, his wife Lotte (Cameron Diaz) and his sassy, sexy co-worker Maxine (Catherine Keener), and of course, Malkovich.
The problem Jonze and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman have is to keep all of this perking. About three quarters of the way the straining becomes evident and the romp gets out of hand. It's as if nobody knew how to end it, so the plot grows more silly than funny. However, for a good deal of the way "Being John Malkovich" is original and effervescent, and it can only be a plus for Malkovich's career.
The festival program committee is to be congratulated for including a retrospective look at Michael Powell's 1937 THE EDGE OF THE WORLD, which he shot on the island of Foula in the North Sea. It is a documentary-like story of islanders attempting to cope with change and the eventual need to leave. The story also involves emotional antagonism between two families and the trgedies that befall them. The film holds up exquisitely, especially in its new 35mm print made by the British Film Institute. Audiences are mostly familiar with Powell's later more opulent "The Red Shoes," on which he collaborated with Emeric Pressburger, but "the Edge of the World" represents a period in which Powell demonstrated a strong social conscience. (The festival is also to be commended for its ambitious retrospective of films by Italian director Pietro Germi at the Walter Reade Theater. It was a welcome opportunity to rediscover or see for the first time the outstanding films that he directed.)
From France came RIEN SUR ROBERT, an enjoyable story of relationships and intellectual integrity, or lack of it. In the film written and directed by Pascal Bonitzer, Didier Temple, played by skillful actor Fabrice Luchini, is a critic who has attacked a movie about the Balkans that he has not even seen. But that problem is minor compared with his problems with women.
His girlfriend Juliette, played provocatively in a deadpan style by lanky Sandrine Kiberlain, blithely tells Didier about her intimate exploits with other men in the expectation that he will accept such tales with aplomb. Of course, she aggravates him royally. Meanwhile, he meets a woman with whom he becomes involved and she turns out to be emotionally needy and suicidal. Poor Didier. "Rien Sur Robert" is consistently amusing in an offhand sort of way, with some lively dialogue and candid sex talk on the part of Juliette, who spares no details.
In another French language film THE CARRIERS ARE WAITING, a Belgian-French co-production, a father (Benoit Poelvoorde) who earns a living as a photographer for a small town paper yearns for a better, more economically rewarding life. He focuses his ambition vicariously through his 15-year-old son (Jean-Francois Devigne) and fixes on a harebrained scheme, training his son to try to top a feat listed in the Guinness Book of World Records. How many times can a door be opened and shut within 24 hours? The situation is both pathetic and funny as the poor kid is relentlessly trained for the big competition, the prize being a new car that the father covets.
At times the film begins to seem like one of those derogatory Belgian jokes the French like to tell. But director Benoit Mariage, who co-wrote the screenplay, is more serious. He is zeroing in on the question of values and the effects of an obsessive father on his family, as well as on himself. What counts most in society? The father learns an important lesson in the process of wreaking havoc. "The Carriers Are Waiting" ranks among the more unusual and intriguing of the festival's choices.
One of the best made films is surely director Claire Denis's French-language BEAU TRAVAIL, set in East Africa and dealing with the French Foreign Legion. This isn't the Legion of the old Hollywood movies. Today's Legion is more ethnic and this story, inspired by Herman Melville's writing, involves the recollections of a Legionnaire about the persecution of a new recruit. Denis delivers an incredibly well-honed mood piece. One is transported into the setting and everything is amazingly controlled. The film is filled with atmosphere and a sense of lurking violence and jealousy. It is also beautifully photographed by Agnes Godard.
DOGMA, flawed as it is, tackles religion in a satirical way, with director-writer Kevin Smith concocting a gross comic parable about saving the world. (See under Special Reports Toronto International Film Festival 1999 for a review of its earlier showcasing.)
As for the misses, the two films that I disliked the most out of those that I saw were Leos Carax's POLA X and Jane Campion's HOLY SMOKE. Carax is a director who can drive you crazy if you don't take to his pretentiousness. I have no use for his earlier "Lovers on the Bridge" and even less, if that's possible, for "Pola X," a lugubrious story which he based on Herman Melville's 1852 work "Pierre; or the Ambiguities." Guillaume Depardieu chews every bit of scenery within range as he plays a frustrated writer who abandons his customary world and relationships to attend to a mysterious woman who turns up and says she's his half-sister. From then on it is one tedious descent into hell for him--and for us. I wanted to flee any number of times but stayed through the bitter end out of sheer duty.
Campion's folly is another matter. "Holy Smoke!" is easier to watch than "Pola X" but just as loony. Campion wrote the screenplay with her sister Anna Campion. Kate Winslet plays Ruth Barron, an Australian who has succumbed to indoctrination by a guru in India. Her family manages to get her back home and enlists P.J. Waters, an American known as an expert in deprogramming cult victims. Harvey Keitel plays Waters and goes for broke in the role.
The action boils down to a grueling contest between Waters trying to break Ruth, as one might a wild horse. Naturally, the relationship turns sexual. Ruth is expert at taunting and ultimately seducing her tormentor. He behaves as he shouldn't by succumbing to temptation. Winslet stands starkers before him and asks whether he likes her or her breasts more. For me the answer was obvious. The doings grow increasingly ridiculous, especially when Ruth puts Waters in touch with his feminine side. Are you ready to see Keitel running around wearing lipstick and a dress and chasing after Winslet like a spurned dog in heat?
The Campion sisters apparently are striving for a metaphor illuminating the battle of the sexes and women emerging from being controlled by men, especially younger women by older men, but "Holy Smoke!" merely succeeds in blowing smoke up our noses or wherever. It is an awful film.
That said, I prefer to look at the festival's bright side. In addition to the outstanding films I've mentioned, there were numerous other worthwhile selections. What has long since become a New York institution is still thriving.
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