Scarlett Letters

I had hoped to do pretty intense capsule reviews of all the other films I saw this year at SIFF, but clearly that hasn't happened. If I maintain this idea that I'm going to do them, they'll never get done. Here are nutshell reviews of the other films I saw with relevant notes. Those titles with asterisks are especially recommended.

A Lady in Paris: Jeanne Moreau is an older woman whom an Estonian woman is hired to care for in the City of Light. Moreau is marvelous, supported by a strong cast. The relationship between her character and that of her caretaker is realistic and well rounded. While I enjoyed the film, I didn't buy the ending; I didn't feel like it was earned. Also, the implied romantic relationship between the caretaker and Moreau's patron was perhaps too mildly touched upon to have the weight we seemed to be expected to give it. I had higher hopes than the film could fulfill.

Ludwig II: Sumptuous German biopic of Bavaria's mad king. Exploring his inability to deal with politics, power, and responsibility, the film focuses on his love of the arts and his retreat from a world which he has no ability to negotiate, neither human relationships nor the rule of a nation. I don't think he was crazy; rather, I think he had the worst case of denial in the history of the world. His poor brother--and his nation--paid the price. Sabin Tambrea was nominated for best actor at SIFF--didn't win, but he gives a terrific performance. The film felt a little overlong to me, but it did make me want to go read up about the real man and his history.

***Wolf Children: Charming anime film about a woman who falls in love with a man who transforms into a wolf and who is left to raise his two wolf children. Her job becomes helping them learn to live with their double identities and to decide what kind of lives they will lead. It's beautiful to look at, and in its way, quite universal. One of the better films of the festival for me and recommended.

Jump: A thriller set in Northern Ireland that weaves together three stories that come all climax on New Year's Eve. The film plays with its chronological order and takes its audience places I never expected to go. It was funny and clever and quite serious in some spots. I'd rate it average, but it was cool to see the city of Derry as one of the film's characters.

***The Little Tin Man: Sick of being cast only as an elf for Santa, a dwarf decides to take his acting career into his own hands when he tries to audition for Martin Scorsese's remake of The Wizard of Oz. Initially funded via Kickstarter, this charming, low-budget comedy had a big message delivered with humor and compassion: pursue your dreams. Aaron Beelner plays Herman, our eponymous hero, with great heart. Q&A after the film showed him and the director to be very smart and very committed to the picture. Met Beelner briefly after the film; he was very cool, very smart. This guy's got a future.

***Twenty Feet from Stardom: My initial note about this movie was that it was a "documentary about backup singers to the stars," but it's so much more than that. In some ways, it's the history of rock'n'roll told from a completely different perspective. It's an exuberant, frank, unvarnished, and uplifting chronicle of the voices we all know but the names we never learned: Merry Clayton, Darlene Love, Tata Vega and others who sang back-up (and sometimes lead without our knowing it) on the soundtracks of our lives, songs like "Gimme Shelter," "Da Doo Ron Ron," and so many others, and with artists like Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Ray Charles, Lou Reed, Madonna, and more. Merry Clayton and Tata Vega were present to answer questions after the film. I've never seen or heard the kind of wild, standing ovation at SIFF that these women got when they arrived on the stage. And they both sang. It was awesome. It won the Golden Space Needle for Best Documentary and no doubt about it. When this film is released, DON'T MISS IT.

***Fanie Fourie's Lobola: Cross-cultural romance set in South Africa about a man who must negotiate his bride's lobola, or dowry. Fanie is Stefaans, an Afrikaans custom-car designer living in his mother's garage and trying to make money with his art. He's not doing so well. His brother Sarel (pronounced Sorrel) is a B pop star and kind of an ass; at his bachelor party he dares his brother to ask out the next woman who walks in the door. It's Dinky, a gorgeous aspiring entrepreneur who happens to be Zulu. He asks her to go to his brother's wedding with him just to shut his brother up. She agrees only if he'll come to lunch with her father to keep Daddy from hounding her about dating. The expected hijinks ensue--but with a difference. The film takes on the lingering effects of prejudice and apartheid with both courage and humor--and in three languages. It's completely charming (even if it is another gorgeous-woman-falls-for-schlumpy-guy comedy), and Zethu Dhlomo, who plays Dinky, is luminous in her first film role. We'll be seeing more of her. The director says he's had distribution offers and the movie won SIFF's Golden Space Needle for best picture of the festival. TOTALLY RECOMMENDED.

Cinema Magnifico was the Spanish short films program at SIFF this year. It consisted of 7 films made in or related to Spain in some fashion. The quality of all of the films was good, just some better than others. They were:

Fuga: (animated) A young girl arrives at a music conservatory to discover just how difficult a life dedicated to art may be. It uses an interesting technique in which perspective and self-awareness are portrayed with varying levels of cartoonish to realistic animation styles.

Routine: A woman realizes that her marriage has succumbed to a routine that spells the end of her relationship with her husband. Beautifully made and well acted but, wow, depressing.

My Right Eye: A young man contemplates his relationship with his grandmother. Moving and quite well done.

Mystery: A deadpan story about a woman who goes to see a young man to whom the Virgin Mary has appeared, and what happens when she acts on the revelation she receives.

Postcards from the Moon: Two brothers travel to see family, the elder of whom has some decisions to make about his life. As kateyule observed, many of the relationships in this film were ill-defined, muddying up some of the intended resonance. Nicely made, but muddled.

Taboule: A man challenges his partner's trust in him by demanding his PIN. What ensues is an economical, charming, and charmingly true portrayal of a loving relationship at a turning point. One of my two favorites of this batch of films.

Presence Required: A Brooklyn couple grapples with the disappearance of their live-in ghost and struggles to find a replacement. Another charming, funny film, and my other favorite of this series.

Set in Belle Epoque France and based on a true story, Augustine is about a young woman who is diagnosed with "hysteria," which results in fits, emotional disturbance, temporary paralysis, sexual behavior, and so on. (Wikipedia explains the common definition from the era in more depth.) The film follows Augustine's treatment by a Mr. Charcot who places her at the center of his research and ultimately makes her the star of "academic" spectacles in an attempt to get funding to continue his research. The film is lush and well made. Some would describe the relationship between Augustine and Charcot as complex, and perhaps it is. I couldn't help looking at it through twenty-first century eyes and seeing gender imbalance and social injustice, and I just wanted to slap Charcot all over town for his behavior. While the SIFF site seems to be taken with the movie and it may be a fine film for some, but I was left feeling really on the fence about it.

Our Nixon is a documentary made entirely out of archival footage from news broadcasts and home movies taken by John Erlichman, H.R. Haldeman, and Dwight Chapin, and VO from the Nixon tapes. The film is fascinating, an examination of the Nixon era from an entirely different perspective. It is sometimes funny and remarkably timely. I found myself watching these men doing what they did, and thinking how young, how good looking, how optimistic, how committed they were to what they were doing. And then, like music in a major key slowly sliding to a minor key, events just go awry. Who knew what, when, and how? It's like their entire world warped. Listening to excerpts from the Nixon tapes, the disconnect from reality is, frankly, kind of astonishing. I have to believe that this film will either get wide distribution or turn up on PBS or HBO. It must be seen. It's a remarkable film.

The documentary Out of Print was touted as "an in-depth look at the turbulent, exciting journey from the printed book through the digital revolution and modern information age." It turned out to be more of a survey of the subject than any kind of a discussion. While the filmmaker, based on her post-film talk, had some very specific thoughts and positions on the subject, the film was pretty neutral over all. It didn't get into some of the more contentious issues surrounding the evolution (or lack of same) that publishing is going through. I don't think the publisher position was well-represented, and I feel like the self-publishing situation was represented in a kind of lopsided way. Overall, I walked away feeling rather disappointed in it. Best part about it was hooking up with ironymaiden and varina8 to see it.

Populaire is a French romantic comedy set in 1959 about a girl from a small town who goes to the big city (a little city in Normandy, actually) to become--how exciting!--a secretary. Turns out she's a terrible secretary but a prodigy typist. Her boss decides that, to keep her job, she has to participate in the regional and national typing competition to become the fastest typist in the country. He becomes her coach and trainer, and thus begins the comedy and the romance. It's a delightful little film. Deborah Francois, who plays Rose the secretary, has a refreshing, Debbie Reynolds quality about her. She's charming. Romain Duris, who plays Louis, her boss and coach, has the sort of dark-haired, dark-eyed looks I always swoon for. As a World War II vet and last survivor of his French Resistance cohort, he's appropriately sexy and tortured. The film is clearly modern but imitates the sensibilities of the time very well. The clothes are to die for. It's all made with this Technicolor look and feel that is delicious to the eye. I had a great time with it and very much recommend it.

It was my first fairly uncommitted weekend in a while, and for once I felt like I was able to relax and rejuvenate a little bit. That's not to say that previous weekends weren't good--they were; they were just very busy, with little time for me to unwind.

This weekend started with seeing "Grey Gardens" in the company of EB, the musical based on the documentary about Edith Bouvier Beale and "Little Edie" Beale, the society shut-ins abandoned by their family in a crumbling mansion until Jackie Onassis, Little Edie's first cousin, more-or-less rescued them. I saw the HBO film based on their story several years ago and had a rather dramatic reaction to it. It's a story of peculiar and co-dependent relations in isolation and abandonment and, given my own sensitivities about those particular issues, it had a pretty strong impact on me. When I got my subscription to Seattle's ACT Theater for this year, I had misgivings about seeing "Grey Gardens" but then decided that there's no use in not confronting all the feelings that the story provokes in me; obviously there's food for thought there. And while the show is, by any measure, a difficult one for me (and in general, I think; it's not exactly uplifting), it's a good play, and the performances were top shelf. I enjoyed it as much as I could, even while having my moments of grim reflection alongside.

Saturday was a day of housecleaning and organizing. As I said over on Facebook, seeing a show about two shut-in ladies, their 52 cats, and all the garbage they live with gives a girl pause. My big accomplishments were cleaning the top of the fridge, vacuuming, and beginning to clean out the upstairs closet. That last job is by no means finished, but it's less intimidating than it was, and now I have stuff to take over to Goodwill.

Sunday began with me going into Capitol Hill to meet my usual suspects for a morning of writing. In the wake of finishing and delivering a short story project (upon which more another day), I spent the morning reacquainting myself with my novel and its issues. Writing commenced. There may be something here. And for the first time, it occurred to me that there may actually be a series here. We Shall See. And i spent the rest of the day grocery shopping, cleaning, and just mellowing a bit.

The only other things that went on this weekend were plans for the future. I'm going to Portland partly for business and partly for pleasure next weekend so plans got rolling for that. I'm trying to figure out my NY trip for this summer. I've RSVPed to the Seattle International Film Festival invitations to the Donors' Premier and the Members' Preview. (That first week of May will be busy!) I tried to get plans rolling to attend the SFWA readings in Kirkland on Tuesday evening. And I picked up my Locus Awards membership for June.

It's all little bits and pieces of things, but this is what results in Having A Life, something I very much believe in.