Strand Releasing

Toe to Toe

brittany — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Toe to Toe was part of the official selection of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. The story is simple: Jesse and Tosha are both lacrosse players at a Washington, D.C. prep school and although they seem predestined to be rivals, they become the best of friends. Each girl is completely different from each other. Jesse (Louisa Krause) is the wealthy yet lonely and promiscuous daughter of detached parents with Daddy issues. Tosha (Sonequa Martin) is the minority with a background of financial hardship but driven by her ambition of acquiring an Ivy League education on a full scholarship.

At first glance, the film could appear forced and stereotypical; unfortunately, that’s exactly what it turns out to be. There’s enough teenage drama to fill the entire four years of high school. Jesse and Tosha are faced with issues regarding STDs, harassment, racial conflicts, and everything in between. Add to that the dramatic suspense of being part of an athletic team and you have the basis for the movie. There’s a heavy use of socio-economic clichés and an especially artificial climax that almost obscures everything else about the movie.

At other times, though, the protagonists’ acting chops shine through and the movie becomes enjoyable. Both performances are well balanced. Krause manages to portray a promiscuous but self-aware character while Martin has enough poise and restraint to make her character vulnerable and relatable.

The movie’s setting is also quite enjoyable; the scenes outside the prep school and in the actual city are lively and more realistic. This is due to the fact that they were shot with local musical talent. The protagonists seem to feed from the city’s energy and only magnified their charisma and talent.

Yet, in a movie that seems so contrived it doesn’t seem enough to carry it through. Toe to Toe didn’t surpass being bland.

Written by: Jessica Sánchez, October 1st 2010

Picture Me

brittany — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 18:00:00 +0000

Directed by Sara Ziff, Ole Schnell

Strand Releasing

There is a moment in Picture Me, a documentary about the fashion industry, where model Sara Ziff’s father recalls hearing his daughter’s look described as the girl next door. The camera closes up on Ziff in a two page Tommy Hilfiger ad. “I guess that depends where you live,” her father quips, flippantly alluding to the exclusive world of high fashion. Filmed largely by Ziff and then boyfriend Ole Schnell, Picture Me documents Ziff’s developing modeling career from her first trip to Paris at eighteen to her eventual burn out at twenty-three and, along the way, exposes the human side of an industry built on solely on image.

Picture Me began as a homemade video diary and it maintains that feeling throughout. Adorable, sometimes cynical, animation by The Boos punctuates the various themes of the film. The visuals of notebooks and grade-school graffiti offer a consistent reminder of disrupted youth and the choice to forgo education; many of these models are simply schoolgirls, invited into this world as young as twelve and aged out by their mid-twenties.

I commend Ziff’s bravery for sharing her personal experience; however, I was disappointed by the lack of attention given to the privileged position she was in, especially in regards to physical appearance. “Modeling just happened to me,” Ziff states as she recounts being approached on the street as she walked home from school on day. Yeah, it happened to you because you’re tall, skinny, and blonde and you were walking down the street in New York City. Turns out Ziff’s ambivalence is rooted in deeper emotional issues such as putting off college. She also struggles with the age-old dilemma of using her body as a commodity by comparing modeling to stripping and when shortly into her career she begins to out earn her father, a college professor, Ziff wonders why she should make so much money for being “pretty and on time.”

This film is rife with contemporary social issues, especially around work and women’s bodies. Most interesting were the admissions by the models who share everything from being sexually assaulted by photographers to being told they are fat in a host of different languages. The models interviewed are cognizant of the way they are being treated, like a “robot” or a “prop” but are unaware of how to resist or respond. Ziff offers many of the most poignant insights herself—“Skinny is power. And it’s the one thing you can control.”—and her relationships with the other models are refreshingly sincere and drama-free. Unfortunately, the filmmakers missed an opportunity to connect their story to a broader social context and the many feminist issues are either ignored or under-developed.

Nonetheless, Picture Me is an excellent platform for discussion and would serve well as an educational tool, especially for media entrenched teens.

Written by: Alicia Sowisdral, September 12th 2010

The Girl on the Train

admin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Directed by André Téchiné

Strand Releasing

Upon watching The Girl on the Train, it may not be immediately obvious that this is based on a real event: the 2004 scandal in which Marie-Leonie Leblanc fabricated an anti-Semitic attack by six Arab youth. In fact, the film’s lead character, Jeanne (Émilie Dequenne), seems like a typical teen in need of inspiration.

Minutes into the film, a man (Nicolas Duvauchelle) appears alongside her, rollerblading, and promises to be the thing that she has been missing. Cautiously, she allows him into her life, even after her mother (played with regal poise by Catherine Deneuve) notes an element of aggression.

As their affair unravels, it’s easy to empathize with the shocked Jeanne as she obeys the man's request that she leave. She runs home, and watches television with her mother. As her mother sits beside her, Jeanne appears to be watching a historical program about the Holocaust. At first glance, it appears that she is sympathizing with the victims of the atrocities.

Philippe Sarde’s fluid music arrangements provide sensations of desire and confusion, which are expressed by most of the characters in the film. In addition, the gentle tone is established by the supporting cast, which features Michel Blanc as Samuel Bleistein, Mathieu Demy as Alex, and the enigmatic Ronit Elkabetz as Judith. Director André Téchiné’s inclusion of the larger historical context of racism achieves the film’s outstanding quality: a compassionate depiction of Jeanne’s misguided tactic for being loved.

Written by: Maria Guzman, September 2nd 2010

Happiness Runs

admin — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Adam Sherman

Strand Releasing

I sat through this eighty-eight minute monstrosity two and half times. And the question that I’m still asking myself is, “What the fuck?”

Set sometimes during the eighties, Happiness Runs is the semi-autobiographical story of its tyro director. Happiness Runs centers on Victor (Mark L. Young), a teen who is desperate to escape from the hippie commune that he was born into. His terminally ill, inexplicably wealthy, and utterly disinterested mother (Andie MacDowell) has been brainwashed into single-handedly supporting the commune by Insley (Rutger Hauer), a creepy self-proclaimed “guru” who has impregnated most of the women on the compound. When Insley isn’t hypnotizing his narcissistic adherents into complete submission, he is training Becky (Hannah Hall) to serve as a sex slave. Due to Insley’s indoctrination, Becky has become a drug-addicted promiscuous mess, having sex with nearly all the boys in the group.

Victor, deeply in love with Becky, resents her naïve embrace of “free love” and repeatedly begs her to run away with him. To complicate matters, Victor’s mother absolutely refuses to give him any money. Because Victor doesn’t seem to understand that he can support himself by finding a job, he drifts from wild party to wild party with the other children in the cult, even half-heartedly drug-dealing, an enterprise which the adults hypocritically disapprove of. Due to their early exposure to drugs and sex, the children are all incredibly damaged, escaping the anger over parental neglect with varying forms of self-destructive behavior.

Just like a lot of movies with a “sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll” theme, the women of Happiness Runs are routinely objectified. There are several instances of full frontal female nudity—the exposed female bodies juxtaposed with male bodies that are always covered with at least boxer shorts, if they aren’t completely clothed. The men and boys routinely use the women sexually, an attitude that the women seem to encourage. Becky is referred to as “everybody’s girlfriend,” not seeming to understand that the males in the commune aren’t automatically entitled to access to her body. She even goes so far as to climb into Victor’s bed, saying, “You can do whatever you want to me.” The fact that Rachel (Laura Peters), the only girl in the bunch inclined to call the boys out on their disrespectful attitudes, is the “ugly” one that none of the boys seem to want is another slap at the women’s liberation movement.

And Happiness Runs marries sexuality and violence in an especially disturbing way, with no fewer than three shots of Becky’s nude body covered in blood. (Becky also gets her hip thrown out during a bout of passionate sex; an event that amuses the boys to no end.) It’s been a long time since a film managed to offend most of my feminist sensibilities. Then again, it’s been a long time since I saw a movie this bad.

I know I’ve spent entirely too much time critiquing the lifestyle choices of the characters. Unfortunately, this movie is so threadbare that I can’t adopt the Oscar Wilde standpoint of not concerning myself with the morality of the characters. The plot and character development are virtually non-existent. The pacing is slack with performances ranging from anemic to downright wooden; none of the actors are skilled or experienced enough to convincingly play world-weary addicts. The dialogue is so vapid and elliptical that it will put even the most committed viewer to sleep. And the cinematography is uninspired. And, like many movies centered on impressionable drug-addled subjects, Happiness Runs repeatedly sinks into surrealistic dream sequences, over-relying on the visions’ hallucinogenic quality to drive the story.

Please don’t waste your time with this one, kids. This movie sucked.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, June 19th 2010