Films

Certified Copy

mandy — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 20:00:00 +0000

The latest film from Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, Certified Copy begins with the same joke twice. While waiting for author James Miller (William Shimell) to give a lecture, his translator (Angelo Barbagallo) apologizes for James’ lateness and says, “He can’t blame the traffic; he is walking from upstairs.” The restless crowd responds with no audible laughter. Moments later James walks into the room and, unknowing that it has just been said, re-uses the same joke. This time several members of the crowd emit soft laughter. Within the first few minutes of the film, Kiarostami has already laid out his brilliant thesis: that when it comes to art, history, or even comedy the copy can have meaning in a way that makes it as valuable the original.

This sets up the audience nicely for the existential journey that is to follow in Certified Copy, a rich examination of art, love, and the authenticity of life. Kiarostami’s first film away from his home country hits every note just right and creates an environment that encompasses the viewer. With beautiful cinematography, pitch-perfect pacing, and fantastic performances from both leads Certified Copy is a certified hit.

Comparable to the films of Richard Linklater or David Mamet, Certified Copy is not about where the characters go, but the discussions they have along the way. At a small café, a barista mistakes James and Elle for a married couple and is never corrected. Then, without provocation, the two characters begin to play-act as if they were a married couple, immediately challenging the direction the narrative had been leading. Have these two characters known each other before? Are they so committed to proving the value of a copy over the original that they are going to continue this “copy” of marriage? Or are they a real married couple looking for some excitement?

Juliette Binoche is brilliant as the bubbly and enthusiastic leading lady, who seems to be leading the direction of the conversation for most of the film. The story moves along like a long-form improvised scene with each character continually providing a “yes, and…” to continue the flow of the story. Just like in any improvised stage scene, even the best performers are apt to occasionally break character, and Kiarostami seems to emphasize this by having the characters look directly at the camera, breaking the fourth wall. Just like Bertolt Brecht, Kiarostami never wants the viewer to forget that they are watching a piece of art, not a piece of life, so he often has the actors look straight into the camera to distract any audience members from moments of escapism they might be experiencing.

At the conclusion of Certified Copy, the audience will be left with far more questions than answers and the discussions that will be inspired are undoubtedly one of the greatest values of the film. Unlike author James Miller’s thesis that artistic copies can have equal value to their original, it is unlikely that Kiarostami’s film will be successfully imitated anytime soon.

Read the full review at Film Misery

Written by: Alex Carlson, April 18th 2011

Vag Magazine

mandy — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Directed by Zach Neumeyer

Upright Citizens Brigade

I didn’t think it was even figuratively possible to shoot yourself in the foot while disappearing up your own behind, but the characters in Vag Magazine have proven otherwise. This eerily well-observed sketch show from the women of the Upright Citizens Brigade is watchable and rewatchable by third wave feminists and those who love them—or who love to laugh at them—especially since every episode is available on the web.

The six-episode, internet-based series of shorts shows what happens when a trendy, glossy women's magazine is taken over by a group of hardcore third wave feminists who revamp it by firing all but one staff person then change its name to Vag Magazine. The newly minted mag is a hipster-heavy haven of hypocritical hilarity that describes itself as such: "Not your grandma's feminist magazine, though we support her as a woman."

I have to admit that, as the editor of a comedic zine about menstruation, I was terrified Vag Magazine would have me crying instead of cracking up. And I'm relieved to report that the show is really very funny. The humor is devised from improvisation at its finest. The overall concept covered all my pet peeves about feminism, an ideology to which I subscribe, despite the kind of annoying behaviour on display in Vag Magazine. I offer the following dialogue as evidence.

Hierarchical Hypocrisy: "We don’t believe in hierarchies, but we also don’t have time to get our own coffee."

Capitalist Conundrum: "I feel like the idea of advertisers is really un-feminist." Swiftly followed by, "It's just that we need advertising dollars if we’re gonna be able to tell women what to do."

The biting observations are dead-on, down to the last detail: roller derby, cloth maxipads, ironic bunting. The writers leave no handmade, vegan, Zapatista-solidarity stone unturned. You’ve gotta be in that scene, or very near to it, to be able to poke so much fun in such glorious detail, and to my satisfied delight.

How did these awesome comedians have time to spy on self-righteous feminists and put together an outstanding sketch comedy show? Perhaps a future season of Vag Magazine will tell us.

Written by: Chella Quint, April 16th 2011

Last Train Home

mandy — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 17:00:00 +0000

Directed by Lixin Fan

Zeitgeist Films, Canada Council for the Arts

The establishing longshot of this documentary tilts down to show a few policemen in an open, paved space. Slowly the camera pans left, and the entire frame fills with thousands of people standing in a drizzle. Many hold bright, pastel-coloured umbrellas. It’s a beautiful image. The following shot, from ground level, shows that huge crowd rushing in pandemonium past the camera into a train station. These two shots are emblematic of the film: beauty and chaos inextricably interwoven.

Earth’s largest human migration occurs in China at their New Year. One hundred and thirty million people who work in cities scuffle for prized train tickets to return to villages where they were raised. Last Train Home fuses a macro view of this migration as a social and cultural phenomenon with a micro view of one family that makes this annual trek. In so doing, it underscores the high price in domestic turmoil many Chinese families pay for the country’s so-called economic miracle. It also vividly contrasts the lovely countryside with the polluted, teeming, ugliness of urban China.

Changhua Zang and Sugin Chen, husband and wife, work as sewing-machine operators in a factory in Guangzhou. They have two kids—Qin, a girl in her teens, and a boy, Yang, about ten—who live with their grandmother in Huilong Village where the parents were born. The film was shot over a couple of years, so we watch the kids grow up a bit. The parents labour at their dreary work to give their children a chance at prosperity. “You shouldn’t be like us,” they say. To this end, they constantly remind Qin and Yang to stay in school and get good grades. The parents also reveal decidedly mixed feelings about being wage slaves 2,000 kilometres away from their kids. They insist their destiny (etched in their faces) will be worth it if the kids acquire a higher education.

However, Qin, angry and bitter with her parents for their protracted absence, quits school and moves to a city, thus frustrating Changhua and Sugin’s hopes. She goes to work in a strobe-lit dance bar where the music is industrial technopop and employees’ training includes chanting capitalist slogans: “Customers are always right!” and “The boss is always right!” (Mao is turning over in his grave.) Yang, the son, stays in school and remains the light of his parents’ lives. If he quits, their sixteen-year devotion will have been for naught.

A great thing about Last Train Home is how it makes family a common human denominator: the daughter angry with her mother; the likable, hard-working, worried, exhausted, guilty, self-sacrificing parents; the wise grandmother; the young boy who is academically inclined and is his parents’ last, best hope. We know these people. They are us. When Changua finally breaks from his impossibly stoic reserve and slaps his daughter for disrespecting him by using fuck in his presence, we deeply empathize with them both.

A word about the production of this film. Lixin Fan, the director, is Chinese-Canadian. The film was produced mostly by government funds from Canada. It’s a tribute to the country and its art organizations that they have the acuity to fund a film that may seem at first to have nothing to do with Canada. But troubled families, Chinese, Canadian, or anywhere else are legion. And China itself is omnipresent. One need only look at the planet’s retail shelves to see that. This superb documentary allows us inside a Chinese phenomenon to see how similar and connected we all are now.

Finally: Be sure to stick around to hear the plaintive, chilling, gorgeous, acapella aria sung over the end credits.

Written by: Neil Flowers, April 15th 2011

The Skin Quilt Project

mandy — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Lauren Cross

Mae’s House Productions

Without the preservation of historical text, artifact, and art, history can slowly fade from memory. Stories of survival can easily become short-lived memories as they are passed from one generation to the next before they are forgotten. For Black African American women, their history has been and continues to be woven together in quilting. The Skin Quilt Project is a documentary featuring various quilters, artists, academics, and historians discussing the necessity, purpose, benefits, and impact of Black African American women quilters and what their artistry does for their families and communities.

The film begins with the issue of skin color among African Americans and the discriminatory “trick down racism” that began with slavery and eventually bled into African American communities to set up its own caste system. Artists and quilters talk about the process and representation of creating images of Black women in their art and the significance or insignificance of the skin color of their subjects. As the documentary deepens, the topics become more complex and emotional.

There are two themes explored in the film: the process of quilting and the quilts themselves. The Skin Quilt Project goes beyond skin deep as it gains testimony about the relationship between the artist and community, artist and their work, artist and history, story and survivor. It’s more than just preserving cultural legacy; the quilts themselves are works of art, tangible testaments to the diverse life experience of Black women in the United States.

The process of making the quilts is binding experience, not just between the quilter and the quilt, but also between the artist and the community in which it is made. Many quilters find acceptance, camaraderie, confidence, and affirmation of their skill level by quilting together. It also provides challenge to take a project to the next level. This in-depth sharing of knowledge and craft is essential to many of the artists. The experience is not only for the artist’s physical artwork, but as many women attest, quilting feeds the soul and is part of the “visual, Negro spiritual” identity.

While the stories and commentary of The Skin Quilt Project are clearly important and interesting, the format of the documentary did not share the rich diversity of the quilts or the artists. No narrative voiceover to direct the film or text dividers to signal a new focus. The documentary relies heavily on the spoken word to engage the audience, but with a few audio kinks in the beginning, it’s difficult to phonetically understand what is being said. The ongoing and unbroken stride doesn’t offer much creative opportunity to appreciate the different insights of each interviewee.

For those interested in the role of African American women, quilters, and the critical role artists play in our social history, The Skin Quilt Project is a fine demonstration of the radical work that can be accomplished by needle and thread.

Written by: Lisa Factora-Borchers, April 14th 2011

Floored

annette — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Allen Smith

Typecast Releasing

What do you get when you cross a documentary film about the supply and demand frenzy of the Chicago Stock Exchange with a borderline Marxist, feminist film critic? A whole lot of screaming. But that’s really just happening on screen during Floored, the new movie from director James Allen Smith (My Name is Smith), which presents Chicago traders and their associates telling stories of how it felt to be in “the pits” during the “glory days” before the boom of Internet trading and the recession of late, risking their clients’ (and often their own) money. As for the room where I was sitting, there was silence and a yawn. This liberal wasn’t shocked or amused by a showcase of the distinctly capitalist obsession with money.

Smith does everything by the book: he knows who to interview, and where, and how. It’s not enough that the men who used to trade tell us about how much they love money (one couldn’t be away from the floor on vacation with his wife and children because he missed the possibility of acquiring greater wealth too much); we must see their other obsessions: cigarettes, booze, status symbols (Rolex watches, fast cars, large homes, decorative companions such as models and porn stars, etc.) and phallic symbols (guns, golf clubs, cigars, etc.). We must visualize their aggression to understand how their circumstances were; and only then can we understand how even the most successful traders turned out looking and sounding as foul as Mickey Rourke—on his worst day.

“It’s just not any fun… unless you can die,” one former trader says of hunting. But is he really just talking about hunting? He could as easily have said, “It’s just not any fun… unless you can go broke.” These men–and an estimated four women–of the trade are gamblers. They get a high from risking big and winning big. They get off on fear and anticipation. And when they think about winning and losing $100,000, they’re not thinking the things your average 9-to-5er is when he or she goes off to work: how will I pay my utility expenses, my taxes, my mortgage bill; will my health insurance cover my doctors visit/prescription drugs/surgery, etc.? There’s too much loud, naked—and yes, male—aggression in the air to be concerned with anything other than shouting, pushing, waving and clawing one’s way to fortune. The emphasis in stock trading wealth acquisition is less about how much you can spend at the end of the day, and more about how big a pile of cash you’ve managed to hoard.

Of course, there’s a token female trader, who has (fittingly) made a graceful transition to electronic trading. She poetically mentions Darwinism when she talks about the shift. (You’re forced to picture apes foraging for food, grunting and beating their chests before the glow of computer monitors.) And it is, of course, a female psychotherapist who helps the “guys” evolve into electronic traders, even after they feel like they’ve lost their mojo. The Internet has robbed them of the game, many feel. It’s “the most vile invention in the world” that allows “evil” people to cheat at trading. As the film depicts, computer trading is certainly more sedate than open outcry on the floor.

Could the juxtaposition of self-contained, successful women against a pile of sweaty, angry and ultimately unhappy male former stock traders be a little too conveniently giving viewers the sense that men are predisposed to aggressive behavior and ruin in its wake? Yes. But as anyone who’s ever walked by the boys’ locker room after a crushing defeat on the football field knows: boys will be boys. (That is to say: masculine boys will be masculine.)

Floored doesn’t really offer up anything new or exciting, but it does confirm the essentialism we collectively already subscribe to. A better movie, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, confirms the same information, condemns the ethics of unscrupulous capitalists, and keeps you glued to the screen.

Written by: Rachel Moehl, April 13th 2011

Nrityagram: The Love of Dance

brittany — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Nan Melville

A Nan Melville Production

In the film Nrityagram: The Love of Dance, a short and simple story is told. A woman finds purpose in her was life when she learns how to dance and creates an institute to instruct others. It is the story of Protima Bedi and her Nrityagram Dance Ensemble. Protima Bedi was known in India as a socialite, until she saw a Narissi Dance and came to pursue it instead. A woman who was known as an emotionally vibrant and open person, pursues a dance form that is tells the story of feelings more than anything else. Bedi’s candidness found a new outlet.

Having found her own guru and learnt the dance, Bedi decided to create an institution to train the gurus of the future. In the Indian tradition, princes and prophets would go to gurus to learn their trades—archery or spirituality. The institute Bedi created, Nrityagram, is intended as an equivalent for dance. Women and girls can go there to focus on their craft, learn from the gurus, practicing everyday unconcerned with the world outside.

In terms of form, there is not much substance to the film. I imagine that it would be useful in an instructional setting; a dance teacher doing a unit on Narissi dance may show this film before proceeding to instruct her students on the basic steps. In twenty-five introductory minutes, one learns about Bedi, the creation of Nrityagram, and Narissi in the broadest of strokes. The short snippets of dance intrigue but do not inform as none last more than a minute or two and are mostly spoken over. It is therefore hard to relate to this film or to relate this film to feminism.

That being said, first Protima Bedi is portrayed as a woman before her time; second, women’s learning of dance is explicitly compared to men seeking their gurus. In that way, this is a feminist work as it portrays women as distinct yet equal in their methods. Each seeks his or her own guru.

Written by: Elisheva Zakheim, March 24th 2011

Love Translated

barbara — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Directed by Julia Ivanova

Interfilm Productions

Love Translated follows a group of men from North America and Europe as they tour the Ukraine on a trip organized by an international dating service that links male clients with “letter order brides.” Over the course of their ten-day trip, the men travel to several cities, judge a beauty pageant of women who have joined the agency, attend social events, and go on “one-on-one” dates (accompanied, normally, by a translator). The film opens with men telling stories of their experiences (or lack of experiences) with women in their own communities, accompanied by a voiceover from an agency representative exhorting the men to be reasonable and keep in mind that they are looking for a partner, “not a statue to hang on the wall.”

Julia Ivanova, the film's director, writer, and editor, does a skillful (and sometimes humorous) job of juxtaposing the men’s views of who the women are and how they will behave with the women contradicting these statements. One man says, “There’s been this transition through feminism and a number of other movements in the United States that have altered how women look at themselves and it has, I think, robbed them of some of the identity they once took great pride in.” The woman he is on a date with replies, “Our women want to have it all; a husband, children, money and their own business. The woman is the head of the family. The man is just an accessory.”

All of the issues that normally come up when the topic of mail-order brides is discussed are on display: the somewhat primitivist notion that the women will be untainted by feminism and, therefore, more ideal; the objectification of women’s bodies; the unequal power dynamics. As much as some or all of the men may be sincere in their desire to find a true life partner, they have also come to the Ukraine because it is, as one man says, like a candy store for middle-aged men. In the absence of the ability to speak directly due to language barriers, the men rely on the women’s looks and letters. The letters have, at the very least, been translated by someone else, but have possibly also been written by someone else. Despite (or perhaps because of) the power that the men have in the situation, there is also uneasiness. Many express concern that the women are using them for money, gifts, and/or a visa.

This uneasiness comes to a head in an uncomfortable scene. A client is displeased because a woman he has been on several dates with expected to receive flowers more often than he would have liked. He physically blocks her ability to sit down and join the group, pointedly ignores her, and explains that he is going to blow smoke in the face of the person who should be punished. His date looks like she is about to cry and becomes conciliatory. By the end of the night, we see them walking hand in hand into a hotel elevator. While it would be unfair to judge all of the participants from the actions of these two individuals or even judge the individuals from the one interaction, it is an uncomfortable reminder of the type of isolation that the women could potentially face if they did follow the men to a foreign country.

Ivanova is impartial in her portrayal of both the male and female participants. Although the film is filled with uncomfortable and awkward moments, the explicit involvement of the documentarian is rarely evident. Instead, Ivanova is confident enough to let the story unfold on screen, supplementing long scenes of the men talking amongst themselves and some awkward—and often silent—dates with individual interviews with the male and female participants.

Despite the uncomfortable and sometimes disturbing subject matter and the long history of subjugation and objectification that are impossible not to consider when viewing it, Ivanona’s film is compelling, watchable, and even—perhaps most surprising of all—entertaining.

Written by: Erin Schowalter, March 18th 2011

Beautiful Boy

mandy — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Shawn Ku

Anchor Bay Films

Considering how common the tragedy of school shootings has become in our society, it is strange how infrequently this phenomena appears on both the silver and the TV screen. Perhaps this is because understanding these incidents is difficult, even when it comes to fiction. In Beautiful Boy, director Shawn Ku attempts to explore unanswerable questions by depicting a married couple who are torn apart by the death of their son, a college student who is both the victim and culprit of a massively fatal school shooting.

Maria Bello and Micheal Sheen play Kate and Eric, a married couple on the brink of separation. Despite living in the same home, the two move in completely separate spheres: eating dinner apart, sleeping in separate beds, and conversing with one another from different rooms. Their coldness to one another seems to have spread to their sole child, Sam (Kyle Gallner), who is attending college away from home.

Beautiful Boy opens with Sam reading a short story aloud, sadly recalling a long gone happy memory of his family at the beach. Eyes large and heavy with sadness, he calls his family from his dorm room and tries to communicate his frustration. His parents, however, are completely distracted by their own troubles, and unable to register his need for help.

The next morning the couple’s routine is interrupted by news of the shooting at Sam's school. Panicked, Kate fruitlessly attempts to get in touch with Sam. When the police finally come to their door, Kate and Eric learn that the truth is more terrible than even their greatest fear: not only is Sam dead but he is the sole perpetrator of the shooting.

With the media waiting on their doorstep, and the phone ringing incessantly, the two find themselves unable to carry on with their normal lives. Unsure of who to turn to and where to go, Kate and Eric walk away from what they knew. At first this tragedy seems to push Kate and Eric further apart, but eventually it's the only thing big enough to hold the couple together.

The question that haunts Kate and Eric, and no doubt the parents of real-life shooters, is how they could have created a child capable of carrying out such an unspeakable act. The two are forced to face this question amid intermittent snippets of television footage showing their son explaining his actions. Defying cliche, Sam is never made out to be overly angry or monstrous; rather, he is shown to be a boy ripped apart by the seemingly bleak world around him.

In the end, it is the raw and unsettling internal examination of a disjointed couple’s struggle to reunite in the midst of an an overwhelming crisis that is the sole focus of this film. Bello and Sheen give incredible, understated, and emotionally bare performances in which they portray the anguish of their characters without seeming overly dramatic. Both prove themselves to be immensely gifted actors, skilled at lending realism and believability to the most unbelievable of moments.

Written by: Adrienne Urbanski, March 13th 2011

Monogamy

brittany — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 22:00:00 +0000

Directed by Dana Adam Shapiro

Oscilloscope

Don’t let the relationship-centric plot fool you; Monogamy is not a chick flick. In fact, it’s one of the more interesting films I’ve seen that explores fears about committing oneself to just one person for the rest of one’s life, from a wholly male perspective.

Typically these kinds of heteronormative man-boy treatises on marriage phobia are treated with ample doses of trite and predictable humor. While Monogamy dips its toe into these well worn waters, to writer-director Dana Adam Shapiro’s credit, it never dwells there for very long. Instead, Shapiro gives the viewer nonverbal shards of Theo’s (Chris Messina) conflicted inner tumult through a dully present, self-distanced, unsteady lens. The result is a thought-provoking film.

While Shapiro stays away from Hollywood-style cliché, Monogamy is overflowing with film student-esque visual metaphor: Theo’s repeated donning of a creepy dog mask indicates that men are dogs, an engagement ring constructed from a piece of string represents how Theo’s desire to get married is hanging by a thread, and a repetitive, ambient score overlays the relationship’s tedious monotony. These ubiquitous moments caused my partner to say out loud at one point, “Alright. We get it already!” Clearly, he’d had enough.

That said, I appreciated the way Monogamy's clunky pace impressed the awkward and stilted predictability present in Theo’s and Nat’s (Rashida Jones) interactions—and the interactions of most all the married couples in the film, for that matter. The utter lack of spontaneity coupled with Nat's rejection of his sexual advances made it easy to empathize with Theo’s frustration with his fiance, despite the deep level of comfort he felt with her. So, when the mysterious, daring, and overtly sexual Subgirl (Meital Dohan) makes an entrance by masturbating in a public park as Theo consensually captures the indiscretion with his camera, you can feel Theo’s core being shaken.

The enigmatic character’s pseudonym illuminates Theo’s undoing. Subgirl is not a full person, just a partial representation of something men desire: naughty, anonymous, illicit sex. She is as tantalizing as she is elusive, and her entry into his life causes Theo to become obsessed with what marrying Nat means giving up. He takes the gains of monogamy for granted.

This provocative, if somewhat banal film, is sure to get attention for all the wrong things: its treatment of voyeurism and exhibitionism, for example. But what makes Monogamy worth the watch is what it says about male perspectives and masculinity. It’s a trip to boy’s town, that’s for sure. And one I believe is worth making.

Written by: Mandy Van Deven, March 11th 2011

Mutum

mandy — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Sandra Kogut

Global Film Initiative

Mutum is a coming of age, low-budget feature about a subsistence farming family living in the sertão, the hardscrabble outback of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The family is so dirt poor and isolated that nearly every meal is rice and a little meat, the roof leaks buckets in a rainstorm, and a person can die from lack of treatment for a minor scrape that becomes infected.

The protagonist, Thiago (Thiago da Silva Mariz), nine years old, is guileless, curly-haired, doe-eyed, a moralist, a storyteller, a profound questioner, and a favourite of his long-suffering mother (Izadora Fernandes). His innocence is broken by death, violence, and sexual betrayal, mostly played low-key or off-screen, except for a small amount of overt physical violence.

The household’s father, Bero (João Miguel), can joke with his kids, but has a hair-trigger temper, is subject to rages, and abuses his family—especially Thiago because his son is broodingly sensitive. His personable uncle (Rômulo Braga) treats Thiago well, but exploits the relationship to manipulate the boy. His older brother, Felipe (Felipe Leal Barroso), with whom he is close, suffers a disturbing fate.

Sandra Kogut, Mutum's director, takes chances that pay off. The temporal and thematic connections between scenes are not always immediately obvious. This method requires a viewer to actively engage with the scenes to connect their meanings—a good thing. Kogut’s actors are mostly non-professionals. All of them—kids and adults alike—do amazingly well in range and expression. One feels their authentic presence, undoubtedly because they are native to the locality. This casting creates the feel of eavesdropping on real lives, as well as foregrounding by comparison the artifice of so much Hollywood acting.

Contrary to the hyperkinetic editing fashionable in many studio films, Kogut establishes an unhurried rhythm using long takes that employ close-ups and extreme close-ups, often of people’s faces, which contrast sharply with telephoto landscape shots. This method and its results mirror the slow pace of the countryside and also allow the characters to bond emotionally in a convincing way, which big feature films often fail to do because those movies almost always restlessly move on to the next edit.

Example: Thiago and his mother must make a decision that will alter their lives forever. He comes to her, climbs in her lap, rests his head on her shoulder. Dialogue is minimal. Everything they feel lives in their faces and their hug. One keeps expecting an edit, but the camera is not impatient; it holds for about a minute—an eternity for most shots in movies nowadays—so they and we can feel the love between them. It’s a beautiful, simple, complex minute.

Finally, in this incomplete list of Kogut’s achievements with this film, Mutum eschews a music track. This tactic lets an audience experience on its own the emotions arising from those long, intimate takes rather than being coerced into those emotions by hammer-and-anvil leitmotifs. Sounds from the environment—the barking of dogs, a cow lowing, birds calling, insects chirruping—contribute to a scene’s tone, while simultaneously helping to create the sense of place.

I do have a major beef with Mutum. In the last few minutes of the film, with nary a scintilla of backstory, seeding, or foreshadowing to set this up, there occurs an extremely important revelation about Thiago. This sudden revelation is all the more jarring because it seems incompatible with what we have seen of him; thus the suspension of disbelief necessary to drama—indeed upon which emotional involvement in drama absolutely depends—is shattered. This flaw is not a dealbreaker, as there are so many pleasures and treasures in Mutum, but it sure is a clunky misstep in an otherwise excellent picture.

Written by: Neil Flowers, March 10th 2011

Orgasm Inc.

barbara — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Directed by Liz Canner

Chicken & Egg Pictures

The orgasm. Feminists laud it, good lovers work hard to give it, pharmaceutical companies make it a business model. The inability to experience an orgasm is thought to be as devastating as the inability to delight in the joy of wine, sunrise, spring flowers, and other wonderment. But this is hardly an overstatement. Last week in London, I had the sheer privilege of attending a hugely popular talk by a doyenne of second wave feminism, Shere Hite. Her most well-known publication, The Hite Report, was a groundbreaking feminist version of the Kinsey report, a comprehensive study on female sexuality in '70s America that overturned all taboos of its day.

Hite contends that the traditional model of sexual intercourse privileges male pleasure and disregards any sense of pleasuring women to the point of orgasm. Not climaxing is tantamount to self-abnegating one self's right to wholeness, and women have long been denying their selfhood by committing to the patriarchal rituals of sex, argues Hite. She does have a point of course about the significance of pleasure, but her assertion that the “lack of sexual satisfaction is another sign of oppression of women” poses serious implications on how women must rethink sex. Woe betide the women who feel inadequate when they have difficulty getting sexually aroused, much less with orgasm during intercourse.

And so the many women who were once frustrated, frigid and unfulfilled are now medically certified as casualties of a new epidemic—female sexual dysfunction (FSD). But in a pill-popping culture such as the U.S., help is at hand and pharmaceutical companies are quick to exploit cultural expectations and women's most intimate insecurities. In Orgasm Inc., by first-time documentary film-maker Liz Canner, we are treated to the dizzying unravelling of pharmaceutical businesses devoted to the “female Viagra” and its role in creating, as it were, female sexual dysfunction (FSD). Canner is initiated into the shams and often shambolic world of drug companies through an invitation to edit an erotic video used during a clinical trial conducted by Vivus, a company dedicated to developing a cream for sexual arousal.

But when Canner delves deeper into Vivus's business plan, some things are amiss. Women on both active drug and placebo appear to be equally aroused when subjected to erotic videos, but Vivus goes ahead anyway pushing to get themselves on the market. Not that Vivus's drug was initially designed to treat male impotence really mattered, as the researchers placed their bets on a hunch that it can turn women on as well. It appears that the business of discovering a cure for the purported female sexual dysfunction is masculinist and penis-centred at best, one that is isolated as a problem related to the sexual organ and a matter of hormonal imbalance. There is little reference to how women get on with their partners in the bedroom, the happiness or lack of it in relationships, history of abuse, and lack of self-esteem. Furthermore, cultural expectations which are mistaken as "universal" sexual norms prescribe that sex without orgasm is a sign of abnormality.

Canner interviews other pharmaceutical companies that have also been founded on dubious science and run by “research” consultants who aren't able to explain in definitive terms what FSD is and react as if they are assailed by trick questions. When promoted by drug company-backed doctors and scientists who frame sexual inadequacies in often obtuse and intimidating language, lay persons beset with perceived medical disorders are like putty in their hands. The stage is thus set for a no-nonsense competition—a race—to win FDA approval and multiple million-dollar glory.

Soon companies dropped one-by-one off the race like flies due to unconvincing science, including a strong contender, Intrinsa, a trans-dermal testosterone patch. It did not, however, stop Instrinsa from being sold in the European Union. Fallacies poised to eternally discredit FSD notwithstanding, very few could stand in the way of the monstrously indomitable spirit of pharmaceutical companies. Like Hite's grand manifesto, much of drug research posit that desire and pleasure are like a switch within an autonomous body. I raised my hand to ask Dr. Hite about women who were unable to experience orgasm yet live happy and fulfilled lives, to which she struggled to offer a coherent answer other than there are no two ways about how important sexual satisfaction through an orgasm is.

Suffice to say, I felt equally dejected by her response and the outcome in Canner's thought-provoking film as the mystery of female sexuality is thrown further into abyss. How helpful is the medicalisation of perfect sexuality when desire, pleasure, and fantasy are made to fit a disease model, a model designed to reinforce crude normal/abnormal typologies? Yet we are besotted by medical science but unaware of its cultural and moral underpinnings that are adept at demonising “bad” bodies. Canner's film peels away much of the objectivity purported by pharmaceutical science, sexology, and medicine, and invites us to reassess the social values of health and happiness in radically new ways.

Written by: Alicia Izharuddin, March 9th 2011

Put This on the {Map}: East King County

mandy — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Directed by Megan Kennedy, Sid Jordan Peterson

Revelry Media

Part education, part cinema, all honesty. Put This on the {Map}: East King County gives a youthful face to gender and sexuality through its twenty-six compelling high school narrators. Filmed in Washington State on the east side of Seattle, where there is seemingly no visibility of queer youth, the strength of these young people to comes out on camera. Celebrating who they are is astonishing for any high schooler, let alone a queer one in a community where they are often isolated.

With the explicit goal of “reteaching gender and sexuality," Put This on the {Map} opens by defining the term gender itself. Some of the more useful educational exercises include a visual of a football field to explain the spectrum of gender and clarifying sexuality and gender through personal stories. Biology versus gender is difficult to grasp for many adults in our heteronormative society, and this film explains it to youth in simple yet never patronizing terms.

Shifting from an educational lens to the stories of the youth dealing with many familiar themes like depression, drug abuse, and bullying, one that was especially powerful was of a young, FTM transman explaining the challenges of returning to his school among the classmates who previously knew him as a girl in middle school. The dating difficulties segment in particular seemed really useful and unique. It provided a space to not feel so alone while going through all the trouble of self-discovery and disclosure, and still not being able to find a date.

From the personal to the political, the youth in this film move to speak directly to a wider audience. Peers, parents, friends, families, and the universe are called upon not for pity but receptivity and support, even if folks aren't sure whether a young person truly needs their help. Harboring wisdom beyond their years resulting from deep self-exploration, the young people seek a world where all people can marry in any state, bathrooms no longer succumb to assumptions of sexual violence if a woman’s pants are down within three feet of a man, and a country where comprehensive sex education is the norm. Obvious to some, but it is the privilege of hope amongst youth that gives it so much power. Watching a teenager explain genderqueer as limiting is absolutely phenomenal.

You can find this thirty-four-minute film at www.putthisonthemap.org, with other educational tools soon to follow.

Written by: Nicole Levitz, February 28th 2011

Peep World

payal — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Barry W. Blaustein

Occupant Films

Lately it seems as if forced quirkiness has become an unavoidable symptom of our indie films, with the family of characters being perhaps the most common and convenient setup (see Juno, Little Miss Sunshine, et al). So despite certain bright lights in Peep World's cast, I was wary of it from the start. The ensemble comedy centers on a family dinner that suffers under a mountain of tension in the wake of the success of the youngest son's tell-all memoir. The eponymous book mostly serves to air out the dirty laundry of all of its author's siblings: Jack, "the responsible one" (Michael C. Hall); Joel, "the fuck-up" (Rainn Wilson); and Cheri, a love-desperate neurotic (Sarah Silverman). Rounding out the cast are Ron Rifkin and Leslie Ann Warren as the parents of the clan, Judy Greer as Jack's wife Laura, Taraji P. Henson as Joel's girlfriend Mary, Ben Schwartz as Nathan, the youngest sibling and author of the controversial novel, and Kate Mara as his assistant.

With such a formidable cast, the film is mostly a showcase for its characters. Unfortunately, in this case the writing doesn't quite live up to the acting. For a comedy that's actually a tragedy of a highly dysfunctional family, the Peep World script doesn't create nearly enough of a history. The film is short, which would be fine (welcome, even) if not for the fact that it feels even shorter. There's something essential missing and, as a result, the emotional climaxes don't have much impact. We don't have enough time to settle into any of the siblings, let alone invest in them, and so, their epiphanies feel unearned.

The actors can't be faulted; they manage to create moments that are both hilarious and deeply touching, even without much to start with on paper. It may seem redundant to even mention it, but Michael C. Hall is just so good. Among the entire cast, he comes the closest to sparking actual empathy from the audience. One of the most effective scenes is when Jack has a quick phone conversation with the extravagant restaurant that's hosting his father's big birthday dinner—right after he's discovered that his own business has gone bankrupt and his few employees have abandoned him.

It's a pleasure to see Judy Greer playing against her stock rom-com quirky best friend role, and she and Hall are truly wonderful together. Taraji P. Henson is also, as always, one of the brighter lights among the cast, making the most of her small but hilarious role as Joel's understandably disoriented girlfriend. I would not have thought to pair her with Rainn Wilson, but they're ridiculously fun to watch together. Though she's never quite won my heart as a comedienne, even I couldn't take my eyes off of Sarah Silverman, and Ben Schwartz's Nathan faces a seemingly out of place, extreme situation with a fearless physical comedy that's equally unexpected. The only misfire in the casting is in Lewis Black as the film's narrator. His voice and delivery are certainly funny but they're also distracting, and even if that's the point of his voiceover, it still detracts from the film.

To the credit of Peep World, I certainly left the theater wanting more, but that's only because, despite its terrific performances, I was still ultimately left dissatisfied.

Written by: Caitlin Graham, February 27th 2011

Elena Undone

gwen — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Directed by Nicole Conn

Wolf Films

When I discovered that the director of Elena Undone was the same Nicole Conn who’d directed Claire of the Moon, I was a bit nervous. Claire of the Moon was one of the first lesbian films I ever watched and, as such, it was extraordinarily exciting on first viewing. As age and experience caught up with me and I watched the film again from the perspective of someone who’d studied film, I was disappointed. It was, I think, a bit like watching popular 1980s sitcoms as an adult and realizing how very cheesy my childhood had been. Fortunately, my expectations for Elena Undone were proven wrong… very, very wrong.

Elena Undone is the story of Peyton (the stunning Traci Dinwiddie) and Elena (the also stunning Necar Zadegan), one a famous lesbian writer, the other a presumably heterosexual, married photographer. As this is a lesbian film and not real life, presumptive heterosexuality is no barrier to lesbian love. Romance, of course, ensues when the two encounter one another at a meeting for potential adoptive parents and meet again at a session run by a love guru named Tyler (the hilarious Sam Harris), who is all on board with a potential Sapphic dalliance for his presumably straight friend Elena. Because this is a lesbian film, the voice of lesbian pragmatism asserts itself in the form of Peyton’s friend and neighbor Wave (the gorgeous and hilarious Mary Wells), who reminds Peyton frequently that the pursuit of heterosexual women isn’t exactly healthy or realistic.

The film starts a bit slowly and intersperses the main story with interludes from love guru Tyler. At the first interlude, I found myself inwardly groaning, but that soon gave way to a real enjoyment of Tyler’s pontifications. Once the rhythm of the film was set, it was incredible. The first kiss between our two protagonists, which broke the record for longest movie kiss, reflected an incredible on-screen chemistry between Dinwiddie and Zadegan, a chemistry made even more intense during the love scenes. With the exception of the Dinwiddie and Zadegan pairing, the brightest spots in the film were the moments between Wells and Dinwiddie. It may be my undying love for redheads and slightly unhealthy obsession with various UK accents talking, but I can’t help thinking that the only thing that could have made the film better was more Mary Wells.

Overall, with great acting and incredible visuals, Elena Undone is a much welcome addition to the lesbian film canon, one I intend to watch repeatedly and share with as many friends as possible, starting with you. So, go watch it already. You can thank me later.

Written by: Melinda Barton, February 24th 2011

Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Suss

mandy — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 09:00:00 +0000

Directed by Felix Moeller

Zeitgeist Films

Harlan reworked brilliantly the Jew Suss film. This will be the anti-Semitic film. - From the diary of Joseph Goebbels, December 15, 1939.

You’re a talented, ambitious film director, lauded in your homeland and feted elsewhere for your movies. You can choose your projects. Producers throw money at you and don’t interfere with your work. You have final cut. You’re well paid. You lead a privileged life. You are married to a beautiful actress, who is your leading lady.

Suddenly: a political sea change. Ruthless men seize power. The Minister of Propaganda calls you in. He wants you to direct a film and use your wife and many another of your country’s famous actors in the cast so that the film will draw a large audience. He promises you a plentiful budget.

You read the script. It’s scurrilous propaganda that denigrates and villifies the government’s so-called enemies. Almost certainly, this film will inflame your countrymen against these perceived foes; many may die as a result. You can’t flee; you’re too famous, and they’d never willingly let you out. Don’t make the film and you might never work again; in fact, you might be killed and your family with you.

With some tweaks, this was the dilemma that faced Veit Harlan, a renowned German director of the 1930s. The Minister of Propaganda was Joseph Goebbels. The script he gave to Harlan in 1938 was anti-Semitic shit entitled Jew Suss (Suss the Jew). Harlan made the picture. It was a hit.

He would come to rue his decision, perhaps not so much for the film itself but for the repercussions that followed the Nazi defeat. He was twice tried, twice acquitted for contributing to the holocaust by directing Jew Suss. That wasn’t the end of it. The court of public opinion denounced him. After the war, he couldn’t find work; when he did, he had to direct under pseudonyms for a number of years.

This documentary about Harlan employs the customary mix of period photographs and movie footage, and talking heads, to examine Harlan’s case. Part of what makes the film unique is that the talking heads are mostly not pundits and historians proffering distanced or academic opinions. Harlan had five children by two wives. His kids, now elderly, and his grandchildren, mostly young women in their twenties, were filmed at length. Their responses manifest divided feelings about his actions and about being related to him by blood.

Harlan claimed he was forced to make Jew Suss and denied that he understood the possible deadly consequences. His apologists claim that he made the film well because he was a true artist and could not make a movie any other way. Some family members believe this. Some reject these avowals and say he knew what he was doing, he was responsible for the deaths of many Jews, and his crime was inflected by never confessing he had erred grievously in accepting Goebbels’s and Hitler’s commission. This division in the family—and some who speak are conflicted within themselves about Harlan’s guilt—lets us see how problematic, complex, and emotional the question of his culpability is.

So which way Harlan? Dupe under duress with no real clue about what he was doing? Skilled filmmaker who morphed into a stinking Nazi propagandist with buckets of blood on his hands? Somewhere in between? Have a look at this engrossing piece of work, a significant contribution to the cinema of fascism and the holocaust, and decide for yourself.

Written by: Neil Flowers, February 19th 2011