I thought I could keep writing these blog entries nightly, but the Nashville Film Festival proved too formidable an opponent. My daily schedule consisted of: waking up and heading to work at 8am, taking an extended lunch break to engineer The Film Talk podcast at noon, heading back to work until 5, seeing 2 or 3 films at NaFF, sleeping around 1am, and doing it all again the next day. But now it’s Saturday, and I’ve had a full night’s sleep. Here are the festival highlights for days 5 through 8. (Click these links for days 1 – 2, 3, and 4.)
MONDAY – APRIL 19TH
Steve James, co-director of Hoop Dreams and director of Stevie (one of my favorite films of all time), appeared on Monday’s The Film Talk. I was able to keep my composure without geeking out too much. We talked a bit about both being graduates of Southern Illinois University. On the show, James talked about his new film No Crossover: Allen Iverson on Trial.
As luck would have it, No Crossover was my day’s first screening. The documentary explored James and Iverson’s hometown of Hampton, Virginia and it’s reaction to the court case which put the future NBA star behind bars. The sentiments fell largely along racial lines in the town where slave ships first landed on American soil. James reflected on his own possible bias, recalling his own high school basketball days when he fraternized with black players on the court but never invited them into his home. The film is a part of a 30 film series ESPN sponsored to celebrate it’s 30th anniversary. Leave it to James to take an assignment that was supposed to be about profiling a sports icon and turn it into a treatise on bias and identity. 4.5 out of 5.
The Hong Kong action/crime spectacle Bad Blood reminded me again why NaFF is no TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival). Here we have all the ingredients that scream “must-see.” IMDB’s synopsis states: “When the boss of a ruling Hong Kong triad is arrested and executed in China for counterfeiting money, mayhem ensues as the mob’s leading contenders circle the throne.” Sadly, the enthusiasm disappears when the projector rolls. I found the narrative confusing, the direction clunky, and the entire affair lacking. It’s a third-tier Hong Kong crime epic, and that’s what puts a sour taste in my mouth about NaFF. The festival relies too strongly on submissions. During the selection process, NaFF might have taken this as an opportunity: “Bad Blood is adequate, but can we do better?” Why not try for the newest Johnnie To film, for instance? (It’s worth noting that the newest Johnnie To picture Fuk Sau stars Sylvie Testud, the enigmatic star of NaFF highlight Lourdes.) Instead, we get brain-dead schedule filler. 2 out of 5.
TUESDAY – APRIL 20TH
Tuesday’s The Film Talk featured Gaia helmsman Jason Lehel and Belcourt Theatre programming guru Toby Leonard. During his talk on the show and our conversation at Boscos at the end of the evening, Jason proved himself both thoughtful and sensitive. He certainly has a keen eye for color, composition and movement, which we’ll get back to in a moment.
My first film of the evening was the Peruvian film Undertow (Contracorriente), which won the audience award for World Cinema Dramatic at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. I usually walk into audience-award winning films with some suspicion: As it happens no film I’ve ever voted for won any festival’s audience award. More often than not, the films that win are just slightly better than ok: crowd pleasers with a positive message than inexplicably make fest-goers mark 5’s on their cards. IMDB describes Undertow as, “An unusual ghost story set on the Peruvian seaside; a married fisherman struggles to reconcile his devotion to his male lover within his town’s rigid traditions.” That pretty much says it all, although “ghost story” makes it sound scary or even mildly haunting. Rather, the male lover exists only in the head of the fisherman after he suddenly disappears in the first quarter of the film. Undertow reaffirmed my suspicions of the audience award, and I give it a decent 3 out of 5
It was 8:15 on Tuesday night and Gaia was already 30 minutes late for it’s 7:45 show time. The projectionist was having problems with the HD elements, problems which seemed to have cursed Gaia’s first 5 screenings. However, when the film finally began, all bad vibes went away. Photographed on two Red cameras, Gaia is a stunningly-shot meditation on sexual abuse, marginalized cultures, and the fearlessness one acquires when there’s nothing left to lose. Director Jason Lehel offers this synopsis: “A group of Native Americans discover a young woman, left for dead, in the Arizona desert and take her to their reservation. Through her relationship with American Natives she manages to re-connect with her own innocence, but is forced to make a choice between being reborn out of the chaos of her past or dying in the grips of her darkness.” Having gone through some of the tribes’ rituals himself, Jason was able to gain rare access to highly-protective Native American communities in Southern Arizona. He captured never-before-seen tribal rituals and a disturbing ritual slaughter of a hog that would feed the entire real-life tribe. There is a poetry in Jason’s camera-work that is reminiscent of Terrence Malick and Andrei Tarkovsky. He gleans performances out of his mostly non professional cast that rivals the direction of Robert Bresson and Roberto Rossellini. Newcomer Emily Lape is absolutely explosive in her first feature performance. She’ll be a star if there is any justice in the world. My only real quibble (and it is a minor one) is that Jason uses too many flashbacks of Emily’s abuse-laden childhood. The point would have been much more effective if 90 percent of the flashback scenes were taken out. Even still, Gaia is a near-masterpiece that marks the arrival of its director and lead actress. 4.7 out of 5.
Because Gaia ended late and because the director invited us out for drinks after the screening, I missed Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl. I hear it’s everything I had hoped Bad Blood to be, and in spades. I’ll try to secure a screener copy.
WEDNESDAY – APRIL 21ST
Wednesday 5ish marked my toughest decision: Films Without Borders or Dogtooth? The latter was being praised as a festival highlight and a delightfully bent drama. The former was a collection of experimental shorts, featuring a new film by Syndromes and a Century director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. I thought long and hard about it (and changed my mind several times) and in the end chose the experimental shorts collection curated by the Belcourt’s Jason Shawhan. The program was a mixed bag of good, bad, and ugly. After seeing the Films Without Borders collection for a few years now, I’m beginning to feel that Jason tends to prefer statement-making experimental shorts that work within a narrative structure. I myself lean towards tone poems in the vein of Stan Brakhage or Len Lye. Musical symphonies don’t have to mean anything to be deep and beautiful; why must films? I would tell you the names of the standouts, but NaFF took the schedule off their website. The best film placed a camera inside a person’s mouth facing outward as the person ate, smoked, and kissed. The effect produced surprisingly beautiful images. Another highlight was a Friends-style sitcom scene that kept rewinding and playing again, with each viewing a generational loss in quality and a deja-vu bewilderment on the faces of the actors. Quite enjoyable. Overall, 3 out of 5.
An Italian drama starring Tilda Swinton about the love lives of the bourgeoisie offspring of a wealthy textile manufacturer, I Am Love (Lo Sono L’Amore) was the surest, most elegantly composed, most masterful film I saw at NaFF. I’m still thinking about the densely layered plot, involving class, sexual orientation, ethnicity, power, and the forbidden. 5 out of 5.
Hitoshi Matsumoto’s Big Man Japan was the outrageously-entertaining-if-bum-fuddling monster romp of NaFF 2008. I was a little worried that his new film Symbol would succeed and fail in the same ways BMJ did — that being, an ending that doesn’t live up to it’s innovative premise. Worry not. Symbol is certainly innovative and at times bum-fuddling, but it satisfies; and the ending is thoughtful, touching, and prescient. The film juxtaposes the stories of a Mexican luchador who never takes his mask off and a man (played by the director) trapped in a white room. You’ll wonder what the two stories have to do with each other until a slow-wound punchline intersects them near the end of the film. The man in the white room has to touch levers in the shape of . . . erm . . . cherub penises and testicles . . . in order to activate various deployments, including toothbrushes, sushi, cherub farts, momentary-on doors, etc. The plot could very well be the level design for a video game. I was constantly reminded of Valve’s masterpiece Portal and half-expected a companion cube to drop in. The man subsequently reaches further levels until he faces. . . well, I won’t spoil it for you. Is the cake a lie? You’ll have to watch and see for yourself. 4.5 out of 5.
THURSDAY – APRIL 22ND
Starring John C. Riley, Johah Hill, and Marisa Tomei, the Duplas brothers’ Cyrus was by far the comedy highlight of NaFF. Of course, it was the only comedy I saw at NaFF. IMDB plots it as thus: “A down on his luck divorcée finally meets the woman of his dreams, only to discover she has another man in her life – her son. Before long, the two are locked in a battle of wits for the woman they both love-and it appears only one man can be left standing when it’s over.” The film was quite hilarious, but things resolved a little too easily at the end. 3.8 out of 5.
So there you have it, the 2010 Nashville Film Festival. If you want to read more of my reviews, see my coverage for days 1 – 2, 3, and 4 and check out the Nashville Scene’s NaFF guide. Now back to your regularly-scheduled experimental music blog.
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DaveX