Los Angeles’ longest running International Film Festival, AFI fest, announces its 2010 dates and asks for film entries for their 24th annual event. The American Film Institute’s event which will be held November 4 until the 11th will take place at the historic Grauman’s Chinese Theater and the MANN Chinese in Hollywood, as well as the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.
And so the 2009 American Film Institute Festival has, as all good things must, come to an end. A smaller selection of films than recent years, showing mostly in one screening only, was offset by the remarkable fact that in conjunction with its sponsors, the AFI was able to present the entire festival for free. This is obviously a good thing, and it would be remarkable if viable in the long term. The drawbacks, however, are that about two thirds of the screenings I attended had empty seats despite advance ticket “sell” outs, and some of the late-night screenings had a back-row contingent of the Hollywood blvd demographic looking for anywhere warm inside at that time of evening. A nominal dollar or two fee would perhaps take care of these issues, but the aura and allure of the free ticket remains unmatchable.
One of the AFI Fest‘s exclusive screenings in its final two days’ removal to Santa Monica was Portugese João Pedro Rodrigues’ acclaimed transvestite drama Morrer Como Um Homem. From the war-paint-as-make-up opening, followed by a terrific sex-change origami demonstration, to the musical afterlife-view finale, Rodrigues glides smoothly and unhurriedly through the story of aging transvestite Tonia (Fernando Santos), scared of the butchery implied in the final transformation, secure in her inner identity but undeceived by the outer, and slowly dying from the very things that help make her what she is (leaking breast implants).
The AFI Fest moved on Friday from its Hollywood home to the westside, coinciding with the start of Santa Monica’s American Film Market. This occasioned the welcome replay of a handful of titles, as well as some screenings exclusive to the new location. One of the former, widely-praised after an appearance at Cannes, was the Politist, adj., Romanian Corneliu Porumboiu’s follow-up to his 12:08 East of Bucharest.
The plot, such as it is, concerns provincial cop Cristi trailing a schoolboy suspected of selling hashish. The boy does very little at all as Cristi follows at a discrete but purposeful distance, and as the camera in turn does likewise. This is not thrilling stuff – we get to watch as Cristi eats his lunchtime soup and even the policeman hired to consult on the movie found the first part too boring on first viewing – but Porumboiu’s careful long-take camera is as concentrated in its attention as Cristi’s and compels the same from the engaged viewer.
The AFI fest continues to support and expose new Argentine cinema with El Secreto de sus ojos by feature and TV director Juan José Campanella. It is essentially a legal eagle murder mystery movie; Campanella has been behind the camera for several episodes of Law and Order, and the TV form is intermittently evident here, but it’s to his credit (he also adapted the source novel) that it plays rarely like a feature-length small-screen piece, and more like a fully-fledged good old-fashioned movie.
So the deal is that Edward Pressman, producer of Abel Ferrara’s original Bad Lieutenant, owns the rights to the title and decided the time was right to reuse it with an eye to kick-starting a franchise (he is also currently planning Wall Street 2, and a reboot of The Crow.) He wanted someone unexpected to direct and eyebrows were certainly raised when news filtered out that it was to be crazy German arthouse-favourite Werner Herzog; and in star Nicolas Cage, Herzog may just have found a worthy replacement for his erstwhile muse, the late, great and certifiably insane Klaus Kinski.
Enjoying its US premiere at the AFI Fest, fresh from acclaim at Cannes and adulation in Toronto, J’ai tué ma mère is the debut feature from 20 year-old Quebecois Xavier Dolan, writer, director and star.
16 year-old Hubert Minel has in some ways the archetypal push-pull (mostly push) teenage relationship with his (single) mother, but it’s ramped up to a near-hysterical degree. Everything she does annoys him, she listens to a stupid radio station, she eats wrong, and if he’s selfish and childish it’s because she raised him poorly. Sometimes car-rides will descend into shouting matches, but sometimes she’ll weather Hubert’s indignation, calmly resigned. And it’s not all him; his mother can lose her temper too, invading his school class or petulantly spoiling an evening on which he has actually made an effort to be nice.
One of the more anticipated titles in this year’s AFI fest was Mother (Madeo), subject of excited word of mouth from Cannes, Toronto and Karlovy Vary, and the fourth film from South Korean writer-director Bong Joon-ho (The Host). Its opening, with an old woman walking slowly through then dancing in a field, has little to do with what follows, but does introduce the film’s gentle semi-absurdist sense of humour and the captivating presence of Kim Hya-ja. Her performance is central to the movie, as the title suggests, and she is mesmerizing without a jot of overplaying or sympathy-begging, in her search for the perpetrator of the crime for which her slow-witted son has been lazily convicted (Won Bin, also excellent).
The big draw of the AFI Fest‘s 10 o’clock slot last night was not, surprisingly, Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers, but the new Michael Cera comedy (yes, it is now a genre) Youth In Revolt.
Nick Twisp is a polite, intelligent 16 year-old virgin. Meeting a hot, willing temptress (Portia Doubleday) on vacation compels him to create a rule-breaking “supplementary personality” (Cera as “François”, mustachioed, beloafered, permanently smoking) to help him get kicked out of home (child support issues) and reunited with his sweetheart. He does so in grand style, just as she’s carted off to boarding school, and he has her parents and ex-boyfriend to deal with also.
