There’s something about Texas and independent filmmaking, I don’t know what’s in the water over there, but something seems to be giving them an edge. They seem to be able make films without giving into the system that slows and destroys many Hollywood productions. An Ordinary Family is the perfect example of a team of filmmakers that still have a love for the art and a respect for their colleagues that gives their film a heart and soul that’s refreshing to see on the big screen.

I had the chance to sit down with the makers of the film, Director/Writer Mike Akel, Writer/Producer Matt Patterson, and Actor/Associate Producer Richard C. Jones at LA Film Festival while their film was playing at the festival and talk to them about putting together such a fine independent film…

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The trio of Québécois films at this year’s LA Film Festival came to a head for me with Denis Côté’s Curling, a slow-burn observation of a small circle of off-centre individuals in an isolated, snow-bound setting. With a certain dry, not to say absurd humour, it certainly ticks some familiar Québécois boxes. But the direction displays an unusual rigour and a discreet formal range, and it is one of the most beautifully photographed films (by Josée Deshaies) that I have seen in recent years. Despite some obtrusive loose ends, it ends up an impressive, disquieting and rather moving achievement.

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The revival strand of the LA Film Fest was pretty random this year, and the most tempting older movie was part of the guest artist series. Composer Daniel Luppi picked Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 Navajo Joe, primarily for the pseudonymous Morricone score but also a little bit, one hopes, because it improbably stars Burt Reynolds in his second-ever lead role.

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Ludivine Sagnier was at the LA Film Festival this year, which was rather a glamorous surprise in the Regal 6. She was introducing Crime d’amour, the final film from veteran director Alain Corneau; Kristin Scott-Thomas co-stars in a tale of corporate back-biting, unruly passions, ambition and obsession/compulsion.

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Although I didn’t see many of the narrative films in competition at the LA Film Festival this year, if for no other reason than its hearty substance I would probably have picked Sawdust City over the winner, Familiar Ground. This is a great example of something or other: the synopsis in the programme made it sound like a tired Midwest indie. It’s debatable whether it’d have seemed more or less attractive if they’d added that it was inspired specifically by Cassavetes’ terrific Husbands, and by him and Peter Falk in Mikey and Nicky. First-time director David Nordstrom was on hand and dedicated the screening to the just-passed Falk. He would have liked it a lot, I believe.

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The career of director Christopher Munch has not yet lived up to the promise of his Lennon/Epstein fantasy, The Hours and the Times (1991). He was present at this year’s LA Film Festival with his latest, Letters From the Big Man, a most unusual tale of a forestry worker getting to know the Sasquatch. It’s not likely to propel him into the big time, and frequently skirts the risible, but does turn out to possess something like the stubbornly individual charm of its protagonist.

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French Director Céline Sciamma made a splash (hoho) a couple of years ago with Water Lillies and her new film Tomboy sticks with the pre-pubescent female theme, receiving its North American premiere at this year’s LA Film Festival.

Laure is a 10 year-old girl – a tomboy – newly moved to a new town, who tells the local kids she’s called Michael. She’s still a lanky, unformed thing, so playing soccer topless poses no threat to her deception (though swimming trunks require a play-doh prosthesis, amusingly). We don’t know why she’s a tomboy but nor do we need toto; she is close with her kind and loving father but that can scarcely be the reason. Continue Reading

Do not confuse the Los Angeles Film Festival with the plethora of other film festivals in the city. I would list them all for reference but I have better things to do with my time. The “LA Film Fest” wrapped up this past weekend (June 16-26) and it was my first time in attendance.

In a city like LA, with the abundance of film festivals and savvy audiences made up of filmmakers, festivals tend to go one of two ways; they are either populated by pretentious Hollywood douchebags, or they are struggling to survive selling tickets only to the families of the filmmakers. I shamefully admit I expected the first of the two options, but The LA Film Festival was neither pretentious nor struggling.

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The wry, deadpan humour found in the various Québécois films on offer at this year’s LA Film Festival reaches an apotheosis in the droll and wintery (are they all?) En terrains connus, by director Stéphane Lafleur, whose vision of despondent, smalltown existence bears comparison with the absurdities and suppression of Kaurismaki.

There’s a gimmick in this movie in the form of a man from the future, come to warn of disaster, who appears mysteriously (and unidentified) to Maryse, and then to her sadsack brother Benoit. He is an anomaly that is never explained, straightforwardly-presented and touched with self-deprecating humour (he’s from only a few months in the future) that is (only just) justified by the wry but realistic absurdity of the rest of the film.

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