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LAFF Interview: Mike Akel, Matt Patterson, Richard C. Jones Talk An Ordinary Family

Mali Elfman — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 18:43:29 +0000

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…

As a filmmaker and film watching I appreciated their get up and go style of shooting, limited and cost effective locations and their “make it work” motto. The quality of this film is on par with the best indie films out there and the honest story and heart behind the characters is really what makes it such a great watch. As we all know, every family has their problems and interesting characters, so to begin, let’s find out what provoked them to write the particular stories they did….

Mike Akel: Matt and I both have had a lot of relationships with people who’ve walked through the coming out process. Also a lot of people in the American church community that this is a really big issue. Churches are splitting over this one issue; another one was women in the church leadership [and] gay marriage. I just found that really interesting personally. I’m also a teacher. In schools it’s a big deal – I’m at a school where it’s very conservative-base, but the teachers are very liberal so we have to walk through that and it has been tough. That was front and center for me in my life. And just asking that question, how do you love someone beyond their belief, no matter what it is. Sometimes it feels hypocritical, on the extreme liberal side, they’re not tolerant for the religious right. Someone gets hit and wounded and they run to the other extreme, I see that. We wanted to show a minister that wasn’t doing that and a gay brother who wasn’t doing that.

[Seth] was really trying to come home and be in a relationship with his brother [Thomas] and he didn’t give up, even after the fight. I love that he’s the one that comes to the church. I see that as Thomas’ answered prayer. He didn’t know what to do and all of a sudden the brother comes in and they are able to begin some sort of relationship.

Matt Patterson: All that and more, why are some issues bigger than others. I have a family member who’s an alcoholic and nobody has a problem with it. But somebody that’s gay and that tears the family apart. Why do some things tend to hit harder than others? While we have these two characters that are working it out, I love the fact that for the last year they haven’t been working it out. Before the movie started, they haven’t spoken in almost a year. They both have been living with these questions and this guilt and this remorse, and all this stuff. Mike [Akel] likes to say, ‘Those hairballs that come out, the tight spaces of family vacations when you’re just avoiding talking about it until you can’t avoid it anymore.’

It’s obvious that you three are quite like a family yourself. You’re able to fight with one another, finish each others sentences, and get through it all with a hug. How did you build your crew and establish your well adjusted film-family?

Patterson: Mike and I went into this really believing that community, was not only integral to the story but just to the way we like to live our lives. I want to be the type of producer that when I call somebody for the next job, they’re eager to pick up the phone instead of avoiding my phone call. The relationships that we still have from the film are so amazing. I know that I can call every single one of these people and they’ll work on the next project. So carrying that forward is awesome.

Akel: My last film, this magical thing too, I hire great people. People you’re not afraid if they are smarter than you and that’s super smart and sharp technically – I found myself, with this project, being able to let go more. I think when you’re directing, especially when you feel like you have to control everything, and be like Robert Rodriguez and be the writer, director, editor, sound, score. It’s not my personality. I wasn’t that way growing up in sports, I’m point guard and quarterback. I like to distribute things. It felt good. Matt [Patterson] directed a number of scenes. I said, ‘Hey why don’t you go do the swimming?’ You look at Peter Jackson, they have like five units. You can’t do it all. I learned that letting go makes project better.

Richard C. Jones: The community that we had as filmmakers and as crew shone through in how we treated the actors and having that. It comes out on the film. The opportunity to work with friends, work with people that you believe in, that’s really valuable for me. It’s turned out well so I’m going to continue on doing that.

The one rule of filmmaking is that nothing ever goes right. How did you overcome that?

Patterson: I think we’ve learned to appreciate the delicate surprises. I don’t know any better way to it. Plan, plan, plan and then be prepared to be surprised and be okay with it. That’s what I feel is the strength of the film, is being surprised by the little moments. Even in editing, finding something that none of use even saw and being willing to put in there and maybe scrap something we planned because the surprises were better than what we planned.

Akel: I see that so much, I teach high school filmmaking, and so many people get stuck to their script. And that’s great. And then you shoot it, now this is what’s reality. Not what you intended. You have to go, what do we have? If you could open up and say, ‘Okay, well how do I make a story out of what we have? We didn’t get this scene, but we got these.’ Be able to really work with that. I think that’s a big step of maturity to be able to do that.

While at at LA Film Festival this year I made it to a handful of films, An Ordinary Family was one of them mainly because of the buzz on the street that it was possibly one of the most honest and realistic films in the festival and despite it’s lack of stars had some of the best performances. So, what’s going on in Texas, what are you guys doing over there?

Akel: I wasn’t raised in Texas. I was raised in Arkansas, been there 12 years, but there’s such a can do, you’re not waiting for someone to give you permission. I really think our patriarchs, you have Terrence Malick, Mike Judge, Richard Linklater, Robert Rodriguez. Not that any of us know them, but they have have established that ‘can-do’ spirit. Then you have the university. Richard Linklater started the Austin Film Society and it’s a very nurturing community-driven environment. It’s a very creative city. You have musicians, you have a lot going on there. I call it my grad school.

Patterson: I worked in Los Angeles for several years in indie film. I got sick of the circular steps, projects never happening. Things like that. It’s very refreshing to move to Austin. You don’t need a ton of money, you skill, you got people that want to help, you don’t need permits.

Jones: I feel like a lot of my friends they move out to LA to make it happen. That’s the last time you ever see anything on their IMDb or anything that they did – I feel like some people can move out to LA and there’s a sense of entitlement, of ‘I moved to LA, now I’m an actor, now I’m a real filmmaker ’cause I’m where the action is.’ They start looking for somebody to create that opportunity instead of working towards – you still have to keep working at it.

Do you think it’s realistic to be an independent filmmaker and have that be your only job?

Akel: I think we’re in a good era where that is going to become more possible because of the direct access to an audience to sell your work.

Patterson: I think we’re in an awkward middle phase right now. We’re kind of ugly teenagers, falling all over ourselves, but we’re learning. The good thing is if we’re in a nimble state, we can move whereas the more established people can’t. I think that’s good – but I don’t think that question has an answer yet.

Jones: It’s the same as out here, can you be a superstar? Yeah, it’s possible, but the numbers game doesn’t support that on average. I think that’s the same way for indie filmmakers. There is very select few who can do it, but you have to have projects that get you there. Not in the beginning, maybe ten years in.

Patterson: But there’s no shame in taking that corporate gig or whatever than can help. You have to butter your toast one way or another or otherwise you don’t have the energy or capacity. I don’t believe in the starving artist life. I don’t think that you have to starve to make art, but I do think you need margin in your life to make art. It’s trying to find that balance.

Akel: Filmmaking is so big. It’s not like we’re a singer songwriter with a guitar, it’s work, work, work, work, so you can get three months off, and I’m a teacher so really it’s for my summer shoot. My two films have been shot in the summer.

What’s next for this film? Obviously you’ve gone the film festival route but how do you get it even further and what other festivals can people find you at?

Akel: We have a couple of distribution opportunities. Also other festivals that we’re waiting to hear back, some international festivals we’re really curious about. Italy and Greece an England.

Patterson: We know there’s an audience and we’re going to take it to them.

Since you guys are such a great example of when it all goes right, what tips do you have for independent filmmakers out there wanting to make films?

Akel: Don’t be afraid to work with people smarter than you. Make sure you really love the material because you’re going to be with it for a long time. See all the weaknesses and limitations as strengths, lack of money, locations, and write your story to those limitations.

Patterson: Read the book ‘Art and Fear.’ My favorite chapter [is the one that talks about] making one piece of pottery or as many as they can, and the people that made as many as they could, made the most beautiful pottery because they got use to what the clay feels like. The group of people that made one and tried to make best, made the most horrible pot. Don’t wait for the best thing, just make something and keep learning.

Akel: Another great book is Sculpting in Time, unbelievable. Also remember this, it take a big man to cry, it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man. Jack Handey. It’s great to entertain, but ask yourself what you really care about. Try to incorporate that. Just one thing about relationships, or the state of affairs in the world, but a theme. I think, theme is missing in a lot of things today. I think that’s the beauty of art that it has something that is going to move us emotionally not just brain candy.

Patterson: To add to that, when you’re writing ask yourself how you can humanize your characters instead of dehumanizing. What are they begging for to be humanized about? When you’re making your film, ask yourself how you can humanize your crew, and your actors and when you’re finishing the film and editing it, asking yourself how you’re editing it to humanize your audience.

Akel: Go for it, go for it filmmakers. We love you. Seriously.

Keep an eye out for An Ordinary Family (you kind find them on Facebook) and more to come from Akel, Patterson and Jones! The film is wonderful and shows great potential for more quality indie filmmaking to come!

LA Film Fest: Curling – Movie Review

Tom von Logue Newth — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 18:51:45 +0000

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.

This is not a film of overt comedy, but its humour is exemplified by a scene where our “hero” Jean-François is dressed and face-painted as a giant bowling pin in the alley where he works, talking to his colleague, an impeccably foxy goth girl in a platinum Marilyn wig. They look bizarre, but their conversation is about self-imposed isolation, fear and connection between people, the film’s fundamental concerns. This is followed by another scene of borderline absurdity, as Jean-François is bothered by a grotty child, rather bearing out the motivations behind his semi-disturbing home life.

We learn at the start that his daughter, Julyvonne, is home-schooled, but discover gradually that this one aspect of a weirdly cloistered existence. The mother is absent, her single appearance suggesting trauma, and adding sinister weight to the already disquieting situation. There’s little hint of anything physically untoward, however: Jean-François loves his daughter very much and keeps her hidden at home through fear of all the danger that could occur out there in the world.

Their relationship, in the brief domestic scenes, displays a strange equality of respect. But he is also the strict rule-maker, withholding dessert because good behavior has already been rewarded, and occasionally allowing Julyvonne to dance to music on the living room stereo. Does he choose the music or does she? The first is a hammer blow of elucidation – “I Think We’re Alone Now”, with its opening “children behave..” the pointed awkwardness heightened by Tiffany’s desperate, synthetic cheerfulness and the couple’s incongruously quiet contemplation.

The second such scene makes a similar point, to Stacey Q’s “Two of Hearts”. The irony is as heavy-handed as Jean-François’s frightened fatherhood, and we sense he might know that too. He has withdrawn from the world, and taken Julyvonne along with him, but his love is not entirely blind, and that is no small part of his pain. He knows that his mind has been twisted by some crippling, inchoate fear of interaction, of contact with others; restrained pace here is no stylistic fripperie but a fundamental, tragic character trait, a near-paralysis stunningly literalized in portraits, long takes, cropped compositions and perfect use of the short zoom (there’s a couple of perfect focus-pulls also).

Jean-François is not beyond redemption. His amusing boss Kennedy at the bowling alley encourages a friendly relationship, and Isabelle the goth draws him out a little in kindly fashion – he seems like a good man who cannot help himself. Kennedy, behind his bluff exterior, tries in gentle ways to introduce some sweetness and fun into Julyvonne’s life. Her joy at being allowed a rare outing, to play with other children, is palpable. Debutante Philomène Bilodeau’s mostly blank performance is appropriate for the character, described as having “nothing in her eyes”. But that is not quite true – she is an obedient little girl, but can speak up to her father in a mature, equal way; and we see and are touched by her excitement at the pleasures he allows her.

The opening scene explains that she has an astigmatism, advanced and undiagnosed. This life is not good for her health, emotional or physical, and is actively eroding her ability to relate to the world at large. Her father is played by veteran Emmanuel Bilodeau, and for the role of Julyvonne he suggested his own daughter. There is certainly an intimacy to their relationship which must come from real life, but this is his film – what a face! – and his closed-down performance includes nonetheless a glimpse of the inner life of conflict, and the tragedy of self-awareness, revealed gradually, just as our sympathy replaces mistrust.

Coté’s script is measured, unafraid to delay explanation: this is the sort of film that a couple of scenes later one can find oneself wondering, what was with that kid’s body? Not all the explanations arrive. The danger Jean-François so fears is presented obliquely: it is intimated that there is a killer on the loose; bodies in the woods are Julyvonne’s only playmates; and there’s blood in the room of the motel where Jean-François also works (presented in first-rate fashion through dialogue before image).

Not everything comes off: Julyvonne finds a caged tiger in a snowy field which may or may not represent her burgeoning pubescence. There is otherwise no sexual dimension (or is her father looking too hard during that second song?). Those unexplained bodies: the dead kid is a particularly distracting irrelevance and Julyvonne’s “dolls” are a pat morbidity. The purported irrelevance of the film’s title is thuddingly eroded – we can achieve something if we do it together (unlike the individual efforts of the ostensibly similar sport of bowling, of course, of which we see rather more). Likewise, Jean-François’s recuperation feels all too easy: his dream is finely presented but still too pat, and the only other thing he needs, it seems, is a good lay, even if the run-up is a lovely escalation of friendliness and growing comfort with surely the most tenacious whore in recent cinema.

That said, I don’t really care about the missteps. In the theatre, the opening shot actually brought tears to my eyes for the colour, composition and grain, and it looked frequently like 16 or even 8mm in its perfectly lit, tangible celluloid quality. Some of that quality even survives on the DVD screener, and it makes one ponder, now that we’re well into the digital age, whether a real distinction may be necessary between films and videos, as one distinguishes between a daguerreotype and a photograph, say.

Natural wintery light is used to gorgeous effect, composition is scrupulously precise, and the hopefulness of the ending is as much to do with Jean-François’s actually cracking a smile as it is to do with the colors of the final shot, outdoors, with crowds of tobogganers, black and red dotting a snowy hillside beneath a sky of a perfect, optimistic blue. One beautiful but pointless shot of a door jamb, however – at a tense emotional moment – betrays the third, secret, central character.

This is not invisible direction. That Coté used to be a film critic contributes perhaps to his film’s being slightly over-calculated, willful and frequently brilliant. His control is highly impressive, the emotional line of the film valid and affecting, as much due to conception as to sensitive playing, and Deshaies’ photography will make you swoon. Hobbled by a few distractions, but seductive and intelligent film-making of an impressive order.

Rating: 8.88/10

Watch the Trailer.

LA Film Fest: Navajo Joe (1966)

Tom von Logue Newth — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 01:05:49 +0000

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.

When even Reynolds frequently disowns a movie, you know it’s not got a lot going for it, but the reasons above are quite enough to make it watchable. Corbucci’s films are frequently less excellent than they sound, and this is from 1966, the year when Sergio Leone would unleash the baroque excess under which the genre would flourish. It’s a serviceable enough tale: large bunch of bad guys, stalked by renegade Joe, trying to rob a train at the behest of a corrupt town doctor and generally causing havoc.

It’s as ridiculous as it sounds, with Reynolds in brown buckskins to match his tanned face, a warm brown plank of wood; he leaps and rolls all over the place, always appears on the skyline, and just occasionally threatens to break out the smirk. His discursion on what it is to be American is sharp and pointed (he’s of part Cherokee descent). Basic motivations are all clear-cut, but moment-to-moment decisions are haywire as the townsfolk dither, the villains act even more stupidly than one would expect, and Joe inexplicably blows hot and cold over the foxy Mexican servant girl.

Set pieces are serviceable, and too little is made of Joe’s yen for carving the gang’s symbol (yes, in one instance into a forehead). Nice to see Fernando Rey in support, but he doesn’t get to do a lot as the padre, and the gang and its leaders are fatally goonish. Morricone saves the day, with a score full of familiar tropes like the wailing voices and the offset ostinato that’d be recycled into the climactic theme of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (the same year). There’s also a great deal of killing. One wonders why, if Joe is so sure he can do away with the tens-strong gang all on his own, he had not done so already, but it’s best not to ask questions of this sort of film. Amusing theme song too (“Navajo Joe” over and over again).

Rating: 5.56/10

Watch the Trailer.

LA Film Fest: Love Crime

Tom von Logue Newth — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 01:04:46 +0000

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.

The opening scene is almost the best thing about the film, as Sagnier’s Isabelle sits with her boss Christine, in the latter’s luxe-to-a-tee living room. They are working casually after hours, drinking wine, getting to know one another a little more. Unexpected sexual nuances and surprising gestures deliciously spice the action. But it opens with the punchline of a story, as if warning the viewer that the film’s satisfactions will not necessarily come with much back-up.

The plot’s the thing, and to reveal too much would be pointless. It plays out neatly enough, setting up an antagonism, allowing the viewer to see that something is afoot in the preparation of a crime, and then dissecting the aftermath as the police work to accuse and then clear the perpetrator. We are half let into a secret whose revelation becomes increasingly superfluous, but it is all put together with high efficiency – the equivalent of that living room, or perhaps the shiny offices of the unspecified company. Their sequestered, tunnel-vision world is well evoked, in the skyscraper cockpit offices and tactically-timed meetings. But all they are doing is working on “projects” and other vague jargon, and the English dialogue of their American colleagues is semi-parodic.

Scott Thomas is superb (is she always?): thorny and malevolent, but perhaps possessed of a desperate vulnerability. Sagnier runs a gamut of personalities and fully suggests the slippery, driven identity beneath, without ever really revealing it (rightly) and so gets away with a very actress-y job. Given everyone’s duplicitous-ness, it’s hard to know how far to trust the lesbian subtext, but it’s not even that important. In a sense, Corneau has made an archetype of a film, a classy French thriller with psychological mechanisms and a bitter ending. It is handsomely-mounted, but its complexity gradually drifts further and further away from ingenious. Really nice Pharoah Sanders score though.

Rating: 6.72/10

Watch the Trailer.

LA Film Fest: Sawdust City

Tom von Logue Newth — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 01:03:14 +0000

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.

Nordstrom was not slavish in his inspiration, and nor did he did he confine himself, channeling a load of wintery 70s vibe with a sailor and a knapsack. A first-rate opening montage introduces us in very natural fashion to two brothers, who’ll see each again after some years, with closeness and caginess. On the soundtrack, Pete the sailor calls brother Bob from a bar, chews the fat, let’s on he’s in town and says he’s got to find dad. They spend the night, and the rest of the film, on a bar crawl. Some stuff comes out, of course, but mostly the film lets them just be together, spar, drink, annoy, and generally fit.

The whole premise allows Nordstrom to hit obvious notes, but he nails almost all of them, dispensing the secrets of absence and family with care, and creating a couple of central characters whom one would be happy to watch doing almost anything together. He takes Bob himself, opposite Carl McLaughlin, a quiet, stolid presence who perfectly registers restrained annoyance, and makes his shell almost visible. Bob is a remarkable creation and a selfless performance – he can be such a dick at times that strangers want to beat him up. But he’s always ready to forget and raise another beer, and his obligatory toilet confessional is properly great.

Just that film would be pretty fine, but this one has a killer touch: the brothers are joined by Gene (Lee Lynch), a free-flowing barfly and practiced freeloader, who injects a great deal of amusement into the proceedings, supposedly guiding them to their dad. The kicker is that it’s like late 60s Dennis Hopper is in the movie: his first shot is an instant classic, sitting at the bar, telling a hilarious story, with cowboy hat, shaggy beard. But it’s not an imitation: in speech he has echoes of Hopper, but his own voice. Lynch is brilliant, in a really unusual move pulled off to a tee.

The film plays out to a spot-on soundtrack of 70s bar rock, and the feeling for that kind of small-town bar existence is note perfect (filmed in Nordstrom’s home town). Photography is handsomely appropriate, by James Laxton; there’s a great deal of humour; and the emotional stuff is almost all handled well. If the final dialogue is cliché-ridden, the characters have earned it – and would they not be likely to talk that way? Thing is, Cassavetes and Falk wouldn’t have, and one misses the first-rate naturalism of the rest of the script. But overall, terrific.

Rating: 8.88/10

Watch the Trailer.

LA Film Fest: Letters From The Big Man

Tom von Logue Newth — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 19:03:07 +0000

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.

Forestry service hydrologist Sarah is played by Lily Rabe (daughter of Jill Clayburgh), unafraid to be sour or unfriendly, a young woman leaving behind a broken relationship to return to the solitary existence she loves best, in the wilderness of southwest Oregon. There’s a whole load of business with a government agency planning to clear a section for a secret base (developing Sasquatch for military use?) and some fussing between eco-types and forestry officials. But Sarah would rather be left alone in the woods with her sketchbook and watercolors. Not least, we realize, as she has started to befriend the Sasquatch who sits mournfully in the sunrise and beats trees with logs in the dead of night.

After Sarah’s initial suspicions that something is out there with her, the getting to know one another of man and beast is largely elided until we realize at the end that they have become much closer than we have been allowed to see. It’s a bit of a cheat, but one that evokes the secretive, personal nature of the bond. Munch also avoids heavy explanation of the myth, giving us snatches that reveal the creatures to live in some crepuscular trans-dimensional state, but which also falls back on stuff like infrasound, chosen ones and a wise old bearded woodsman.

The landscape is shot with frequent beauty (by Munch regular Rob Sweeney): the Kalmiopsis Wilderness is the real star. The Big Man is surprisingly un-silly, but lines like “you must see us with your heart” undercut our tolerance for the whimsy; the medievel-tinged classical score is pleasant, but repeatedly overblown. Some of the more poetic elements of the film-making work better than those that skirt gesturism, but the cumulative effect is genuine, and the exhortation to ”feel more deeply” narrowly avoids being a platitude, as that is just what Sarah quietly learns to do. The sheer difference and self-containedness of woodland life is effectively conveyed and Rabe efficiently conveys that this is Sarah’s most natural habitat; we are happy to see her depart for a Diane Fossey-style year with the Sasquatch, away from all the real-world nonsense, and happy too that for all its wonkiness, the film has its heart at the right place, and a prickly performance at its heart.

Rating: 6.76/10

Watch the Trailer.

LA Film Fest: Tomboy

Tom von Logue Newth — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 19:51:58 +0000

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.

Her decision actually to pass as a boy seems spur of the moment – less decision than childish impulse; her clear blue eyes are searching and intelligent but apparently unable to conceive of ramifications to her behaviour. The marvelously self-possessed Zoé Héran is outstanding, childishly steadfast, and when she is inevitably forced to put on a dress, her whole demeanor is almost animal in its naturalness – not a powerful animal, perhaps, but one caught and coiled between anger and fear. Backed up by sure direction and pacing, a little bit of visual poetry and fine support from Mathieu Demy and Sophie Cattani as the parents, Héran gives a stunning performance of childhood torn between conviction and uncertainty.

Laure has a little sister, a curly-haired cherub with giant lash-frilled eyes, and she’s far too cute for my tolerance. But she is an amusing presence and an amusingly facile liar and, as with Laure, there’s a real sweetness in her pleasure at having other kids to play with (a thrill that they’re older too, and a bursting pride in her big brother). The sisters love to horse around together at home also, but there’s likewise more footage of kids at play than I care to watch: the point that they – and Laure specifically – are kids like any others is quickly made.

But the flipside is that she is not like the other kids; she feels, presumably, born into the wrong body, and has only the barest hesitation in kissing her (female) friend, an act that the other children find abhorrent in their incomprehension. The tale is slight, observational rather than probing, but its gentle tone and terrific central performance allow the wider ramifications to be felt.

Rating: 7.65/10

Watch the Trailer

LA Film Fest 2011 Wrap Up with Elite Squad and Life Happens Video Reviews

Guest Writer — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 16:59:46 +0000

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.

I attended the opening night filmmaker and press party where I ran into old friends, met knew ones, and was happy to discuss the state of Indie films with a group from Austin, TX. (Who isn’t a filmmaker or musician from Austin nowadays?) I immediately discovered that this festival is a unique gem in the city.

With a large catalogue of films playing at the festival, I unfortunately did not see many because I got hit with an unexpected cold. However I did spend a night seeing Elite Squad: The Enemy Within, from Brazilian director Jose Padilha, and L!fe Happens from director Kat Coiro. Both films were entertaining and worth seeing, and I hope they’re successful in their post-festival lives.

The LA Film Festival is exactly what you want from a festival with plenty of parties to keep you mingling with people throughout, provides the resources for unknown movies to get publicity, and the selection of films is top-notch. If you’re an independent filmmaker deciding on where to submit your movie, the LA Film Festival is a prime destination.

Check out my reviews for the films below…

The Enemy Within:

L!fe Happens:

Written by Guest Writer and Filmmaker Michael May

LA Film Fest: Familiar Ground

Tom von Logue Newth — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 16:28:01 +0000

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.

Francis La Haye as Benoit has a funny face that fits right in, and most of the film’s amusement is generated around him: a ridiculous way to build a fire, a ridiculous family roast. In his dead-end life he is constantly frustrated and angered by seemingly everything and everyone around him; his wheezing father, with whom he lives, puts him down; he appears to have no job; his sad-faced girlfriend has a devil child who torments him; and he confesses to his sister that he’s had a “shit winter”. She has troubles of her own, drifting through her existence, sometimes literally, accompanied by slo-mo and spacey music, with a preoccupied anxiety about severed arms following a factory accident. She is disengaged from life for no reason she can define, slowly drifting out of her marriage to a loving, cheerful husband.

Brother and sister don’t quite get on, in a regular squabbling sibling way, but Benoit nearly does something terrible to her, out of his own desperation. Disaster averted, they start to grow closer, on an errand together to their country cottage. Their relationship has that sibling warmth which can bubble up when the squabbles are subdued. There’s no big reconciliation, revelation or growth, but it does look as though they are learning a little how to get on, and how to engage with life. Which makes Benoit’s final decision a little strange.

Rating: 7.56/10

Watch the Trailer.

LA Film Fest: The Salesman

Tom von Logue Newth — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 01:30:46 +0000

Following a special section in last year’s AFI Fest, and a trio of titles at this year’s LA Film Festival, I am developing rather a fondness for Québécois cinema. Without presuming to pigeonhole an entire region’s cultural output, one can recognise in Le Vendeur a quiet wit, straightforwardness and lack of illusions that seem characteristic.

Marcel Lévesque is in his late sixties, but still works at the car dealership where he has been the number one salesman every month for sixteen years, and dismisses all suggestion of retirement. It’s a declining industrial town in the depth of winter, some hours from Quebec City, and the film is punctuated with the number of days the local plant has been closed (over eight months). This effects the whole community, but Marcel can even flog a car to a laid-off worker. He is a kind, friendly man, a jovial, loving father and grandfather, but still a killer salesman, chummy and persistent rather than pushy, firmly believing that everyone needs a new car: “I lie to make people happy”.

Something happens. The film flows along without any apparently significant event until it does, simply filling out the few details of Marcel’s routine life, fleshing the character, conjuring the sublime placidity of his existence, and making all the more powerful the cracks that appear in his tranquil mien (veteran Gilbert Sicotte is superb). If he seemed dedicated to his work before, it now looks more like his life than his job; the others on the lot are uncomfortable at his not taking a break, but we feel the full force of his lonely tragedy, and recognise the car lot as his only life raft.

It is a finely controlled feature debut from Sébastien Pilote, discreetly shot, with some beautiful snowy moments, and similarly low-key but effective music; matters proceeds with fine, unhurried pacing that conveys a sense of the gentle rhythm of the town’s life, but it reveals itself in the end to be a film of devastating hopelessness and unexpected power.

Rating: 8.23/10

Watch the Trailer.

LA Film Fest: Sidewalls

Tom von Logue Newth — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 00:22:53 +0000

I like to tell anyone who’ll listen that Argentina is producing some of the most imaginative cinema in the world right now. The LA Film Festival presentation of Gustavo Taretto’s Sidewalls (Medianeras), for all its slightly inconsequential whimsy a smart, detailed and funny romance-in-waiting comedy that happily upholds the national reputation.

As much as anything else, the film is also a city portrait, introducing itself as such with a fine skyline montage in lovely gray dawn light, moving in on details whilst the voiceover makes an effective case for the emotional power of architecture. The specific effect of the city on the film’s two protagonists, Martin and Mariana, is that they can be near neighbours without realising it, and that each one’s apartment benefits from the addition of a small window (hilariously placed).

Voiceover dominates the film, alternating between the two characters, as each shows us the floorplan of their apartments, describes their lives and past relationships, and enumerates various things such as the contents of Martin’s “survival” backpack for when he goes out: he’s a recovering sufferer of panic attacks, and a web designer who feels like he “sat down at my computer ten years ago and never got up”. Mariana on the other hand is an architect who’s never had anything built, rather shell-shocked by the end of a 4-year relationship (now indulging in an amusingly why-not thing with a shop-window mannequin). Each goes on a couple of hilariously unsuccessful dates, also in a may-as-well sort of way, but otherwise they remain solitary, not quite lonely, and both more or less, it seems, having given up the hope for Mr/Ms Right.

That the two are going to meet is fondly inevitable, and the manner in which it happens balances obviousness with suddenness and sweetness. We’re firmly rooting for them by this time: both Javier Drolas and Pilar López de Ayala are hugely appealing, he shaggy and doleful, a depressed Paul Coelho, as he has it; and she is smart and stunningly beautiful, in that remarkably everyday Argentinian way. Such is their charm that the Youtube coda to the film is both surprisingly unimaginative and something of a let-down: we’ve enjoyed being in their company so much that we’d like to see more of them in one another’s.

But that’s hardly the point of the film. Nor indeed is the influence of the city on the individual, really, but the city portrait is terrific, shot by DP Leandro Martínez : steel and glass, hodgepodge styles, gorgeous belle epoque frontages and even a nice discursion on the unclassified plants that tenaciously sprout from the cracks. No surprise that Martin includes a copy of Playtime in his backpack (there’s also a wonderfully Tati-esque shot of an absurd field of arms rising and falling from the surface of a swimming bath). That the two strands of the film do not quite meld is easily forgiven when it is all accomplished with such neat construction, wit and charm.

Rating: 8.13/10

watch the Trailer.

LA Film Fest: Winners

Tom von Logue Newth — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 09:53:09 +0000

The 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival wrapped up this weekend, after ten days of much better movie-going than the programme had suggested. Everyone was very proud of the 800+ army of volunteers, who manned the downtown streets and lurked in groups around every corner of the Regal 6, asking what movie we were going to see and in one case, simply whether or not I was there to see a movie. And the film-maker’s lounge was a default destination, in part for the unimaginable quantities of free Stella and Jamesons they handed out throughout the festival’s ten days.

Awards were announced promptly. I saw no shorts or music videos, and almost no documentary; Blind Date and The Wind Is Blowing On My Street won the audience and best short awards respectively, I Am A Girl! was voted best documentary short and The Eagleman Stag nabbed best short animation.

Full-length awards went to Wish Me Away, a documentary about lesbian country singer Chely Wright; Beats Rhymes and Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest (documentary: audience); and Senna, about the dead Grand Prix driver, a fascinating-sounding assemblage of archival footage took the International Feature award, as voted for by audiences across the whole board of full-length films, fact and fiction.

The Audience Award for best feature went to south London hoodies vs aliens flick Attack the Block, from the stable of Edgar Wright and helmed by Joe Cornish, a familiar comedy name on British TV. The big winner, one could say, is the recipient of the Narrative Feature prize, and that was Familiar Ground, from Québéc . I thought it pretty good, with a fine consistent tone but a weak ending and ultimately a little on the slight side. I did not see many of other competition films, but heard good things of Chilean bad little girl movie Bad Intentions, hugely enjoyed the Echo Park-set Mamitas, and despised How To Cheat. The only serious contender for the award that I caught was mid-western, Cassavetes-inspired, bar-crawl movie Sawdust City – for all that it had some obvious moments, it took flight far more frequently and thrillingly than Familiar Ground, and featured a wonderfully unexpected and successful homage to the young Dennis Hopper in one of its secondary characters.

Québéc was well represented otherwise by The Salesman and Curling. The first was deceptively powerful and the second, although not perfect, was stunning – my top film of the festival. Both played out of competition with a number of other interesting features: Christopher Munch’s Letters From The Big Man was a bit wonky in executing its weird premise – girl befriends supernatural sasquatch – but ultimately rather beautiful; Alain Corneau’s corporate noir swansong Love Crime revealed itself to be sadly quotidian following the departure of Kristen Scott Thomas’s deliciously malevolent character; and Come Rain, Come Shine from Korea conjured a remarkably gripping mood out of a very slender divorce story, all set indoors on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, the big opening gala starring Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan, was described as a modern noir and seemed to go down universally well.

My favourite festival nation, Argentina, was represented only by Sidewalls, which was delightfully inventive and funny, but ended up adding up to not a great deal. It was nonetheless impressive, just as Tomboy, from France, was impressive for its simplicity, and for a striking central performance by a 10 year-old. Another respectable British debut, from actor Paddy Considine, was Tyrannosaur featuring first-rate performances (the great Peter Mullen and TV’s Olivia Coleman, who’s almost better), but its substance was underplayed and it seemed overly bent on brutality in a particularly generic way. Apart from How To Cheat, the only other LA-based indie I could bring myself to watch was Entrance, and that was ghastly too.

Of the revivals, none were essential, but Burt Reynolds in Corbucci’s Navajo Joe (1966) was amusing enough. He leaps and rolls a lot, and the smirk threatens but never breaks out; greatly aided by a good Morricone score (and guess where Tarantino got the forehead carving from?) Mr Nobody (2009) and Paper Soldier (2008) were recent films that got away: the former cost an inordinate amount of money for Jaco von Dormael to weave a head-spinning tale of alternate realities around Jared Leto; though highly impressive and frequently funny, it was too rarely moving and too likely to cause headaches. The same is largely true of Alexey German Jr’s film, set to a backdrop of the first manned space flight and deploring the human cost in post-Stalin Russia, in a dizzying, Felliniesque whirl of characters constantly moving and talking in medium and close-up near-monochrome. On gets the sense, however, that its full power is revealed only if you a) see it again and b) are Russian.

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