Film Roundup Time

A couple weeks worth - haven't been killing myself to see a lot of films, which I suppose is a bad habit. But since we're less than a month from the World Cup, which is going to consume all my free time in June - 2-3 films a week might be all I manage for a while...

No One Knows about Persian Cats: 12/15 - Wonderful fictionalized documentary about Tehran's underground music scene - a young man gets out of prison and meets his girlfriend (who may also have been in prison) - they are musicians, they are trying to get a band together to either go to London and play a concert or play a show and make a record in Iran. An underground music producer introduces them to a fixer and the film takes off - the fixer (Nedar by name) rides them around town on his motobike talking a mile a minute and setting everything up - the passports, the permits - introducing them to all the musicians - a heavy metal group (nu division) playing in a cow shed; jazz acts, acoustic guitar singers, traditional folk singers, a bluesy chanteuse, and a couple indie bands (one with a very Stone Roses looking drummer, and a Stone roses sound - the other - a dronier version of the same, more Interpol, less Strokes maybe.) The leads sing a sweet poppy style - Bishop Allen in Farsi, almost... Overall, the film has some of the feel of the great Beijing Bastards - less completely fictionalized, less accomplished (filmically or musically), though it may be because working underground in Iran is tougher than it was in 90s Red China... But like Beijing Bastards, it gives you a sense of the lives being led, and is very generous with the music, which gains a sense of complete exhilaration. Several nearly complete musical performances are included, usually accompanied by documentary shots of the city - it plays like a love letter to something being lost - I believe the principals left the country after shooting the film and did not go back - I suspect those pieces were put together from that footage with much that intention.... It is heartbreaking, though - the 90s were a thrilling time to watch Iranian films, and seeing them over a run of years, you could see things changing in Iran. Every year it seemed, the films took more chances, showed more, and showed their world changing, becoming, slowly, a better place. But that is gone, and the story of Iranian films in the 00s has been a story of filmmakers leaving while the country becomes more politically retrograde - now, with Panahi in jail and most of the other major talent in exile (Ghobadi, the Makhmalbafs, Kiarostami), Iranian film as a national entity is damn near dead. This film offers a pretty nice eulogy...

Bluebeard: 10/15 - The latest from Catherine Breillat - a filming of the classic fairty tale - a man dies, leaving two impoverished daughters whose only chance to marry is to old Barbe Bleue, an ugly man whose earlier wives have all disappeared - the younger daughter agrees to marry him, out of desire to free herself from her sister and mother, as well as a degree of greed and curiosity. This couple proves - well - something close to happy, for all the weirdness of it.... BUt there are rules of course - she insists on sleeping in her own room until she is of age, and he agrees; but he prohibits her from entering that one room at the end of the hall... I hope you have all read the story somewhere along the line and know what happens - not that it is any real mystery. Rules like that have only one possible outcome. Of course she goes in and of course the other wives are there and of course he has to kill her and of course she begs for time to say her prayers, to put on her wedding dress - etc... All this is intercut with two little girls reading the story - the younger one is brash and enthusiastic, the older one is scared... the double narration, the cheap simple sets and costumes, give it an air of both unreality, told-ness, and a kind of naturalism - it comes off as a lesser version of late Rohmer, or even Rivette - very stylized, simplified, and clever and engaging - one of the more enjoyable, and satisfying Breillat films. It lacks Breillat's usual explicit sexuality, but it is quite plainly about sex - about sexual desire, the girl's, especially. The forbidden room is made an explicit symbol not just for her sexual desire, but for her sexual maturity, maybe mixed with the idea of losing her virginity - all that blood... It's an interesting film - Breillat's treatment of female sexuality is nearly unique...

Hot Tub Time Machine: 9/15 - I don't know what kind of double feature this would make with Bluebeard, though I saw them the same day.... This proved to be a silly buddy movie with some nice undercurrents. John Cusack, Rob Corddry and Craig Robinson as three buddies in the throes of midlife angst - when Corddry's Lou nearly kills himself in his garage, they head off (with Clark Duke, playing Cusack's nephew) to a ski resort where they wasted the 80s - it's a dump now - but there's a time machine and some Russian Red Bull, so anything can happen. They wake up in 1986 - and decide (for some reason) they have to exactly reproduce what they did in 1986 to get back to the present. It's not clear why they want to go back to the present - though it might have something to do with the non-existence of the nephew in 1986 - but they try... for a while... but not only don't they have much to go back to, but what happened to them in 1986 was mostly bad, so repeating it seems awfully dumb. It's all very funny and a bit grim, as they prove to have been a pretty awful crew in 1986, and just as bad now - but they manage, I suppose, in a backhanded way, to get something like redemption. A big part of the fun is the shameless self-referentiality - lots of Better off Dead and Say Anything jokes, and Back to the Future (Crispin Glover is also on hand), plenty of 80s mockery... though I fear it has a couple details that are so wrong as to almost ruin the experience. I don't know, but I find it hard to believe there would be a lot of girls around in 1986 who would get Dr. Who jokes - 2009, yeah - 86? But there's a bigger mistake, a bit of detailing that totally ruins the illusion that they've gone back to 1986 - they hang around in restaurants, bars, a pool hall and through it all - No One Is Smoking! This clearly indicates to me that this whole time travel thing has to be seen as Someone Having a Bad Dream. I remember what 1986 smelled like...

Please Give: 10/15 - New film from Nicole Holofcener, a slice of life in upper New York City. Catherine Keener is married to Oliver Platt, they sell used furniture they buy from dead people, they own the apartment next to theirs and are waiting for the old woman who lives there to die, and they have a 15 year old daughter with problems... The old lady has two granddaughters played by Rebecca Hall and Amanda Peet - one is a nice, mopey technician at a clinic, the other is a mean, depressive drunk who works at a spa. The two families intersect; there is a disastrous birthday party full of booze and passive aggressive "honesty" that leads to an extremely unwise relationship - while Keener and Hall look for a bit of improvement in their lives.... It's a bit strange, off-kilter, understated - the plot turning, really, on two events, an affair and the inevitable housing change, that splits these two families, without quite resolving anything. It is hard to pin down, but it is still utterly convincing. It has that odd tone you get from some films, some French films, of simultaneously satirizing and sympathizing with its characters - here - they act foolishly for good reasons - it almost makes fun of them, for their inept gestures at generosity, their thinking they can buy off guilt, even their guilt (I mean, that's how used furniture shops work - you buy low, you sell high...) It's a fine film. My only real complaint is this - that like way too many American films that try to do this (tell smallish, domestic stories carefully, elliptically), there is nothing to look at. Why is it like that? The French and Japanese have long been masters of films like this, and they all look fantastic - why do American indies look so boring? American quietism - the worst thing about American films. A problem that goes across the board, actually - I can say the same thing about Hot Tub Time Machine, or Kick-Ass - they're all competent, but there's nothing really to look at except the story being told.