I had a short but good Monday night at the festival with two very good films. Every Monday night for the past several years has been Italian Night at FFF, with a retro Italian film being screened leading into a nice spread outside the Enzian sponsored by a local Italian restaurant (this time by Buca di Beppo). Whether Italian or otherwise, I've always seen the movies featured in the retro screenings before, but this night's film, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, was not only new to me but a film I had never even heard of before. Shame on me because it is a clever and funny satire about a high-ranking officer who kills his mistress then plants clear clues to see if the police will charge him with the crime, much less figure out that he's the culprit.
FFF favorite Bill Plympton is here as usual, but this time with a animated feature, his first since Idiots and Angels five years ago. In his post-screening Q&A, he scoffed at the widespread belief that animation is relegated only to big-budget CGI cartoons targeted to young children and this movie, Cheatin', certainly aims to dispel that myth. It's a bawdy, sexy, yet ultimately touching and of course hilarious look at a couple torn apart by infidelity, brought through with Plympton's typically expressionistic artistry.
Nature in some ways seemed to be the theme connecting my first two movies of the fest. The title of the first, Druid Peak, refers to an area in rural Wyoming populated by wild wolves, a population maintained and monitored by dedicated scientists and naturalists. But this isn't a nature doc. The story begins with Owen, an apathetic high school student living in a small, working class town--the kind of town, frankly, you see in one too many of these microbudget films. Thankfully, Marni Zelnick's story (which she also directed) leaves this oft-looked at setting when after a tragic night that sees one of his friends killed in a car accident, Owen's mother sends him off to Wyoming to be with the father he's never met.
A solid slate of films on Wednesday started with Joe Swanberg's All the Light in the Sky. Based largely on her own experiences in the industry, Jane Adams stars (and co-wrote the movie with Swanberg) as Marie, a 45-year-old woman struggling to navigate having a career in a business where the more she ages, the more her presence is devalued. It's a performance stripped of all vanity and, in typical Swanberg fashion, merely documents his characters without any sense of flare or pretension.
Saw only two films on Tuesday. The first being the historical biography Renoir, about the legendary artist Pierre-Auguste. Not a typical biopic, this focuses on the artist's final years during the first world war and the complicated relationship he had with a model who would become a bit of a muse for both him and his son, the equally legendary film director, Jean. It's beautifully and sumptuously photographed, but narratively inelegant and uneven, which ultimately made it hard for me to engage with what was going on. Not a poor film, but had me wishing it had more I could grasp onto.
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This is Where We Live, however, will be one of the standouts of this year's festival. A slice-of-life movie about a Cerebral Palsy-afflicted young man named August and his friendship with Noah, who is hired by his mother to care for him during the day. Noah is played by writer and co-director Marc Menchaca with a quiet resolve that hides a harboring volatility caused in part by a childhood tragedy. But there are great performances all around and they elevate material that could have easily been overplayed for sentimentality. Aptly titled, the film gives a great sense of this particular rural Texas town and the almost tragic inevitability of their dire circumstances. And as specific as that setting it, this family is in someways a quiet microcosm of situations all over the country. A wonderful American independent movie without a false note to strike.
I started day 4 with the inventive French film, The Painting, was nominated at this past year's César Awards for Best Animated Film and deservingly so. The initial conceit is that the characters in a particular unfinished painting are socially stratified--the Alldunns (i.e., "all done"); the Halfies, who are partially finished; and the Sketchies, who are exactly what they sound like. There's an obvious hierarchy here and, for a kid's film, it's a particularly clever parable. But the film isn't satisfied with staying in the world within this particular painting and the story wonderfully opens up when three of the main characters jump out of the frame into other worlds and other paintings. It's a truly uplifting and magical film with the kind of imagination only the best of animated films provide.
Sunday began with another shorts program, “The Weight”, not
as successful as a whole than Shorts Program 4, but mostly solid work,
including the very funny The Procession,
featuring Lily Tomlin and Jesse Tyler Ferguson who get forced into driving
in--and then hilariously--leading a funeral procession and the moving Record/Play a science fiction short
about a cassette tape and recorder that does more than just play audio.
I wrote about Nancy,
Pleasehere. I don’t think it’s worth attending and will likely be one of
my least favorite features at this year’s festival.
The History of Future Folk, on the other hand, will be one
of my favorite features this year. This sci-fi comedy tells the story of a
General Trius from the planet Hondo, who was sent to Earth to destroy all
humanity--that is, until he hears the sound of music, which is so thrilling to
him, he abandons his plan to become a local folk star. It’s a slight film in
many ways, but it makes up for that with incredible charm and music that lives
up to the silly idea that aliens would scrap their plan for intergalactic
domination just to keep enjoying it.
As always, the Florida Film Festival begins in earnest on Day 2, the first full slate of movies. My docket for the day began and ended with two great shorts programs: the dark and darkly comic "Shorts Program 4: Stayin' Alive" and the ever-popular, ever-gross out "Midnight Shorts". Standouts of the former included Riley Stearns's The Cub, about a family who voluntarily allows their daughter to be raised by wolves; Caterwaul, an endearingly moving short from Ian Samuels about a fisherman and his very peculiar relationship with a lobster; and Things You Don't Joke About, a movie from Viet Nguyen that brilliantly ratchets up the humor as his story becomes escalatingly and hilariously ludicrous.
When Paul (Will Rogers) finally moves in with his longtime girlfriend, Jen (Rebecca Lawrence), it marks not only the beginning for him, but an end--specifically the end of his co-habitation with his roommate, the titular character (Eleonor Hendricks) in Andrew Semans's debut feature, the moody thriller Nancy, Please.
Nina Davenport is a director of documentaries whose cameras point as much at herself as it does to her supposed subjects. They act like video diaries of the most personal kind. But her latest, First Comes Love, about her desire to have a baby--with or without a partner--puts a distinct twist on the term "navel gazing".
The debut feature from director Jason Chaet, Putzel, opens with narration about a popular fish store/deli called Himmelstein's in Manhattan's Upper West Side and shows us an animated map of said area. It's the part of New York that Walter (Jack Carpenter) grew up in and can't seem to leave--literally. It's as much of a prison as it is a home.
Documentary as activism isn't new to the festival (representatives from Amnesty International were in attendance of the Give Up Tomorrow screening earlier in the week, for example). Films traveling a festival circuit is certainly a way to create awareness. This, perhaps serendipitously, is the case with Girl Model. The film fundamentally follows the stories of two people: Nadya, a 14-year-old, Siberian girl who is plucked from a gaggle of other young Russian girls that are on display on stage to be hired as Japanese ad models; and Ashley, herself a former model a decade or so ago, who now is well-employed as a scout choosing girls like Nadya.
Two more movies on Wednesday that exist on opposite ends of the spectrum, Kid-Thing from FFF regulars the Zellner Brothers and the biopic, The Lady, from popular French director, Luc Besson.
The Lady follows the life of Aung San Suu Kyi, a Burmese expatriate living with her husband and two kids in London, suddenly becoming the symbolic and political leader of a burgeoning democratic movement in her home country. The movie is framed by two separate events: the assassination of Suu's father, Aung San, who himself was instrumental in bringing independence and democracy to Burma; and the cancer diagnosis of her British husband, Michael Aris.
And I think this is part of the failure of this movie. By framing Suu's story as both a political one and a personal one, it seems to not do real justice to either. Michelle Yeoh as Suu and David Thewlis as Michael are very good here and do their best to convey their support for each other as longtime partners. But the real-life events of the couple being separated for years while she was in exile in Burma and the movie's decision to not include their courtship and instead jump into their relationship well after their kids had been born doesn't give us any connection to their connection. But the moments of Michael and Suu having protracted phone conversations (don't get me started on how many times someone says, "Hello? Are you there?" followed by a dial tone) and pining to be with each other also take up time that could be better utilized explaining her politics or showing how she was able to mobilize her significant supporters.
If The Lady does little to surpass the conventions of the standard biopic, Kid-Thing complies no ideas of convention. Throughout the early moments I was ready to dismiss the meandering story of Annie, a ruthlessly delinquent child, living on a farm with her mostly inattentive father. But amongst stealing from convenience stores, throwing uncooked biscuit dough at passing cars, and shooting dead cows with paintballs, a potentially tragic discovery gives her at least some semblance of direction. The Zellner's perfectly calibrated pacing and tone matches a great performance by newcomer Sydney Aguirre. The movie languishes in its poor rural setting, but it always knows where it's going. And by that final frame, Kid-Thing just hits the most perfect note.
The beginning of the week often provides a brief respite from the busy weekend of movies at the start of the festival and Monday and Tuesday were no different, as I attended only three screenings--all features--during that time. Two of those movies, Dog Years and The Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best, were not only among the best of the fest so far, but also emblematic of what I think this festival and probably many others represent.
Sunday's Day 3 was a relatively protracted day of screenings, watching only two feature documentaries along with their accompanying documentary shorts. If part of the allure of film festivals is to experience a wide variety of movies, then a natural result of that is being able to experience vastly different cultures. And the two documentary features I screened Sunday--in widely disparate ways--were eye-opening looks at places and situations that exist on the other side of world.
Day 2, which is actually the first full day of the Florida Film Festival, always (ALWAYS, I tell you!) seems to begin not with a bang, but with a stutter. Technical difficulties at the makeshift tickets booths outside the Regal screenings generally mark the beginning of each year's festival before things settle down as the week progresses.
In any case, the two Saturdays are usually the busiest days for me during the festival, as I normally try to fit in 5 or 6 screenings. I (and my sister, who joined me for the entirety of Day 2) opted for only five this time, skipping one of our scheduled movies for something I like to call dinner.
The arrival of spring is usually one I greet with dread. Plants in bloom make my sinuses go "boom". The Florida heat is beginning to rear its ugly head and this past winter--or should I say "winter"--was almost nonexistent. But another April means another Florida Film Festival. And another week-plus of movie watching and hopping from screen to screen or from theater to theater and sneaking in a meal in between films (or during films) and more movie watching.
Monday morning I woke up hazily, unhappily staggering toward a realization that I must return to real life after my nine-day vacation of standing (which sometimes turned into sitting) in long lines, driving between venues, listening to filmmakers and actors, eating a ridiculously insane amount of cranberry raisinets, and, yes, watching movies.
And the movies, on the whole, were superb. As a group, this was among the strongest roster of films I've seen in my nearly decade of attending the Florida Film Festival. The quality, neither, did focus itself in one area. Some years the shorts are great, while the narrative features lack. Other years, the documentaries clearly outshine the shorts. But this year, I could have easily picked favorites among shorts, narratives, documentaries, domestic, and international.
So here I go with some recommendations. Most may never get released at a theater near you. Some may not even get a DVD release. But these are among my favorites, so try your best to seek some of them out.
I'm on vacation, which must mean it's time for another Florida Film Festival. The 19th installment of what is steadily becoming one of the premiere fests in the southeast will focus on what has long been one of its charms, Southern hospitality. With the Enzian as its main location, the dinner theater will once again be a host of not only movies, but a series of food and wine celebrations. And as is customary, an interesting slate of food-related films will populate the schedule.
Sunday night brought the 18th Florida Film Festival to a close. I didn't watch anything that final night, but the previous two days did allow me to screen some terrific films. The only narrative feature I watched was Em, a love story whose journey hits a speed bump due to the woman's bipolar disorder. It isn't an easy movie, it's as tough as its two main characters. It's intimate, never maudlin, and as moving a film as there was at this year's fest, thanks to two great performances by Stef Willen and Nathan Wetherington.
I just realized that I did watch another feature--one of the midnight movies--Deadgirl. I think I forgot about it because I hated it. For those who don't know, the midnight movies at FFF are slightly demented. They appeal to lowest sensibilities. I say all of this in a good way. They are usually wildly entertaining and a blast to attend. And knowing this, I still could not get past disliking Deadgirl. It's sadistic and mysogynistic. I kept waiting for it to somehow, someway to redeem itself. It didn't. Maybe I've lost my sense of humor, but I don't think so.
The rest of the screenings were either shorts programs or docs. This year's documentaries were something spectacular. Art + Copy was a fascinating look at both the show and the business behind some of the most memorable advertisements. The Wrecking Crew showcases a fraternity (plus one girl) of West Coast musicians who defined an era of rock 'n' roll as the session band behind a series of hits in the 60s and 70s. The Beach Boys, the Mamas and the Papas, Frank Sinatra, Sonny & Cher, Sam Cooke are just some of the names Hal Blaine, Plas Johnson, Carol Kaye, Tommy Tedesco, and company played for. Like Motown's Funk Brothers (who were featured in the excellent Standing in the Shadows of Motown a few years back), these great musicians may finally get the recognition that has long been overdue.
Maybe my favorite doc of the fest though was School Play, a film about a year in the life of a 5th grade class's production of The Wizard of Oz. (The school, by the way, is in Mamaroneck, New York, not too far from where I was born--but whatever.) It's a film very much in the tradition of recent documentaries like Spellbound or Mad Hot Ballroom, where it's as much about the kids than it is spelling, dancing, or performing in a play.
The final tally:
This year I saw 14 features and 60 shorts. And I must say that the overall quality of the films were quite good. From We are the Mods to Em, from School Play to Pickin' and Trimmin', from Treeless Mountain to Sita Sings the Blues, the playlist for this year's FFF was one of the best.
The middle three days of the festival had me seeing four movies on Wednesday bracketed by two single-screening days on Tuesday and Thursday. Tuesday night I saw Nina Paley's altogether delightful Sita Sings the Blues an animated interpretations of the Indian myth, The Ramayana. It's got great (great I say!) music, whimsical animation, and the three most hilarious narrators this side of "Mystery Science Theater".
Wednesday I saw a couple of shorts programs, including the Animated Shorts Program in which filmmakers Bill Plympton (again), Signe Baumane, and Lev Yilmaz attended. All three have had films here in previous years and their entries here were as always among the best of the program. Later that night I screened We are the Mods, which may not be the best movie of the festival I've seen so far, but may possibly be my favorite. Like Sita Sings the Blues, it also had great period music and a great visual style (especially costume design) and a nice young cast, two of whom were in attendance with the director. We also learned that it was the first time either of the two actors who were here had seen the film.
Thursday I saw a doc double-feature of Smile 'Til it Hurts: The Up With People Story, a film about the cultish phenomenon of the massive teenage singing troupe/religious-social movement. As much as I liked it, I was more impressed by the doc short that preceded it, Matt Morris's Pickin' & Trimmin', about a small-town North Carolina barbershop that also hosts a kickass bluegrass band in its backroom. Music seems to be the recurring theme these three days and that's certainly the case in this short, but the film also exists as a wonderful affirmation of slowing down and appreciating the things that make life, well, life.
Animator Lev Yilmaz, director of the Tales of Mere Existence series. Photo courtesy of Samantha.
My very blurry picture at the Q&A for We are the Mods. Actor Lance Drake, director E.E. Cassidy, and actress Melia Renee.
