by Mark Pfeiffer

Mark Pfeiffer is a film critic/producer who discusses current cinema on WOCC TV3's Now Playing. His reviews can also be heard on Youngstown, Ohio's Rock 104 and found online at his film-oriented blog Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema and DVDMon.com. Mark serves on the programming committee of the newly launched Deep Focus Film Festival. A member of the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) and Central Ohio Film Critics Association (COFCA), he currently works at Otterbein College as WOCC TV3's Assistant Director of Television, where he is in charge of production.

Bolero ( F.A. Brabec, 2004)

The Czech language and a more permissive attitude toward showing nudity are the only elements separating Bolero from the standard-issue Hollywood police procedural. A medical student is murdered. The cops spin their wheels on the case due to uncooperative witnesses with self-serving reasons to hide their knowledge of the incident. Contrary to the dance from which the film takes its title, Bolero moves rapidly, but with no central character and poor development of the dozen or so people trying to solve or thwart the investigation, the film fails to find its footing.

Cell Phone (Shou ji) (Feng Xiaogang, 2003)

Cell Phone opens with a comic reminder of years ago when the telephone was relatively inaccessible for those living in rural China. Feng Xiaogang’s film initially appears to be a satire of contemporary society’s need to reach anyone anywhere anytime and to be reached. The main character, a television talk show host, uses his cell phone to manage every aspect of his life, including his infidelities. Cell Phone loses its sense of humor about the willingness to accept this electronic tether, instead adopting a stern attitude toward the technology and its ability to abet the unscrupulous. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the technology, just how people choose to use it. In Cell Phone the protagonist is an unrepentant cheat. While he can arrange his affairs and secret communications more quickly with his cell phone—and his wife can more easily uncover an incriminating trail—the cell phone isn’t to blame for someone unfaithful by nature. (A problem of some sort resulted in Cell Phone being presented in projected video. This solution was better than not showing the film, but the inferior picture and difficult-to-read subtitles turned the screening into a less than ideal experience.)

Clara and I (Clara et moi) (Arnaud Viard, 2004)

Arnaud Viard’s feature directorial debut starts as a breezy romance between Julien Boisselier and Julie Gayet as Antoine and Clara. On the verge of turning 33, Antoine resolves to get married. The problem is that he isn’t seeing anyone. He and Clara meet cute on the train, and before they know it, they’re head over heels in love. Their match seems fated when out of nowhere they sing a song along the river on their first date, a sublime and delightful moment as unexpected as finding someone with whom you immediately click. The easy early days give way to turmoil that tests their relationship. There’s nothing that sets Clara and I apart from other French cinematic explorations of l’amour, but Viard’s deft navigation of Antoine and Clara’s ups and downs and Boisselier and Gayet’s appealing performances make this mature romance a Francophile’s indulgence. Pi Ware and Susan Kraker’s short The Act, starring Debra Jo Rupp as a comedian whose offstage life isn’t as funny as it is in her jokes, preceded Clara and I. The Act turns out not to be as incongruous of a companion piece as it first seemed.

Deadlines (Ludi Boeken and Michael A. Lerner, 2004)

Stephen Moyer stars as a stringer who tries to catch his big break during the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. Anne Parillaud is a photojournalist who knows her way around the Lebanese war zone and gives him a crash course. Moyer’s reporter breaks a couple stories right off the bat but later discovers that he may have been an unwitting dispenser of misinformation. Deadlines has a promising start. Boeken and Lerner establish a good sense of place and a convincing setting. The first scenes showing the newsgathering process bristle with the thrill of hunting down a story others have not turned up. Deadlines then falls into clichés. An unnecessary romance gets shoehorned in, and characters are revealed to have connections that feel ever more implausible.

Dear Frankie (Shona Auerbach, 2004)

At first glance Shona Auerbach’s Dear Frankie appears to be the stuff of a Lifetime TV movie. Single mother Lizzie (Emily Mortimer), her deaf nine-year-old son Frankie (Jack McElhone), and her mother move regularly so that Lizzie’s abusive husband and his family can’t find them. Lizzie has never revealed the truth about Frankie’s father to him and explains his absence with a lie that he works on a ship. Posing as Frankie’s dad, Lizzie writes letter to her son to perpetuate the falsehood. One day a classmate informs Frankie that his dad’s ship is scheduled to dock in a Glasgow harbor. Rather than come clean, Lizzie pays a stranger to pretend to be Frankie’s father for a day. By film’s end Dear Frankie delivers several eye-dabbing moments, but the tears in this working class tale are earned through solid storytelling and subdued acting. As a fiercely protective mother Mortimer’s tender performance is especially good. Although Lizzie is vulnerable, Mortimer refuses to play her as a victim. She’s strong when she must be, but Mortimer doesn’t overdo it. Her Lizzie is a complicated woman who knows the house of cards she’s constructed will come tumbling down eventually, but she is unable to look past the daily struggle or confess to the ugly truth. As the whip-smart Frankie, McElhone is engaging in a performance that is anything but cloying.

Dorian Blues (Tennyson Bardwell, 2004)

This conventional coming-out story glides by on its sweet spirit and Michael McMillian’s likable performance as the sexually confused teenager Dorian. The supporting cast tends to be familiar types rather than fully realized characters—the domineering father, silent mother, and star quarterback brother—but Dorian Blues gets past its sitcom trappings with wit and some minor surprises. Dorian’s jock brother turns out to be very accepting of his younger sibling’s homosexuality. Although this relationship seems idealized rather than realistic, it provides for some nice scenes in which they openly discuss who Dorian is and how he should deal with it in a home environment that won’t accept him.

The Edukators (Die Fetten Jahre sind vorbei) (Hans Weingartner, 2004)

Hans Weingartner’s The Edukators was the best film I saw at the festival. Weingartner taps into youthful feelings of anti-capitalist rebellion a la Fight Club, without the violent outbursts, and idealistic self-doubt, the kind that plagued Mark Wahlberg’s character in I ♥ Huckabees . The Edukators consist of two young men who break into the vacant homes of the wealthy, rearrange their possessions, and leave notes proclaiming sentiments such as, “Your days of plenty are numbered.” Their motivation is to make the victims uneasy about their accumulated wealth, not to steal or destroy. Scenes of the political pranksters at work are playful and tense. While The Edukators has affection for the young radicals played by Daniel Brühl, Julia Jentsch, and Stipe Erceg , the final destination isn’t apparent from the outset because their principles get put to the test when a mission takes an unexpected turn. The Edukators’ complex political message is also sprinkled with humor and a romance that interjects some Jules et Jim tension.

Genesis (Claude Nuridsany and Marie Pérennou, 2004)

An African storyteller explains the origins of the universe and the life in it in Genesis, the newest documentary from the directors of Microcosmos. Spectacular nature photography depicts the earth’s creation, the evolution of life on the planet, and the cycle of birth and death encoded in all living things. Claude Nuridsany and Marie Pérennou present enlightening juxtapositions of geography and biology, such as comparing rivers with arteries and veins, to demonstrate how both sustain life. Whether examining life at its most basic level or drawing the connections in the grand evolutionary pattern, Genesis marvels at nature and the transcendent design.

Here (Tu) ( Zrinko Ogresta, 2003)

Similar to how Krzysztof Kieslowski’s films showed the unknown connections among people, Zrinko Ogresta’s Here (Tu) finds the links while wandering among a set of characters in postwar Zagreb. They are the lonely, the addicted, and the haunted struggling to find normality after civil war. The downbeat film, dominated by blues and grays, evokes a place where depression and post-traumatic stress disorder linger in the air waiting to infect anyone who breathes. On a formal level Here is a fine piece of work. Davorin Gecl’s cinematography rhymes with the cool thematic current. The narrative and emotions are too monochrome, though, to muster much interest after awhile.

Lipstick & Dynamite (Ruth Leitman, 2004)

Long before the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (GLOW) the women documented in Lipstick & Dynamite were brawling for a living (and a meager one at that for most). Told through terrific archival footage (including clips from 1951 B-movie Racket Girls), old photographs, and new interviews, Ruth Leitman’s film tells the stories of the “girl” wrestlers of the 1940s and ’50s. Among the film’s main participants are Gladys “Killem” Gillem, The Great Mae Young, and Lillian Ellison aka The Fabulous Moolah, who has still been in the business in recent years as a WWE wrestler and manager. These ladies are a fiery bunch who refuses to pull verbal punches now similar to how they wouldn’t hold back when they were in the ring years ago. Lipstick & Dynamite skims across the surface of women’s pro wrestling, preferring to acquaint us with the performers and their colorful personalities than dig into the workings of an industry that frequently took advantage of its employees. These women have some stories that are real doozies, including the recounting of a wrestler killed in a match. While their tales are riddled with pain, Lipstick & Dynamite is a fun and funny film because these female wrestlers are a feisty and entertaining lot.

Millions (Danny Boyle, 2004)

Two motherless boys find a gym bag full of money in Millions, a children’s film that gets the directorial energy that Danny Boyle brought to Trainspotting. Damian (Alexander Nathan Etel), a mystical lad who converses with the saints, believes it is a gift from God and is determined to distribute the cash to the needy, much to the chagrin of his older brother Anthony. Frank Cottrell Boyce’s screenplay crafts a wonderful allegory for the value of money. (With the impending conversion to Euros, the English pound will be worthless.) Boyle demonstrates that a family film with a moral message mustn’t be a musty affair. Millions asks hard questions about faith and charity in entertaining and visually inventive ways.

Murderball (Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro, 2005)

Upon learning that Murderball is about quadriplegics who play wheelchair rugby, the first question that comes to mind is “How?” Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro’s lively documentary clears up the common misconception that quadriplegics don’t have use of their arms and then proceeds to show these athletes ramming themselves into one another in pursuit of victory on the court. While it’s an effective sports film—there’s great potential for a terrific narrative feature based on this material—the people and their enormous spirits take precedence over the outcome of the games. Murderball isn’t steeped in cheap sentiment and doesn’t soften the hard edges of the more irascible people profiled. They don’t perceive themselves as victims, and many probably don’t view themselves as role models. Still, one can’t help but be inspired by how these guys have adjusted to their circumstances and live to the fullest.

Palindromes (Todd Solondz, 2004)

Director Todd Solondz was spotlighted at the festival and attended the lone screening of his latest comedy Palindromes. Again Solondz indulges his taste for the tasteless and provocative. Twelve-year-old Aviva, played by eight actors differing in age, race, and gender, desires to be a mother, but her parents force her to have an abortion when she becomes pregnant. After the procedure Aviva runs away from home. She is taken in by a fundamentalist Christian family that shelters disabled children and has them perform in what amounts to an evangelizing freak show. A collection of cheap shots at easy targets, Palindromes has contempt for everyone. This spleen-venting film is more misanthropy from a writer-director whose need to top his previous efforts at subversion and controversy is increasingly limiting him. Solondz shocks and offends, but that’s all he can do in this lazily told film. Maybe the result would be more palatable if he had something to say other than his belief that people are terrible creatures incapable of change. Solondz’s experimental use of various actors for Aviva’s role doesn’t hold any meaning, but it grants him the discomfiting opportunity to make a morbidly obese African-American woman in belly shirts and frilly dresses the butt of jokes.

Rahtree: Flower of the Night (Buppah Rahtree) ( Yuthlert Sippapak, 2003)

A young man worships the quiet, unnoticed student Buppah (Chermarn Boonyasak) from afar until one day he approaches his obscure object of desire. Their romance begins in a flash and ends in one when Buppah learns that he bedded her to win a wager. She dies in her lonely apartment and becomes a ghost that torments the residents of the building, not the least of which is her con artist landlord. Rahtree: Flower of the Night is a Thai horror-comedy that resembles typical genre fare but remains interesting through its humor. Buppah’s apartment building is filled with many oddball characters cowed by her spirit. Their many failed methods of purging the ghost from haunted room 609 produce a few good jump moments and several laughs. Director Yuthlert Sippapak is obviously fond of The Exorcist. He makes quite a few overt references to William Friedkin’s film. Rahtree: Flower of the Night doesn’t have the polish or depth of The Exorcist, but it’s a strange, funny ghost story that works more often than not.

Millions

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