January 2013 – Page 5 – LFM: Libertas Film Magazine

LFM Reviews Tiny Furniture (2010) on Blu-ray/DVD

By Patricia Ducey. On the long road of life, sometimes a fish does need a bicycle.

Tiny Furniture is Lena Dunham’s 2010 filmmaking debut, and led to her HBO series Girls. Given the assurance Dunham shows here as both a writer and director, it is not surprising HBO took the risk.

Loosely based on Dunham’s own life, the movie tells the story of Aura, played by Dunham, who’s on the cusp of a life fraught with uncertainty and danger; she has graduated from Oberlin College with a degree in film theory and has no job, and nowhere to go but home. Like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, and other youth-in-identity-crisis movies, Aura lives in a state of free-floating anxiety, born of personal confusion and career uncertainty.

Aura returns to her family’s stylish Manhattan townhouse cum studio and greets her mother Siri, an artist (played by real mother Laurie Simmons), who can hardly be torn away from her latest photography project – a portrait of daughter Nadine’s legs (real life sister Grace) looming over a tableaux of the aforesaid tiny furniture. Aura awaits a greeting, to no avail. Siri may not have time to say hello, but she has cultivated a wide array of chic friends and contacts in the hip Manhattan art scene that might prove useful to Aura – so Siri dispatches her, on her own, to a party sure to be filled with such possibilities.

There she sees her old friend Charlotte (Jemima Kirke) who holds her hand through her transition home. She also fixes Aura up with Jed (Alex Karpovsky), a YouTube artist, who the recently dumped Aura finds attractive. Her mother and sister depart on a college visiting trip – so Aura invites Jed, in town with no hotel for meetings, to stay with her. Then Aura starts her hostess job, also provided by Charlotte, where she also develops a crush on the chef. But neither swain is interested really, perhaps because Aura wears her need so plainly all over her face. She eventually entices Jed to sleep with her, and he does actually sleep — nothing else. The chef sets up what she hopes is a date, but the date turns out to be nothing but a ghastly hookup in a back alley — they can’t go to his apartment because after all he hasn’t quite left the girlfriend who lives there.

tiny-furniture2 — Lena Dunham as Aura and Jemima Kirke as Charlotte in "Tiny Furniture."

So the men are on the periphery of the story, with a mother and two daughters forming the triad that moves the story forward. They compete, argue, lie and – rarely – understand one another. Most tellingly, no father is present or even mentioned; we don’t know if the father is on a business trip, or is absent due to divorce, death, artificial insemination or what. His absence hangs over the entire film; and if this is post-feminist America, I will take the patriarchy. (It would be too easy to assume that this replicates their real family; in fact, Dunham’s father, artist Carroll Dunham, is very much in the family and the marriage and – as Dunham has related in an interview – very much the maker of the rules in the home.)

So you don’t have to be a Freudian to see that what Aura needs is a parent, any parent really, but particularly a father. Her mother is emotionally unavailable, her father physically and emotionally so. The daughter Aura is lost, a child on the verge of adulthood with no one to lead her forward. She has no hope and no boundaries; she (unconsciously perhaps) chases Jed; she tells herself she is going on a date with the chef when he really wants her Oxycontin and some sex, as long as she’s offering. So again, the men she seeks out are either emotionally distant or callous louts.

I don’t mean to imply, though, that Tiny Furniture is another twee and ennui-soaked Manhattan fable. Dunham eschews many tics of the genre — like the annoying, deadpan non-acting prevalent in so many similar films, or the hopelessness that stands in for wisdom. The film manages something more. No spoilers here, but the last sequence, when Aura relates her sexcapade with the chef to her bored, sleepy mother, implies a nascent humanity within her that is salutary. Denied a father, and the better part of a mother, Aura might just save herself.

Posted on January 21st, 2012 at 9:56pm.

LFM Reviews The Look of Love @ The 2013 Sundance Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. Paul Raymond was like the British Hefner, except he was significantly richer. It turns out that real estate and dirty magazines were a highly profitable combination. Who knew? Yet, despite the money and the parties, Raymond’s story is rather sad, at least according to Michael Winterbottom’s big screen treatment, The Look of Love, which screens during the 2013 Sundance Film Festival in Park City.

Initially a burlesque impresario, Raymond’s first foray into publishing was a failure. The timing was better for Men Only in the early 1970’s. Much like Hefner, Raymond planned to turn control of his companies over to his daughter, Debbie. Unfortunately, as the audience quickly understands from the flashback structure, this will not come to pass.

Matt Greenhalgh’s screenplay unambiguously argues that doing coke with your daughter does not constitute good parenting. Actually, Look’s inclination to pass moral judgment is rather refreshing. Yet it clearly wants to have its cheesecake and eat it too. There are plenty of scenes of Raymond’s naughty stage shows and photo-shoots. However, the real estate side of his empire gets decidedly short shrift. It might not be as cinematic, but it is important. At the height of his family tragedy, Raymond was declared the wealthiest man in the UK, but Look never really explores his considerable business acumen.

Reuniting with Winterbottom again (following the thoroughly entertaining Trip), Steve Coogan is quite masterful in the dramedic lead, vividly portraying Raymond’s recklessness and remorse. Unlike obvious comparison films (such as Boogie Nights), Look boasts several strong women characters, including Raymond’s first wife Jean and his longtime lover, Fiona Richmond, both of whom were once involved in the risqué side of his business. One might even go so far as to say that Tamsin Egerton projects empowered confidence as Richmond, the sex symbol who eventually has enough. As Ms. Raymond #1, Anna Friel’s mature, self-possessed sexuality also works quite well on-screen. Conversely, Imogen Poots’ lost little rich party girl persona becomes rather exhausting.

It is hard not to enjoy Raymond’s breezy first act success story, but since we know more or less how it ends, the third act plays out like a grim end-game. As a period production, Look gets the groovy details right and if you dig David and Bacharach, you will have plenty to hum along with here. Look is a fascinating morality tale, but it just could have used a bit more pep down the stretch. Recommended reservedly for Coogan fans and those obsessed with the early adult smut industry, The Look of Love screens again Wednesday (1/23) in Salt Lake, Thursday (1/24) in Sundance Resort, and Saturday (1/26) in Park City, as part of this year’s Sundance.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on January 21st, 2012 at 9:54pm.

LFM Reviews The Institute @ The 2013 Slamdance Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. What’s more fun than global conspiracy? If you ask former “inductees” of the Jejune Institute, you will likely get radically different responses. It seems it was all just a game, or was it? Indeed, truth is deliberately difficult to separate from fiction in Spencer McCall’s ostensive documentary The Institute, which screens during the 2013 Slamdance Film Festival in Park City.

Once upon a time, in 2008 to be exact, some strange leaflets began appearing around San Francisco—strange even by that city’s standards. The Jejune Institute was trumpeting its revolutionary scientific breakthroughs, like the personal force field, and inviting interested parties to inquire at their local offices. It turns out the Jejune Institute was headquartered in the heart of San Francisco’s glass-and-steel financial district. However, the office was nothing like Bank of America’s. Visitors were directed to a trippily appointed room, where they watched a video greeting from Jejune founder Octavio Coleman, Esq.

After a mind-bending intro to some of the basic Jejune buzz-words, inductees were sent on a scavenger hunt throughout the city, finding secret signs and clues amid the urban environment. Before long, inductees found themselves aligned with a rival faction seeking to liberate the power of “nonchalance” (the rough Jejune equivalent of The Force) from the megalomaniacal Coleman. Or something like that.

The thing is, it was all just a game, engineered by a conceptual artist to foster a sense of play in the city. Yet as soon as the behind-the-scenes architects come clean, McCall introduces a former player, whose tales of misadventures in the Bay Area sewers have to be part of the mythology. I mean, seriously.

Reportedly, McCall was brought in to document the final stages of the game and recognized a doc-worthy story when he saw one. By the same token, it seems safe to assume he is to some extent an accomplice to the mythmaking. There are enough digital tracks to suggest that the Jejune Instituters truly were running an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) that some players took very seriously. As for everything else in the film, maintain a healthy skepticism.

The thing of it is, the Jejune mythology is a great story. McCall taps into our deep, abiding interest in secret histories, conspiracy theories, and urban legends, as well as our fear of cults. For scores of players, the ARG was like submerging themselves in an Illuminatus! novel. Yes, some of them might have become obsessed to an unhealthy degree, but they might also be playing the parts.

While openly inviting comparison to Exit Through the Gift Shop, The Institute will appeal to viewers who enjoyed Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles. It might be strange and unreliable, but it is never dull. Recommended for those who appreciate postmodern fables, The Institute screens again tomorrow morning (1/22) at Treasure Mountain Inn, as part of this year’s Slamdance.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on January 21st, 2012 at 9:53pm.

A Call to Action: LFM Reviews Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer @ The Sundance Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova is currently in prison for protesting the collusion between church and state. She also has a long history of demonstrating on behalf of women’s issues. One would think her face would be on countless hipsters’ t-shirts. Given her supermodel looks, her likeness would certainly be more appealing than ugly old Che. However, Tolokonnikova and the other members of her punk rock band were objecting to the authoritarian Putin regime’s increasingly brazen abuses of power. It might not interest professional activists in the West, but their ongoing plight is as dramatic as true stories get. The persecution of Russia’s most famous underground band is documented in Mike Lerner & Maxim Pozdorovkin’s Pussy Riot—A Punk Prayer, which screens during the 2013 Sundance Film Festival in Park City.

Sort of like a real world version of the musical tricksters seen in Simonsson & Nilsson’s films, the balaclava-donning Pussy Riot specialized in provocative, unannounced public performances. Critical of both the Putin regime and traditional Russian patriarchal (or chauvinistic) attitudes, their lyrics have always been pointedly political. While they certainly ruffled some feathers before, Pussy Riot’s decision to crash Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior was admittedly a profound miscalculation.

PussyRiotPunkPrayer1 — The Russian girl-punk band Pussy Riot.

While the thirty second performance was intended as a political commentary on the open alliance between the Russian Orthodox Church and Putin’s government, the resulting outrage amongst the faithful allowed prosecutors to come down on the band with the full force of the state. Soon thereafter, Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich were behind bars, facing trial on vaguely defined charges.

The reasonably well informed should know the broad strokes of the regime’s campaign against Pussy Riot, but Lerner & Pozdorovkin give viewers a look beneath their brightly colored hoods. Over the course of the doc, the audience learns that the three imprisoned musicians are deeply steeped in the contemporary art scene and earnestly committed to causes like environmentalism and democratic reform. Far from being the maladjusted delinquents of state-sponsored propaganda, they are profoundly influenced by supportive, well educated fathers, who are quite compelling during their on-camera interview segments.

Sadly, Pussy Riot will not be performing at Sundance’s ASCAP Music Café. Although the story is still developing, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina still remain behind bars. Indeed, Lerner & Pozdorovkin illuminate the twists and turns of the case quite well, while eschewing voice-over narration. Frightening and infuriating, Pussy Riot—A Punk Prayer is arguably the most important film selected at this year’s Sundance. It is very highly recommended when it screens again today (1/20), Wednesday (1/23), and Thursday (1/24) in Park City. However, it should also be a call for action. For starters, every Russian filmmaker who attends a western film festival should be asked to comment, as a fellow artist, on Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina’s continued imprisonment.

LFM GRADE: A+

Posted on January 20th, 2012 at 4:41pm.

LFM Reviews The Summit @ The Sundance Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. For climbers, the math surrounding K2 is daunting. Twenty-five percent of those who reach the summit perish on the way down. It is a factor of altitude plus exhaustion. Nevertheless, the mortality rate for the international expedition scaling the mountain in August of 2008 was unusually high. While the sudden blizzard and subsequent avalanches obviously cost the climbing party dearly, many of the details of what transpired up there remain murky. It is a mystery that survivors and loved ones try to resolve in Nick Ryan’s The Summit (trailer here), which screens during the 2013 Sundance Film Festival in Park City.

Out of the twenty-four who ascended K2 that fateful day, eleven never made it back. That is forty-four percent—or sixty one percent of the eighteen who reached the so-called “death zone.” Gerald (Ger) McConnel became the first Irishman to summit K2. However, his ultimate fate is the driving question of Ryan’s documentary.

The tragic 2008 climb was not the first controversy surrounding K2. In fact, there was quite a bit of back-biting and finger-pointing after the first successful summitting. Esteemed Italian mountaineer Walter Bonatti never received proper credit for his contributions that allowed his countrymen to stake their claim for glory. Viewers learn this from journalist Concetto La Malfa, who intermittently tells the tale in the persona of Bonatti. Actually, that is not very clearly established in Summit, which is problematic for a documentary – but good golly what a rich voice he’s got.

Despite the flashing backwards and forwards, Summit keeps the audience riveted throughout. Incorporating home videos and footage shot during the climb, as well as staging some surprisingly cinematic dramatic re-enactments, Ryan conveys the personalities of most of the party members, often through their own words. This also increases the suspense as the mountain takes the ill-fated eleven one by one, And Then There Were None-style.

Visually arresting (with ample credit due to cinematographers Robbie Ryan and Stephen O’Reilly, as well as the climbers themselves), The Summit is a perfect doc for viewers who prefer narratives. It is about as story-driven as films get. Ryan’s documentary vividly captures a sense of the punishing Karakoram-Himalayan environment as well as the spirit of adventure that draws people to it. Enthusiastically recommended, The Summit screens today in Salt Lake (1/20), Wednesday (1/23) and Friday (1/25) in Park City, and Tuesday (1/22) in Sundance Resort as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on January 20th, 2012 at 4:39pm.

LFM Reviews Best Friends Forever @ The 2013 Slamdance Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. When the apocalypse comes, books will definitely have an advantage over the internet. An aspiring grad student would agree. She was planning a career as a librarian. Unfortunately, the end of the world complicates matters. However, it takes a while for her and her hard partying BFF to notice Armageddon looming during their southwestern road trip in Brea Grant’s Best Friends Forever, which premiered last night in Park City at the 2013 Slamdance Film Festival.

Harriet is the sensitive one, who spent a short stint in a mental hospital following a suicide attempt. Following the long held tradition of low budget genre movies, her best pal Reba is kind of trampy. After graduation, Harriet packs up the AMC Pacer for grad school in Texas, convincing Reba to tag along for the ride. While they are on the road, a mysterious terrorist attack leads to a series of nuclear explosions. The two women are not listening to the news, though, preferring music and the occasional “Oprah” moment to reports from the outside world. Their first inkling something might be amiss comes when three hipsters carjack their Pacer.

Eventually, the breakdown of civilization strains their relationship. Of course, nobody is assigned responsibility for the cataclysmic act of terror, lest that offend anyone. In one awfully strange exchange, several characters want to blame North Korea, to which Reba replies that she is Chinese – as if the PRC were as benign as Luxemburg. Indeed, the third act threatens to undo much of the good will established by the co-leads, depicting a rather nasty nativist martial law sweeping across Texas.

Since Grant co-wrote and co-produced with her co-star Vera Miao, viewers are pretty much stuck with them as Harriet and Reba, respectively. Fortunately, they have some nice bickering buddy-buddy chemistry together. Still, this is clearly a genre film with a female audience in mind, casting men in exclusively either predatory or ineffectual roles. While Grant comes in with geek credentials from appearances in Heroes and Halloween 2, as well as her work co-writing the 1920’s zombie comic We Will Bury You with her brother Zane, neither of the two seems particularly comfortable with the odd action scene. Frankly, everyone in BFF would rather talk than do anything else, but the dialogue does not have the sort of snap it should.

Putting a Pacer in the center of an end-of-the-world road movie is pretty ingenious. Employing the apocalypse as a prism through which to examine personal and social relationships is also a promising strategy, yielding mixed results in this case. There are some appealing moments of friendship under extreme circumstance in BFF. Nonetheless, it never approaches the attitude or verve of Thom Eberhardt’s Night of the Comet, the gold standard for zeitgeisty generational Doomsday movies. More chick flick (deliberately referencing Thelma & Louise) than midnight movie, Best Friends Forever should satisfy those looking for the former, albeit with a bit of an edge. Flawed but interesting, it screens again at the Treasure Mountain Inn screening room this Monday (1/21) as part of this year’s Slamdance.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on January 20th, 2012 at 4:38pm.