Day: January 27, 2014

LFM Reviews Rezeta @ The 2014 Slamdance Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. Rezeta still calls herself Albanian, but technically that is no longer true. Regardless of her Balkan nationality issues, the fashion model is not fluent in Spanish. Nonetheless, she will have no trouble meeting men in Fernando Frías’s Rezeta, which won the narrative feature Jury Award at the 2014 Slamdance Film Festival.

Things always seem to work out relatively okay for Rezeta, if not spectacularly so. The modeling agency that brought her to Mexico is decidedly on the dodgy side, yet she starts scoring high profile work almost immediately. She gets along reasonably well with most of her roommates in the company’s model crash pad, but frankly she will not be around very much. She is not Blanche DuBois, but Rezeta will knowingly slip into some bad relationships with underwhelming men of means, for obvious reasons. However, things with Alex, the working class punk rock hipster, might be different. He definitely catches her eye when they bond over their tattoos, but he plays bafflingly hard to get.

Highly improvisational, Rezeta the film chronicles the rise and potential fall of a romantic relationship, with some culture clash garnish on the side. Even at its best, Rezeta is never particularly deep and there are long stretches of narrative slack. Still, the Balkan connection lends the Lost in Translation story a fresh angle.

From "Rezeta."

Without question, lead actress Rezeta Veliu is the film’s winning ace-in-the-hole. Not just a pretty face, she is also quite a fine screen performer, blessed with a natural sense of when to dial it up or down. As Alex, Roger Mendoza does not have a fraction of her screen presence, but at least they develop some credible chemistry together during their ambiguous courtship scenes.

The occasional glimpses Rezeta offers of the vagabond lives led by not-quite-supermodels suggests there is more to be mined from this strange world of pseudo-glamour and exploitation. Clearly, Frías is much more interested in the characters transparently based on his co-leads, but their interpersonal dramas are rather hit-or-miss stuff. Regardless, Rezeta obviously made quite an impression on the jury when it screened at this year’s Slamdance Film Festival. The combination of its award attention and Veliu’s striking look (she is not a plastic cookie-cutter type, by any stretch) should secure it plenty of festival play, including at the 2014 Indie Fest in San Francisco, where it screens February 11th, 16th, and 20th.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on January 27th, 2014 at 3:49pm.

LFM Reviews Life After Beth @ The 2014 Sundance Film Festival

From "Life After Beth."

By Joe Bendel. Teenagers and zombies both have bad skin and smell like feet. However, the similarities end with the risen dead’s affinity for smooth jazz. At least, that is how the zombie apocalypse rolls in Jeff Baena’s Life After Beth, which screened during the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.

Zach Orfman was always inclined to be mopey, but the death of his out-of-his-league girlfriend Beth Slocum really has him down. He is especially anguished because their final awkward days of couplehood teetered on the brink of splitsville. Seeking comfort in proximity, Orfman starts spending time with Slocum’s parents, Maury and Geenie, who also seem to take consolation from his presence. Then one day they freeze him out and close off their entire house to the outside world.

Eventually, Orfman discovers they are harboring the “resurrected” Slocum, who has no memories of her fatal hiking misadventure. The Slocums are determined to keep it that way. They allow Orfman to renew their relationship, but insist he never tell her about her death or share the happy news with the rest of the world. It is all good for a few days, until certain changes start manifesting in Slocum. For instance, her skin is drier and her behavior is more aggressive. We also get hints she might not be the only zombie who came back.

Writer-director Baena dexterously keeps the zombie apocalypse lurking just outside our field of vision, focusing instead on the increasingly problematic relationship between Orfman and Slocum. He also stays true to the logical necessities of zombie movies in the redemptive third act climax. However, the humor in After definitely leans toward the mild chuckle end of the spectrum.

From "Life After Beth."

Aubrey Plaza is the perfect choice for Slocum, jumping into the undead teenager angst and zombie gore with both feet. In contrast, Dane DeHaan’s Orfman is a leaden presence, stuck on moody brooding throughout the film. He might be convincingly nebbish, but it is impossible to believe someone with this kind of dead fish charisma could attract the reasonably popular Slocum. While Paul Reiser (his second dad role in a Sundance film this year) and Cheryl Hines are largely wasted as Orfman’s parents, John C. Reilly’s shtick suits Maury Slocum rather well.

Life After Beth is pleasant enough, but it is quite like scores of previous teenager horror mash-ups thematically and stylistically. While it earns originality points down the stretch, Plaza and Reilly could have used some help carrying it to that point. Tightly executed but low in calories, Life After Beth only served as a light snack for genre fans when it screened as a selection of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on January 27th, 2014 at 3:43pm.