Category: 4. Joe Bendel

By Joe Bendel. Sir Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe were about to achieve career highpoints in John Osborne’s The Entertainer and Billy Wilder’s Some Like it Hot, respectively. However, the chemistry was somewhat lacking in their one and only film together, The Prince and the Showgirl, tepidly received by critics and audiences alike in 1957. The behind-the-scenes story of their rocky shoot is told from the perspective of a smitten production assistant in Simon Curtis’s My Week with Marilyn (trailer here), the centerpiece selection of the 49th New York Film Festival.

Though to-the-manor-born, young Colin Clark wants to make his own way in the world working in motion pictures. Refusing to take no for an answer, Clark parlays a dubious introduction into a gofer job with Olivier’s production company. Recently knighted, the great actor is planning to direct the American bombshell in a light comedic role his wife, Vivien Leigh, originated on-stage. Unfortunately, when Monroe shows up with full entourage in tow, it is quickly apparent that she’s deeply enthralled by the method school of acting, dubious claptrap Sir Laurence has little patience for.

Despite beginning a healthy romance with Lucy, a wardrobe assistant arguably as attractive as the childlike and frequently doped-up Monroe, Clark falls hard for the famous sex symbol. While not exactly mutual, Monroe starts to rely on the solicitous young man’s emotional support. It all leads to much gossip and quite a bit of ill will on the set.

If Marilyn Monroe truly was a ragingly insecure woman who lived in a pronounced state of arrested development, then Michelle Williams plays her quite well indeed. Though she is already being positioned as an Oscar contender, her Monroe seems to be a blank slate on which the other characters project their desires. Was that all there really was to her? If so, how very sad.

In welcomed contrast, the British ensemble cast, including the likes of Dame Judi Dench, Michael “Foyle” Kitchen, and Julia Ormand (as Leigh, no small part to step into either), plays it to the hilt, bandying about witticisms as if they are in The Bad and the Beautiful, as rewritten by Noel Coward.

Yet, the casting of Kenneth Branagh as Olivier is particularly inspired. Not only does Branagh have the right “classically trained” presence and flair for razor-sharp dialogue, one can see parallels of his own career in that of Sir Laurence. Earning acclaim and the not infrequent comparison to Olivier with his early Shakespearean films, Branagh’s recent career had been somewhat checkered (including a critically drubbed remake of the Olivier vehicle, Sleuth), until scoring an unlikely comeback with Thor. Regardless, he plays the iconic thespian with genuine depth and charisma.

Granted, Week is based on his memoir, but the amount of screen time devoted to Eddie Redmayne’s Clark seems wildly misappropriated, considering the far more interesting actors and great larger than life figures of cinema history that are also assembled in the film. Frankly, his sad eyed, love-struck act quickly gets rather dull. Fortunately, the seasoned veterans like Branagh, Dench, and Sir Derek Jacobi can be relied upon to supply Week with periodic jolts of energy.

Curtis certainly keeps the film breezing along nicely, capturing a nice sense of the era along the way. Always pleasant viewing, Week features some wonderfully tasty supporting performances. It just seems to consistently focus on the two dullest people at a banquet of greatness. A case of a film whose sum of its parts is probably greater than its whole, Week screens again tonight (11/12) at the Walter Reade Theater as the Centerpiece of the 2011 NYFF. However, only standby tickets are available, so good luck.

Posted on October 12th, 2011 at 10:06am.

By Joe Bendel. After twenty-five years of incarceration, the recently released ex-con Lin Wen-sheng understands how to take a beating. It is a skill he tries to teach to a gangster’s abused pre-teen in Chienn Hsiang’s Ranger, the powerful concluding film of the San Francisco Film Society’s 2011 Taiwan Film Days.

In contradiction of established film noir conventions, Lin did not leave prison looking for revenge or redemption. Having enduring the assaults of rival gangs for a quarter century, he is essentially dead inside. Though the aging crime boss Dragon intends to look after him, Lin is left forgotten in a corner, next to the beaten and battered kid the mobster never wanted.

After a particularly rough beating, Lin takes the child to the hospital. Of course, this necessitates a police report, setting in motion a chain of events Lin will be largely oblivious to. Reluctantly though, he starts to care for the vulnerable youngster, perhaps seeking to make amends for his crimes or to compensate for his estranged relationship with his own father.

Ranger is about as grimly deterministic as a film can get. Yet its view of humanity is not unremittingly pessimistic, showing many small but touching acts of kindness, as Lin marches towards his destiny. Indeed, it blends naturalism and humanism into a strange cocktail that ultimately represents Taiwan and Taiwanese cinema quite well.

The winner of the Taipei International Film Festival’s best actor award for Ranger, Wu Pong-fong’s Lin is viscerally intense but scrupulously understated. His work with the film’s adolescent costar is also rather honest and poignant. In fact, Ranger might herald the arrival of a considerable young star in the making, yet the nature of the performance is such that it is difficult to discuss without spoiling a major development.

While periodic flashbacks establish the crushing weight of the past, former cinematographer Chienn Hsiang sensitively helms Ranger, allowing its quiet moments to blossom organically. It is a film that a distributor like Magnolia ought to take a serious look at, since they could position it either for the serious art-house market or as a gritty genre gangster movie. Regardless, it is a very accomplished film. The highlight and fittingly the closing selection of the SFFS’s Taiwan Film Days, Ranger is quite highly recommended when it screens this coming Sunday night (10/16) at the New People Cinema.

Posted on October 12th, 2011 at 9:32am.

By Joe Bendel. Toro’s business is one of the few not feeling the pinch of the financial crisis. He runs a boiler room for telephone and internet fraud. He does it well. It is a much different story for the amateur kidnappers he targets in Wang Chi-tsai’s zeitgeisty dramedy Formosa Mambo (trailer here), the opening night film of the San Francisco Film Society’s 2011 Taiwan Film Days.

A well educated loser, A-kang was amongst the first wave of layoffs at his former company. A terrible interviewee, he cannot even make of go of it as a street vendor, much to his wife’s frustration. However, he gets something of a dubious break when his childhood friend Toro, a.k.a. “Mosquito,” stops at his food cart. He needs a new employee for his scam operations, and has a big deal brewing. He is scheming to intercept the ransom payment demanded by a trio of unemployed migrant workers, who have kidnapped the son of Huang Shu-li, a friend of A-kang’s wife.

Initially, Mambo appears to be one of those slice-of-urban-life films with braided storylines and characters who keep crossing paths but never significantly interacting. Refreshingly though, Wang and co-writer Cai Deng-ciao draw their motley crew together rather quickly and tightly. In fact, after the first act set-up, they no longer rely on coincidence, but karma is definitely knocking on the door.

Mambo is a surprisingly slippery film to get a handle on. At times, it seems to be going for a breezy cynicism, while borrowing elements from disparate films, like Jimmy the Kid and High and Low. Never abandoning the black comedy, it eventually takes a detour through class-conscious naturalism on its way to an ironic punchline. Yet, the way Wang keeps viewers off balance while maintaining the brisk pace is strangely effective.

Chen Yi-wen (a well established filmmaker, not to be confused with the lovely Miss Chinese Taipei), is masterfully roguish as Toro, appropriately delighting in skullduggery, even as he hints at the stirring remnants of a conscience. By contrast, as A-kang, Chu Chung-heng’s guilt-ridden angst routine gets a bit old after a while. Still, he has some nice quiet moments with Jin Siao-man’s Sha-sha, the gang’s staff seductress and computer hacker.

In a way, Mambo is a morality play that forgets to end with a neat and tidy morale. Frankly, it breaks a lot of rules of canned screenwriting, but that is a good thing. Quite clever in an admittedly idiosyncratic way, Mambo is definitely an interesting choice to kick-off this year’s Taiwan Film Days, which has quickly become the top showcase for contemporary Chinese cinema in America (including New York). It screens twice this Friday (10/14) at the New Peoples Cinema, the new home for SFFS programming.

Posted on October 11th, 2011 at 11:34am.

By Joe Bendel. Jafar Panahi will not be appearing at the 49th New York Film Festival. He was never expected. However, it was hoped Mojtaba Mirtahmasb would be able to promote his recent collaboration with Panahi on the international festival circuit. Ominously though, Mirtahmasb’s passport was confiscated just as he was leaving to attend Toronto and he was subsequently arrested, along with five other Iranian filmmakers. At least Mirtahmasb will have a good idea of what to expect. With Panahi, he co-directed This is Not a Film (trailer here), a documentary record of a day in life of the award winning filmmaker chafing under house arrest and a prospective twenty year ban on movie-making, which screens at this year’s NYFF.

For those unfamiliar with his story, Panahi and fellow filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof were sentenced to six years in Iranian prison (a.k.a. Hell on Earth) and prohibited from practicing their art for two decades. With his appeal pending, Panahi is confined to his relatively upscale but not all that spacious Tehran flat on the eve of Persian New Year. Since he cannot make a film, he makes This is Not a Film, with the furtive assistance of Mirtahmasb, a digital video camera, and the odd handheld device.

Considering we are simply watching a man putter about his apartment (with Igi, the scene stealing pet iguana), Not a Film is surprisingly engaging. Even under extreme stress, Panahi is clearly a man of considerable wit and charm. We watch as he blocks out a film that might never be produced and listen as he cryptically discusses projects with Mirtahmasb in an effort to shield him from presumed eavesdroppers. These are the small, grimly fascinating day-to-day realities of artistic repression in Iran. Just in case any of the significance is lost on viewers, the blank closing credits ought to bring it all home.

Not a Film is a quiet film that resolutely avoids anything that might be deemed provocation. Frankly, the circumstances that gave rise to the not-film should never have happened. Yet, since it is here, in its way Not a Film is an inspiring example of the creative impulse as it flows like water through the cracks of an oppressive state. Indeed, it is already renowned as the film that was smuggled out of Iran in a cake.

To give credit where it is due, the international film festival network has done good work keeping attention focused on Panahi’s plight. The 2010 Cannes Film Festival pointedly reserved an empty chair for the filmmaker when he was not allowed to attend, even though he was chosen to serve on the jury. Earlier this year in New York, the Asia Society hosted a Panahi retrospective to further publicize his case. However, it is important to remember Rasoulof and now Mirtahmasb as well, who are also prisoners of artistic conscience, but might not have the same name recognition on the world stage. Highly recommended, Not a Film screens this Thursday (10/13) at Alice Tully Hall, as a Main Slate selection of the 2011 New York Film Festival.

Posted on October 10th, 2011 at 6:58pm.

By Joe Bendel. Call it facial determinism. In Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Face of Another, a new “life-mask” countenance fundamentally alters the personality of a scarred businessman. With his latest film, Pedro Almodóvar addresses similar themes of appearance and identity, but dramatically raises the stakes for his experimental subject in The Skin I Live In (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York, following Wednesday’s gala screening at the 49th New York Film Festival.

Dr. Robert Ledgard gave his mysterious “patient” Vera the face of his late wife, who was severely burned and disfigured in a fateful car crash. As a result, Marilia, his motherly housekeeper, worries the plastic surgeon is developing an unhealthy emotional attachment to his unwilling test-case. As flashbacks explain the chain of events that brought Vera to his isolated villa, we learn just how twisted their potential relationship would be.

Though billed as Almodóvar’s horror movie, Skin really constitutes a continuation of his noir-esque period begun with his previous film, the underappreciated Broken Embraces. Indeed, it is structured around a big twist, which makes it challenging to discuss its themes and motifs without getting spoilery. Frankly, just a few details are probably sufficient to give the game away. However, it is probably safe to say Ledgard nurses some serious grievances, while initial appearances are deliberately deceptive.

Though also undeniably restrained compared to the films that made Almodóvar’s reputation, Broken Embraces had a slow-burning undercurrent of dark passion. By contrast, Skin is a decidedly chilly film. Overtly voyeuristic, Almodóvar avoids delving beneath the surface of his characters, consciously concentrating his focus on the surface level instead. Still, he adeptly uses the Hitchcockian cinematic vocabulary as well as the claustrophobic setting to create a fairly creepy genre film.

Although he never truly unleashes his inner mad doctor, Antonio Banderas is certainly a severe presence as Dr. Ledgard. However, Elena Anaya is quite remarkable as the suicidal Vera, convincingly handling her character revelations, which are considerable. A tricky role to approach, she fully commits to it, providing the film’s only emotional center.

Skin is an intriguing film, but were it not for the vulnerability and immediacy of Anaya’s work, we would simply feel as though we were being played, rather than pulled inexorably into a dark morality drama. While the implications of Almodóvar’s screenplay (adapted from Thierry Jonquet’s novel Mygale), will stay with viewers, his execution will most likely leave them cold. A mixed bag, Skin is largely distinguished by Anaya’s performance. For Almodóvar fans, it screens twice this Wednesday (10/12) as a gala selection of the 2011 NYFF. Though only standby tickets are still available, it also opens theatrically this Friday (10/14) in New York at the Landmark Sunshine.

Posted on October 10th, 2011 at 6:57pm.

By Joe Bendel. A film festival must be pretty secure in itself to program a four and a half hour documentary tribute to another festival. Such is the case with the 49th New York Film Festival. Though not exactly an international launching pad, like Toronto or Cannes, the Midnight Sun Film Festival in Sodankylä, Finland has drawn some of the most admired names in the history of cinema. Festival director Peter von Bagh interviewed many of them on-stage, eventually editing some of their most provocative recollections and insights into the four part documentary, Sodankylä Forever, which has a special two-night screening at this year’s NYFF.

Held in June when the Midsummer sun never sets, the festival might be patrons only opportunity for a brief respite of darkness. However, each day’s line-up begins with an in-depth discussion with a prominent filmmaker. In a way, von Bagh’s Sodankylä is particularly timely and appropriate for this year’s NYFF, because it includes several excerpts of interviews with Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who obviously will not have the opportunity to participate in Q&A sessions after the screening of his latest film, This Is Not a Film.

Indeed, many world class auteurs sat down with von Bagh, including Wim Wenders and Roger Corman, who are also represented at NYFF, as filmmaker and subject, respectively. Yet, for pure movie fans, the highlight of Sodankylä will be hearing Empire Strikes Back director Irvin Kershner discus his initial reaction to a sneak peak at Star Wars (or A New Hope as we are now supposed to call it).

Arguably though, the best material comes from filmmakers who labored under the yoke of Communism. Most notably, Krzysztof Zanussi pointedly criticizes the festival’s special screening of Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, explaining how the ideology it sought to promote caused such profound pain for his country. By the same token, von Bagh deserves credit for putting his comments into the film.

Although an entire segment is essentially devoted to picking desert island films, most of Sodankylä proceeds in a rather idiosyncratic fashion. Von Bagh frequently uses something an interview subject said (or almost nearly said) as a transitional hook into the next auteur, like a game of free association featuring the likes of Sam Fuller, Miloš Forman, Abbas Kiarostami, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Demy, Andrei Konchalovsky, Jerzy Skolimoski (who probably has the best one-liner), and John Boorman (who probably offers the funniest anecdotes).

It is important audiences understand Sodankylä is not That’s Entertainment. Throughout the film, the only film clips von Bagh shows are part of wider audience shots.  However, (aside from some rather superficial axe-grinding from John Sayles) the collected reminiscences and commentary are all quite perceptive and engaging. One of the more ambitious screening events at the 49th New York Film Festival, Sodankylä is respectfully recommended for earnest students of cinema. It screens in two installments this coming Tuesday (10/11) and Wednesday (10/12) at the Francesca Beale Theater.

Posted on October 7th, 2011 at 12:40m.