Yesterday, I
exclaimed that I found it surprisingly easy to find a
connective thematic tissue between the diverse film
selections that I had seen during Day Two of AFI Fest
2007. I am not able to say the same thing about the four
festival entries that I saw on Day Three, and hence do not
have much of an introduction for this piece. If there is a
similar trait embodied by France’s The Last Mistress,
America’s Honeydripper, Mexico’s Déficit,
and Israel’s Jellyfish, I haven’t the faintest idea
of what it is. For this simple reason, I find myself eager
to jump right into the process of reviewing the films
individually.
Catherine
Breillat’s The Last Mistress offers exactly what
one might expect from a French period-piece: a lot of
talky conversation and a lot of explicit sex.
Unfortunately for the movie, the dialogue isn’t
particularly riveting, nor is the intercourse particularly
steamy, leaving little for the viewer’s interest to latch
on to. In fact, most aspects of The Last Mistress
represent traits indicative of cinematic dullsville. And,
while the picture may not be entirely boring on the whole,
it certainly isn’t entertaining enough to be considered a
rewarding artistic endeavor.
The Last
Mistress focuses on an intimate circle of characters,
but none of them come to earn the sympathy or even the
empathy of the audience by the film’s final frame. They
merely exist as ploys in the movie’s plot. For the
majority of the duration, the action is told through
flashbacks as Ryno de Marigny
(Fu'ad Ait Aattou)
justifies his love for his fiancée, Hermangarde (Roxane
Mesquida), to her boisterous grandmother (Claude Sarraute).
Ryno’s future fidelity is questioned by Harmangarde’s
family because of his notorious (assumedly ended)
relationship with sexy Salamanca-native Vellini (Asia
Argento), who just so happens to be Hermangarde’s father’s
(Michael Lonsdale) mistress as well.
If there is one
thing that is exceptional about The Last Mistress,
it is the visual look of the film. The lush costume design
and gorgeous set decoration both prove to be feasts for
the eyes of the viewer. When coupled with veteran Giorgos
Arvanitis’ picturesque cinematography, these aspects of
the movie nearly allow the viewer to forget just how stale
the central story and characters are. Had Breillat’s
adaptation of
Barbey-D'Aurévilly’s novel been more
provocative or innovative, then perhaps The Last
Mistress’ delectable imagery might have had a reason
to exist. As it is now, the movie is pretty, but I
could name a hundred better pretty movies that I have seen
without once stuttering.
As Ryno, Aattou
gives a performance that feels too youthful. The actor has
the presence of a boy in his mid-teens, which leads to the
audience not believing his affair with Vellini for a
second. Frankly, I don’t think that there is much about
Ryno that she could possibly be attracted to other than
(maybe) his hunger for her. In addition, much of Aattou’s
work gives off the peculiar impression that he is trying
to impersonate other actors who have played similar
roles, such as James McAvoy and Matthew McFayden. Luckily,
his co-star, Argento, is far more successful in crafting
her character than he is with his. While the viewer never
quite comes to like Vellini, she at least provides some
seductive energy to an otherwise yawn-inducing picture.
The Last
Mistress was a rather auspicious choice for
programmers to admit into AFI Fest 2007. Isn’t the purpose
of festival films to be challenging, original, or daring
in some way? Breillat’s picture is a thoroughly mediocre
piece that doesn’t even make a concerted effort to appear
fresh. The fact that it never becomes flat-out painful to
watch only exists as one of the many reasons why this
movie is bound to be forgotten in due time.
In
Honeydripper, John Sayles points his camera at a
setting completely different than the one on display in
The Last Mistress: the American South during the
1950s. The film focuses on Tyrone “Pine Top” Purvis, the
soulful old-time proprietor of the Honeydripper, a bar and
club in Harmony, Alabama. Despite offering the
sweet-sounding vocals of long-time house singer Bertha Mae
(Mable John), the Honeydripper seems to be doomed to
failure now that it has to compete with its rival club
across the street, which has installed the
young-people-magnet that is a jukebox. But Pine Top isn’t
ready to go down without a fight, mainly because he is
determined to get back at his pompous landlord, who would
much rather use the property for other purposes. In order
to bring in desperately-needed some revenue, Pine Top,
against his own personal musical beliefs, books
rock-‘n-roll hit-maker Guitar Sam to play a show at the
Honeydripper.
By the time that
the day of the concert rolls around, circumstances change,
as expected. The real Guitar Sam is nowhere to be found.
In order to still put on a show, Pine Top pulls a fast one
and hires aspiring young guitarist Sonny (Gary Clark Jr.),
who first came to the Honeydripper looking for a job after
randomly ending up in Harmony, to pretend as if he is
Guitar Sam. This, of course, also proves a challenge in
and of itself. After coming to town, Sonny is arrested by
a racist cop for wandering around aimlessly without being
employed. Tyrone must buy Sonny out of his labor sentence,
in which he picks cotton with dozens of other innocent
black men, for the night. After much hoopla, Sonny is
finally able to give the gig a try.
Structurally and
thematically, Honeydripper is Sayles’ most
straightforward film to date. Regardless of this, the
movie has a lot to say. Its depiction of black culture in
a setting of extreme racial tension is both subtle and
factual, but nonetheless extremely affecting. The viewer
comes to care for the film’s characters as people,
and this makes the discrimination that they put up with
all the more disgusting. And, still, the movie is hardly
about race relations in America as much as it is about the
joyous, healing effect of music. Rock-‘n-roll functions as
a prominent character in and of itself in Honeydripper,
providing an equal amount of context for the film as the
historical elements. No one song is particularly striking
so much as the work as a whole is: Sayles makes sure to
thoroughly explore the effect and consequence of simple
rhythm.
Meanwhile, the
humanity found in Honeydripper is also undeniably
moving, with rich, poignant performances coming from
nearly every member of the cast. In the lead role, Glover
is a revelation. As much as I hate the man’s politics and
life outside of Hollywood, it is impossible for me to deny
the raw power of his interpretation of Pine Top. In more
ways than one, the character has a tormented soul in the
film’s first two acts; to observe the manner in which
Glover depicts his transformation of healing as the plot
progresses is somewhat of a miracle. Also exceptionally
impressive efforts found in the ensemble are those of
Clark Jr.; Lisa Gay Hamilton as Pine Top’s wife, Delilah;
and Yaya DaCosta as Pine Top’s daughter, China Doll.
For Sayles, the
film is clearly a deeply personal passion-project (then
again, when has one of his efforts not been?); his care
for his characters and the story that they embody is
evident in every frame. Because of this, Honeydripper
always strikes the viewer as an incredibly pleasant work.
It softly builds to create a very enjoyable, accomplished
mix of history, emotion, and art. While I am hesitant to
call it a great film because of the fact that it
ultimately lacks consequence, I certainly recommend it to
just about everyone. Rarely do crowd-pleasers have as much
heart or as much intellect as Honeydripper does.
My third
screening of the day offered something that I didn’t
expect of a festival as high-profile as AFI Fest: an
unmitigated cinematic disaster. Gael García Bernal’s
Déficit is clearly only being admitted into
well-regarded festivals (it played at Toronto earlier this
year) because of Bernal’s accomplished reputation as an
actor in World Cinema. Unfortunately, if enough people see
this movie, his name might soon not carry as much power
when listed on the credits of a motion-picture as it does
now. Déficit represents amateurish, shoddy
filmmaking at best.
Bernal, in
addition to directing for the first time, headlines the
cast as Cristobal. The rich son of important
businesspeople, Cristobal is naïve to the disparaging
poverty found in his native Mexico. Déficit
introduces the viewer to him as he is gearing up for a
house-party, in which he and several friends will parade
around his parents’ large summer estate aimlessly, take
the occasional dip in the family pool, and likely smoke
some weed and drink some alcohol. Also along for the ride
are Cristobal’s sister, Elisa (Camila Sodi), and her
idiotic friends. All the while, in true “rich-kid”
fashion, Cristobal readily awaits what he hopes will be a
letter of acceptance to Harvard’s M.B.A. Program.
Déficit
was based on a telenovela, a fact that is very easy
to believe given the movie’s overall ineptitude. As the
plot progresses, it is very easy to see that Bernal wishes
to accomplish the same thing that the very popular Alfonso
Cuarón film that he starred in, Y Tu Mamá Tambíen,
did so well: create an externally juvenile comedy with
underlying layers of striking social commentary. In
attempting this, he comes up short in both areas. Bernal
bargains on the tense relationship between the pompous
Cristobal and his compassionate old friend and
now-housekeeper Charlie (Jorge Luis Moreno), who he
publicly humiliates in front of his friends to establish
himself as superior, to function as some sort of profound
statement on the classicism found in Mexico. In actuality,
this story-thread comes off as one-dimensional and
uninteresting, clearly the work of a freshman behind the
camera.
Writer Kyzza
Terrazas adds a lot of filler in order for the movie to
fill a feature-length duration. There is a subplot
involving Dolores (Luz Cipriota), an alluring Argentinean
party-guest who Cristobal instantly falls for. Because of
his newfound crush, he intentionally gives his girlfriend
Mafer (Ana Serradilla) bad directions to the home, leaving
her lost in the Mexican Countryside. In the meantime,
Elisa is busy trying experimental drugs that one of her
“friends” introduces to her, which leads to a climactic
scene of chaos in the film’s final act.
As it closes in
on its conclusion, Déficit progressively engages in
comic relief because it doesn’t know of anywhere else to
go. The various conflicts that Cristobal juggles
throughout the film come to a head and, because Kyzza and
Bernal are not skilled enough to depict these with
legitimate emotions, they take the easy way out and try to
make the situation funny. Bernal hams it up for the
camera, literally acting like the clueless doofus that
Cristobal’s personality traits often suggest. The result
is a third act that is borderline-nauseating, undermining
characters that the viewer doesn’t even respect in the
first place. Like the rest of Déficit, this
sequence of scenes is an inane, puerile excuse for a work
of real social significance.
To the great
benefit of my sanity, the last film that I saw of the day
was far more rewarding than Déficit could ever hope
to be. Jellyfish is the latest entry in a wave of
wonderful contemporary Israeli films, which most notably
includes Nir Bergman’s 2002 minor-masterpiece, Broken
Wings. While not as tragic as that film, Jellyfish
is quite a poignant, personal piece of cinema unto its
own. By the end of the picture’s trim 78-minute running
length, I had developed a strong bond with each and every
one of its affectingly real characters.
The film is
constructed using the ever-popular modern “intertwining
stories” structure. The viewer is first introduced to
Batya (Sarah Adler), a young wedding caterer who is
depressed with her life. Batya’s boyfriend has just left
her, she cannot handle having a relationship with either
of her divorced parents, and she lives in a scummy
apartment with a leaky ceiling. Batya happens upon
somewhat of a miracle when she discovers a little girl (Nikol
Leidman) wearing only panties and an inner-tube emerging
from the water of the ocean as she walks along a beach.
The girl doesn’t speak. Displeased by the police
department’s nonchalant attitude toward the girl when she
tries to turn the girl in, Batya decides to take the girl
under her wing for the time being.
Batya is later fired from her job when she unsuccessfully
tries to look after the girl as she works a shift at the
wedding reception of Keren (Noa Knoller) and Michael (Gera
Sandler), two other characters that Jellyfish
follows. The Happy Couple has grand plans for a honeymoon
in the Caribbean, but these are destroyed when Keren
breaks her leg climbing out of a bathroom-stall with a
jammed lock at the reception as everyone else dances the
night away. Their replacement vacation to an Israeli hotel
proves torturous, as Keren finds herself stunningly
unsatisfied with the hotel and the circumstances that
accompany their stay. Frustrated by her constant
complaining, Michael nearly finds himself in an affair
with another one of the hotel tenants.
Also featured in the film is Joy (Ma-nenita De Latorre), a
Filippino foreigner who works as a live-in helper for
elderly people in order to support her young son back
home. Joy’s latest client is Malka (Zaharira Harifai), a
crabby old woman whose actress daughter does not have time
to look after her. Joy and Malka can barely converse with
each other as Joy does not fluently speak Hebrew, making
interaction even more tedious for the both of them.
I
realize that I have spent the bulk of this review simply
describing the characters and their actions. But that is
precisely the joy of Jellyfish: experiencing these
people’s lives and the ways in which they respond to the
happenings of the film’s story. Not one character stands
out above the rest (although Batya does come close at
times), making the movie a true ensemble effort. As
audience members, we merely take in the picture’s moments
and their inherent richness, allowing ourselves to feel
what goes on. For me to rattle off praise of the actors
and of the script would, in a sense, trivialize the
unique, affecting experience that Jellyfish offers.
It isn’t particularly deep or even particularly memorable,
but it certainly does leave an impression on the viewer.
For this reason, I regress to mere plot description. If
the characters and their stories sound interesting to you
from my summary, then you owe it to yourself to check the
film out when it is released.
And with that, Day Three comes to a close. Despite not
liking two of the four films that I saw, I still am able
to find great reward in the other two, which were both
tremendous. On to Day Four!
-Danny Baldwin, Bucket Reviews
(post date: 11.21.2007)
