September 13, 2002

Getting out can be as important as getting in…

After days of chatter about the crowds the industry/press screenings, things eased up on Thursday.  And the focus returned to film.  For me, one film in particular.

Jim Sheridan’s newest, currently titled IN AMERICA, arrived quietly, but damned if it isn’t one of the very best films in the entire festival. More, it is easily the most Oscar-likely film to turn up at Toronto this year.  I mean, this thing stinks of nominations.  Best Picture, Best Director (Sheridan), Best Screenplay (Sheridan and his daughters Kirsten and Naomi), Best Cinematography (Declan Quinn), Best Production Designer (Mark Geraghty), Best Supporting Actor (Djimon Hounsou) and Best Actress (Samantha Morton)… for starters.  (I wouldn’t be surprised if Morton double dips with a Supporting Actress nomination for Minority Report.)

Telling the story is a mistake of sorts, as the movie is more than its story.  This is Francis Coppola level filmmaking, representing a major jump, in my opinion, for Sheridan.  The screenplay is one of the most beautifully structured screenplays without feeling structured at all… it’s not a stunt.  But the five main characters each rise and sink, filling their places in this family as fate demands, working as five separate batteries, each absolutely necessary to power the drain of life in a new country and a city like New York.  

That’s as much of the story as you need to know… a family of four – mom, dad and two daughters – come to New York from Ireland, the father dreaming of a career on the New York stage.  Beyond the adjustment to a new life and drug-addled neighbors, this family carries another weight… the memory of a dead child.  But they will be a family and they will survive… together… no matter what, together.  (There are interesting coincidental connection to the black comedy/drama The Secret Lives of Dentists from Alan Rudolph, which may have been picked up by the time you’re reading this.  But the films go in very different directions.) 

Tears will flow for many audience members in the third act, but this is not a film of draining weight.  This is a story of laughter and reality and deep, deep unshakeable love.  And, in an odd way, this film is the perfect answer to 9/11, though it never refers to that day in any way.  This is a film about immigrants and the American dream and ethnic diversity and not really noticing ethnic diversity as anything more than human diversity and secrets and family and staying awake in the unending, emotional-sleep-inducing din of New York.  This is a film whose basic avoidance of jingoism allows us to keep our defenses down and to find our inner humanity in the humanity of these people.

I have been citing Kirsten Sheridan’s Disco Pigs – never released domestically – as an influence on her father’s film, even before I knew she was a co-writer.  And I think the daughter did help the father’s growth.  Kirsten showed a fearlessness about magical thinking in her film and, while it is tempered here, it is still right there under the surface.  This is a place where individual moments can change the course of lives with startling simplicity.  While we rarely admit to the drama of out own lives – or alternatively, overstate it – these magic moments of change sweep through all of our lives every day.  It’s just that these characters are occasionally able to see them as they happen.

Now… here’s the rub… Fox Searchlight currently has this film scheduled for Spring 2003.  That would mean no Oscars in this year’s race or next year’s race.  And that would be a damned shame.  Searchlight is currently enjoying an embarrassment of riches at this festival.  Bend It Like Beckham is getting lusty cheers at every screening.  The Good Thief looks like a small hit and Nick Nolte could well end up with a Best Actor nomination… if he’s not in too much trouble.  Antwone Fisher is being unveiled tomorrow.  But In America is THE MOVIE. 

Make no mistake.  A cursory glance at this year’s Oscar race shows a dearth of “regular” dramas.  Much as I like Moonlight Mile, I think that acting and writing nods are all that should be seriously hoped for there.  The Hours has created questions for itself.  Antwone Fisher and Narc are both street dramas.  Gangs of New York, Catch Me If You Can and Road to Perdition are overdogs.  But In America is a film that Academy members can “discover” and make their own.  And it is driven by that rarest of commodities in America film today… real, unabashed, unashamed emotion. 

Ironically, there are two other Oscar locks here in Toronto that are scheduled for 2003.  The first is Miramax’s City of God, which hopes to be chasing the Best Foreign Language Oscar (Brazil has to nominate the film) against Sony Classics’ wonderful new Almodovar film, Talk to Her.  The second is also from Miramax… the Michael Caine Best Actor lock film, The Quiet American… which could, ironically, compete head-to-head for the bigger prizes as “The Underdog Pick” with In America. 

Personally, I’d like to at least see the two English-language films in release this fall… there’s a lot of stuff out there, but these two films would raise overall quality level considerably. 

The day continued happily with Stephen Frears’ latest, DIRTY PRETTY THINGS, which offers a very different view of the immigrant experience.  In most ways, it isn’t an immigrant movie at all.  Being in London without proper papers drives the actions of the lead characters – Okwe, a bell captain/taxi driver played by Chiwetel Ejiofor and Senay, a hotel maid played by Amelie’s Audrey Tautou. 

London is a dangerous place for a man with secrets and no immigration papers, like Okwe.  It’s every bit as dangerous for a sweet-faced Turkish virgin like Senay, who secretly works for cash, since legally she has to wait for a status shift that allows her to work legally in London. 

Elements of earlier Frears films like My Beautiful Launderette and The Grifters mix with original ideas in Steven Knight’s tightly constructed screenplay.  Sergi Lopez is the hotel manager who has his entire building wired for kickbacks.  Sophie Okonedo is the hooker with the heart of brass.  And Benedict Wong is Okwe’s even-tempered Asian friend with a job at the hospital’s morgue that keeps him in nights. 

Dirty Pretty Things can be a tough, bloody ride.   Open body wounds are no less raw than the emotional wounds carried by some of these characters, imposed by the soulless that take advantage at any turn they can.  But it is a smart, clever movie with strong characters and performances that we haven’t seen before.  Tautou is on a wholly different note than in Amelie.  And Chiwetel Ejiofor is a real find.  He appeared in Amistad… tiny world, when I am seeing great, career-building performances by Amistad graduates back-to-back.  But this will be his first worldwide exposure.  Ejiofor has great strength of character as an actor.  I will look forward to his next roles. 

Frears has always been a hard one to peg.  He’ll make a hit like The Grifters and a commercial miss that deserved better like The Hi-Lo Country and dead miss like Mary Reilly, then come back with an urban romantic dramedy like High Fidelity, work in live television and deliver a small wonder like Dirty Pretty Things, which takes its place in the domain of 70s style Brit thrillers like Sexy Beast and Croupier.    Good movie.

And then, there’s the buzz kill….

I’m trying desperately to figure out what was in the Evian at Cannes this year.  I’m glad they picked up on Bowling for Columbine, even if the degree of attention was probably less about the film than about bashing America along with Moore.  But the other big American hit over there, well…

I’ve been looking for someone…anyone… to explain to me just what made anyone think that Punch Drunk Love was something special… that is to say, something more special than, say, the much pilloried Full Frontal.  There were three positive reviews sitting on RottenTomatoes.com.  Interestingly, the Hollywood Reporter misidentified *****Mary Anne Rasjkub****.  But I chose Mike D’Angelo’s review to use as a reference:

“Slender absurdist romantic comedy gets the full force of P.T.'s visual imagination, with every moment so spectacularly heightened that the picture's nearly over before you notice how empty and impersonal it is. Might have been more effective with an actor in the lead role; I'd hoped Anderson would reveal some hitherto unknown aspect of the Sandler psyche, but he remains one of the least expressive, least soulful, least charismatic movie stars in cinema history -- a dead-eyed, bullet-headed emotional vacuum. Doesn't much matter, though, since the comedy here emerges not from personality but from aesthetics: the precise framing, the bravura camera movements, Jon Brion's insistently percussive score, Sandler's ridiculous blue suit. Every cut a winner, and I could happily look at production stills for hours; frequently hilarious, too, albeit largely in an incredulous, how-the-hell-did-this-get-studio-funding kind of way. Think of it as P.T.'s Buffalo '66, except made by somebody who'd only seen that movie instead of somebody who'd lived it.”

So, that is considered a positive review! 

The funny thing is that there isn’t a whole lot there with which I disagree.  I don’t think Sandler deserves the blame and I don’t think anything in the movie was hilarious.  I agree that the movie was empty and impersonal.  The only effort at any storytelling is aesthetic.  And if you think it’s funny that PT Anderson got financing for this non-starter, enjoy the laugh.  I don’t mind that he’s making a small, experimental film any more than I am offended that Soderbergh made Full Frontal.  But I just want to make the point that the only joke here is on people who think that it’s something more than that. 

I do think of it as PT Anderson’s Buffalo 66… it is self-indulgent, pointless and hard to watch for more than a few minutes at a time.

The day recovered a bit with yet another piece of enjoyable fluff, El Otro Lado de la cama aka The Other Side of the Bed.  Baz Luhrmann should be getting some sort of award from this festival… unfortunately, Ken Branaugh might show up to try and claim it… but the musical is back.  In this case, the film is a Spanish sex comedy about a bunch of friends who can’t keep their clothes on.  And of course, they break out in song every once in a while. 

The audience enjoyed itself and watching Paz Vega and Natalia Verbeke romp about in and out of their clothes can’t be anything but a pleasure.  But this is no Moulin Rouge, no 8 Women, not even a Hollywood/Bollywood.  The musical numbers are nothing more than kitsch.  They try really hard, but the rhymes were of the nursery school level. 

That said, I enjoyed the film, which plays as a special episode of Friends in which all the players get naked and relive all the group-incestuous relationships of the characters. 

But let me close as I began… In America, In America, In America!!!! 

See you Monday with a wrap-up column.

READER OF THE DAY:  From Her Crispiness:  “You're not missing much down here in the U-S of A.  Apparently, Swimfan (Isn't that a Canuck picture?) is currently the ''#1'' movie in America. Yoikes!

E ME.  You know how.