The strange, the kinky, and the Krispy

If
the air outside is thick enough to cut with a knife, that means it’s time for
the Rochester Jewish Film Festival.
The festival opens this Sunday (July 13) and continues through the following
Sunday (July 20), with all screenings taking place at either the Dryden Theatre
or the Little Theatre. City has the
inside scoop on several of this year’s entries, but you can get more
information about films, tickets, and schedules at www.rjff.org.

            God is Great, I’m Not (Tuesday, July
15) screened at last fall’s High Falls Film Festival, and the mere presence of Audrey
Tautou (Amélie) had people lined up
around the block. Here, Tautou plays Michèle, a frizzy-haired Paris fashion
model whose recent relationship implosion and abortion leave her searching for
spiritual answers. Catholicism ain’t cutting it, and a short-lived attempt at
Buddhism finds her nodding off during meditation. She discovers Judaism at
around the same time that she meets François (Edouard Baer), a Jewish
veterinarian who is desperately trying to hide his religious roots. When they
fall in love, it becomes a feature-film version of an episode of Three’s Company. (Picture Chrissy Snow
hanging up a mezuzah on secret-Jew Jack Tripper’s door and imagine the
hilarity.)

            You get two chances to see Amen on Saturday (July 19 — it’s screening at 6:30 and 10:00), but only the
mentally disturbed will want to catch this flick more than once. Costa-Gavras
directs and adapts the story from Rolf Hochhuth’s controversial six-hour 1963
play called The Deputy. Don’t worry
— the film version isn’t nearly that long, though it does unspool over a very
uncomfortable 132 minutes. It’s about a German chemist and SS lieutenant named
Kurt Gerstein (Ulrich Tukur) who invents Zyklon B, a gas he believed was going
to be used for routine water purification. Eventually, the devout Protestant
learns Zyklon B is being used in the Polish death camps and pleads with the
Church to intervene.

            Gerstein’s (a real guy) squeaky
wheel gets no grease from the Church, though he does pique the interest of
Riccardo Fontana (Mathieu Kassovitz), a young Jesuit priest who uses his family
connections to arrange a meeting between Gerstein and Pope Pious XII. But old
Pious offers no solution to the Final Solution, mostly because he’s scared the
Nazis will invade the Vatican if he shakes his finger at them.

            Costa-Gavras, who saw Oscar action
for Missing and Z, hasn’t made a film since 1997’s debacle Mad City with Dustin Hoffman and John Travolta. Amen should have been much more
rabble-rousing, but aside from a moment or two, it’s oddly unmoving. It’s also
extremely heavy-handed, almost comically repetitious, and way too long. Amen is also, strangely, in English,
despite a glaring lack of actors who can call it their native tongue. Then
again, people seem to love watching this kind of thing ( The Pianist ), as Amen garnered seven César nominations
(and a win for Best Writing). On the plus side, Krispy Kreme will be doling out
free donuts at the screenings.

            Things definitely look up the
following day, with a trio of hour-long documentaries about interesting
subjects. Strange Fruit relates the origin of the haunting Billie
Holliday tune, which turned out to be written by American Communist Party
member and Bronx high school teacher Abel Meeropol (using the pseudonym Lewis
Allen). Meeropol crafted the words in 1937 after seeing a photograph of the
lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp. The Joel Katz-directed doc, which
follows Meeropol’s interesting career, ends with a list of contemporaries who
have performed the song over the years.

            Hot on the heels of last year’s Schmelvis: Searching for the King’s Jewish
Roots comes Shalom Y’all, another look at the unlikely combination of
Judaism and the South. Director Brian Bain, a third-generation Jew, echoes the
Bible Belt journeys made by his hat-and-tie-salesman grandfather many moons
ago. For a road-trip film, it’s all pretty pedestrian, but there is a brief
appearance by musician-turned-mystery-writer Kinky Friedman.

            Friedman takes center stage later
that evening in Kinky Friedman: Proud to Be an Asshole From El Paso, which is
packed with interesting interviews with notable Southern luminaries like Lyle
Lovett, Willie Nelson, and Bill Clinton (who tells a hysterical story about
what he did with a cigar!), who all reflect on what Richard “Kinky”
Friedman means to them. And, of course, there’s plenty of Kinky, who hit the
scene 30 years ago with a band (The Texas Jewboys) and a song (“They Ain’t
Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore”) that captured the nation’s attention as
well as its ire.

There are two
cinematic ways in which you can celebrate Gay Pride Week. The first and
perhaps less obvious route would be to see Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the
Black Pearl, which features Johnny Depp doing a brilliant, flaming
mélange of Captain Morgan, Dudley Moore, Keith Richards, and Andy Dick. There’s
also the big ImageOut fundraiser on Thursday, July 17, where Tipping
the Velvet and I Love You Baby will be screened. Velvet is a BBC-produced miniseries
about three women in Victorian England, and Baby is about a handsome country boy who finds love in the big city. For more
information and details about advance ticket sales, visit ImageOut online at
www.imageout.org.

Interested
in raw, unsanitized movie ramblings from Jon? Visit his site, Planet Sick-Boy (www.sick-boy.com),
or listen to him on WBER’s Friday Morning Show.

This article appears in Jul 9-15, 2003.