High Falls Festival Films

Wednesday, October 30

Frida

Julie Taymor, US, 120
minutes

Dryden Theatre, 7
p.m.

Based on Hayden
Herrera’s book, Frida: A Biography of
Frida Kahlo, and cooked up by at least four different screenwriters, Frida begins in true biopic fashion by
showing Kahlo (Salma Hayek) on the verge of checking out before it flashes back
to 1922 Mexico City, where the young artist-to-be is portrayed as a
free-spirited, sexually ambiguous student. Most of Frida is about Kahlo’s tumultuous relationship with notoriously
unfaithful muralist Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina), who first became her mentor,
then her lover, and finally her husband. A bunch of stuff happens with a lot of
other celebrity types — Leon Trotsky (Geoffrey Rush), photographer Tina
Modotti (a horribly miscast Ashley Judd), Rivera’s rival David Alfaro Siqueiros
(Antonio Banderas), and Nelson Rockefeller (Edward Norton, who also has an
uncredited script rewrite) — but none of it is too exciting, unless you’re a
fanatical Kahlo fan. But that demographic already knows what’s coming.

Chaos

Coline Serreau,
France, 109 minutes

Little Theatre #1,
7:15 p.m.

Hélène (Catherine
Frot) and Paul (Vincent Lindon) are on their way out for a night on the town
when their car comes upon a frantic prostitute pleading for help. Of course,
being French, they don’t help at all, opting to watch the woman get beaten to
near death by a pack of dangerous-looking men. Hey, at least Hélène feels bad
about it, turning up at the hospital the next day and pretending to be a
relative of the now-comatose Noémie (Rachida Brakni) so she can work out her
guilt through providing physical therapy to the hooker once she wakes up. And
when Noémie wakes up — oh, what a story! Meanwhile, Paul and his son Fabrice
(Aurélien Wiik) demonstrate how awful and piggish men are by ignoring their
respective mothers and refusing to pick up after themselves while Hélène is at
the hospital. Whether or not you dig the message, you’ll probably like the
film, which was nominated for five Césars (Brakni was the lone winner).

Lift

DeMane Davis and
Khari Streeter, USA, 85 minutes

Little Theatre #2,
7:30 p.m.

A double nominee at
last year’s Independent Spirit Awards, this Boston-set drama is about
professional shoplifting (or “boosters,” if you’re down with the
street lingo). One of the ISA nominees was star Kerry Washington, who has
appeared in Save the Last Dance, Bad Company, and the television show 100 Centre Street. She’ll be in
Rochester for Lift‘s screening.

Take Care of My Cat

Jeong Jae-eun, South
Korea, 112 minutes

Little Theatre #1,
9:30 p.m.

Five secondary school students and a stray cat star in
this sluggishly paced but otherwise enjoyable drama about coming of age in
South Korea. Each has different wants and goals, which we learn as the cat is
passed back and forth between the girls like the talking stick at a Management
Team Product Development Retreat. One is a yuppie go-getter with a dead-end
job, one does volunteer work, and another dreams of studying abroad even though
she lacks the cash to do so. A pair of Chinese twins seems fairly jovial
(they’re the comic relief) even though they don’t have much going on. A nice
slice of life about young women from the port town of Incheon, which we last
saw when South Korea’s win over Portugal put the US into the Round of 16 in
this year’s World Cup.

Black Chicks Talking

Brendan Fletcher and
Leah Purcell, Australia, 52 minutes

Little Theatre #2,
9:30 p.m.

As the title
suggests, the film is 52 minutes of black chicks talking (it does neglect to
mention they’re all Australian, as well), but not in the same manner as you
might see on Oprah or Jerry Springer. They’re all from various
backgrounds and economic strata, and through their stories we learn what it’s
like to be black and Australian… something many of us don’t think about quite
as often as we should. The most recognizable of the lot is Deborah Mailman, an
actress who we’ll see later this year in Phillip Noyce’s Rabbit-Proof Fence.

Thursday, October 31

How I Killed My Father

Anne Fontaine,
France, 98 minutes

Dryden Theatre, 5
p.m.

Don’t let your aversion to violence scare you away from
this film — the title is strictly metaphoric. Instead of murder, we get lots
of angst. Self-centered doctor Jean-Luc (Charles Berling), who helps the upper
crust of Versailles combat the ravages of age, is shocked to see his father
Maurice (César winner Michel Bonet) drop into his life after the crusty old
coot abandoned him as a boy three decades earlier. It seems that while Jean-Luc
was sucking fat, injecting Botox, and shagging his assistant (Amira Casar)
behind the back of his young trophy wife (Natacha Régnier), his dad was off in
the wilds of Africa practicing medicine on people who really needed help.
Sparks fly. Or they mean to, anyway. While the story is a little predictable,
the acting is strong enough to keep you interested.

Sister Helen

Rebecca Cammisa and
Rob Fruchtman, USA, 90 minutes

Little Theatre #2, 6
p.m.

Yet another Sundance
winner (the Director’s Award for documentaries) is in the house, as Cammisa and
Fruchtman offer a nice counterpoint to the glut of Nuns Is Bad films that are
making waves on the festival circuit (like Evelyn and, more notably, Peter Mullan’s Magdalene
Sisters). Of course, Sister Helen Travis could probably hang with the
meanest nuns of those films. She’s a no-nonsense, smack-talking, recovering
alcoholic who also happens to be hell-bent on getting a house full of two-dozen
crackheads and junkies cleaned up.

Nowhere in Africa

Caroline Link,
Germany, 141 minutes

Little Theatre #1,
6:30 p.m.

Winner of five German
Film Awards (including Best Picture and Best Director) and a likely contender
for next spring’s Foreign Film Oscar, Africa might be the most gorgeous picture in this year’s festival. Based on the
best-selling autobiography by Stefanie Zweig, the film follows the lives of the
German-Jewish Redrich family as it narrowly escapes 1938 Europe and heads for a
remote farm in Kenya. Don’t worry — it only sounds like the crapfest that was
Kim Basinger’s I Dreamed of Africa.
Most of the attention is devoted to the Redrichs’ young daughter Regina (the
wonderful Lea Kurka), who acts as the viewer’s conduit to the Dark Continent.

Maya Deren: Short Films

75 minutes

Visual Studies
Workshop, 7 p.m.

A collection of short
films made by the late Maya Deren. Not to be confused with In the Mirror of Maya Deren, a documentary screening at the
Festival on Saturday afternoon.

The Weight of Water

Kathryn Bigelow, USA,
113 minutes

Dryden Theatre, 7:15
p.m.

Back before she
struck out this summer with the disappointing submarine flick K-19: The Widowmaker, Bigelow made this
smaller, quieter picture that will probably remind a lot of people of Possession. Both films were adapted from
popular novels (this one was written by Anita Shreve) and each deals with dual
stories — past and present — that parallel each other to a certain degree.
In the present, a magazine photographer (Catherine McCormack) is sent to New
Hampshire’s Isles of Shoals to snap pictures of the sight of a murder that
happened back in 1873. In the past, we see the murder trial and the events
leading up to the murder. It’s an intriguing and beautiful film, but those of
you who read the book are likely to be disappointed. Costars Sean Penn,
Elizabeth Hurley, and Josh Lucas.

Possible Loves

Sandra Werneck,
Brazil, 98 minutes

Little Theatre #2,
8:30 p.m.

This winner of Sundance’s Latin America Cinema Award
attempts to answer that age-old question “What if?” as Carlos (Murilo
Benício) waits at the theater for his girlfriend Julia (Carolina Ferraz).
Werneck blends three different scenarios into her film that are all based on
what Julia does. We see three very different versions of Carlos, each living 15
years in the future. A decent romantic comedy that could be Brazil’s version of
Sliding Doors.

The Safety of Objects

Rose Troche, US, 120
minutes

Little Theatre #1,
9:15 p.m.

An ensemble drama about four interconnected suburban
families dealing with the typical suburban-family troubles (boredom,
infidelity, and the like). Features a huge cast, including Glenn Close, Dermot
Mulroney, Patricia Clarkson, Joshua Jackson, Moira Kelly, Robert Klein,
Mary Kay Place, Tim Olyphant, and a talking Barbie doll.

The Happiness of the Katakuris

Takashi Miike, Japan,
113 minutes

Little Theatre #4,
9:30 p.m.

When a director makes roughly seven films a year, you
shouldn’t expect any of them to be the same. Likewise, anyone who saw Miike’s Audition earlier this year at the Dryden
shouldn’t count on another bloody fright-fest. Katakuris is, instead, a madcap comedy with a bunch of
song-and-dance numbers. This isn’t The
Sound of Music, though, as the subject is the Katakuri family, who open a
bed-and-breakfast in what they’re told will be an area heavily populated by
tourists. When the first few guests die on the premises, you get a good idea
where the film is heading. And when the dead bodies start to sing and dance,
things only become clearer. Think Beetlejuice as a musical.

Near Dark

Kathryn Bigelow, US,
95 minutes

Dryden Theatre, 9:45
p.m.

Back before Bigelow made a name for herself with
high-octane films like Blue Steel, Point Break, and Strange Days, she directed this critically lauded picture which
sounds like a blend of both of Joss Whedon’s television shows — the vampire
thriller and the western. Adrian Pasdar plays a cowboy who picks up a girl,
gets bitten in the neck, and finds himself deep in the world of eternal
darkness (hint: it’s not Elmira).

Roads to Riches

Michelle Gallagher,
US, 88 minutes

Little Theatre #3,
9:45 p.m.

The latest from Robert Forster was formerly titled Rat in the Can because his character is
the kind of lowlife con man who would raise a baby rat in an empty pop can so
he could sue the soft drink company once the critter is big enough. Jack’s
specialty isn’t rats, though — it’s game shows. And after a major meltdown on
a Pyramid knockoff, he meets a young,
good-looking cowboy named Henry (Kip Pardue) and trains him (à la Hard Eight, or even Forster’s Diamond Men) how to get on and win a
game show called Roads to Riches.
When Henry becomes a big hit, Jack sees dollar signs but must contend with an
equally unscrupulous stripper (Rose McGowan) whose hooks are already firmly
lodged within Henry. An interesting dramedy for people who thought Quiz Show was too long and too serious.

Friday, November 1

Whispering Sands

Nan Triveni Achnas,
Indonesia/Japan, 106 minutes

Little Theatre #2,
5:30 p.m.

Sounding like a beach resort, or perhaps a lush golf
course, Sands is instead an
attractive film about the dysfunctional relationship between a teenager and her
mother. Berlian (Christine Hakim) likes to keep Daya (Dian Sastrowardoyo) on a
short leash, and since she’s blossoming into a real beauty, the leash just
keeps getting shorter and shorter — and Daya keeps getting more and more
rebellious. When Daya’s father, who has been missing for years, returns into
their lives, you might think the family dynamic would change for the better.
Think again.

Blue Vinyl

Judith Helfand and
Daniel B. Gold, US, 98 minutes

Little Theatre #1,
6:30 p.m.

With all the focus on snipers and terrorists, nobody is
paying any attention to the deadly foe that’s right under our noses — vinyl
siding. That’s the point of this nicely edited picture, which won Sundance’s
Cinematography Award for documentary films. Helfand becomes concerned when her
parents decide to re- side their home with the eponymous blue vinyl, and with
good reason — she just had a radical hysterectomy because of a drug her mom
took during pregnancy. Now, looking for potential cancer-causing agents like
she’s the love child of Erin Brockovich and Michael Moore, Helfand decides to
blow her “uterus money” on this exposé, in which she uncovers the
truth about the various dangers of siding. Features animation by Emily Hubley (Hedwig and the Angry Inch), whose late
mother, Faith, was honored at last year’s festival.

American Standoff

Kristi Jacobson, US,
95 minutes

Dryden Theatre, 7
p.m.

Produced by two-time Oscar winner Barbara Kopple (who has
also won the American Film Institute’s Maya Deren Independent Film and Video
Artists Award), this documentary chronicles the battle between a trucking
company called Overnight Transportation and a Teamsters Union weakened by
decreased membership and political infighting. The Teamsters have been trying
to organize Overnight’s employees for years but have met incredible resistance,
which ultimately culminates in a devastating strike they thought would last
about three weeks. (They weren’t even close.) The ending is fairly
anticlimactic, but this is still a classy documentary.

Personal Velocity: Three Portraits

Rebecca Miller, USA,
85 minutes

Little Theatre #1, 8:40 p.m.

Miller, the daughter
of Arthur Miller and husband of Daniel Day-Lewis, wrote and directed this film,
adapting it from her own novel (which features seven stories compared to the
film’s three). I was floored at how visual Velocity was, expecting that a movie made by a writer would concentrate more on the
story than the appearance. But Miller’s direction, punctuated by freeze-framing
her digital video and cutting in stills every so often, is the perfect blend of
image and narrative. Her “three portraits” tell the stories of three
different women, played by Kyra Sedgwick, Parker Posey, and Fairuza Balk, and
concentrate on cookbooks, teenaged runaways, and somebody’s glorious,
traffic-stopping ass. If you make it to only one film at the festival, this is
the one you don’t want to miss.

His Secret Life

Ferzan Ozpetek,
Italy, 105 minutes

Little Theatre #3, 9
p.m.

Shortly after a woman’s husband dies, she discovers he was
having an affair… with a man.

Civil Brand

Neema Barnette, US,
95 minutes

Little Theatre #2,
9:30 p.m.

A drama full of rap superstars (Mos Def, Da Brat, MC Lyte)
that likens prison labor to sharecropping.

Morvern Callar

Lynne Ramsey,
Scotland, 97 minutes

Dryden Theatre, 9:45
p.m.

We saw flashes of brilliance in Ramsey’s Ratcatcher, but with Callar, the Scottish director takes a
huge leap in both her directing and writing (she adapts Alan Warner’s novel
here). Of course, it helps when you’ve got a super talent like Samantha Morton
in front of the camera. She plays Morvern Callar, a Glaswegian who wakes up one
crisp December morning to find a glowing Christmas tree with her boyfriend’s
dead body lying underneath it. It’s surprising when Morvern ignores the body
for several weeks, and even more shocking when she hacks it up and buries it
outside. But then she does something even more unbelievable. Morton is, as
usual, brilliant. And her long dark hair makes her look like a cross between
Emily Watson and Kimberly Williams.

God is Great, I’m Not

Pascale Bailly,
France, 100 minutes

Little Theatre #1,
10:40 p.m.

The mere presence of Amélie‘s
Audrey Tautou should have 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
isn’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.)

Saturday, November 2

Lost in La Mancha

Keith Fulton and
Louis Pepe, UK, 89 minutes

Dryden Theatre, 11
a.m.

You’ve heard of the Curse of the Bambino, but what about
the Curse of Don Quixote? Orson Welles spent two decades trying to turn Miguel
de Cervantes’ classic story into a feature film, and in 2000, Terry Gilliam’s
years of planning finally took the project further than Welles ever managed to.
We join the pre-production in Madrid about eight weeks before filming one of
the most expensive European-financed films ever, with the likes of Johnny Depp,
Vanessa Paradis, and Jean Rochefort. What follows is a colossal string of
disasters that would almost be funny if they didn’t completely derail the
project. The parallels between Gilliam and Quixote are almost too much to take
— both are looking for one last big chance, and both are proven foolish time
after time. Gilliam, however, is still looking for redemption in the final reel.

Railroad of Hope

Ning Ying, China, 56
minutes

Little Theatre #1, 11
a.m.

Every August, scores and scores of Chinese — peasant
women, mostly —from the Sichuan province hop on a train to make the three-day
journey to Xinjiang. Is there something exciting happening in Xinjiang? Only if
you enjoy the harvesting of cotton. Ying and her crew take the same train and
ask the cotton-pickers a bunch of questions in an attempt to get to the bottom
of the story. A very interesting and, at times, very touching film.

The Execution of Wanda Jean

Liz Garbus, US, 88
minutes

Little Theatre #1,
12:30 p.m.

Garbus’s documentary about the execution of Wanda Jean
Allen in Oklahoma last year is a must-see for anyone against capital
punishment. It’s even a must-see for people who think the whole eye-for-an-eye
thing is a great idea, because ol’ Wanda could be the poster child for why we
should kill more criminals. She almost slipped through the cracks after being
convicted of manslaughter back in 1981 (sentence: a paltry four years), so why
were people shocked and outraged when she was given the death sentence after
killing her girlfriend in a fit of rage in 1988? Garbus shows us the three
months before Wanda’s scheduled execution, as do-gooders try to spring her with
the “She was too dumb to know what she was doing” excuse for the cold-blooded
murder.

Veloma

Marie de Laubier,
France, 100 minutes

Little Theatre #3, 1
p.m.

Philippe (Patrick Pineau), a sailor involved in a race
around the world, doesn’t seem to mind that he finished in last place and more
than two months behind the winner. When he returns home, Philippe has trouble
readjusting to life on land, despite help from his wife, Lucie. Looking for a
break from it all, Philippe goes to visit a friend in Madagascar, but something
goes wrong on the way and Lucie gets a call saying Philippe’s boat was
discovered adrift and empty. With her husband presumed drowned, Lucie has a
breakdown reminiscent of Charlotte Rampling’s character from Under the Sand. Co-written by Claire Denis’s
usual scribe Jean-Pol Fargeau. Take a Dramamine because the boating scenes are
pretty intense.

Daughter From Danang

Gail Doglin and
Vicente Franco, US, 75 minutes

Little Theatre #2, 2
p.m.

I had never heard of Operation Babylift until I saw this
Sundance winner (Grand Jury Prize winner for Best Documentary) about the
long-term effects of President Ford’s attempt to gain domestic support for the
Vietnam conflict. Babylift took hundreds of Vietnamese orphans (and pried a few
more out of the arms of crying mothers) and flew them to the US so they could
be adopted by nice white families. Now it’s 25 years later, and Heidi (formerly
Hiep) has become a clueless Southerner (from Pulaski, Tennessee — birthplace
of the KKK) with teased hair and stretchpants. What will happen when Heidi goes
back to Vietnam to meet her birth mother? A lot of unbelievable things,
including the line, “Y’all are just going to have to carry me off that
plane.” Danang is a very good
documentary about a particularly dark and relatively unknown moment in American
history.

Blackboards

Samira Makhmalbaf,
Iran, 85 minutes

Little Theatre #1, 3
p.m.

A big hit on the 2000
festival circuit (it won the Jury Prize at Cannes) now preparing for a regular
theatrical release, Blackboards is
further proof that the epicenter of cool, beautiful, thought-provoking foreign
cinema is smack-dab in the middle of Dubya’s Axis of Evil. A film that opens
with a group of seven men lugging giant blackboards up a dirt road, only to
scatter and hide when a helicopter flies overhead, is going to get my attention
every single time. The men are teachers looking for students, and, after they
split up, we see each go on wacky adventures involving people who just don’t
care about reading, writing, or ‘rithmetic. You might remember Makhmalbaf, the
22-year-old daughter of Iranian master director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, from her
terrific debut, The Apple.

In the Mirror of Maya Deren

Martina Kudlácek,
Austria, 103 minutes

Curtis Theatre, 3
p.m.

If you were knocked over by Deren’s short films, which
screen at the festival on Thursday (October 31), Mirror is your big chance to learn more about the groundbreaking
filmmaker. In addition to clips of those shorts, we also see Deren’s interviews
and lectures, as well as a trip to Haiti that turned the avant-garde artist on
to voodoo. I had never heard of Deren before I saw this John Zorn-scored
documentary, and Mirror left me
hungry for more information about her. Depending on how you look at it, that’s
either a really good thing or a really bad thing.

Blue Car

Karen Moncrieff, US,
96 minutes

Little Theatre #1, 5
p.m.

Writer-director Moncrieff, who has appeared in four
different daytime soap operas, clocks in with an amazing and devastating debut
behind the camera. Car tells the
story of an Ohio high school student named Meg (a very strong Agnes Bruckner)
with a messed-up home life, an uncanny ability to write great poetry, and an AP
English teacher (David Strathairn) who might be taking a little too much
interest in his prized pupil. While we all silently pray for the film not to
venture into Oleanna territory, we
still know it’s headed there, especially when we see that momentary look of
fear in his eyes when Meg asks, “Why are you so nice to me?”

Photos To Send

Dierdre Lynch, US, 89
minutes

Dryden Theatre, 5:15
p.m.

Lynch, an Irish-American cinematographer, follows the
steps of Life Magazine photographer
Dorothea Lange’s assignment to County Clare in Ireland in 1954.

Loco Fever

Andrés Wood, US, 94
minutes

Little Theatre #4, 5:30 p.m.

Set in Chile, Fever depicts the zaniness surrounding a lift on the ban of catching a particular
kind of shellfish that many believe has certain aphrodisiacal qualities. You
know what that means, don’t you? More fishermen and more hookers.

Partners of the Heart

Andrea Kalin, US, 57
minutes

Little Theatre #2, 6
p.m.

This short, Morgan Freeman-narrated documentary portrays
the little-known origins of open-heart surgery, which was pioneered by an
unlikely duo back in 1944. Dr. Alfred Blalock came from a family of rich,
white, Georgia sharecroppers, while his partner, Dr. Vivien Thomas, was a
black, high-school-educated child of a Nashville carpenter. The site of their
experimentation on curing “blue babies” was the now-legendary Johns
Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore, where the duo had to create its own
instruments and deal with the hospital’s segregation policies. Heart features one of my favorite lines
of the festival — “We got along like a sick kitten and a warm
brick.”

Bloody Sunday

Paul Greengrass, UK/Ireland,
107 minutes

Little Theatre #1,
7:40 p.m.

It’s January 30, 1972, in Derry, and Greengrass drops us
into what will shortly become Bloody Sunday. His film is a lot like Black Hawk Down in that it portrays a
horrible event by lowering viewers into a dizzying, volatile pressure-cooker of
a situation that quickly spirals out of control. Greengrass focuses on the
“what” much more than the “why” — everyone has different
ideas about why it happened, but this is what happened. Like Down, Sunday wasn’t as much written as it was choreographed, and its
characters are empty cinematic cutouts, with the exception of the blazingly
charismatic James Nesbitt, whose Derry Civil Rights Association leader comes
off damn near Giuliani-esque, especially during the post-tragedy news
conference. One cool flick with a cinéma-vérité style that makes it look like
archival footage of the incident.

Love Liza

Todd Louiso, US, 90
minutes

Dryden Theatre, 8 p.m.

Incredibly talented
Fairport native Philip Seymour Hoffman, who once again channels Daniel Clowes’
mouthbreathing loser Dan Pussey, plays Wilson Joel, a web designer whose wife
Liza recently offed herself with what we can only assume was little or no
warning. The film is dark. Make that very dark. It offers little background about its protagonist. There is no character
arc. Its ending is ambiguous. It’s about suicide. It’s about mourning. It’s
about addiction. And it’s about huffing gas fumes. Hoffman, whose older brother
Gordy wrote the award-winning script (see our interview with him on page 11),
carries the entire film on his back. There’s no Elisabeth Shue-type sidekick
here as he huffs himself into next week. Jim O’Rourke provides an appropriately
erratic score, while Louiso’s (he’s best known as the guy who wasn’t John Cusack
or Jack Black in High Fidelity)
direction is fairly low-key and unobtrusive, allowing Hoffman to work his
magic.

Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns

A.J. Shnack, US, 102
minutes

Little Theatre #1,
10:30 p.m.

One would hardly
expect a documentary that begins with a monologue from Illinois Senator Paul
Simon to have anything to do with either Istanbul or Constantinople, but
strangely enough, Gigantic does. It
tells the story of They Might Be Giants, concentrating on both the band’s
history and the preparation of its first studio album in five years. The
history is what makes the film enjoyable, as we learn about everything from the
Giants’ early appearances in illegal apartment clubs and the Dial-a-Song
phenomenon, to a rare chance to perform with Doc Severinsen on The Tonight Show. In between portrayals
of the past and the present, we see interviews with Johns Flansbugh and
Linnell, praise from a flock of people the band has influenced (like Frank
Black, Dave Eggers, and Jon Stewart), and several very funny (yet seriously
delivered) lyric readings by the likes of Harry Shearer, Janeane Garofalo, and
Andy Richter. Aside from Katakuris, Gigantic is the closest High Falls comes
to having a real Midnight Movie.