Three more from the Festival - CIFF Report Part 2

 Here are more capsule reviews from the Chicago International Film Festival (CIFF):

I'm Your Woman (director Julia Hart)

This is the latest entry in the ever-growing list of films that tell typically male-driven kinds of stories from a female point of view.  Here it's the mobster crime thriller that gets a welcome inversion from writer/director Julia Hart. 

Rachel Brosnahan (better known to Amazon Prime subscribers as "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel") plays the pampered wife of a low-tier mobster; her stagnating, childless marriage has subsisted on a "don't ask-don't tell" basis for so long that she barely reacts when her husband brings home a baby boy one day and tells her "This is our baby." After her husband kills a mob boss, she and the baby are forced to go on the run, with occasional help from one of his associates (Arinze Kene). 

I'm Your Woman is, in many ways, a standard story of lost innocence, but it feels fresh and emotionally astute. It's moody, suspenseful and engrossing to the end - even after the plot mechanics go into overdrive in its final act. Brosnahan gives a skilled, nuanced performance as a woman who gradually discovers her own strength and cunning when forced into desperate circumstances.  

The Comeback  (Director Patrik Eklund)

The Comeback follows every standard beat in the sports underdog trope whilst adding a welcome sprinkling of dark, absurdist comedy into its good-hearted mix.  It centers on AnnBritt, a washed up former elite athlete who saw her career destruct after losing a match due to an umpire's bad call (after which she physically assaulted the umpire.)  She's stuck in a spiral of heavy drinking and near-poverty, unable to move on from the ignominy of the incident some 30 years later.  

Through a series of interventions by family and a kindly therapist, AnnBritt is able to get a rematch with her fellow adversary and a new umpire  - and I wouldn't dream of revealing what happens from that point on.

The Comeback began life as a 10-part Swedish television series; it's apparently been trimmed down to a 94-minute feature film (much like Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander, to use a completely different example from the same country). Though it follows a standard and almost predictable story arc, it never seems to feel cliched.  I particularly liked that AnnBritt's old rival is living only a marginally better life than she is, and that both women have problematic adult sons who seem overly invested in their mothers' rematch.  In the midst of a festival slate that seem always to skew toward the serious, the heavy and the complex, it's a treat to find a genuinely heart-warming and funny little film like this.

Kubrick by Kubrick (Director Gregory Monro)

The selling point of this documentary on Stanley Kubrick is a series of never-before-heard taped interviews of the legendary director by a French journalist.  In truth, they don't amount to much - they're heavier on banalities than on fresh insights. Kubrick admits at the outset he can't really explain what attracts him to certain types of stories; he makes lots of observations along the lines of "Directing isn't a lot of fun, it's hard work, it doesn't make you popular with your actors, blah, blah blah." (And I'm obviously I'm paraphrasing there.)

Still it's always great to revisit scenes from the likes of Dr. Strangelove, Spartacus, Barry Lyndon, 2001: A Space Odyssey and so on. (Lolita is curiously absent from all discussion here.) And even if Kubrick's own words aren't particularly revelatory, the interview clips with some of his actors are. We get, for example, Marisa Berenson talking about the tedious difficulty of acting in Barry Lyndon's interior scenes which used only natural light and candles. Elsewhere, in a talk-show clip, Peter Sellers gives us the lowdown on the inspiration for Dr. Stangelove's black-gloved, Nazi-saluting hand.

It struck me more than once that talking to Kubrick about his own films isn't nearly as interesting as hearing the people who worked with him talk about them.  I was especially reminded of Film Worker, the 2018 documentary about Leon Vitale who played Ryan O'Neals stepson in Barry Lyndon and went on to be Kubrick's slavishly devoted assistant for the rest of the director's career.  If you want a real sense of what Stanley Kubrick's film sets were like, I'd recommend that film over this one anytime.

Report from Chicago International Film Festival 2020 - Part 1

 

COVID changes everything - including film festivals.

This year, I won't be taking my usual trip into the city to attend the Chicago International Film Festival. Instead, I'll be streaming a number of festival selections in the safety of my own living room.

A handful of high profile films at this year's festival are being shown only in a drive-in theater and not being made available for home viewing. (Among them: the lesbian romance Ammonite; Nomadland starring Frances McDormand; and a documentary on the life of John Belushi.)  But there's plenty of good cinema available to experience at home. I will be streaming no fewer than 11 films this year - and I'll be writing here about everything I see. 

The festival started on Wednesday night, and I've already managed to see three films (all of them directed by women, interestingly enough). Here are my capsule reviews:

For Madmen Only (director Heather Ross):

Del Close was a legend in the world of improvisational comedy - an eccentric but inspired teacher and performer who co-founded Second City and created a long-form improvisational style known as "the Harold" which is still performed at Improv Olympic in Chicago. But even if you don't know or care much about improv, you've likely experienced Close's influence on comedy through the careers of his many disciples (inlcuding John Belushi, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Chris Farley, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Adam McKay and Jon Favreau).

Many of  those who learned from Close are here, not only to pay him homage but also to testify to the many personal demons (mental illness and addictions to a variety of illicit substances) that - more than once - nearly destroyed his career. Director Heather Ross employs a kaleidoscopic approach to Close, constantly shifting between dramatizations based on actual taped conversations, comic book panels (from an actual Marvel comic book based on Close's life), filmed improv classes with Close and the usual, obligatory talking head tributes. To some degree, this approach imbues the film with a sort of restless, manic energy that seems to mirror both Close's own inner torment and his crazed drive to make great comedy.  But it also fragments the story and ultimately deflects as much attention from Close as it gives him.

Throughout his life, Close was repeatedly frustrated and hurt to see so many of his students and co-stars go on to spectacularly successful careers while he worked in relative obscurity.  The sad irony of For Madmen Only is that, even here, Close himself gets a bit lost amid the never-ending parade of testimonials, tributes and performance clips from the successful performers he mentored. In the end, he's still the shaggy mad man on the fringes rather than the star of his own show.

Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time (director Lili Horvat)

I laughed when I first heard the title of this film; it suggested to me a story about a family frantically stocking up on groceries and toilet paper at the start of the coronavirus lockdown.

So it was a bit a relief to find a tantalizingly ambiguous romantic mystery shot in Budapest. 

As the film opens, a neurosurgeon is heading to Hungary after working in the U.S. She's met a fellow doctor at a medical conference and shared an intense connection with him.  They've arranged to meet at certain spot on Budapest's Liberty Bridge at a certain time and date.  But when she arrives at their meeting spot, he isn't there.  And when she manages to track him down a couple days later, he doesn't recognize or remember her.  Has she concocted this romance in her own imagination?

That possibility lingers throughout the film, but is never finally settled.  The woman moves back to Budapest and finds work in a hospital there, while cyberstalking her crush in her off-hours.  Eventually their professional lives lead them to cross paths again and a genuine relationship seems to develop between them. But every scene is open to interpretation; we're never sure if what we're seeing is an actual romance or if she's escaped into a fantasy. 

At the festivals where Preparations... has already screened, first-time director Lili Horvat has frequently been compared to Krzysztof Kieslowski (director of The Double Life of Veronique and the acclaimed "Colors" trilogy). That's not just a flattering comparison, it's an accurate one. Like the Polish cinematic master, Horvat is adept at sustaining mood and tone in a film that is primarily concerned with the emotional lives of its characters.

And Tomorrow the Entire World (director Julia von Heinz)

Here's something I learned in the opening credits of this film:  the German constitution specifically states that their nation is a 'democratic and social state' and that German citizens have the right to oppose anyone who seeks to abolish that state - so long as no other remedies are available.

It's the business of determining whether there are other remedies (i.e. alternatives to violence) available to fight the growing number of far-right extremists in Germany that drives the drama here. I'm honestly not sure where the film comes down on this question. By the time it ended, we've seen questionable tactics on both sides of the divide.

The central character is Luisa (Mala Emde), a privileged if somewhat naïve law student who joins a peaceful, predominantly female Antifa group. (Their most controversial act is throwing cream pies into the faces of far-right activist speakers). In time, she comes under the spell of a charismatic leader on the fringes of the group (Noah Saavedra) who insists that their opponents won't take them seriously unless they unleash violence themselves, and goes on to participate in some dangerous, destructive stunts with a startling enthusiasm.

 It feels like we lose the dramatic through-line at about the two-thirds point.  (The group seems to distance itself from Luisa after she is excluded from an indictment of the group's activities; they later reconcile with her, but it's never clear how or why. ) This is unquestionably timely stuff and I wish von Heinz had taken the time to better shape the material and clarify the dramatic arc of the story.  It's a sporadically compelling but confusing film, and it ends on an unexpectedly bleak note.