NY Film Festival 2002 (1 Viewer)

[Ted Todorov]

Marc,
As I said upfront, I am prejudiced against Sandler -- truth be told, I was already sick of his "performances" at my NYU dorm, long before he started making movies. That said, I'm not alone in my assessment -- here is a quote from an otherwise positive Newsweek review:

There is danger lurking under his bland exterior, visible to everyone but Lena, who sees only ... what? This is the mystery, and the problem, at the heart of the movie. You must take Lena’s love for Barry on faith, for her character is seriously underwritten. What does she see in the guy? Why would she commit herself to him, rather than have him committed?

To read their entire Punch-Drunk Love review, click here.
Ted

 

[Pascal A]

Ted, did you get a chance to see Marco Bellocchio's My Mother's Smile? I'm actually more interested in the Victor Erice short that preceded it entitled Lifeline. Any comments?

 

[Ted Todorov]

My Mother's Smile an Italian film directed by Marco Bellocchio defies easy categorization.
A painter, Ernesto, played by Sergio Castellitto (Last seen in Bella Martha & Va Savoir) who happens to be an atheist is informed by a Catholic priest that the Catholic church is planning to make his mother a saint. Ernesto, who apart from his religious disbelief, thinks that his mother was a stupid woman and bad mother, is not pleased. His initial reaction however is nothing compared to what he feels after realizing the lies and hypocrisy involved in minting a new saint. According to Bellocchio more saints have been canonized during John Paul II's reign, than during the entire, 2000 year history of the Catholic Church before him.
My Mother's Smile however, goes beyond exposing and satirizing this new production line for saints -- it asks a lot of questions on the nature of faith, love and family -- and points out how dangerous a smile can be. The cinematography, score and lead performance are all first rate.
Like Pascal, I was more interested in Victor Erice's Lifeline -- indeed I only got tickets for this show after the shorts were announced. Lifeline with its incredible B&W cinematography, languorous pace and transcendentally great portrait of a particular time and place deserves every superlative it gets. Probably the best 10 minutes of the festival.
Ted

 

[Ted Todorov]

Bertrand Tavernier's movie-movie Laissez-passer (Safe Conduct) which takes place in Nazi occupied Paris, is a love letter to the movies on par with the love letter to theater that is Truffaut's similarly themed The Last Metro.
Laissez-passer is though, that much more, both cinematically and in terms of content. Based on the true stories of a then assistant director (Jean-Devaivre) and a screenwriter (Jean Aurenche) it tells some amazing tales. Tavernier's rampant camera effectively matches the frenzied lives of his protagonists and gives yet another lesson in the power of cinema.
But as I said, this is a love letter to movies: in one incredible (but true) scene, Jean-Devaivre, after going home sick, has ended up, after a series of ever wilder adventures, being flown to London to personally deliver a German file he has managed to steal and to the utter incomrehension of his British Intelligence hosts, he keeps insisting between sneezes that he has to get back to occupied Paris -- he is due back on the set Monday morning!
Highly recommended for fans of filmmaking, WWII history buffs, and fans of the incomparable Bertrand Tavernier who seems to turn everything he touches to cinematic gold.
Laissez-passer opens commercially on Friday.
Ted

 

[Holden Pike]

I saw About Schmidt opening night, and while it's a solid flick, overall I was disappointed. Nicholson's performance is fantastic and will definitely get him bundles of award nominations next year, but I thought it was a step backward from Election for Payne.

The first half was very strong for me, deftly balancing a difficult tone ("Ngbu, I hope you're sitting down...") while establishing a real character, but by the time he hits the road and gets to his daughter's in Colorado, it degenrated into fairly standard sitcom-level goings on. I like the way Jack's character has his earned moments at the very end without going over-the-top or in an obvious direction, but too much dead space leading up to it for my taste.

I'd still recommend it, but don't go in expecting brilliance from anyone other than Jack, who is restrained and introspective and doesn't rely on any of those easy Nicholsonesque charming trademarks that have become self-parody by this point. Coupled with his work in Sean Penn's The Pledge, Jack is doing some of his very best work since the early '70s of late.

 

[teapot2001]

It's Holden! Welcome back!

~T

 

[Ted Todorov]

I just saw To Be and To Have (dir. Nicolas Philibert) a documentary on a one room schoolhouse in rural France -- a spectacular piece of filmmaking, and proof that a documentary can look and sound amazing (shot on film with natural light). A more warmhearted film I can't imagine. It is the perfect portrait of childhood as well as what teaching is all about. It also got more laughs than any other festival film thus far. New Yorker has picked it up, DO NOT MISS!
Last night's film the 1965 Hong Kong epic Come Drink With Me (dir. King Hu) was more fun than a barrel of monkeys, and yes, a lot more fun than Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon which was a major rip-off homage to Come Drink With Me, to the extent of casting Cheng Pei-pei the lead actress of Drink as the bad guy in CTHD. The sword fights seem much more real in Drink and Cheng is a total goddess on screen. Shot in gorgeous cinemascope. Ms. Cheng was present for the Q&A and is just as delightful in person as she is on screen, though she did leave those deadly daggers at home. The restoration was impressive, but it brought to mind that one can't always blame artifacts on a DVD -- these days film restoration gets done digitally and the flaws tend to be DVD like.
Ted

 

[Ted Todorov]

Well, the festival is over and I have to say that it has been a very good year -- not only did I get so see any number of outstanding new films, but there wasn't a single one I actively disliked, which is rare.
Friday Night Claire Denis' new film is a perfect example of the the strengths French cinema. It is a very simple story which takes place, as the title implies over one night. There is a transit strike in Paris, and a woman who has just packed up her apartment so she can move in with her boyfriend the next day tries to drive to a dinner party, but just ends up stuck in a traffic jam. She gives a man a ride and they end up spending the night together. The End. A wonderful film emerges out of this simple and seemingly banal story with relatively little spoken dialog. It works so well, because every little detail is just right. Never has a traffic jam been more evocative rendered. Every little detail, touch, event, thought that leads two strangers to spend the night together and then leave each other the following morning is perfectly rendered. In some ways, the lyricism of Friday Night recalls In The Mood For Love but it is a very different film, its own animal, and all the better for it.
The closing night film, Pedro Almodovar's Talk To Her I saw last spring, so I won't go into details other than to say that it is one of his best recent films, and is worth seeing.
There was an interesting article in yesterday's NY Times about festival film Safe Conduct. To read it click here. This article also lists a bunch of upcoming Criterion DVDs.
Ted

 

[Ted Todorov]

I'm very curious about the fact that a lot of people who live in New York City and the surrounding area post here, but judging from the posts in this thread, I'm the only New Yorker who actually bothered to go to the New York Film Festival.
Considering the close to ideal circumstances for viewing these films -- huge screen, good sound (Alice Tully is a concert hall after all), good properly framed and matted projection, new prints, director/cast present for Q&A, good short subjects, assigned seating -- I find this VERY surprising.
Does anyone from the New York area care to comment on your reasons?
BTW, judging by the people selling tickets out front and a friend's experience of buying tickets right before various films, it was possible to go without advance tickets to all films except for Punch Drunk Love. Of course getting advance tickets is not all that complicated either
Ted

 

[Pascal A]

Well, I left New York in 1990 after college, but I've been able to manage either a couple of long weekends or a weeklong stay for the NYFF for the past 12 years, so it's kind of a tradition for me.
Frankly, I like the fact that the NYFF is pre-selected to show only a handful of films, so your chances of seeing a "dud" are not as much as in a colossal festival like Toronto (but then, TIFF definitely has a better selection of films if you know what you want). Certainly, outside of TIFF, NYFF is the way to go for seeing future "buzz films" in North America.

 

[nikita]

Hey Ted! You are right, this thread does not really have too many people in it. Mainly you, and occasionally two other guys, which are, probably, also you under different nicks.
As for Turning Gate - not much to say. Nothing too revolutionizing in the way of cinematography or acting. It's a rather small and very adorable flick - intuitive, humble and obviously autobiographical. It's named after a true Korean legend. I love this brand of legends, you know, where the messages are rather complex, and the characters are not labeled from the start, so the guy in black could easily turn out to be the good guy at the end. The legend is only mentioned once in the movie, and it goes like this:
One princess falls in love with a regular guy. The feeling is mutual. Her father, the king, gets pissed off and kills the guy. So in the next reincarnation the guy comes back as a snake, it finds the princess and wraps around her waist real tight, so that she can barely breath. So to get rid of the snake the princess goes to a distant temple, as if to visit her uncle. There she leaves the snake at the gate (probably because there is a big "no snakes allowed" sign on the wall), but promises to be back in a minute. So the snake waits and waits, and then the thunder storm starts, it gets cold and dark, and the snake starts thinking, hey, what the heck am I doing here? Screw that! It's not worth it. And it turns around and crawls away. Hence, "Turning gate".
The way I understand it - we live, and we get obsessed with things, but we have to always recognize those turning gates. The point after which it becomes not worth is. Usually it ain't easy and takes temporary disattachment combined with some distracting hardship. And of course, there is also the princess's POV. Saying that fake promises and bullshit excuses are well justified when dealing with the feeling of guilt towards our past obsessions.
So basically, the movie is about the art of letting go. It spies on a rather ordinary modern situation (a guy first dumps his one-night stand and then gets involved with a married woman who eventually dumps him), but it goes about it in an amazingly subtle way. Almost like an unedited documentary. A lot of stuff, a lot of "noise" is included which does not move the story forward, but creates an extremely realistic atmosphere. The story, however does move forward, following the legend template rather closely, and all the loose ends are tied in the end, if you pay attention.
For the fast-thinking, goal-oriented NY audience it's a hit below the pager. Many frustrated questions during Q & A: "What's the importance of that scene?" "Why does everybody change their mind so often?" "Why is the whole thing so inconsistent?" This frustration I partly understand - after all, it's not custom for serious movies to show the backstage mess of people's actions. Like, small unnecessary lies, or say, going to the bathroom. C'mon, Godfather never goes to the bathroom! We all know he does, but it's just never shown. Well, in this movie it is shown - not the bathroom literally, but all the background work and all the glitches of our decision-making process, caused by this terrible burden of being self-aware. I am sure Turning Gate is not the first one to address this, and I am sure one can easily trace the heritage, but I don't think it's that important. What's important is the amount of respect the movie pays to these little imperfections that make our souls so precious and unique.
NEK

 

[Pascal A]

Thanks for the comments, Nikita, and welcome to the board!
There is definitely a dualistic analogy to the title of the film. As you mentioned, one is to realize the point where the "obsession" becomes unhealthy and it is time to let go. This was also reflected by the repeated words of a few characters, especially Kyung-soo, that went something to the effect of "It's hard to be a human being. Let's not turn into monsters."
The second is more of the circular nature of romantic relationships, a kind of "what goes around, comes around" observation. Kyung-soo first finds himself as the uncomfortable object of a suffocating, obsessive relationship then becomes the smothering pursuer in a subsequent relationship. This circular nature is also repeated in the long, lost friend who calls him at the beginning of the film, and in his earlier encounter with the professor in the paddle boat. A lot of great little nuggets of truth in the film. Good stuff!
By the way, I'm more particular than Ted - he'll watch anything!