This year’s edition of the San
Francisco International Film Festival (April 21st through May5th at
the Castro, Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, New People Cinema, and The Pacific Film Archive
in Berkeley/PFA) starts off on a sprightly queer note with Mike Mills’ moving
ode to his late to come out gay father, Beginners and has a few more to
follow including a moving portrayal of a lesbian relationship under the Iranian
religious police state, first time director Maryam Keshavarz’s Circumstance;
the revival of the late Sidney Lumet’s insurrectional Dog Day Afternoon;
a newly rediscovered and restored science fiction melodrama from German bad boy
Rainer Werner Fassbinder; and a State of the Cinema Address from Killer Films
founder and queer indie producer Christine Vachon.
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Beginners: Mike Mills didn’t expect his 75-year-old
father would use the end of his marriage to make a startling life
transformation. “My dad came out – my parents were married for 45 years. They
are the World War II-era generation. He was gay in a world where that just was
a very hostile place, and the limited place, and the limited life you could
have as a gay person really freaked him out. He and my mom were friends since
high school, and they really did love each other on some level, and tried to
work it out, and god knows exactly what he did for 45 years. He was with her
and not with other people. When he came out, he was 75-years-old, and he came
out full guns, not just intellectually. He really wanted to be gay in every way
and have a relationship. It was a very beautiful, sad, crazy part of all our
lives. And it’s definitely a part of my life, because I live with that father
figure who definitely was an odd father figure, a closeted gay man.
“In many points of my life it would
have been advantageous to be gay, going to art school, being in the New York
art scene, But I never really felt that was what I was. At the same time, I can
often identify with gay guys more than straight gays as far as sensibility,
interests and friendships with women.”
With Beginners Mike Mills
employs the wit, precision for telling complicated personal stories with a
great acting ensemble and, yes, the peculiar straight boy sensitivity to queer
issues he displayed with his debut feature, 2005’s Thumbsucker, to embed
us inside an arid marriage of convenience seen from the point of view of a
scared little boy who grows up to be a relationship phobic adult man.
In slapdash flashbacks we see the
boy becoming substitute partner for his mood-swinging mom, who doesn’t get
enough from her art museum curator deeply closeted husband. In the film’s
present tense, dad (a wonderful Christopher Plummer) bursts forth and embraces
gay life with gusto, including time sharing a much younger boyfriend. Ewan
McGregor as the grown son fusses and frets as dad shrugs off stage four cancer.
“There’s no stage five.” (Castro/Opening Night/4-21 is followed by Terra
Gallery party).
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Meek’s Cutoff: Kelly Reichardt has spent a profitable
decade exploding myths about male friendship (Old Joy), homeless
drifters (Wendy and Lucy) and now in her third feature she gives us a
female driven, pre-Civil War anti-Western. Inspired by the diaries of women
traveling in wagons along the Oregon Trail, circa 1845, Reichardt plants us
down among disoriented settler families who suspect their guide has gotten them
dangerously lost. Executed by a top flight indie cast: Michelle Williams, Bruce
Greenwood and Paul Dano, the film – framed in the classic square box aspect
ratio of pre-WWII Westerns – focuses on the unceasing monotony of the journey. Reichardt
sets up one powerful scene where William’s skeptical pioneer woman expresses
her disdain for Meek’s lecherous braggadocio.
“We’re not lost we’re just finding
our way.”
“You don’t need to patronize me,
Mr. Meek”
“Now I think you’re flirting with
me.”
“You don’t know much about women,
do you Stephen Meek?”
“Women are created on the principle
of chaos – the chaos of creation, disorder bringing new things into the world.
Men are created on the principle of destruction: chaos and destruction, two
genders’ always at it.” (Kabuki 4-22 & 25)
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Nostalgia for the Light: Set in Chile’s austerely
beautiful and bone dry Atacama Desert, Patricio Guzman casts an ironic and yet
tender eye on two sets of searchers: astronomers who employ powerful telescopes
to probe the origins of the universe – literally tracing DNA from the Big Bang
– and the now elderly female relatives of the 60,000 persons disappeared by the
Pinochet dictatorship in the 70’s, persons whose remains were buried in the
desert or scattered at sea. A moving moment finds a still grieving mother
wishing that the huge telescopes could be pointed down to find the bones of her
murdered son. Juxtaposing the metallic rumble of the huge telescopes with the
pilgrim like behavior of the mothers, Guzman reveals a place at the top of the
world where science and spirituality find a harmonic convergence. (Kabuki
4-26/PFA 4-28)
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The Troll Hunter: Norwegian Andre Ovredal’s cheeky
parody of The Blair Witch Project finds a plucky band of college
filmmakers getting in way over their heads as they uncover a secret government
project to exterminate large hairy creatures terrorizing local sheep herders.
With a wry eye on government disinformation programs, the filmmakers manage to
find that elusive cinema “G” sport between funny and scary.
(Kabuki 4-23/New People 4-25)
The Future: In her deliciously whimsical second film,
Miranda July (Me and You and Everyone We Know) concocts a bizarrely
organic to her native Berkeley universe where a young couple becomes
virtually immobilized at the prospect of adopting an injured kitten from an
animal shelter, whose stern spokeswoman reminds them to fetch their cuddly fur
ball by its due date. “We euthanize!” (Kabuki 4-23/New People 4-24)
Cave of Forgotten Dreams: Werner Herzog
gives an all access pass to a long abandoned cave in southern France. The
prehistoric drawings in the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc offer scientists a field day
navel gazing on the artistic/emotional development of our species. The French
security precautions for protecting the caverns include building a theme park
like duplicate for tourists to roam. Herzog offers a timely glimpse of a
species of mutant crocodiles growing up in the runoff pools from the adjacent
nuclear reactors.
(Kabuki 4-25 & 26)
Walking Too Fast: Radim Spacek provides a feral peek
at Cold War Czechoslovakia -- a secret policeman goes mad lusting after the
girlfriend of a man whose life he is systematically destroying. Cribbing from
film noir and torture porn this is a 146 minute dystopian universe that will
stay with you. (Kabuki 4-22 & 24/PFA 5-2)