“ALTERED STATES”
There is something vaguely and perhaps misguidedly nostalgic about The American Independent Cinema; that term evoking a wealth of early-mid 90’s art ethics and hoary filmbiz/anti-filmbiz notions. However, the movement’s small moves away from actually being an ascribed ”movement” in recent years is reflected in MIFF ’08’s micro-photo detail of the current US indie pulse, with seemingly naught but low budgets to link these peasants to each other.
BALLAST – It is indeed worrying that everyone is mentioning that everyone is mentioning this work’s indebtedness to The Dardennes, and some rather unfavourably. Ed Gonzalez at Slant warns that we’ll be doing all the hard work ourselves, and whilst some are scrambling for superlatives, a question: is there anything as frighteningly hollow as a film whose tone and style are “clearly the film’s primary pursuit“?
GARDENS OF THE NIGHT — Journeyman director Damian Harris’ last film was a porno. Not a fun porno, or even a real porno, but a fucking erotic thriller. In that light, one may well wonder/fear what Harris’ newest – a tale of child abduction and sexual abuse - may illuminate, and perhaps ”fatally unbalanced by an ingrained Hollywood desire for closure” is the summation of that fear.
THE GUITAR – Whilst being Robert Redford’s daughter renders a director somewhat less indie than almost everyone else alive, NYC-punk-dude/no-wave-film-dude/writer Amos Poe is/was about as fuck-off-DIY as one can/could be. What any of this means for this film is a lil moot; life is indeed short, perhaps too short for another contrivance about life being short.
IN SEARCH OF A MIDNIGHT KISS — Sounding suspiciously ‘audience-friendly’, this, uh, “cult romcom” has everyone throwing around words like ‘misanthrope’, ‘monochrome’, and “sub-Tarantino/Larry David rip-off“, and if ‘indie’ isn’t enough this typically LA B&W no-budgeter has “hipster charm” too. Christ.
MOMMA’S MAN — Azazel Jacob’s new work may be the most self-reflexive work at MIFF this year. “Implicitly nostalgic“, his tale of ‘Mikey’ refusing to leave his parent’s home (the parent’s played by Jacob’s own, in the home Jacob actually grew up in) has been boxed up into NY’s Mumblecore scene, which some people fucking love. Also: if yr dad has to be famous, don’t be Robert Redford’s child, be avant-garde icon Ken Jacob’s.
PADRE NUESTRO — Being “one of the more visceral movies pondering the new globalization” won’t necessarily win you a bunch of new friends, but this this quasi-double-fugue downer was the surprise winner of Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize in 2007. That it ”lives down to the dubious nature…of that so-called honor” however? Ouch. And ouch.
THE PLEASURE OF BEING ROBBED — Perhaps the no-budget-est (and, thus, indie-est) of this fistful of low-b whimsies - this work’s reception all smitten cinephilia and nuevelle vague comparisons - Joshua Safdie’s debut feature will seemingly act as a litmus test for the oldest protagonist argument: Sympathetic or Compelling? Also: being both “too precious” and “too articulate” makes this sound like a Joanna Newsom song, and you know how I feel about Anthony “Dreamboat” Carew.
THE WACKNESS — A “standard issue coming-of-age story” window-dressed in NY Summer of ‘94 kicks, ain’t nobody really love this wackness ‘cept the Sundance audience that saw it and saw fit to give it a death kiss.
WENDY AND LUCY – After 2007’s most surprising theatrical run – the surprise that writer/director Kelly Reichardt’s wonderful though definitively understated Old Joy actually enjoyed a run at all – Reichardt re-ups with a work of “incredible emotional genuineness” whose “sadness is natural“, and whose Cannes 2008 inclusion had a lot of people almost pleased to be so subtly devastated. Maybe the closest thing to a neck-and-neck in the annual ‘Will It Get A Local Release?™’ MIFF parlour game (and more on that later).
WHITE LIES, BLACK SHEEP — Sounding very much like quintessential ‘Important To Me’ personal cinema, it comes bearing some of the critical hallmarks of such work: “undernourished” writing (borne of a writer’s purely internal visions staying put; its hailing as largely “a scripted documentary” pouring concrete on this kid’s fear) voiced by - even according to writer/director James Spooner himself - surrogate mouthpieces that are author stand-ins, and all direct to the audience.
