My Son the Fanatic

REVIEW Vive le Cinéma! The Northwest Film Center's annual International Film Festival comes at just the right time. BY BRIAN LIBBY, DAVE McCOY, JAMES McQUILLEN AND KIM MORGAN

The Northwest Film Center's 22nd annual International Film Festival couldn't happen at a better time. Hollywood is in its dry season, and Portland's winter is dragging on. In two jam-packed weeks of screenings, this year's festival offers an eclectic mix of new cinema from around the world. We in Portland will have only one chance to view most of these films on the big screen. This year's festival features high-profile films that have played on the prize circuit, ranging from Brazil's Central Station, which nabbed the most recent Best Foreign Film Oscar, to various films featured at festivals including Cannes, Toronto and Sundance. Also featured are works by established and legendary auteurs such as Serbo-Croatia's Emir Kusturica (Black Cat White Cat), Britain's Ken Loach (My Name Is Joe), Italy's Bernardo Bertolucci (Besieged) and U.S. directors Paul Schrader (Affliction) and Hal Hartley (The Book of Life). Along with these more famous names in film, the festival boasts a vast array of new talent worth checking out. As only the better-known films will eventually make their way to the KOIN Center, Cinema 21 and video stores, this is a rare opportunity. Among the new talents are three making their directorial debuts: Australia's Craig Monahan (The Interview), China's Lu Yue (Mr. Zhao) and Croatia's Vinko Bresan (How the War Started on My Island). Topping off the festival's assortment of worldly delights are film shorts that range from 3 to 30 minutes in length and include works by the notorious American artist Jeff Koons (Phi Bright) and Germany's Martin Arnold, whose Alone, Life Wastes Andy Hardy has been described as an "Oedipal backyard musical" featuring Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney clones. Happy viewing. --Kim Morgan THEATER ADDRESSES Broadway Metroplex: 1000 SW Broadway Guild Theatre: 829 SW 9th Ave. Mission Theater: 1624 NW Glisan St. Movie House: 1220 SW Taylor St. TICKETS Single Admission General: $7 Members: $6 Children 12 and under: $3 PASSES Festival pass: $125 Silver Screen Club: $300 Patron pass: $500 Student 5-film pass: $25 221-1156 PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL Black Cat White Cat Affliction Get Real Fishes in August Shorts 1 The Voice of Bergman Divorce, Iranian Style Elvis & Marilyn The Last Contract Commedia Infantil Let's Get Lost The Interview The Outskirts The Dreamlife of Angels The Harmonists Children of Hannibal The Lighthouse My Son the Fanatic Photographer Dead Letter Office Passion The First Night of My Life Tango Made in Hong Kong ID The Apple Sekal Has to Die Short Cuts 2 Friendly Fire Life on Earth The Book of Life Black Cat White Cat (Serbo-Croatia) Broadway, 7 pm Friday, Feb. 12 Guild, 3:45 pm Saturday, Feb. 13 THE PLOT:Set along the banks of the Danube River, this zany, slapstick comedy focuses on several gypsy families dealing with economic and romantic chaos. Matko, a small-time hustler, lives with his 17-year-old dreamer son and spends time thinking up get-rich schemes. Dadan, a coke-snorting gangster, has a dwarf sister he's trying to unload to fulfill his dying parents' wish. When Matko ends up owing money to Dadan, they arrange a marriage to settle the score. The problem is that both the teenage son and the grumpy sister love other people. THE DILLY: The latest from acclaimed filmmaker Emir Kusturica is a slight departure from his earlier works (Arizona Dream and Time of the Gypsies). Black Cat White Cat is surreal and more idiosyncratic. It's similar in energy and tone to his award-winning allegory Underground, but it lacks that film's depth and scope. Light, breezy and a natural for opening night. THE SCORE: 2 DM Affliction (United States) Guild, 7:15 pm Friday, Feb. 12 THE PLOT:Directed by Paul Schrader (the tortured soul who wrote Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver), Affliction stars Nick Nolte as Wade Whitehouse, an alcoholic spiraling into near-dementia. A divorced father whose daughter doesn't like him, Wade is haunted by the abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of his own father (James Coburn) and must contend with his future. THE DILLY: A beautifully filmed, moving character study that boasts stellar acting by both Nolte and Coburn. Affliction would have been exemplary if not for Willem Dafoe and his preachy, unnecessary voice-over narration. THE SCORE: 3 KM Get Real (Britain) Broadway, 7:30 pm Friday, Feb. 12 Guild, 2:15 pm Sunday, Feb. 14 THE PLOT:16-year-old Steven has a crush on John, the dreamboat adored by all the girls in their high school, and--surprise!--the feeling is mutual. But John balks when his boyfriend wants to go public, and Steven writes an anonymous essay addressing the situation, which is selected to be read at commencement. THE DILLY: Get Real is British filmmaker Simian Shore's debut feature, and it won the Audience Award at the Edinburgh Film Festival. THE SCORE:Not screened by press time JM Fishes in August (Japan) Movie House, 7:30 pm Friday, Feb. 12 Broadway, 3:45 pm Sunday, Feb. 14 THE PLOT:A love triangle in which a young man develops a crush on a member of his high-school swimming team. The girl, of course, pines for another swimmer. THE DILLY: The existential metaphors of water, fish, swimming, floating and sinking are enough to pique my interest, especially when crossed with a teen rite-of-passage story. THE SCORE: Not screened by press time KM Shorts I Guild, 1:30 pm Saturday, Feb. 13 THE PLOT:A series of short films from around the world about various subjects (love, mutant Mickey Rooneys and a majorette). THE DILLY: In one short film, Waiting for Woody, Josh has been waiting for months to get an audition--and an erection. I'm there. THE SCORE: Not screened by press time KM The Voice of Bergman (Sweden) Movie House, 2:15 pm Saturday, Feb.13; 4:45 pm Sunday, Feb. 14 THE PLOT:An intimate interview with legendary director Ingmar Bergman features the late filmmaker discussing the art, technique and joy of filmmaking. THE DILLY: Bergman is an infinitely fascinating person, as are his images and his words. This should be required viewing. THE SCORE: Not screened by press time KM Divorce, Iranian Style (Iran) Broadway, 2:15 pm Saturday, Feb. 13 THE PLOT:This slice of Iranian life focuses on Tehran's divorce court and three women's struggles to end their marriages. THE DILLY: The documentary provides rare insight into the repression and inequality found in this Islamic nation. It manages to educate viewers as it humanizes its subjects. On the other hand, it's 80 minutes of people arguing. THE SCORE: 2 BL Elvis & Marilyn (Italy) Broadway, 3:45 pm Saturday, Feb.13; 5 pm Sunday, Feb. 14 Movie House, 7 pm Monday, Feb. 15 THE PLOT:After winning a celebrity look-alike contest, a Romanian Marilyn Monroe impersonator and a Bulgarian Elvis Presley double embark on a journey that will add even more bizarre perspectives to their lives. THE DILLY: Though the camp factor of Marilyn and Elvis is already eons old, this film provides a little more than just typical Honeymoon in Vegas cutesiness. THE SCORE: Not screened by press time KM The Last Contract (Sweden) Broadway, 4:15 pm Saturday, Feb.13; 7:45 pm Sunday, Feb. 14 THE PLOT:Based on the real-life 1986 assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme, this picture follows a young police officer who searches for the truth about this still unsolved murder. THE DILLY:"Swedish" and "taut thriller" are not words one usually sees in the same sentence, so Borje Hansson's film is intriguing simply for being an anomaly. It is also said to resemble The Day of the Jackal, which was brought to the screen most recently (and most heinously) with Bruce Willis and Richard Gere. This one's got to be better. THE SCORE: Not screened by press time KM Commedia Infantil (Mozambique/Sweden) Movie House, 4:45 pm Saturday, Feb. 13 Broadway, 5:30 pm Sunday, Feb. 14 THE PLOT:A boy whose entire family is killed in Mozambique's civil war becomes the leader of a street urchin group and is soon seen as a spiritual miracle worker. THE DILLY: Unless this film becomes more Practical Magic than Oliver Twist, it has the potential to be a fascinating view. Though I'm not sure about Mozambique, Sweden is usually reliable when it comes to tremendously depressing yet darkly comical character studies. THE SCORE: Not screened by press time KM Let's Get Lost (Denmark) Broadway, 6:15 pm Saturday, Feb. 13; 1 pm Sunday, Feb. 14 THE PLOT:The friendship between a woman and her beer-drinking, sports-obsessed, alpha-male pals creates problems with her boyfriend in this slice-of-life Danish comedy. THE DILLY: This one has the potential to be overly adorable and sitcomish (My Three Louts) with a Danish twist. No word on whether there's a Chet Baker connection. THE SCORE: Not screened by press time KM The Interview (Australia) Broadway, 6:45 pm Saturday, Feb.13 THE PLOT:An unemployed man living in Sydney is awakened at 5 am by a homicide investigation squad and interrogated at the police station for hours. As time goes on, the captive becomes more like the master as the police find they desperately need his input. THE DILLY: This is the debut film for this director. Hopefully, it won't come off like a sophomoric stab at Kafka. THE SCORE: Not screened by press time KM The Outskirts (Russia) Movie House, 7 pm Saturday, Feb. 13; 2:15 pm Sunday, Feb. 14; 9 pm Monday, Feb. 15 THE PLOT:A group of vengeful Russian villagers search for the people who stole their farmland and livelihoods. THE DILLY: With its black-and-white cinematography, political and social relevance and epic storyline, this film has generated a buzz as one of the most important and interesting films to come out of Russia in years. THE SCORE: Not screened by press time KM The Dreamlife of Angels (France) Guild, 7 pm Saturday, Feb. 13; 5 pm Sunday, Feb. 14 THE PLOT:Struggling amid the bleak, gray landscape of Lille, 20-year-olds Isa and Marie (Elodie Bouchex and Natacha Regnier) meet in a sewing factory and begin sharing a borrowed flat. Their friendship grows quickly but is threatened when a rich, arrogant club owner takes a primal interest in Marie. THE DILLY: Erick Zponca's feature-length debut is receiving overwhelming acclaim and being touted as the best drama to come out of France (a rarity in itself) in quite some time. It's not all that, but Zponca's bleak episodic narrative and natural style--an odd mixture of French New Wave and cinema vérité--skirts the normal melodramatic clichés and is genuinely affecting. Bouchex and Regnier, who shared the Best Actress prize at Cannes last year, both give absorbing performances. THE SCORE: 3 DM The Harmonists (Germany) Broadway, 8:30 pm Saturday, Feb. 13 Guild, 7:30 pm Monday, Feb. 15 THE PLOT:Six young men form a pop vocal ensemble, the Comedian Harmonists, and attain stardom. Unfortunately, they're in Berlin, it's the 1930s and three of them are Jewish. Joseph Vilsmaier's The Harmonists is the true story of their rise and fall. THE DILLY: Given the potential of the story, Vilsmaier's film is a desultory exercise in movie narrative; nothing about it truly inspires. The script is clunky, the character development is uneven, the pace is initially rushed and the score is often execrable. The Comedian Harmonists deserved better. THE SCORE: 2 JM Children of Hannibal (Italy) Broadway, 9 pm Saturday, Feb. 13 THE PLOT:A down-on-his-luck man decides to rob a bank. Things get complicated when he takes a hostage and a relationship bubbles up between captor and captive. THE DILLY: A warmhearted Italian bank-robber movie? Was Disney involved? THE SCORE: Not screened by press time KM The Lighthouse (Argentina) Movie House, 9:15 pm Saturday, Feb. 13 Broadway, 9:15 pm Tuesday, Feb. 16 THE PLOT:The lives of two sisters, sole survivors of a car crash that kills the rest of their family, are chronicled as they grow from girlhood to womanhood. One limps, the other doesn't. THE DILLY: Argentinians have made this film a smash hit. THE SCORE: Not screened by press time KM My Son the Fanatic (Britain) Guild, 9:30 pm Saturday, Feb. 13 THE PLOT:Pervez, an Indian immigrant to Britain who drives a taxi, is set to marry off his son, Farid, but Farid weds himself instead to Islamic fundamentalism. As Pervez's alienation from his son and his unhappy wife deepens, he becomes closer to Bettina, a prostitute he drives and sometimes pimps. Under the tutelage of a visiting maulvi (holy man), Farid and his fellow acolytes unite against--of course--the local prostitutes. The film is based on a story by Hanif Kureishi, who also wrote the screenplay. THE DILLY: A beautiful piece of work. With expressive camera work and a soundtrack that mixes Western and Indian music to great effect, director Udayan Prasad balances cross-cultural malaise with a bittersweet love story. Kureishi's script is smart and even-tempered. There are excellent performances by Rachel Griffiths as Bettina and Stellan Skarsgard as a Mephistophelean German who engages both her and Pervez's services. As Pervez himself, Om Puri is superb; his sympathetic and quietly brilliant performance is the heart of the picture. THE SCORE: 3.5 JM Photographer (Poland) Broadway, 1:30 pm Sunday, Feb. 14; 6:45 pm Monday, Feb. 15 THE PLOT:A documentary about the discovery of 400 color slides taken by Walter Genewein, the chief accountant of the Lodz Ghetto. Pictures of the 300,000 inhabitants of the ghetto--some of the first color photographs ever made--reveal the chilling vision of a man who considered his subjects "subhumans." THE DILLY: Narrated by a survivor of the Lodz Ghetto, this chronicle of one man's part in the Final Solution sounds horrifying and spellbinding. The history is probably captured well, but this documentary is worth seeing for the amazing discovery of the photographs alone. THE SCORE: Not screened by press time KM Dead Letter Office (Australia) Broadway, 3:15 pm Sunday, Feb. 14 THE PLOT:Alice was abandoned by her father as a young girl. She has diligently written letters to him for years, but she doesn't know that he never receives them. She then gets a job at the post office, where she lives vicariously through other people's lost mail. THE DILLY: Lost dad, lost mail, lost souls living others' lost lives. The circular symbols warrant this warning: Do not smoke pot before seeing this picture. THE SCORE: Not screened by press time KM Passion (Hungary) Movie House, 7 pm Sunday-Monday, Feb. 14-15 THE PLOT:Another remake of James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, in which a woman and her lover plot to murder her older husband. This one takes place in Hungary in the 1930s. THE DILLY: Honoring Cain's brilliant, hard-boiled noir style, Passion was filmed in grainy black and white. It has swept up almost every film award in Hungary. For lovers of neo-noir, this movie looks superb. THE SCORE: Not screened by press time KM The First Night of My Life (Spain) Movie House, 7:30 pm Sunday, Feb. 14 Broadway, 7:15 pm Monday, Feb. 15 THE PLOT:A road movie/comedy about a couple who can't seem to get to a New Year's Eve party without something wacky happening. THE DILLY: A Spanish screwball that sounds a lot like the American film The Daytrippers. THE SCORE: Not screened by press time KM Tango (Spain/Argentina) Guild, 7:45 pm Sunday, Feb. 14 THE PLOT:The obsessive work of dance film director Mario Suarez, who stars as himself, is chronicled within a slim story involving his love for a lead dancer. THE DILLY: Yuck! Though there are some nice dance moments, this film is pretentious (someone actually says, "Ah, he taught me poetry"), boring and downright stupid. Stay home and watch Gregory Hines in Tap, a mediocre dance film that still soars above this one in terms of beauty, style and inspiration. THE SCORE: 1 KM Made in Hong Kong (Hong Kong) Broadway, 9 pm Monday-Tuesday, Feb. 15-16 THE PLOT:The story of three teenagers who live in the poverty-ridden, drug-filled and violent world of the projects in the new Hong Kong. THE DILLY: A very personal and bleak look at Hong Kong's handover to China. "A sense of helplessness prompted me to make this film," says director Fruit Chan. THE SCORE:Not screened by press time KM ID (Republic of Congo) Broadway, 6:45 pm Tuesday, Feb. 16 THE PLOT:A Zairean king journeys to Brussels in search of his daughter. There he realizes many things have changed since his last visit, during the 1958 World Expo. Laughs over the old vs. the new ensue. THE DILLY: How often do you see Congolese films? THE SCORE: Not screened by press time KM The Apple (Iran) Broadway, 7:15 pm Tuesday, Feb. 16 THE PLOT: Based on a true story, this political and cultural drama tells the tale of two 11-year-old girls trying to adapt to the outside world after being locked inside their house from birth. THE DILLY: Some of the most groundbreaking contemporary cinema is being made in Iran. Samira Makhmalbaf, the 18-year-old daughter of Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, makes her directorial debut here, actually casting the members of the family whose story the film reenacts. THE SCORE: Not screened by press time DM Sekal Has to Die (Czech Republic ) Guild, 7:30 pm Tuesday, Feb. 16 THE PLOT:During the summer of 1943, a village of prosperous farmers is threatened by an evil neighbor named Sekal who, by embracing the Reich, is rewarded with all of his neighbors' farms. The enraged and frightened farmers decide to retaliate--hence the film's title. THE DILLY: The title is so to-the-point that Sekal has to be good. THE SCORE:Not screened by press time KM Short Cuts II Mission, 6:30 and 8:45 pm Wednesday, Feb. 17 Guild, 4:30 pm Saturday, Feb. 20 THE PLOT:Another series of short films from around the world about various subjects (hell, sheep rustling and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner). THE DILLY: The collection includes live action and animated shorts, most of which have won awards at festivals from Cannes to Zagreb. THE SCORE: Not screened by press time JM Friendly Fire (Brazil) Movie House, 7 pm Wednesday, Feb. 17; 9 pm Saturday, Feb. 20 Broadway, 6:45 pm Thursday, Feb. 18 THE PLOT:Friends and former political prisoners discover that the police officer who tortured them is still alive, and they seek him out in order to exact revenge. THE DILLY: The latest from Beto Brant (Belly Up) weaves the political upheaval of Brazil in the 1970s into a thriller à la Constantin Costa-Gavras. THE SCORE: Not screened by press time JM Life on Earth (Mali) Broadway, 7:15 pm Wednesday, Feb. 17; 9:15 pm Friday, Feb. 19 (with The Book of Life) Movie House, 9 pm Thursday, Feb. 25 THE PLOT:A filmmaker living in France returns to his native Mali on the eve of the millennium. He films the small village where his father lives and where life goes on as though the technological advances of most of this century have never happened. THE DILLY: The semi-documentary by Abderrahmane Sissako (Octobre, Sabriya) is a meditation on the technological disparity between the developed world and the vast sections of the globe it has left behind. It was well received at the Toronto Film Festival. THE SCORE: Not screened by press time JM The Book of Life (United States) Broadway, 7:15 pm Wednesday, Feb. 17; 9:15 pm Friday, Feb. 19 Movie House, 7:30 pm Wednesday, Feb. 24 THE PLOT:It's the end of the century, and Jesus (Martin Donovan) arrives in New York City. While the rest of the world wonders whether the new millennium equals the Apocalypse, the Messiah busies himself battling Satan (Thomas Jay Ryan), hanging out with Magdalena (P.J. Harvey), risking banishment by his dad and trying to find people worth saving. THE DILLY: This is the latest comedy from American indie genius Hal Hartley (Trust, The Unbelievable Truth, Flirt). It may prove that last year's ambitious magnum opus, Henry Fool, was the beginning of a departure from the director's quirky smaller character studies. THE SCORE: Not screened by press time DM - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Willamette Week | originally published February 10, 1999