MEMENTO (United States) 7 pm Feb. 9 BW, 5:15 pm Feb. 10 GU

PREVIEW
Worldwide Visions
The Portland International Film Festival returns with films from around the globe.

BY JAY HORTON, BRIAN LIBBY, CHRISTOPHER MCQUAIN, ILIKE MEREY, SEYTA SELTER & DAVID WALKER
243-2122

BW Broadway Theatre, Southwest Broadway and Main Street
GU Guild Theatre, 829 SW 9th Ave.
FX Fox Tower, Southwest Taylor Street and Park Avenue
WH Whitsell Auditorium, 1219 SW Park Ave.

General Admission--$7
Members--$6
Children--$4
Festival Pass--$175

Ninety-one films from 36 countries in 17 days. That's right, it's time once again for the Portland International Film Festival. This year's lineup includes an exciting schedule of film from some of the world's most acclaimed filmmakers. Deciding which films to see can be difficult, which is where WW comes in. With a little luck, we might be able to make things easier for you. Here's the lowdown on the festival's first week.

MEMENTO
After two hours this movie leaves you punch-drunk, baffled and begging for more. Or was that how it begins? The second film by writer-director Christopher Nolan, Memento stars L.A. Confidential's Guy Pearce as a deranged bottom-feeder in a designer suit. After his wife's murder, he can't remember anything for more than a few minutes--but her death is the last thing branded on his brain. His life has been reduced to an endless, caustic search for her killer; he relies on scribbled notes, a body full of tattoos and a stack of Polaroids. Nolan presents Memento in reverse chronology, generating a controlled chaos that reflects the defective mind of its central character. (Brian Libby)

(United States)
7 pm Feb. 9 BW,
5:15 pm Feb. 10 GU

THE ENDURANCE: SHACKLETON'S LEGENDARY ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION
Talk about inspiring. Documenting Sir Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated 1914 expedition to the South Pole, The Endurance is a captivating film that examines the human will to survive. Stranded on ice without a ship, the crew of The Endurance struggled against brutal cold and starvation to stay alive. Using film footage of the original expedition and journal entries by Shackleton and his crew, filmmaker George Butler has crafted an epic adventure. (David Walker)

(United States)
2 pm Feb. 10,
7 pm Feb. 13 WH

TO AND FRO
A Mexican peasant returns to his village after living in the United States and discovers that much has changed.

(Mexico)
1 pm Feb. 10 FX

BREAD AND TULIPS
The actors are less pretty and the scenery more beautiful, but that's about the only perceptible difference between this run-of-the-mill Italian romantic comedy and a run-of-the-mill American one. It starts out promisingly enough, with an almost Almodovarian premise: A bourgeois housewife on a bus tour is left behind, and she uses the opportunity to escape her spoiled bourgeois family and take off for Venice. Unfortunately, the film's second half succumbs to the very mundaneness it seems to be challenging in its first. Bread and Tulips is "foreign" in name only; its world view almost exactly matches that of the fluffiest Hollywood pictures. (Christopher McQuain)

(Italy)
7 pm Feb. 9,
3 pm Feb. 10 FX

WAITING FOR THE MESSIAH
Yet another "two paths crossing" story, this one deals with a Buenos Aires banker who becomes an innovative transient and a young Jewish videographer fighting to change his life after his mother's death. The characters are void of feeling until well into the film, when love subplots launch and their previously inner lives shine through. With annoying lessons on "Jewishness" and immature views of homosexuality, this isn't the best film in the festival, though it does come through near the end. (Seyta Selter)

(Argentina)
1 pm Feb. 10, BW

WITH A FRIEND LIKE HARRY
What if there were someone in your life who would stop at nothing to rid you of those problems that never go away: screaming kids, stagnating marriage, dysfunctional parents? With a Friend Like Harry answers that question with a wickedly funny, ultimately disturbing manifestation of just such a person. His name's Harry, of course, and he's an old college friend of our protagonist, Michael. Harry remembers Michael so fondly that when he sees Michael's family and workaday worries holding him back, people start dying. It's suspenseful and quite funny, but never cartoonish enough to detract from its serious themes of ambition, doubt and regret. (Christopher McQuain)

(France)
7 pm Feb. 9,
1:45 pm Feb. 11 GU

THE FAITHLESS
Directed by perennial Bergman starlet Liv Ullmann and written by the great (retired) director himself, The Faithless may not be cause for Bergmaniacs to actually rejoice, but it's nothing they'll want to miss, either. It's basically medium Bergman, following the more dramatic, less experimental template set by Bergman's beautiful '70s films, such as Face to Face and Autumn Sonata. The territory covered here--the infidelity, loneliness, regret, desperation, death, abortion and sex familiar to any Bergman aficionado--is packed with enough intensely dissected dysfunction to be, if clearly not up to the level of its predecessors, a more than passable simulation. (Christopher McQuain)

(Sweden)
1:45 pm Feb. 10,
6:45 Feb. 11 GU

INNOCENCE
In this whimsical post-Viagra romance, veteran Australian actors Julia Blake and Charles Tingwell play lovers reunited after a half-century apart. Eager to make up for lost time, and to the astonishment of friends and relatives, the two septuagenarians soon find themselves between the sheets, undeterred by wrinkles and liver spots. The message of Innocence is boringly pedestrian: Live life to the fullest, etc. But aside from some common heavy-handed techniques (violins, soft-focus lenses), director Paul Cox presents the relationship with dignity and intelligence. Cox shows a quietly philosophical side, questioning God and fidelity more than test marketing probably requires. (Brian Libby)

(Australia)
7:30 pm Feb 9,
6:15 pm Feb. 10,
7:30 pm Feb. 11 BW

THE GIRL IN THE SNEAKERS
Journalist-turned-filmmaker Rassul Sadr Ameli has tied diverging themes of social realism into a knot. The Girl in the Sneakers quickly grabs our attention when said girl, a rebellious teenager named Tadai, is arrested for--gasp!--talking to a boy in public unchaperoned. Watching her parents spew vitriol, you'd think Tadai had pulled an Uzi at the local mosque. But just as we're reeling from the palpable absurdity of fundamentalist Iran, Girl changes course. Tadai runs away for the mean streets of Tehran and soon learns there are worse fates than upper-middle-class repression. After starting with a roar, The Girl in the Sneakers ends with a whimper. (Brian Libby)

(Iran)
2:45 pm Feb. 10,
7 pm Feb. 12 BW

YANA'S FRIENDS
The only Israeli film on the bill, Yana's Friends is a solid, hopeful, romantic comedy that surprises and entertains. Yana, a three-months-pregnant Russian immigrant, is abandoned by her husband in Tel Aviv, where they had just moved into an apartment with a sexually rapacious, voyeuristic roommate. With all characters living in the same apartment building, the plot line draws out hidden connections among them and unfolds as a charming story of people learning about themselves, each other, and what they need to do to survive. (Seyta Selter)

(Israel)
7:30 pm Feb. 9,
4:30 pm Feb. 11 WH

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CHICKENS
Director Mark Lewis trains his unblinking lens again upon one of nature's less-romantic creatures and, inevitably, tells more about the owners than their pets. Essentially a series of interviews exploring biological oddities (the globally renowned chicken that lived years after decapitation) and the deep ties between man and bird (the Palm Beach widow who bathes with her rooster), the documentary flirts with a heavy-handed whimsy and oddly affecting sentiment that renders the framing sequences of industrial egg production less political than tasteless. Something like the average hour of Animal Planet, only with
better camera work and a badly needed perspective. (Jay Horton)

(Australia)
4:30 pm Feb. 10 WH,
7:15 pm Feb. 15 GU

THE ADVENTURES OF GOD
Set in an Argentinean hotel surrounded by the surreal malaise of The Kingdom or Twin Peaks, Adventures is an exercise in absurdity and profundity as characters try to figure out where the hell they are and why. You might wonder the same. Huge visual metaphors aid pontification on the meanings of dream, reality, life, love and death. As the nameless protagonist in this mindfuck becomes convinced that he's in someone else's dream, he humorously embarks on a killing rampage to end the dream (or is it, really?), but humor is lost when Jesus Christ is brought in as a significant character. (Seyta Selter)(Argentina)

8:15 pm Feb. 10,
5 pm Feb. 11 FX

101 REYKJAVIK
An Icelandic slacker takes time off from avoiding responsibility to impregnate his mother's lesbian lover.

(Iceland)
8:30 pm Feb. 10 BW,
7:15 pm Feb. 11 FX

THE ADVENTURES OF ALIGERMA
A tale of young Mongolian girl who dreams of racing horses.

(Denmark)
1:30 pm Feb. 11 BW
2:30 pm Feb. 18 FX

BOLLYWOOD CALLING
Nagesh Kukunoor's unique look at the film industry of India--a.k.a. Bollywood--finds a scheming producer looking to make a hit film with the aid of an American B-movie actor and fading Indian star.

(India)
5:45 pm Feb. 10,
6 pm Feb. 12 FX

YI YI
Clocking in at just under three hours, Yi Yi is a vast epic about one Taiwanese family's quest for spiritual purpose in the modern world. Bookended by a wedding and a funeral, the film finds young and old in crisis; a wife tongue-tied by melancholy, a husband struggling to preserve integrity, children walking a tightrope between curiosity and peril. Director Edward Yang finds new significance in old truths: the immutability of unrequited love, the hypocrisy that success often demands, and the elusive meaning in our daily routines. Yang doesn't answer all of Yi Yi's questions, but he phrases them with unmistakable eloquence. (Brian Libby)

(Taiwan)
7 pm Feb. 10 WH

SEVEN SONGS FOR THE TUNDRA
An anthology of short films chronicling the native Nenets of northern Russia.

(Finland)
4:15 pm Feb. 11,
8:15 Feb. 12,
9 pm Feb. 21 BW

PEPPERMINTA
Greek man returns home to attend to his dying mother, where he reminisces on his past and is reunited with people he hasn't seen in decades.

(Greece)
5:15 pm Feb. 10,
6 pm Feb. 12 BW

THE PRICE OF MILK
When a cynical woman finds the absolute perfect man, she goes out of her way to ruin the relationship.

(New Zealand)
4:30 pm Feb. 11 GU

CLOUDS OF MAY
A Turkish filmmaker returns to his village hoping to capture it on film, only to become so absorbed in his work that he loses sight of his family and their problems.

(Turkey)
4:45 pm Feb. 11,
7:30 pm Feb. 13,
9:15 pm Feb. 22 BW

A PLACE NEARBY

In this slow-paced and emotionally intense murder mystery by acclaimed Danish director Kaspar Rostrup, a tough single mother struggles to protect her family when a girl is found killed and she suspects her own son. The acting is impeccable--Ghita Nørby plays the high-strung Mrs. Nielsen, and Thure Lindhardt is convincing as her autistic and gentle son Brian. With the plot both circling and delving into Mrs. Nielsen's tight grip on her special son, it's more family drama than crime thriller, but gripping nonetheless. Though lagging and overly ruminating at times, the story and circumstances are thought-provoking and well done. (Seyta Selter)

(Denmark)
7:45 pm Feb. 10,
2 pm Feb. 11,
6:45 pm Feb. 14 BW

POLLOCK
Ed Harris stars and makes his feature-directing debut as famed abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock. It's hard to say what is better--Harris' performance, which finds the actor at the top of his game, or his direction, which is packed with emotion and creative energy. Not only does Harris convincingly become Pollock, he visually articulates the way he expressed himself on canvas. The result is a film as impressive as the work of Jackson Pollock itself.
(DW)

(United States)
7 pm Feb. 11-12 WH

CALLE 54
Tito Puente! If that got you excited, you really need to see this movie. If not, don't bother. (For, aside from some electrifying moments of inhumanly fast fingers, the jazz musicians are about as fun to watch as a group of autistic children). Made by Latin jazz enthusiasts, for Latin jazz enthusiasts, Calle 54 is a straightforward homage to Latin jazz greats, including Bebo & Chucho Valdes, Gato Barbieri, and Tito Puente in one of his last performances. The filmmaker follows his stars internationally for lengthy performances and brief interviews about their reflections on Latin jazz. (Seyta Selter)

(Spain)
8 pm Feb. 10 GU,
2:30 pm Feb. 11 WH

CHIKIN BIZNIS
Vaguely reminiscent of Stephen Frears' The Van, director Ntshavheni Wa Luruli's quirky comedy is brimming with eclectic characters. Fats Bookholane (gotta love that name!) stars as Sipho, a retired office messenger who dreams of selling chickens. Taking his life savings, Sipho buys a truck and some chickens and embarks on the adventure of a lifetime. Bookholane gives a stand-out performance and leads an endearing, all-South African cast of misfits and oddballs. (DW)

(South Africa)
7 pm Feb. 11,
6:30 pm Feb. 13 BW

A PARADISE UNDER THE STARS
A young would-be dancer struggles with budding love, family intrigue and Cuban manliness.

(Cuba)
8:15 pm Feb. 12,
9:15 pm Feb. 15 FX,
4 pm Feb. 17 BW

LITTLE DARLING
Being trapped is the recurring theme of Anna Villaceque's slow movie. A homely, 30-year-old zombie named Sibylle is trapped in suburban doldrums with her parents--who are likewise trapped. Then Victor, an egomaniacal drifter, moves in on her and becomes trapped as well. The worst entrapment of all, however, is you in your theater seat. Carefully shot compositions resembling those in Todd Haynes' Safe are the only thing Little Darling offers. Nothing happens in the entire 106 minutes of the film except Victor's continuous berating of Sibylle and her supplicating compliance. The most you'll feel is boredom and pity. Ho hum. (Seyta Selter)

(France)
7:15 pm Feb. 14,
7 pm Feb. 15 WH

VILLA LOBOS
The fiery story behind the woes and triumphs of 20th-century Brazil's most influential composer.

(Brazil)
7 pm Feb. 13,
7 pm Feb. 14 FX

HOUSE
Linda the waitress has clairvoyant powers that just might save her bingo parlor from the newly erected Mega Pleasure Bingo Arena.

(Britain)
7:30 pm Feb. 9,
4 pm Feb. 10,
9:15 pm Feb. 15 BW

LOOKING FOR ALIBRANDI
An adaptation of Melina Marchetta's novel about three generations of Australian-Italian women coping without
a man in the house.

(Australia)
2:30 pm Feb. 11 FX,
9 pm Feb. 13 BW