Friday, January 30, 2009

Sundance 2009: The Dramatic Competition: Based on the Blog by Jeremy

I will be recapping Sundance over the next week by taking a detailed, epic look at each of the festival's program selections. First up is the festival's best-known—if not always best—category.

If the 2009 Sundance Film Festival was an above-average affair, one must acknowledge its flagship category, the US Dramatic Competition, for—if nothing else—approaching something in the ballpark of uniform quality. While it didn't exactly house a game-changing, ah-ha piece of cinema, it only had a couple films that made me want to blow my brains out rather than view them to their conclusion.

I saw all but one of the selection's films ("Peter and Vandy"), and none of them were incompetent. Regular Sundancers will recognize this as a rare feat on the part of the festival programmers. There were still a few boring and/or ridiculous titles, but the turds were generally shiny.

While the Documentary Competition routinely outshines it on the total-films-worth-watching scale, the Dramatic Competition usually plays home to the festival's best discoveries. "Blood Simple," "Sex, Lies and Videotape," "Welcome to the Dollhouse," "Primer," "American Splendor," and many more turned up here. But so have a lot of films that no one cares to remember, or even acknowledge.

Festival-goers often speculate about the programming process, and from the rumors and hearsay emerges a narrative of a bunch of feuding programmers, each with a pet film they're determined to force through. One programmer even introduced the World Documentary entry "Big River Man" by enthusiastically proclaiming that there was no fighting over its inclusion. Huzzah!

If the competition was stronger than usual in 2009, the jury, always unpredictable (except when they agree with me), was considerably more stoned when it selected the competition's winners.

The two top prizes, the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award, both went to the same film: "Push: Based on the novel by Sapphire." Now, I suppose a film with that subtitle could be worthy of an award, providing that money men forced it upon its makers so it wouldn't be confused with an upcoming release starring Dakota Fanning. But the title is merely where the problems start.

At times, the film contains very moving performances—hence the Audience Award. (Sundance audiences love that kind of stuff.) But I'm surprised the jury fell so hard for the over-loaded and generic weepy inspirational melodrama.

"Push" could have been a film about a morbidly obese teenage girl who doesn't know how to read, and ends up in an alternative school where she learns to love herself. Or it could have been about a girl who is pregnant with her second child…her second child conceived of her father's incestuous rape, that is. And either of these plots could use a crazy, abusive, violent mother as a sideshow. But "Push"—sorry, "Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire"— saddles its main character, Precious (Gabourey 'Gabby' Sidibe), with all these problems and more.

The resulting film rushes its character arcs while also falling into monotonous traps. Mo'Nique received a Special Jury Prize for her turn as Precious's mother, but I think this award was based mainly on her closing monologue. For the rest of the movie, all her scenes presumably consisted of this direction: "Act crazy and throw shit!" I don't doubt the filmmakers' or the jury's intentions, but this bloated movie doesn't represent the best the competition had to offer.

The jury made an even more perplexing decision when it presented the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award to "Paper Heart," a boring, repetitive, annoying mess that very obviously had no screenplay.

If they wanted to give a writing award to an improvised movie, they should have honored Lynn Shelton's "Humpday." A funnier, better-structured work, the movie stars Mark Duplass and Alycia Delmore as a couple whose insecurities come to the forefront when Duplass's old friend, played by Joshua Leonard, arrives for an unexpected visit. Stoned and drunk at a party, the two friends conceive of a porn film featuring two heterosexual male friends having sex—starring themselves.

Shooting in the same spirit of the films by Duplass and his brother Jay, Shelton creates an authentic examination of the second thoughts and regrets that plague suburban professionals. More importantly, however, the film is funny as hell. At least "Humpday" received of the three awards given to deserving films: a Special Jury Prize for Spirit of Independence.

The other two prizes, including Best Director, went to Cary Fukunaga's "Sin Nombre," an entertaining and heartfelt drama of gang culture and redemption in Mexico. The film follows a young man who can't escape gang life, and gets himself into deeper trouble when the frustration reaches its tipping point. He soon finds himself on the run, traveling with a young immigrant woman on her way to the U.S. border. Adriano Goldman's award for Cinematography was well-deserved, as he captures the hot, endless days, and a sweaty, tense train ride of would-be U.S. immigrants traveling from the Guatemalan border. Focus Features will release the film in the United States soon.

The best film of the competition went home with no awards. Cruz Angeles's "Don't Let Me Drown" is a touching teenage love story that weaves through the lives of two Latino families in Brooklyn during the months after the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attacks. Lalo's (E.J. Bonilla) father, a Mexican immigrant, was a janitor in the towers, and now cleans up the site, inhaling dust and asbestos all day. Stefanie's (Gleendilys Inoa) sister died in the attack, leaving her father angry and overly protective. The two find that their connection with one another may be the only thing to carry them through troubling times.

The film's characters are so well written and acted that we develop a deep affection for them. The humorous and emotional moments work so well because they grow naturally out of the interaction. In particular, the rapport between the high school students feels just right. These are good kids who are still trying to come to terms with their emotions, but also want to enjoy their youth. Nothing at the festival was funnier than Lalo's uncle's attempt to give the boy "the talk." And nothing was more poignant than the simple, elegant conclusion to which the film leads us.

Writer/director Cherien Dabis offered a a third, distinct, look at the immigrant experience with "Amreeka," the story of a Palestinian mother and son who emigrate to the United States to live with her sister's family in suburban Illinois. Full of well-written characters in roles big and small, "Amreeka" recognizes the loss of dignity inherent in starting a life in a new country. LIke "Don't Let Me Drown," it offers a balance of comedy to offset a largely sad story. Muna, portrayed delicately by Nisreen Faour, was a banker in Palestine, but now can only find a job at a White Castle. While at times overly cringe-inducing, the film is a testament to challenge of maintaining your self respect.

Max Mayer's "Adam" found a memorable love story the relationship between two characters who, no matter how hard they try, can never fully understand one another. Hugh Dancy and Rose Byrne star as two New Yorkers who meet in their apartment building, but fail at the traditional courtship routine because he suffers from Asperger's Syndrome. Beth really likes Adam, but his behavior is often awkward and perplexing. He can never quite recognize how she feels, and she can never get through to the man behind the scientific wizardry and clumsy social skills.

In a festival with more science-themed films than usual, "Adam" won the Alfred P. Sloan Prize. The prize is awarded by a separate jury that, I've always suspected, spends most of its time desperately looking through all the Sundance categories for science-themed films that might be eligible for the award. Several of this year's strongest film's were science-fiction or otherwise science related, making this a much more competetive prize than usual.

Speaking of science, people will no doubt recall another film when hearing about Sophie Barthes's "Cold Souls." The film stars a well-respected actor as himself to create a surreal, existential science-fiction experience. Yes, the "Being John Malkovich" comparisons are inevitable, but the film has its own set of rules and ideas apart from Kaufman and Jonze. Paul Giamatti plays himself as a tortured actor who decides to extract his soul and put it in storage because it is too much of a burden for him to carry. Of course, moving through life with no soul also proves difficult. While Giamatti's motivations and the film's internal logic don't always work, Barthes generates some fascinating philosophy and humor, most notably in the wonderfully droll scenes between Giamatti and David Strathairn as the facility's dodgy doctor and manager.

Robert Seigel, who wrote the screenplay for Daren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler," one of the best films of 2008, made his directorial debut with "Big Fan". The great standup comedian Patton Oswalt stars as a parking garage attendant who lives with his mother and spends his free time obsessing over the New York Giants football team. While overly repetitive and tonally uneven, the film nevertheless offers a fascinating look at a man who equates much of his life's value with the performance of a team over which he has no control.

Ross Katz's "Taking Chance" stopped at Sundance on the way to its premiere on HBO next month. Based on the memoir by Lt. Col. Michael R. Strobl, it stars Kevin Bacon as Strobl, a Marine with a desk job who decides to escort a fallen young Marine's remains home for his funeral. The tear-jerking journey that follows emphasizes the affect of war on a community, and the tragedy of dying young.

John Krasinski showed some directorial flare and daring in "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men," his adaptation of David Foster Wallace's short story collection, but failed in his attempt to create a cohesive story with which to frame the material.

Emily Abt's "Toe to Toe" unevenly and sometimes lopsidedly attempts to study the racial and class divide through the lives of two students on a high school ladies lacrosse team, one black and one white, each in a different economic and social strata. While each character is at times intriguing, the story of two sad girls lacks the interaction of a great character drama.

Despite one very interesting character, Adam Salky's sulky teenage drama "Dare" loses much of the impact of its lurid teenage love triangle by favoring bacchanalian excess over over coherency.

While Shana Feste's "The Greatest," starring Pierce Brosnan and Susan Sarandon as greiving parents, was part of Sundance's coming out party for the bright, young and charming Carey Mulligan, it suffers from a remarkably idiotic screenplay. But at least it had its moments, which I can't say for John Hindman's insulting "Arlen Faber."

1 comment:

Janean said...

Stewf just twittered about this blog: My favorite film critic sees more Sundance films than anyone. His take on this year? "the turds were generally shiny"