Human Capital (***1/2)

A must-see for fans of parallel storylines…. Dino (Fabrizio Bentivoglio) is a social-climbing real-estate investor who can’t wait to buy into a hedge fund run by his wealthy new friend, Giovanni (Fabrizio Gifuni), whose teenaged son is dating Dino’s daughter Serena. The movie begins, almost, with Dino’s story, but then retells the story from two other points of view, starting with Giovanni’s wife (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi), who spends her days shopping, but once dreamed of a career in theater.

The film’s central event is a bicycle rider’s collision with an SUV on a dark highway near Milan. Besides the mystery of who the driver was, the title suggests the greater theme of money. Social class is only a subtext, but it’s a big part of what’s intriguing about the film, a seamless adaptation by director Paolo Virzì of a novel by American writer Stephen Amidon.

IMDb link

viewed 10/20/14 3:20 pm at Ritz East [Philadelphia Film Festival]

Delivery Man (***)

A lot of Hollywood remakes of non-American films change things for the worse; this remake of a Canadian film called Starbuck, which was released stateside just a few months earlier, changes the title, the actors, and the setting (Montreal to Brooklyn), but not much else, not even the writer-director. I do wonder whether it was boring for Ken Scott to remake his own movie. Virtually every scene is the same as in the original.

Once again, the story follows a happy-go-lucky meat delivery man (Vince Vaughn) whose easy-spending ways are about to catch up with him. At the same time, so are some of the 533 children, now young adults, that he fathered via sperm donations with the code name Starbuck. They’re threatening to sue to learn his identity even as his girlfriend (Cobie Smulders), having conceived with him the natural way, wants him to be just a sperm donor; she’d rather raise the child alone.

Clearly, some life changes are in order. Starbuck, aka David, doesn’t want to become an instant father to hundreds, yet can’t resist seeing what his progeny are up to. (His employment in the family business and previous allowances for incompetency allows him plenty of free time.) As in the Canadian version, this makes for a sometimes humorous, sometimes tender story. Compared to Patrick Huard’s version of Starbuck, Vaughn is a bit less scruffy, but the role of a genial screw-up suits him. (So, apparently, do scene-for-scene remakes: he played Norman Bates in the 1998 Psycho.) The lawyer/best friend character is played by Chris Pratt, who once again urges Starbuck to use an insanity defense when he’s committed no crime. Even the baffling plot points are recycled, but if you didn’t see the original version this one will be just as good, just as this partly recycled review should be just as good as my Starbuck review, if you haven’t read that.


IMDb link


viewed 11/19/13 and posted 11/19/13

Watchtower (***1/2) [played at screening only]

This intriguing Turkish drama brings two self-exiled characters together. A quiet man in a quiet place (in a quiet movie), Nihat (Olgun Simsek) has taken a job manning a mountaintop guardhouse. Seher (Nilay Erdonmez), the other main character is a college student who has left school to take a job as an onboard “hostess” for a struggling bus company. Part of her story becomes apparent when she suddenly becomes sick during a trip, but the first half of the movie is largely a careful set-up for the inevitable part where their stories intertwine.

However, what could devolve into a predictable storyline, in which two lonely souls find each other, is instead handled with subtlety and complexity, though with ambiguity that may frustrate some. For most of the movie, these are not talkative characters; there is no music to telegraph what we are meant to feel. Further, writer-director Pelin Esmer, a former documentary filmmaker, favors long takes where we simply watch the characters behave. So the movie is apt to frustrate those who favor quicker pacing or clear resolutions. On the other hand, those who appreciate character-driven stories will find a thoughtful drama that sheds light on the changing roles of women in Turkish society (but in a conservative region).

IMDb link

viewed 9/18/13 7:30 pm at Gershman [PFS screening] and posted 9/18/13

Much Ado About Nothing (***1/4)

This was my first real exposure to William Shakespeare. Othello, though assigned in high school, went largely unread. I’ve never seen any of the plays live, nor seen any of the movie adaptations. So why not start with this one, whose featherweight plot takes a back seat to dialogue and farce. The key storyline, antagonists who fall in love, has so often been repeated as to become trite. Its multiple misunderstandings (though resulting from trickery, not accident) that propel the story are the stuff of romantic comedies up to the present time. 

 

Unlike Kenneth Branagh’s 1993 version, Josh Wheedon’s contains no big stars, though practically the entire cast have worked with him on earlier projects. These include Amy Acker, who plays Beatrice, Alexis Denisof (Benedick), and Clark Gregg (Leonato), more or less the three leads. Wheedon is known for the fantasy genre, having created Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly and directed the 2012 Avengers movie. No vampires or superheroes inhabit this production,. It is in handsome black and white, signaling artistic intent. The 400-year-old dialogue remains intact. But Wheedon does put a personal stamp on the production, and not just by employing a present-day setting and American accents.

 

Ado is perhaps the most acclaimed of Shakespeare’s comedies. Was it funny? Frequently yes. Probably most of the laughs come from the behavior, facial expressions, and tone of voice rather than the words, and here Wheedon’s contribution is apparent even to one not familiar with the play. The dialogue does take getting used to. I was glad for the basic plot, as it took me some time and some missed lines to adjust to the style and figure out who was who. But I did.

 

IMDb link

viewed 6/17/13 7:30 at Ritz East [PFS screening] and reviewed 6/18 and 7/23/13

Fill the Void (***1/4)

This confusingly titled Israeli drama takes place in an Orthodox Jewish community. Unlike most films about such closed societies, including Ushpizin and Holy Rollers, set among Hasidic enclaves in Jerusalem and New York, respectively, this is not about encounters with outsiders or about those challenging tradition. Instead, it is about the normal challenges of life, but as experienced through a particular cultural dynamic.

Shira (Hadas Yaron), the character at the center of the drama, is an 18-year-old kindergarten teacher hoping to wed a young man she has seen but not yet met. However, upon the death of her sister in childbirth, she feels increasing pressure to instead marry her sister’s widower (Yiftach Klein), now a single father, though he is significantly older than she. Although this is not something that would likely happen in secular Israel, Shira’s internal conflict, between desire for self-determination and duty, is not unfamiliar.

The cultural context is one in which a high emphasis is placed on marriage; another character, an older woman, wears a head scarf to suggest widowhood, though she’s never wed, simply to avoid questions. Additionally, there is great weight placed on the rabbi as the center of the community, dispenser of charity, and giver of advice on everything from spiritual matters to ovens. Still, the long beards on the men aside, these characters seem like ordinary people.

IMDb link

viewed 6/19/13 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 6/19/13

Renoir (***)

Not a biopic of Pierre Auguste Renoir (Michel Bouquet), this is more like a family portrait set in the great impressionist’s late career. Like a painting, the film is still but nice to look at. It helps that Renoir lived on the French Riviera in a large home with a balcony overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. (The director, Gilles Bourdos, also lets the camera fall out of focus a few times, making the screen look something like an impressionist canvas.) In contrast to a movie such as The Last Station, which similarly follows Renoir’s contemporary Leo Tolstoy in his senescence, it is a movie of temperaments rather than beliefs. Where a Tolstoy evolved to the end and lived a personal life of some turmoil, Renoir liked to think of himself as a craftsman who liked to “go with the flow” and favored calmness. Though crippled by painful arthritis, he carries on as before, carried around on a chair by his female staff and working with the brush taped to his misshapen hand. Asked by his doctor what he’ll do if he cannot use his hand, he says, “I’ll paint with my dick.”

Red-headed Christa Theret plays Andrée Heuschling, Renoir’s last model, though Bourdos has set the story in 1915, a couple of years before she actually posed for for the old man. This allows him to set her arrival in the midst of the first World War and proximate to both the recent death of Renoir’s wife and the arrival of his son Jean (Vincent Rottiers), who is convalescing after an injury. Another son, though also injured, is still on the front, and the third, too young to fight, is still at home.

It probably helps to know that Jean, the middle son, would become celebrated in his own right, though not for painting. Here he has principle but not ambition. Andrée, known as Dedée, inspires and challenges him in the manner of many young women in many movies about many sorts of young men. She brings out old desires but no new changes in the painter himself. Through her, we see his personality and the way he worked and the way the other members of the household regarded him.

Renoir the man was an innovator. Renoir is merely competent. Not a great love story, it is simply a drama centered around the great man, whom even his sons call “Renoir.” Bourdos and Bouquet, who gives a fine performance, give us a man who obviously inspired deep loyalty, but whose family relationships lacked intimacy. (The youngest son calls himself an orphan.)

IMDb link 

viewed 4/24/2013 7:15 pm at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 4/24–25/13

Reality (***)

Some things are nearly universal, and the Big Brother show, which began in the Netherlands and quickly spread across six continents, is one of them. Big Brother and other reality television shows offers ordinary people with nothing but big personalities a shot at stardom and viewers the chance to observe the hidden behavior of ordinary people. Yet the very fact of being observed alters behavior. It is that reality, not reality television, that is the subject of this movie.

The big personality belongs to Luciano (Aniello Arena), a Neapolitan fishmonger with a loving wife, children, and extended family. He’s also running some kind of scam involving reselling kitchen “robots” that I didn’t exactly understand. It’s his large family that persuades him to try out for Big Brother, but pretty soon it’s Luciano who becomes captivated by the idea of being selected. Is the woman who’s come all the way from Rome to buy his fish really someone from the television program checking him out? Is he truly worthy of being a TV celebrity? Will his small-screen dreams make him miss the big picture? Matteo Garrone, whose previous film was the Mafia drama Gomorrah, keeps things lighter here, though with a touch of pathos, and only modestly comedic. He bookends the film with visually inspired long shots that suggest that life, like reality television, is a bit of a construction in which each of us is producer and star.

IMDb link

viewed 4/10/13 7:05 at Ritz Bourse

Starbuck (***)

This light- to middleweight French-Canadian import (set for a Hollywood remake) follows a happy-go-lucky meat delivery man (Patrick Huard) whose easy-spending ways are about to catch up with him. At the same time, so are some of the 533 children, now young adults, that he fathered via sperm donations with the code name Starbuck. They’re threatening to sue to learn his identity even as his girlfriend, having conceived with him the natural way, wants him to remain anonymous while she raises the child alone.

Clearly, some life changes are in order. Starbuck, aka David, doesn’t want to become an instant father to hundreds, yet can’t resist seeing what his progeny are up to. (His employment in the family business and previous allowances for incompetency allows him plenty of free time.) A likeable lead. lack of heavy-handed moralizing, and mild but consistent humor overcome the shortcomings of the plot. (E.g., his lawyer/best friend urges him to use an insanity defense, but for what crime?)

IMDb link

viewed 4/17/13 7:25 pm at Ritz 5 and reviewed 4/17/13

Parental Guidance (**1/2)

This family comedy put me off immediately by having the main character, Sacramento baseball announcer Artie (Billy Crystal), mock a woman’s looks in front of a stadium full of people. He’s fired after the game, not for this act of humiliation, but for not being technologically hip. In the scheme of the movie: 1) this appears to be the first time his employer has ever mentioned that this is a problem; 2) Artie has possibly never even heard of Twitter, and possibly does not have a cell phone (I assume this because otherwise a later plot point makes no sense); 3) after determining that Artie has no technological awareness, his boss would ask him who is favorite angry bird is;  4) someone (the boss), anyone, would utter the line “Everyone has a favorite angry bird.” Really?  This sort of iCarly-level level of subtlety (in writing and acting) is par for the course, at least in the first half of the movie, which then concerns Artie and his wife (Bette Midler) traveling to Atlanta as emergency babysitters for their grandkids, to whom they are not close. The story clumsily wavers between portraying the kids’ parents, but mostly the mom (Marisa Tomei), as crazy helicopter parents whose style conflicts with Artie’s way of doing things and portraying Artie as the crazy one, while trying to make both of them sympathetic. They are, mostly, but much of this feels terribly artificial.

 

At one point, the two grandparents marvel at their daughter’s ability to remember that “Book of Love” is  their favorite song. How can she remember that? She was three or four years old. It’s unexplained why she wouldn’t have heard the song after that. (The scene does provide the opportunity for Midler and Crystal to do an acapella duet of the 1958 hit.) We’re also supposed to believe Artie didn’t know his daughter had worked for ESPN for five years and didn’t know his grandson’s name, even though he’d seen them less than a year before. Artie’s daughter is supposed to never have mentioned to her husband that Artie signs off every game by saying her name. And his granddaughter fake-laughs at Artie’s joke in a way I have seen many times in sitcoms but never in real life, because in real life it would appear as obviously false to the joke teller as to everyone else.

 

If your inclination upon reading this is to say, it’s just a movie, you may view this as the “feel-good” comedy I heard one middle-aged woman describe it as upon exiting the theater. Crystal and Midler make a surprisingly believable couple, and when the film doesn’t strain for laughs—and most of the laughs are strained—it becomes a decent family drama. In the real world, of course, tension between grandparenting and parenting styles (Artie’s problem) and between attention to spouse and attention to the kids (his daughter’s) are real issues, and the movie’s attempt to address them is worthwhile. Still, the primary appeal will be to those still requiring parental guidance.

 

IMDb link

 

viewed 12/13/12 at Rave UPenn; posted 1/28/13

 

Kuma (***1/2)

The title of this film references a Muslim custom of plural marriage. The title character is sent from Turkey to Austria to become a second wife to a much older man, so you might expect the plot to revolve around the jealousy of the first wife, the oppression of patriarchal family structures, and so on. But it does not. In fact, the two wives become close, and the resentment comes from elsewhere in the household.

In fact, the drama comes from a different kind of culture clash and depicts the tensions of maintaining a traditional lifestyle in a relatively secular country. Begüm Akkaya gives a sensitive performance as a the self-effacing younger woman. A couple of surprising plot turns make this as dramatically compelling as it is in terms of the central characters.

IMDb link

viewed 10/21/12 12:00 noon at Ritz East [Philadelphia Film Festival screening] and reviewed 3/17/13

Casa de Mi Padre (**3/4)

¿Will Farell habla español? ¡Si, si! At least, he does in this gentle parody of every cliché you might associate with Mexico on film, particularly as presented in old westerns. Ferrell is the older, and dumber, according to his father, of two brothers. He is a gentle man, and a gentleman, but when the younger sibling (Diego Luna) brings home his young fiancée (Genesis Rodriguez, of Man on a Ledge), he suspects they are mixed up with the drug trade. Or maybe he’s just jealous.

That’s about all the plot worth mentioning, other than that a corrupt cop, a wealthy narco (Gael García Bernal), and a racist gringo DEA agent (Nick Offerman) have roles. It’s a coherent story, but mostly there to provide a framework for small bits that are more likely to elicit chuckles and smiles than loud laughs. Par for the course are the deliberately bad visual effects (very fake blood, shots of toy cars standing in for the real thing, and a stuffed white tiger that talks to the hero in a sort of vision). Directed and written, respectively, by Matt Piedmont and Andrew Steele, who both worked on Saturday Night Live and HBO’s Funny or Die Presents, it’s less obviously farcical than the movies Ferrell’s made with  business partner Adam McKay (Step Brother, Talladega Nights, Anchorman), yet even sillier at times. I had the feeling it was an idea Quentin Tarantino would have thought of and farmed out, like something made from one of the fake trailers he put in Grindhouse. That is to say, it’s a pretty thin movie, but at just 90 minutes it doesn’t wear out its welcome. And how can you dislike a movie that turns Procul Harum’s psychedelic classic “A Whiter Shade of Pale” into a Spanish-language wedding song?

IMDb link

viewed 2/27/12 at Rave UPenn [PFS screening] and reviewed 2/28/12

The Shore [short] (***1/4)

Almost as gentle and lovely as the coast of Northern Ireland it depicts, this half-hour comedy-drama from Terry George (Hotel Rwanda, Reservation Road) reunites old friends who’ve fallen out. One man has moved to America and is visiting with his adult daughter; the other has stayed behind, poor but happily married.

IMDb link

viewed 2/17/12 9:35 at Ritz Bourse [Oscar-nominated live-action shorts program] and reviewed 2/18/12

The Descendants (***1/2)

With his last four features (of five total), Alexander Payne has become our foremost cinematic chronicler of the adult white male self-examination crisis. However, perhaps because he has adapted a series of novels, he hasn’t repeated himself. Those who found Paul Giamatti’s wine snob in Sideways too ornery or found About Schmidt too slow may still like watching lawyer Matt King (George Clooney), imperfect husband and father, muddle through his own difficult time. King’s crisis comes when his wife lapses into a coma following a water-skiing accident. Payne’s faithful adaptation of a novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings isn’t as plot-driven or pithy as 1999’s Election, but it’s his most mainstream film since then, and in this case that’s not a bad thing.

As much as the California wine country in Sideways, the Hawaii of The Descendants is an important part of the story. The title alludes both to the state’s unique history—haole money men displacing missionaries and, then, the native aristocracy—to King’s two daughters. As Clooney’s voiceover, which paraphrases the novel, tells us, Matt’s the understudy, now cast as the star parent of his ten-year-old, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing. So he gets his 17-year-old, away at boarding school, to help. The older daughter is played by Shailene Woodley, erstwhile costar of The Secret Life of the American Teenager, who’s both terrific and looks the age she’s playing. (First-time actress Amara Miller seems very natural as the younger daughter, a smaller part.)

Clooney is almost too likeable in the lead; only the voiceover and the anger of his daughter (no flashbacks) assure us that King’s been a neglectful husband and father or anything other than the reasonable man he seems here. A subplot about King’s being the trustee of a 25,000-acre parcel of land set to be sold to developers resolves how you’ll likely assume as soon as you’ve seen that first gorgeous shot of pristine coastline. Still, there’s an honesty to the storytelling and a good deal of humor right at the same time as the sad parts, which is as it should be in a movie where a comatose woman features so prominently. Alive yet unavailable, she forces King both to contemplate her death when he’s still angry at her and to figure out what he values. And yes, it’s a tearjerker.

IMDB link

viewed 11/14/11 at Rave UPenn (PFS screening) and reviewed 11/18/11

Take Shelter (***)

I have trouble suspending my disbelief when it comes to the supernatural, but I went to see this because I’d read good things about the film and Michael Shannon’s performance. From the plot summaries, I couldn’t get a handle on whether the film is really about the supernatural, which is because the film keeps it ambiguous for a long time. Construction worker Curtis, Shannon’s character, is definitely having some unusual experiences, mostly in his dreams, but some, like the brown rain in the opening scene, apparently in real life.

The other thing that makes me nervous about a film like this, where one odd thing happens after another, is that nearly the whole film winds up being a big question to which the answer has the potential to really lower my evaluation of the movie as a whole. Other movies like this are Close Encounters of the Third Kind—Curtis seems crazy the way Richard Dreyfuss’s character there does—or Frailty, which involved a character who was either a religious nut or a prophet. This is like that a little too, but without the religious angle. Also, Curtis isn’t such a hardass, so his wife (Jessica Chastain) notices quickly when he begins behaving strangely. He himself is caught between wondering if he’s crazy (it runs in the family) or prescient, or both. They have a deaf little girl; her silence in situations where another child would cry out help create tension.

Ultimately, although writer-director Jeff Nichols (Shotgun Stories) throws an interesting false ending in, I did feel like the answer to the the movie’s question—is he just nuts?—was a letdown. Another answer might have been also. But there’s enough tension built up, and enough just plain drama, to make the success not completely dependent on the ending. Shannon has the showier role, but Chastain (whose breakthrough roles in The Help and The Tree of Life form the other two thirds of a sort of housewife trilogy for her) has the unappreciated role of reacting to a husband coming apart at the seams. This has only a few special effects, but if you do like a supernatural story, and like it told subtly, you’ll probably like this more than I did.

IMDB link

viewed 11/9/11 7:00 pm at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 11/9/11

The Human Resources Manager (***)

In this unusual road movie, a burned-out Israeli HR rep finds himself unexpectedly involved in a family saga half a world away. Ostensibly, the manager is trying to honor an employee killed in a suicide bombing, but burials are always about the living, not the dead. Shot mostly in Romania, the film mixes light comedy, light melodrama, and a bit of adventure in a very picturesque manner.

IMDB link

Viewed 4/13/11 at Ritz East [Philadelphia Cinefest] and reviewed 4/13/11

Summer Wars (***1/2)

Hollywood may be churning out more animated films than ever, but still hasn’t sold Americans on the idea that they don’t need to be family films. (The grown-up oriented, US film My Dog Tulip managed to make about $200,000, or nearly 1/2000 of what Toy Story 3 did.) But the Japanese have no such reservations and made a big hit out of this. Not that it’s altogether serious. In a perfect world, it would have captured the same audience that went to see Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, although the fantasy element is more of a sci-fi thing here. (The version I watched was dubbed very competently, though I didn’t recognize the actors’ names.)

The main character, Kenji, is the sort of nerdy boy who’s often the hero of this type of story. He’s a math expert with no romantic skills who earns some money as a “code monkey” working for the giant computer network Oz. (Think Facebook on steroids.) Of course, there’s a pretty, popular girl, Natsuki, who recruits Kenji for an errand. That turns out to involve taking a train to Nagano, a less-populous area where Natsuki’s family is about to celebrate her great-grandmother’s 90th birthday. All goes well until Kenji’s math wizardry accidentally unleashes a malevolent computer program (Love Machine) that threatens to foul up the family holiday, much of the world’s Internet connection, and worse.

Who is behind this malfeasance? Kenji? Natsuki’s bad-boy uncle? The United States military? And who will be able to stop it? Maybe Kenji. Maybe great-grandma, who humorously wields her rotary phone and list of contacts going back 60 or 70 years. In a world where the electronic infrastructure has gone haywire, the low-tech wizard rules. And when you can’t play computer games, you can always play cards, like the Japanese favorite koi-koi, which is woven into the plot. Alas, only a little is done with the idea of our over-reliance on technology.

The whimsical plot is perfect for animation. The villain’s avatar kind of reminded me of one from the TV show South Park, though the artistry is much better, and the humor is less vicious. The hand-drawn style helps gives the film a warm feel that is well-suited to the story. While the idea of the geek saving the day is fairly familiar turf, the originality lies in Natsuki’s truly colorful clan, who are sometimes at odds, but ultimately come together when the chips are, literally, down.

IMDB link

viewed 1/27/11 at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 1/28/11

La Nostra Vita (***1/4)

My Brother Is an Only Child director Daniele Luchetti returns with the story of a construction supervisor (Elio Germano, also of My Brother) whose wife suddenly dies in childbirth. Left alone with three sons, including a newborn, he pours his efforts into a large project meant to provide for his family but that instead threatens his financial ruin. Though this isn’t a dark film, it’s a realistic story about everyday struggle. The widowed father is, though likable, flawed, and the inequities of Italian society are a subtheme. Illegal immigrant laborers are used on the construction site, taxes are evaded, and casually derogatory references are made toward foreigners. Yet overall the movie takes a kind view of human nature; ultimately, it’s a story about values and relationships.

IMDB link

viewed at Ritz 5 [Philadelphia Film Festival] and reviewed 10/20/10

Secretariat (***)

Even with a great pedigree, no one can predict with certainly that a horse will be great, and so Secretariat’s owner got him after losing a coin toss. (The winner took another horse that seemed more promising.) Still, he was not a true underdog, like Seabiscuit. He did not meet a mysterious and tragic end, like the title character in Phar Lap, another great drama about a racehorse. So some obvious dramatic angles are missing here. Instead, this is is a straight inspirational drama with a mild but definite feminist angle. The horse’s owner, Penny Tweedy (née Chenery) (Diane Lane), was a housewife and mother of four who learned the business in her 40s, made some smart decisions, and got a bit lucky. Taking over her father’s Virginia horse farm in the late 1960s, she defied her husband’s preference that she stop spending so much time away from their home in Denver. Pointedly, the film does not apologize for her having done so.

The screenplay is by Mike Rich, who has penned other inspirational sports films, notably The Rookie. Rich plays up Chenery’s feistiness and simplifies or sentimentalizes some events, but sticks to the facts when it comes to the horse racing. (The corniest moment is probably when her father’s assistant brings Penny coffee. Asked how she knew Penny wanted two sugars and cream, she replies, “That’s how your Daddy liked it.”) Director Randall Wallace (We Were Soldiers) does a fine job filming the races. Seen close up, with dust kicking in the air, it seems almost a violent sport, in contrast to how elegant it looks from afar. And even if you know the outcome, Secretariat’s performance in the 1973 Belmont Stakes is still pretty astonishing. A nice one to watch with the kids.

IMDB link

viewed 9/2/10 at Rave UPenn [PFS screening] and reviewed 9/2–10/7/10

Animal Kingdom (***1/4)

IMDB link

viewed 11/26/11 [Netflix rental]

The Father of My Children (***1/2)

One thing I like about certain (usually) foreign films is the way you don’t immediately know what they’re going to be about. For a would-be blockbuster, this is no good because that doesn’t lend itself to a very exciting description. For example, this can be described as the story of a French film producer (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing), his money troubles, and his family. (There are a lot of films about actors, a fair number about writers and directors, but not too many about producers; The Aviator, the Howard Hughes biography, would be one.) What’s pleasing about it is all in the characters and their relationships. That’s not to say nothing happens—plenty does—but that the story isn’t entirely driven by what happens in the first ten minutes, which is the usual case.

After ten minutes, I assumed the movie was going to be about a workaholic who can’t stay off his cell phone as he tries to placate a free-spending Swedish auteur, a group of Koreans coming to shoot in Paris, and his impatient creditors. He is a workaholic—“human spam” to one of his daughters—but also an adored father and husband, and the proud creator of dozens of non-blockbuster films. He cherishes the freedom of being his own boss, but the freedom is threatened by the bank’s threat to pull the plug on his credit. The most significant plot point happens past the halfway point. The emphasis also surprisingly shifts from the filmmaker to his Italian-born wife (hinted at by the title) and his three daughters, the eldest of which is played by de Lencquesaing’s real-life daughter, Alice. A young adult, she has the most complicated relationship with her father.

The second film of the still-under-30 Mia Hansen-Love is a film that is sometimes sad, but isn’t sappy. The lack of melodrama is one reason why such a film doesn’t feel heavy or depressing. The other is that the characters are enjoyable to be around; after 110 minutes, I wasn’t ready for the movie to end.

IMDB link

viewed 8/5/10 at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 8/6/10