Monday, March 29, 2010

CIFF: Days 7 Through 11

Posted by Laura / 1 comment » / , ciff, family, funny, life, movies, parents, people

Things got a little crazy at the end of last week. I hardly had time to get my homework done, let alone sit to write the daily blog posts that I had intended to write. Whoops. Oh well.

Day 7 started with The Baby Formula, a Canadian “mockumentary”-style saga about a lesbian couple’s journey into dual-motherhood as they both become pregnant through ground-breaking technology which allows sperm to be created from their stem cells, thereby allowing their children to truly be of their own flesh and blood. The concept of the birth was very interesting – especially that the two could only have female children. It wasn’t something that would have occurred to me. I liked the film a lot. It gave me a bit of baby mania, but that went away, as it always does. I thought the film was very interesting, and it certainly got me thinking.

Once we got out of that one, we headed to the food court where Johnathan’s mom was waiting for us. As far as I know, she’d never gone to anything at the film festival before, so it was a new experience for her. We got something to eat, then walked her to the ticket holder lines. Johnathan stayed with her while I staked out some seats in the theater for Three Days with the Family. As far as a first experience goes, I don’t think it was the best one. The film seemed to lack plot and any driving force behind it. There was a lot that went unsaid and unexplained, and maybe I was too dense to get it, but I felt like if this was Maria’s only experience with the festival, it would not have been positive. I think that was what bothered me the most.  The characters were undeveloped and too much was left unstated for it to be a satisfying film experience.

We were seeing Chameleon next, and there wasn’t a lot of time to dawdle. We walked Johnathan’s mom to the line, and then repeated the process from the previous film. I found seats, and Johnathan joined me not long after since the ticket-holder line was getting pretty long. The film was pretty good! It was a little bit suspenseful, a little funny, a little thrilling and overall pretty entertaining. It was a film about a con-man’s latest swindle. It was interesting to watch his plan progress and see what truly can happen when someone very good at what he does loses sight of his goal and gets distracted by something else. (In this case: love.) I think it redeemed the film festival for Johnathan’s mom, so even though she didn’t see any more at the 34th CIFF, maybe she’ll come back and see some next year.

We had a reasonable break after that one, so we sauntered up to Hospitality Headquarters for a while and enjoyed some snacks. The next film we saw was The Girl on the Train, which was… disappointing. I could see how it had the potential to be very interesting, but the main character had a very low affect and very little range of emotion. That made it hard to identify with her or even develop any level of feeling for her. By the end of the film, I really just wanted to smack her. It wasn’t a very good way to end our day at the festival. We had originally planned to stay for Small Crime, but had opted against it, owing to our bad experience with last year’s Greek film, and given that we’d seen two not-so-great movies already, we just went home.

The next day started with Best of Times – a change from our original schedule. We stayed home and slept in instead of getting up at 8AM and going in to see the 11AM round of films. It threw off the whole day, but I don’t regret not going to the first film. It didn’t really interest me. Best of Times was charming and sweet with a hint of bittersweet. It was from Thailand and the way the story unfolded was paced well, and the characters were developed enough for the audience to want them to succeed. The ending was realistic – not like many romantic dramas tend to be in American cinema. I quite enjoyed it and felt it was an excellent start to our film day.

The next originally was to have been The Last Days of Emma Blank, but we swapped it for another showing on Saturday and instead saw Small Crime after hearing that it was pretty good. I don’t regret making that move, either. Small Crime turned out to be interesting and engaging, if a bit slow to develop. The story was interesting and didn’t unfold too quickly. I was afraid it would end up being too predictable, but as more and more elements were added to the story of small-town drama, the possible endings changed and the story did not end at all as I had expected. I was glad we re-arranged our schedule to fit that back in.

We had originally planned to see Mrs. Moscowitz and the Cats, but after talking with some folks before Small Crime who hadn’t heard good things about it, we changed to The Last Train Home, which had also been on one of our lists. I kind of wish we hadn’t changed. It was a documentary about the mass migration in China for the new year. It focused on one family throughout, and while it was interesting from a familial standpoint, I thought it would address the trials and hardships involved with parents having to go to big cities to work and leaving their families behind a little bit more. Instead, it really seemed to focus on the unique hardships of one specific family, and it didn’t do anything to analyze it or even tell the audience exactly how it impacted their lives. It was just shots of the family talking, traveling, things they were doing. I wasn’t overly impressed with it. I was just expecting more from it, I think.

Afterward, we had some downtime in the Hospitality Headquarters, where I had to admit that I hadn’t loved The Last Train Home to the lady who we had been talking to (who had also seen it at the same time). The last film of the day was a Slovenian film called A Call Girl. It was about a college student in Slovenia who starts to work as a call girl so that she can afford the “finer” things in life, while simultaneously avoiding her other financial responsibilities and letting her schoolwork suffer. She runs into a number of difficulties – some pimps who want to “protect” her, an ex-boyfriend hell-bent on exposing her, and pursuit from the government and the press after her peripheral involvement with a German diplomat’s death. It was an interesting story and interesting to see how her life spiraled out of her control largely because of her own decisions. I thought the film was interesting. Once again – very slow to develop. I’m sure my patience for slow development got shorter as the week wore on, but I think a lot of the films rely too much on filler shots of walking instead of engaging story developments. Then it was time to go home. Day 8 began and ended on a high note.

The first film of day 9 was Protektor, a film set during WWII in Czechoslovakia. It was interesting stylistically, but I found the characters lacking. I’m not sure if I was missing something, but it seemed to lack some cohesion. I still found the style to be very interesting, and the muted colors helped to set the tone for the film, even if the plot didn’t do much to sustain it. Overall, I wasn’t terribly impressed with it.

Next was Father and Guns. This was a French Canadian comedy about a father and son who both work for the police force and have to go undercover as, well, father and son. This was probably our most interesting film festival experience. First, they had trouble with the screen – the curtains wouldn’t widen out. We all noticed that the start of the film was most certainly not in either French or English. It was in Russian. It didn’t take very long for people to figure out that they were trying to show us Hipsters! But it seems they didn’t notice, because when the snafu with the curtains was fixed, they started it again. We got partway into the first scene before the film was stopped. I mean, I really liked Hipsters, but that wasn’t what we were there to see! After another delay while they rewound the film and threaded the right one, we got started on Father and Guns. Not five minutes into it, the film melted. It melted! At that point, we were a solid half an hour delayed, so I was already suspecting we’d miss the next round. No matter, though. Father and Guns was Johnathan’s pick, but I ended up really enjoying it. It was subtitled well so that I forgot they were speaking French and not English because it was so smooth. The film had a humor in the same spirit as Hot Fuzz but with less of the gory violence. From start to finish, I really enjoyed it. It would be one I could see owning on DVD.

Sure enough, when we got out of Father and Guns, we had about one minute to get to the other side of the cinemas into the theater for Convention. We ended up having to skip it, because we were hungry and needed a bathroom break. So we went upstairs to the Hospitality Headquarters and sat for a while. While we were up there, we encountered someone that Johnathan compares to a certain group of roller coaster fanatics. He was going on about films and how he “knows” people and can put him (the gentleman he was accosting) in touch with all the right people to get his film promoted well. He probably went on for fifteen to twenty minutes while we discreetly watched with amusement. He finally left to catch the film that was starting last in the round, and the gentleman moved to the table on the other side of us, nearer to an outlet to plug in his laptop. It was then that we found out that he was the executive producer of Ivory, which we had scheduled for our last round that day. He talked to us about the film festival and how many films we’d seen, then talked a little about his film. We had been discussing skipping it earlier in the day, but after talking to him, I sort of felt obligated to see it. He kind of struck me like a lost puppy. He didn’t totally seem to know what was going on around him, but he was very friendly! We spent the break between films redoing our weekend schedule to oust some films that we weren’t sure why they made it on the list and to add some films that we hadn’t even planned on seeing to begin with. Then it was time to go down for another film.

I Am Love looked interesting on paper. It was another film where the plot seemed meant to focus on relationships, and unfortunately, it wasn’t very well developed. Tilda Swinton was beautiful, as usual, but her character was bland. The only character that seemed to have any depth at all died near the end of the film. Well, that sucked! It wasn’t a horrible movie, but I think Johnathan might have fallen asleep during, and I know I had a few moments where I drifted a bit. It just wasn’t as good as I expected it to be. Once again, I expected more.

Since we promised the executive producer that we would, we went to see Ivory. I figured I’d be interested in it – I’ve been in music basically my whole life, and I’m aspiring to be a classical musician professionally (someday). It seemed right up my alley. Johnathan also understands, having also been in music for much of his life. The film started, and not a full ten minutes into it, I was sick of hearing about how famous and amazing the main character’s grandfather had been. Who cares, man? You’re you and he’s him. You can’t ride his coattails to success. Then his “friend”, who really seemed more like he was meant to be one of those “frenemy” things, was a really flat character, and really only came across as a jerk. The girl was, meh, okay, but boring. And the other characters were just… there. Not even worth mentioning. After 45 minutes of wankery, we walked out. I couldn’t take it anymore, particularly after the main character, a pianist aspiring for big fame, dismissed Mozart as insignificant. Oh no you didn’t. Mozart is one of my favorite composers, and while I get that Brahms was his, it seemed like a crutch, and honestly – who would do that? It seemed to be a means of showing how much he knew about classical music, but it really only showed a lack of understanding. I wanted to scream. I was offended by the portrayal of all the musicians and by the implication of the movie that unless you’re pursuing the big dreams, the big fame, you’re not a true musician. My big goals in life revolve around a position in a city opera – and not even the Met! Does that make me less of a musician? I don’t fucking think so. Then, of course, the statements about music teachers, which I suspect is the “conflict” that the main character is meant to get over by the end of the film. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stand to sit there for another long, painful hour to find out exactly how the prick with no personality fared at the Liszt competition. Sorry, guys. I don’t think anyone in the process of the film actually went to Oberlin for music. If they did, I’d like to know who the fuck they were in classes with, because that’s not a wide cross-section of musicians in my experience! As you can see, I’m still steaming about the film a little bit. The older folks, apparently, really loved the film, though the executive producer said that we were its target audience. You’re way off the mark here, I think. Sorry guy. After fuming our way home, we sat together and tuned Johnathan’s guitar. Then it was time to go to bed and call an end to day 9.

After totally rearranging our schedule for the weekend, I honestly went through the day not knowing what the heck we were seeing next, with the exception of a few films. The first on Saturday (day 10) was Will Not Stop There. It was a film from Croatia and Serbia. I know very little about that area and its politics, which made some of the understanding of the film a little bit difficult. It wasn’t a big enough part of the film to stunt the understanding completely, though. I thought the film was a little bit quirky and kind of sweet. It wasn’t amazing or life-changing, but it was pretty good. It wasn’t a total waste of time, which by that point in the festival I viewed as a major plus.

The next film was Serbian and Albanian. The correlation of the two films was totally unintended. Honeymoons seemed like a good idea on paper, but Johnathan most definitely fell asleep during, and frankly, I don’t blame him. The film didn’t have a lot to drive it, and it spent a long time working up to the conflict and climax, which then happened and “resolved” in about ten minutes total, it seemed like. That, in combination with some folks talking created a not-so-pleasant situation. We left the film feeling disappointed at another “dud”.

Afterward, we had just enough time to get a refill on our pop and take a pit stop, then we were on our way to see Storage, which Johnathan had picked up. The film was a definite thriller dealing with murder and crime. It was a very interesting experience for me. I don’t do very well with graphic violence in film, and this one had it in spades. About halfway through, I started feeling a little sick to my stomach and thought that maybe I should leave the theater. I wanted to see how it ended, though, and I thought that it might be good for me to try and tough it out rather than run away from it. Well, afterward, I realized that I should have left the theater. It didn’t get any better and I certainly didn’t feel any better by the end. It was an exciting move and had quite a few unexpected plot twists to keep the audience on edge. There was even a scream from an audience member at an unexpected moment. Johnathan came out of the film raving about it. I think it took me a full five minutes to calm down enough that I could say anything about it. Despite the horrible feelings I was experiencing, I still gave the film a 3 out of 4 rating. It seems really odd in retrospect to do that, given how badly I was feeling, but I still think it was a good movie, even if I don’t handle films like that very well. We went up to the hospitality headquarters after that, and I downed a beer in near record time while I tried to calm down from the nausea I was still experiencing. I know Johnathan felt bad about choosing that film, but I still maintain that any of my discomfort was based solely on my own willingness to stay in the theater rather than leave. I’m glad he liked it, and I think I learned something from it: LEAVE if you’re made that uncomfortable! I’ll remember that for the next time I might happen to end up in the theater for a terrifying film.

Next was My Year Without Sex. I couldn’t honestly remember what the film was about, except that it was about, well, someone’s year without sex. It was an Australian film, which brought our coincidences that day to two (Storage was also out of Australia). The film was sweet and funny and a little bit heartbreaking. In many ways, it was just like any other family comedy, but in others, it got me thinking. Mostly, it got me thinking about faith (or lack thereof) and about what would happen if I died now. It reminded me that we have to create wills and living wills. I enjoyed the film – and I think I enjoyed it even more because it helped bring me back from the desolation and horror I felt after Storage.

The last film of the day was The Last Days of Emma Blank, which we had moved to Saturday in order to accommodate Small Crime. The only word I can really use to describe it is… weird. It was really weird. It was funny, but incredibly, indescribably weird. It was puzzling for a while, because we, as the audience, didn’t know why the family was acquiescing to Emma’s demands without much complaint or resistance until close to the end of the film. Really, the film was very interesting and it had a few unexpected twists and turns of plot that kept me engaged and interesting through the end, in addition to the delightful weirdness which I thoroughly enjoyed. I know others in the theater probably didn’t like it as much as I did, but oh – did I love it. I was pleased that the night didn’t end with a whimper.

Sunday, the last day of the festival, started out kind of slowly. We were both very tired, but I wanted to see some of the films we had scheduled for the day (well, all of them, really). The first was Mid-August Lunch, about a man caring for his elderly mother, when he is put upon to care for the elderly mothers of others in his acquaintance. The weekend for them moves forward sometimes painfully slowly as the group of ladies adjust to one another and to the new environment. It was a sweet film, but not overly engaging for its length. I felt like it needed more conflict to drive it. Perhaps I was becoming blase about the films at this point, but I did enjoy it. I just didn’t love it.

The next was another almost immediate turn-around to get in to the film on time. It was The Enemy, out of Venezuela. The subtitling on this film was a bit annoying because not everything was translated, in particular the text at the very end of the film. I have no idea what they were trying to tell me because nobody bothered to put it into English for those of us not able to speak Spanish. I found The Enemy to be quite engaging and interesting. It explored the idea of good versus evil and how easily those lines can blur, even where one might think they were very clear. Johnathan didn’t like it as much, but I thought it was an interesting concept. It was about twenty minutes longer than it absolutely needed to be, though, and that contributed to my increasing boredom by the end of the film. I’m sensing a trend with myself that I would rather have a shorter film than artistic shots. Oh well.

Splinters was our next film. It was not on either of our lists, but in trying to find a film for that block so that we wouldn’t end up sitting around for a couple of hours while waiting for our closing film, I checked out what was available. This one seemed very interesting on paper. It was from Poland, and I was interested to hear how much the language sounded similar to German in spots. The film was divided into three parts, which seemed like it might work in theory, but it seemed to stop the film where it might have flowed seamlessly from one part to the next with clever editing. I wasn’t thrilled with the film, but I was even less thrilled by the talking going on around us. The woman two seats down from me was a chatterbox, and then there was the couple in the row behind us, and the large group at the other end of our row, and then the elderly couples in the row in front of us. Seriously, one would think that by day 11 of the film festival, people would have known not to talk! It can totally ruin the experience for everyone else. Thankfully, that was the worst talking experience we had for the whole festival.

The next (and final) film we saw was Paper Man. After a final sojourn in the Hospitality Headquarters, we headed in and got seats near the back. I forgot about the bucket for change, and I never have any cash on me anyway, so we had nothing to contribute to the final push for the challenge match. The film was interesting. The concept of imaginary friends is interesting to me, since I never had one myself. (I think my brother was a pretty good playmate, so there was no need for an imaginary friend!) It was interesting to see the concept explored of a relationship with a man and a teenage girl that didn’t have to be lewd or inappropriate, but more like a father-daughter relationship, which clearly both of them craved. It was sweet and a little bit sad. I’m pretty sure when it gets wide release, it will get an R rating. It’s probably merited. I wouldn’t have dealt with it very well as a kid, that’s for sure. It’s not a “kid” movie.

We ended up not staying for the closing reception because, as previously mentioned, we were both quite tired, and considering ours was the last film to get out in that final round of films, we never would have been able to see anything. We chose, instead, to leave and get some dinner. We stopped at Applebee’s and rather than standing around straining to see and possibly to hear, we sat in the comfort of the restaurant, enjoyed tall beers and watched the twitter feed for the award winners and the final numbers.

With 71,500 people visiting the festival this year, we could feel that it was more crowded on some days, particularly in the evenings, than last year. Since we had passes, we didn’t have to worry about getting into any films, only about whether we would be able to get decent seats that weren’t in the very front of the theater. We got free beer several times, and enjoyed free food for most of the festival in addition to what the food court had to offer. We weren’t the best when it came to eating (and I can feel the water retention because of all the sodium we ate this last week), but I feel like we had a good week nevertheless. Now it’s time to get back to real life – work, cleaning the apartment, exercise and errands. CIFF is over for another year. I’m already looking forward to next year.