I'M SO EXCITED 7/22/13

The words surreal, strange, fantastical and bizarre have been associated with Pedro Almodovar’s cinema along with longing, fragility, fluidity of gender, and the search for one’s individual sexuality in a world filled with variations from the “norm.” His 2011 movie THE SKIN I LIVE IN encompassed all those terms and I for one was deeply touched by that exceptionally idiosyncratic film. On the other hand, I’M SO EXCITED is Almodovar on his tiptoes – LIGHT and FROTHY. I do not deny that the movie made me laugh out loud, but it never made me ache with confusion and pain. It never touched me beneath the skin I live in.

The bouncy, brightly colored, whimsical, animated opening credits put a smile on the audiences’ faces, setting the mood for the craziness that was to come. The movie bolts onto the screen with cameos by Airline workers, Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas, two of the finest actors in Almodovar’s repertory.  But their cameos are basically a “schtick” - an eccentric bit - with no relation to the rest of the movie, except as a sign that we are about to be launched on a wild ride. 

We meet the flight attendants and passengers of Peninsula 2549 – an Airline like no other - bound from Spain to Mexico, and discover early on that there is trouble with the plane’s landing gear which puts everyone at dire risk as the plane circles round and round looking for a place to land.  How the crew and passengers deal with the end-of-life/ tying-up-loose-ends business goes to the heart of this comic allegory. Life goes on in the midst of probable death so everyone - actually everyone who is not in Economy Class (they are drugged and asleep) - lets loose and are plied with drinks, drugs and engage in sex – a feast of debauchery including gay and straight sex, anonymous and public couplings. We are privy to personal histories, infidelities, lies and scandals – humanity with all its human failings flung out like baggage for all to see and hear.

Three of the Flight attendants who are all gay, function as a Greek Chorus – commenting on the action, and entertaining the travelers with a wonderfully kinky and freaky rendition of the Pointer Sisters song “I Am So Excited.” These flamboyant stewards are the focus of the movie – their struggles with morality, philosophical musings, religion, and libidinal urges make for a tender, extravagant burlesque. There is also a Cassandra-like character – a predictor of future doom that nobody wants to hear, because the underlying truths make everyone uncomfortable.

I love that Pedro Almodovar works on films that are unpredictable. He experiments with all kinds of genres – some are secret and intimate and others are open and “cosmic”. I admire that he does what he wants and each movie is a challenge. Immediately after the movie ended, I felt that this comedy was both hilarious and often too obviously “over the top.” On further reflection, I realized that what I had perceived as superficiality was a strongly structured jab at our human vulnerabilities – delivered with jest and generosity – all the better to grasp and hold you.

20 FEET FROM STARDOM 7/8/13

What does it feel like to be 20 feet from stardom? Ask me – I am a visual artist who is familiar with the waves that crest and then come crashing down. Oh yes the fickleness of nature and the vicissitudes of acclaim, glory and celebrity! 20 FEET FROM STARDOM directed by Morgan Neville gives us the back-story on the back-up singers for many superstars from the 1960’s to today. This film focuses on the mostly African American women who gave depth, sparkle, glamour (with style and swagger,) and musical resonance to the performances of Ray Charles, Ike and Tina Turner, Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Luther Vandross, Sting, and David Bowie among others. But who are these women? Do we even know their names?

The documentary, 20 FEET FROM STARDOM introduces them to us by giving a NAME to the voices – giving a life story to those who have been blotted out. We are made privy to often exciting, exhilarating and heart-breaking narratives through archival film footage and biographical accounts that divulge the years of hard work these professionals endured honing their craft. And we see them today revealing the alterations that time doth inflict on us all. In the early years, many of these gorgeous singers were “scenery” for the guys up front OOOhing and AAAhing in perfect harmony, wearing tight clothes that accentuated shaking, fluid hips while they bellowed out an orchestrated range of tones “behind” the Maestro. But they were much more than “eye candy” – they were integral to the fire and spirit that drove the audiences into a frenzied state at jam-packed concerts.

Each one of these women has a history – a long history with the world of music and the artists that they have been associated with. We meet Claudia Lennear, Darlene Love, Merry Clayton, Lisa Fischer, Táta Vega, Judith Hill and the Waters Family, etc, as well as Sheryl Crow who sang back-up for Michael Jackson early in her career We get glimpses of how these individuals were treated, ie: Darlene Love by Phil Spector who would not let her out of her contract and stalled her career for years.  In contrast, Luther Vandross was incredibly generous to those who worked with him such as Brooklyn born, Lisa Fischer who I was particularly attracted to. She garnered the respect and admiration of those who sang with her, and to this day at the age of 55 shares lead vocals with Mick Jagger and is still singing back-up on all the Rolling Stones tours. Fischer has a beautiful smile, a wonderful, natural and hopeful way of talking about her experiences. Yes she and her voice got to me!

Personal reminiscences, life dramas and struggles are delineated. Each woman has forged her own path; each woman has had her ups and downs.  Success is ephemeral and the most penetrating thing that they can do for themselves is to sing loud and clear, giving expression to the intensity and breadth of the joy and sorrow that springs from one’s inner, profound self.

As an artist I try to remind myself of this everyday.

THE BLING RING 7/7/13

Every film Sofia Coppola has directed is both romantic in a perverse way, and touchingly innocent. THE BLING RING zeroes in on our fascination with celebrity culture, but not of the “great” performers, but rather our adoration of the accessories/accoutrements that sheer beauty and glamour bestows on the “chosen” that grace the covers of tabloids and supermarket/ convenience store displays. I would call this phenomenon - “Stash/Splash” with its spill over marketing of an intoxicating lifestyle to those who covet a superficial “look” and sleek values.

Marc (Israel Broussard), an average looking teen is the new “kid” attending his first day of High School in an upscale Los Angeles neighborhood.  We discover early on that Marc has had a bit of a rocky educational history in his former high schools – nothing too serious – but Coppola is letting us know that this young man does not toe the “straight and narrow.” Like a wildcat sniffing a lamb, Rebecca, a lovely looking, predatory fellow student (an excellent performance by Katie Chang) immediately discerns a kindred spirit and the two become “best friends” each voraciously enthralled with celeb lore and the “bling” that blankets their lives.

Rebecca, the ringleader, who is fearless, desires what these “icons” have, and is determined to get what she wants, introducing Marc, her willingly passive partner into an exciting, seemingly benign world of  “trespass.” He works the computer and finds out when the targets/marks are out of town on promotional jaunts, and then they both break into these fabulous homes complete with rooms (not just closets) of over the top designer clothes, jewelry, shoes, etc. Both intruders assume that what they steal would never be missed. Soon we are introduced to a gang of girlfriends who rapaciously join the night invasions, each acting like ravaging foragers.

To complete the picture, we are given a glimpse into the family life of one of the members of the club whose name is Niki, played by Emma Watson the British actress known for her part as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter film series, doing a great impersonation of “Valley” girl patois. She lives with her new-age mother (Leslie Mann) and an “adopted” friend and fellow conspirator Sam (Taissa Farmiga); both girls are home-schooled and straddle innocence and marauding hunger for feverish experience. In one telling “teaching lesson” Niki’s mother projects an image of Angelina Jolie on the screen and asks the girls what they admire about her. They respond to her clothes, thinness, jewels, and most importantly her “hot” husband Brad Pitt.

THE BLING RING is more than just satire; it envelops us with a biting halo of truth pointing at America’s obsession with obtaining money effortlessly, and what such currency can purchase. I also kept thinking that Sofia Coppola is showing the flip side of the rap culture’s adulation and emulation of “bling” as evidenced by white upper class privileged youths. Except once caught the sentencing for transgressions are a whole lot “lighter” for one social class than another. Here Money talks.

FILL THE VOID 6/23/13

FILL THE VOID written and directed by Rama Burshtein, a native New Yorker who joined the world of the Hassidic community in Tel Aviv, gives us an intimate glimpse into this Ultra-Orthodox sub-culture in Israel – replete with beautifully composed close up images of their rituals, and codified religious laws, and the workings of the councils whose power over the lives of the community, particularly women is despairingly restrictive.

Girls from a young age are encouraged to get married and stay at home to procreate and raise children, as well as organizing and maintaining their households. The Rabbinical decisions in the “arrangement” of marriages, the “charitable” doling out of money, the resolutions of domestic and business conflicts, as well as the necessity of women to wear head coverings, etc. are similar to other Middle Eastern Fundamentalist cultures. The Hassidic men celebrate pivotal occasions, drinking wine and singing together– haunting mournful chants along with lively, uplifting melodies - while the women are sitting in a group, segregated, serving the food and cleaning up after them. Despite the realization that many women do have a commanding voice in the confines of their homes, I could barely contain my rage.

FILL THE VOID deals with the youthful anticipation of romantic love vs. a young woman’s feelings of (what can only be termed) “biblical” duty. We are privy to the negotiations that are employed in “arranged marriages”. Elders meet with the respective parents and determine financial dispositions, and the couples in question face each other to assess their compatibility for minutes, or (if they are lucky) up to a few hours– each one has a veto power; both can reject the choices that have been made for them, but that too has consequences.

The film’s opening shot zooms in on a lovely18 year-old girl/woman, Shira (Hada Yaron) racing to embrace her exquisite 28 year old, very pregnant sister Esther (Renana Raz) who arrives with her husband for the Purim Holiday festivities.  Unexpectedly this celebration turns into a tragic event, when Esther gives birth to a baby boy and dies in childbirth. Shortly after Esther’s death, her grieving husband a handsome Yochay Goldberg (Yiftach Klein) is encouraged by the powers-that–be to remarry in order to have a wife assist in raising the newborn child. When it is decided that he will be betrothed to a Belgium woman and leave Israel, the infant’s grandmother Rivka (Irith Sheleg,) Esther and Shira’s mother, is heartbroken and feels the best solution to keeping her grandchild in Israel, would be to devise a union between her tender-hearted, sensitive daughter Shira and the older widower.

The film focuses on Shira’s emotionally complicated response to marrying her ex-brother-in-law, and the feeling of responsibility to the newborn child and her parents wishes. I felt that those around this innocent young woman were selfishly heedless to the fact that Shira was in deep mourning for the anguished loss of her adored sister - an event that created an unspeakable “void” in her life. The ensuing depth of her bereavement is one that cannot be filled – the interchangeability of relationships is a complex question. I am not sure of the answer.

BEFORE MIDNIGHT 6/16/13

Despite the quick-witted repartee and theatrical dialogue, I am a great fan of Richard Linklater, the director of the Before Series - spaced almost 10 years apart: Before Sunrise (1995,) Before Sunset (2004,) and the most recent Before Midnight (2013.)  I also have been smitten with the wildly extreme individualized depictions in the film Bernie (2012,) and Linklater’s “digitally animated” Waking Life (2001.) Every movie Linklater directs is beautifully written and all are a rare breed in the filmic world – idiosyncratic characterizations overlaid with visual beauty and trenchantly intelligent talkfests.

Before Midnight begins with a disheveled Ethan Hawke playing Jesse, a successful American writer living in Paris with Celine (the beautiful Julie Delpy) he met 18 years ago on a train to Vienna – and the 24 hour impetuous period they spent falling-in-love only to end when Jesse returned to his life and wife in the USA; that is the essence of the first film in this trilogy - Before Sunrise.

They meet again by accident 10 years later in Before Sunset where Jesse is on a book tour in Paris promoting the book he wrote about their brief encounter. The spark is reunited. The same actors are in all the films making Before Midnight, the most recent incarnation, even more poignant, as life’s imprints are evident in their now older faces and bodies.

In Before Midnight we meet the 41 years old Jesse, a successful writer, at an Airport in Greece awkwardly saying goodbye to his self-contained, bit of a stranger, 14 year old son who is returning to Chicago (where he lives with Jesse’s ex-wife,) after vacationing with his father and Celine in the Southern Peloponnese. The dialogue is very natural and so familiar that I felt emotionally pierced by the ramifications of divorce’s radiating consequences, not only on the father and son but affecting the whole family dynamic. Goodbyes are always complicated and this particular one hits Jesse hard – realizing that his son is growing up without him a continent away, since he is presently living with Celine and his lovely twin daughters in Paris.

The difficulties in dealing with the banality of everyday family obligations,  the changing nature of love and sexual desire, replete with the contradictions and conflicts that time and responsibilities inflict on relationships are at the heart of the movies's lengthy, sometimes juvenile, often both boring and provocative conversations. Both Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy are able antagonists – with lots of biting jabs and generalizations (some annoyingly tasteless) about the differences between male/female predilections. I often tended to side with the Ethan Hawke character feeling that Julie Delpy’s arguments were fulfilling her need for reassurance over reasonableness, with disappointingly oft-used “feminist” clichés thrown into the mix, but then wham! she would come through with a penetrating verbal jab which hit the mark - so the arguments ended up in the all-too-familiar male/female "deadlock/draw." 

And yet Before Midnight asks many questions about issues that many of us avoid discussing, doing so in a refreshingly comedic yet deadly serious way. Like life, we confront the unknown all the time. What the future will bring to this couple might be seen perhaps in 10 years time…or not. I am curious.

THE ICEMAN 6/1/13

How does one balance “family values” and the criminal mind? THE ICEMAN, directed by Ariel Vromen explores that schism, based on the true- life story of Richard Kuklinski, a mob enforcer for various Mafia families, aka “The Polack” who was indicted for killing 100 plus victims between @1954-1986 when he was taken down by an undercover officer in a drug deal on a quiet suburban street in Dumont, New Jersey. We get to see a lot of New Jersey – from Jersey City to the suburbs of Bergen County starting with Hoboken where the story begins in 1964. The clothes, cars, facial hair, and hair styles change with time, from his beautifully tailored suits to loud, brassy, too tight silk shirts becoming an indicator of the state of Kuklinski’s social/ monetary and mental status.

THE ICEMAN could be dismissed as another classic “film noir” movie, photographed not in black and white, but shot in subdued and shadowy colors; though at the onset of the movie, I kept thinking - okay this genre is too familiar - I have seen it played out many times before. BUT what makes this film so powerful and poignant is revealed in our initial encounter with a large lumbering, beefy, inarticulate guy – a beautiful in-your-face (accompanied by seeing–the-pores) close-up portrayal of Richard Kuklinski by the brilliant actor, Michael Shannon mooning over a slight, delicate, fragile, Jersey girl named Deborah (Winona Ryder finally given the opportunity to show her “chops” in a solid nuanced role) who becomes his wife. The visual body-type contradictions seen in this early frame echoes the plot's strange anomalies.

Nicknamed The Iceman – for freezing his corpses in an Industrial freezer so that the time of death could not be determined, Michael Shannon gives a powerful performance as a character whose only solace, loyalty and emotional ties are with the family that he has created with Deborah. Otherwise he is “cold” and hermetic sealed off from any other connections. The split between the innocence and “normality” of his upper middle-class family - his two lovely daughters go to Catholic school living an existence that is the opposite of  Kuklinski’s brutal childhood. The gap between his “day” and often “middle-of-the-night” jobs, and his “domestic” life is a difficult balancing act. The family is oblivious to the source of their comfortable circumstances and the children adore their adoring father – irony rules.

Ray Liotta plays the vicious Roy Demeo, Kuklinski’s immediate “boss” (in the Mafia chain of command), equally brutish displaying a ruthlessness needed to oversee merciless underlings. The relationship between the shark-like maneuverings in the under-world is contrasted to the steady hum of Kuklinski’s “conventional” reality, but that thin line is hard to keep separate, and is eventually punctured physically and psychologically as his complex world slowly disentangles.

A person who can murder with such ease and dispassion usually does not garner our sympathy, but Michael Shannon’s expressiveness is very seductive, and despite being termed “the iceman”, we penetrate his enigmatic veneer and catch a glimpse of how a childhood of administered pain can mold one into the hardness of stone…but rarely into a killer. In this case we have an individual who became a contract murderer, and he was really good at it. Richard Kuklinski died in a Trenton NJ prison in 2006 supposedly of “natural causes,” but that is debatable since he was scheduled to be a witness against the Gambino family in an upcoming trial.

FRANCES HA 5/26/13

Finding roommates in NYC, “the city of all possibilities” to share your space and often your innermost dreams and insecurities is the backdrop of the eccentric, sometimes annoying comic/tragic film FRANCES HA, directed by Noah Baumbach and co-written with Greta Gerwig who plays the Frances of the title. The Ha part will be wittily explained in the final frame. The movie is shot in a sepia tone – no color to distract from our fundamental human needs – finding a home, finding love and/or companionship, realizing our ambitions, and finding the economic means to do so, in this case preferably in the arts, covering the wide gamut of the “creative” spectrum. No character is a day-laborer - all come from the subculture of talented, yearning, touching on 30 year olds that populate our fair city moving from Chinatown to Washington Heights, and even dipping a toe into Brooklyn. But things are not always black and white – luminous grays make the city and its characters both more depressing and also more transparent.

We meet Frances (Greta Gerwig) and the beloved roommate  Sophie (Mickey Sumner) acting a bit bizarrely “mock fighting” on the streets of NYC, but then falling into one another’s arms in laughter. This scene encapsulates the intensity of their relationship as most adored best friends who can communicate, understand and accept one another – no “guy” intrudes on this special bond. NOT until Sophie announces that she is going to leave and move into another apartment with her boyfriend aptly named Patch. This shocking announcement leaves the loyal Frances at very loose ends. An aspiring dancer, and not a very good one, (but a much better choreographer,) she spends the rest of the movie wildly searching for a Sophie substitute – not only to live with, but to rekindle what was once a cherished kinship. Platonic vs. romantic love, the deeply affecting roots of each are explored.

My movie mate observed (and I agree with her) that Greta Gerwig is an actress who is always Greta Gerwig – like the Diane Keaton of Woody Allen films is always Diane Keaton. There seems to be a cult following for this lovely actress who through her body gestures proclaims contradictions. Tall, lithe, slightly awkward, and overtly “bouncy”– skipping and running like a gazelle along the streets of NYC, as if the sheer beauty of movement can overcome despair.

Throughout the film, Frances is so vulnerable, dependent, and oblivious to social cues, that I cringed and squirmed uncomfortably, watching how she talked too much, desperately searching to communicate – “searchers” who are too obvious are often avoided because they embarrass others – until she finally settles down within herself after a brief not-the-usual-kind of interlude to Paris. From being irritated with her character, I gradually, and surprisingly, found myself touched by Frances to the point of feeling tender affection for this fragile, oddball spirit, and was disconcerted to find that I was holding back tears.

Frances’ “coming of age” story involves a trip back to her family home in Sacramento where we experience her role as daughter with both parents (acted by her actual mother and father) in a caring environment, and a short but revelatory stint back to her Vassar College haunts. An oft-explored idea is revisited - sometimes we have to go away to come back and re-connect with our lives afresh.  I have known people like Frances who are earnest and ambitious, tender yet steely and ballsy enough to discern what is needed to take what little control they can over their lives. Director Noah Baumbach skirts the all-too-familiar tightrope of clichés to make FRANCES HA worth viewing.