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EARLY AUTUMN HARVEST


TWO FACES OF THE TWIN CITIES

FACTOTUM (B+) / AURORA BOREALIS (A)

Indie filmmakers have discovered the photogenic Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul in a big way this year. At least three films in current release were shot on location in the two towns that eyeball each other from opposite sides of the Mississippi River. I reviewed Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion”, filmed in and around the historic Fitzgerald Theater in downtown St. Paul, the NPR program’s permanent home since 1981, earlier this summer. What follows are two reviews of Minneapolis-centered films I saw at the Provincetown International Film Festival in June. “Factotum” and “Aurora Borealis”, in art houses now, are polar opposites in mood, spirit, and outlook, but both are directed with sure hands and feature performances that are potent and persuasive.

“Factotum” is a 93-minute spiritual sinkhole of a film underwritten by the Norwegian Film Council and capably helmed by Norwegian director Bent Hamer, there being a strong ethnic connection with the large Scandinavian population in Minnesota. That said, the movie itself is essentially based on the roustabout life experiences of novelist Charles Bukowski, and even the relatively pristine Minneapolis, it seems, has a noxious, inhospitable underbelly for “Factotum” to fester in.

Hamer’s film reprises the character of Bukowski’s alter ego, the poet Henry Chinaski, a role that signaled such promise for Mickey Rourke in the 1987 big-screen bender, “Barfly”, which Bukowski wrote, German-Iranian Barbet Schroeder directed, and Faye Dunaway costarred in as Chinaski’s sotted girlfriend Wanda Wilcox.

“Factotum,” which opened to mixed reviews in Europe last year, has solid credentials, but it’s distressing and exhausting to sit through, unless one derives sadistic pleasure from eavesdropping on the degenerating lush lives of two sex and alcohol addicts. And if you’re partial to endings that are revelatory or hopeful, be advised that “Factotum” comes to an abrupt stop with no more than a fatalistic shrug, as if we’re meant to assume that Chinaski’s life will stagger on along the same numbing path until the day he dies under the crushing weight of a floor-to-ceiling stack of rejected rhymes that has toppled over onto him.

By definition of the world “factotum,” Henry Chinaski is a man of many jobs, yet is only marginally employable -- meaning he holds a job for as long as it or someone associated with it doesn’t piss him off or doesn’t come between him and the two passions that define him -- writing and drinking. Well, to be honest, there’s a third passion, and that’s fornicating. Chinaski, as embodied by the increasingly percipient Matt Dillon, is sullen, strong-willed, and single-minded about where his prioritiies lie. We follow him through short stints as a statue cleaner and cabbie trainee, and entry-level jobs in an ice factory, pickle plant, and bicycle supply warehouse. When a coworker gets him hooked on the ponies, Henry at last is on a fast track to easy money. And that’s just ducky with girlfriend Jan (Lili Taylor) until his new line of work begins sapping too much of his sexual energy, and she complains that he fucked her better as a bum than he does as a bookie.

Now there’s enough room for women in Chinaski’s life as long as they don’t give him lip, don’t distract him when he’s putting words down on paper, and are in sync with his thirst for boozin’ and hunger for bangin’. And Jan was about as amiable a partner as Henry could have hoped for. She didn’t nag him about a job -- unlike many women who don’t want their men around the house and under foot, Jan was cool about Henry’s itinerant job status. As long as he filched enough cigarettes from the glove boxes of unlocked cars, as long as there was a full bottle on the table every day, and as long as he was a virtuoso in the sack, Jan was a happy camper, harboring no illusions about a more productive life. She may have passed out every night, but she arose the next morning buoyed and luminous.

Now that horses have taken center stage in Henry’s life -- or Jan thinks they have -- she reacts impulsively -- no, maybe intuitively -- packs up, and leaves. For a time, Henry shacks up with Laura (an almost unrecognizable Marisa Tomei), member of a stable of floozies-in-waiting for a kinky French millionaire named Pierre (Didier Flammand). When this liaison sours, Henry goes looking for Jan and finds her working as a hotel chambermaid, defining her sense of self-worth by the number of tricks she turns in an average day. Taylor, at her best as characters who are emotionally enigmatic (e.g., Lisa Kimmel Fisher in “Six Feet Under”, Valerie Jean Solanas in “I Shot Andy Warhol”), received the “Excellence in Acting” award at the Provincetown International Film Festival in June, for her work in more than 40 independent films. Variety has aptly dubbed her “the first lady of the indie cinema”.

But this is clearly Dillion’s film, and while he’s made a career of one-dimensionallly crass and coarse dudes who sneer, swagger, and posture a lot, his work in “Crash” and this film reveal an ability to flesh out more complex personalities with subtler emotional shadings and deeper sensitivities. The only humor in “Factotum” is cynical and derives from Dillon’s deadpan delivery of caustic one-liners, invariably at someone else’s expense. Comic relief is transitory, though; “Factotum” is an arduous schlep through a boozy fog, but Dillon and Taylor are resourceful troopers -- they manage to convey codependent addiction without parodying the boilerplate, stock-in-trade mannerisms filmgoers have come to associate with screen characters who drink a lot. “Factotum” causes us to wonder just how random and circumstantial is our ability as imperfect and vulnerable human beings in a conflicted world not to stray from the expected straight and narrow.

Frank Sinatra is reputed to have gone on record that he respected whatever it took for people to get through their daily rigors, even if that meant a fifth of Jack Daniels. Well, Henry and Jan don’t run in Jack Daniels circles, but they do subscribe fully to the Sinatra philosophy, even if their anesthetic of choice is more like Old Crow.

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The same invigorating climate and nurturing chemistry of Minneapolis that drew the diverse personalities of the Mary Tyler Moore Show together for 168 half-hour TV episodes in the 1970’s “ is at the forefront of “Aurora Borealis”, a bittersweet tale of deferred coming of age and coming to terms capably stewarded by first-time director James C. E. Burke from a screenplay by Brent Boyd that is irresistibly diverting and engaging even while it’s being profoundly observant. As both entertainment and social commentary, “Aurora Borealis” is one of the best films I’ve seen so far this year.

Duncan Shorter (a decidedly more mature Joshua Jackson than we currently see in “Dawson’s Creek” reruns) just can’t seem to find himself in a society that routinely defines status and worth by “what it is you do” for a living. Duncan’s stock in trade is getting fired from inconsequential jobs, and not because he has an alcohol problem and short fuse like Henry Chinaski -- more like his clunker of a car is always breaking down, and he’s frequently a no-show at work. Duncan has a cadre of buddies he plays hockey with -- guys whose lives revolve around the up and down fortunes of the Minnesota Wild and Minnesota Vikings. But Duncan is a zero in the romance department, partly because of his reputation as a screw-up -- even his pals chide and deride him -- and partly because of his immaturity and social awkwardness. But, right from the beginning, it’s clear to us, if not to them, that Duncan, at 25, is a diamond in the rough, a work in progress, living in the shadow of a high-achieving older brother and the unresolved circumstances of his father’s premature death 10 years before at the age of 39.

Jacob Shorter (Steven Pasquale), the aforementioned brother, is a slick, shark-like corporate type with a house in the fashionable ‘burbs, who cheats on his wife in a manner inspired, he crows, by Billy Wilder’s Academy Award-winning gem “The Apartment”. Jacob regularly commandeers his kid brother’s apartment as a trysting place and throws Duncan a $50 bill for the short-term rental. Duncan hates himself for being an accessory to adultery, but, frankly, he needs the money. Oh, and Jacob is the smart and successful one, and with those credentials come entitlement.

The only place Duncan gets any real respect is when he’s visiting his grandparents Ronald (Donald Sutherland) and Ruth (Louise Fletcher), who live in a high-rise senior apartment building overlooking the twin downtowns. Ronald has a bundle of health problems, including Parkinson’s, a balky prostate, and a bum ticker, but the one that vexes him the most is an encroaching case of Alzheimer’s, already in its middle stages. He’s beginning to have seriously muddled moments, despite faithfully running through a daily regimen of mental exercises with his home nurse and therapist Kate (Juliette Lewis). He insists he sees the Aurora Borealis from his apartment terrace, even though the Northern Lights are only rarely visible that far south. What he’s really looking at is illumination given off by distant office towers, but no one, least of all Duncan, has the heart to disabuse him of his delusions, and, as you may have guessed from the title, they play an integral part in the film’s coda.

However, Ronald’s dimming senses and fading memory have not clouded his perceptions about Duncan’s intrinsic human virtues. He and his younger grandson have enjoyed a thriving camaraderie, a mutual affinity for one another since Duncan was a child . And now Duncan’s truest ally, the only one who champions his cause, who favors him over his brother is slipping away.

As he’s leaving his grandparents’ building one day, Duncan notices a help wanted posting on the lobby bulletin board -- the building’s handyman needs an assistant. He jumps at the chance and nails the job. Now he’ll get to spend more time with Ronald, take some of the caregiving heat off grandmother Ruth, and, as a bonus, see more of nurse Kate, with whom he’s developing a flirtation -- with grandpa on the sidelines slinging, well maybe lobbing, cupid-like arrows. Kate is the first to catch on and needles the old man, “why you crafty old matchmaker.” Indeed, Kate is just what the doctor ordered for both Ronald and Duncan, but eventually the flourishing romance between the two young people hits a snag -- Kate is used to a peripatetic lifestyle, and San Diego is on her radar. Duncan’s rooted in Minneapolis, the security of home turf embedded in his soul. And there’s still that ever-nagging business about his dad’s death -- was the fatal heart attack triggered by a snort of coke provided by family friend Stu? “Stu knows what happened,” Duncan tells Kate, “but I don’t have the balls to ask him.” Eventually, he grows the balls.

If you’re beginning to suspect a formulaic narrative, let me assure you that “Aurora Borealis” is not a connect-the-dots exercise. There are serendipties, and there are sorrows, but not a sniff of sentimentality. The film is an ode to loyalties and the ties that bind, but recognizes that, in the end, our first responsibility is always to ourselves.

There are the usual allusions and apologies to the Minnesota winter -- “it’s only December and my nipples are so hard they could cut glass” -- but perspective runs strong in this script for quality of life, a prevailing congeniality, a vigorous sense of community pride, a harsh climate that huddles people together in twos, tens, and thousands.

Of the finely drawn performances all around, Donald Sutherland’s stands out as his most cogent and compelling since “Ordinary People” a quarter century ago. The 71-year-old Canadian actor, father of Kiefer, besides currently starring as Nathan Templeton in the TV series “Commander in Chief”, has had supporting roles in an astounding 10 theatrical films in the past three years. His Ronald Shorter is a tour de force -- the stuff of Academy Award recognition -- and “Aurora Borealis”, which, halfway through filmdom’s fiscal year, has a place on my dazzling dozen list, should be on your must-see list.


SURVIVING 9/11

THE GREAT NEW WONDERFUL (A)

In a year in which the heroes of 9/11 have been saluted by no fewer than three landmark films, all of them spellbinding, inspirational, and crafted with artistic integrity, there is also a quieter, more modest, less conclusive masterpiece, which debuted in a rough cut at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival and is now finally making the rounds of indie cinemas in select markets. It’s called “The Great New Wonderful”, and instead of telling stories about ordinary people who did extraordinary things during and after the 9/11 attacks, it burrows into the psyches of other ordinary beings, a disparate collection of Manhattanites toiling and languishing under the radar, and suffering subliminally from variations on a theme of post-traumatic stress disorder.

New York playwright Sam Catlin’s script does not directly refer to the events of 9/11, although, as the film opens, “September 2002” is superimposed on the lower Manhattan skyline. And, near the end of the film, we hear the chorus of bells that rang out on the first anniversary of the attacks. Nor do his characters appear to associate their everyday lives in any way with the twin towers holocaust, behavioral implications notwithstanding. Some are flagrantly in denial, others shuffle about in a listless fog, essentially mute. One is manic and impulsive, another stoic and compulsive, still another is choleric one minute and conscience-stricken the next.

Despite a budget of less than $1 million, director Danny Leiner (incredibly, the guy responsible for “Dude, Where’s My Car?” and “Harold and Kumar”) managed to rustle up a formidable ensemble cast to play his destabilized bunch, headed by such recognized names as Maggie Gyllenhaal, Tony Shalhoub, Olympia Dukakis, Edie Falco, and Stephen Colbert, but also including a half-dozen or so other actors of equivalent talent, but lesser celebrity, such as Tom McCarthy (director, “The Station Agent”) and Judy Greer (“Elizabethtown”, “American Dreamz”).

Five stories are interwoven into the richly textured fabric of “The Great New Wonderful”. Emme (Gyllenhaal) is a high-octane, short-fused businesswoman whose catering company (which bears the title of the movie) architecturally designs and bakes wedding cakes for brides and their mothers determined to make a confectionary fashion statement at the post-ceremony reception. Obsessed with overtaking her chief rival Safarah Polsky (Falco), Emme takes no prisoners in running her tony operation; flounder on a sales pitch or screw up an order, and you’re out on your ass, no excuses or apologies accepted. Emme’s single-minded competitive zeal, her relentless pursuit of supremacy, ultimately accomplishes its goal but at a terrible cost that causes her guilt and remorse, finally bringing her to her senses.

Allison (Greer) and David (McCarthy) are still madly in love in their second decade of marriage. Their lives would be near idyllic if not for their deeply troubled 10-year-old son Charlie (Bill Donner in his debut film), a diabolical sociopath and wheezing asthmatic obsessed with savagery and morbidity who inflicts bodily harm on his classmates at a private school, drawing frequent suspensions. Headmaster Mr. Peersall (Colbert) calls the parents in for consultation and prescribes a course of action that shocks and incenses them at first -- until they realize that their son’s mental illness is tearing them apart.

Judie (Dukakis) and Henry (Ed Setrakian) are married, also -- have been, we presume, for more than 40 years. They live in a no-frills, high-rise apartment with a porch that faces Ground Zero, though neither refers to that fact -- or any other. You see, Judie and Henry don’t speak to one another -- not a word, not a grunt, perhaps since 9/11. As a dutiful wife, she prepares meals he picks at off a TV tray parked in front of his living room easy chair. When he’s finished, she clears the tray, washes and dries the dishes, then sits at the kitchen table pasting into a scrapbook. Aside for a periodic cigarette break on the porch and, presumably, an occasional trip to the potty, Jerry just vegetates in his bed clothes, in a state of emotional oblivion, his eyes staring ahead impassively at the flickering tube. He never lifts a finger to help his wife with the household routines; her rage is largely internalized, vented only in deliberate clattering around the kitchen sink. Out on errands one day, Judie has a chance encounter with a former schoolmate -- a chatty and charming gentleman her own age who invites her up to his apartment. Things don’t work out exactly as she fantasizes they might, but the validating experience jars her from her funk and sends her home with the vigor to confront and subvert the status quo.

Sandie (Jim Gaffigan), a nerdy forty something gentleman, is seated across from his psychotherapist Dr. Trabulous (Shalhoub) who keeps insisting that the patient has repressed feelings of anger and sadness that stem from witnessing something that “happened on the seventh floor,” an unspecified workplace tragedy, possibly related to 9/11. It’s clear that Sandie has been referred to the doctor by someone else -- an employer, perhaps, or family member. Despite the patient’s calm denial of inner conflicts and outward serenity, Dr. Trabulous continues his unorthodox protocol of baiting and badgering, ultimately insisting that Sandie act out his rage right there in the office. When Sandie is sufficiently provoked to comply, there are some anxious and ambiguous moments during which we are uncertain whether we should be shrieking in humor or horror.

Finally, there are Avi (Naseeruddin Shah) and Satish (Sharat Saxena), two fiftyish Indian neighbors who work in tandem as elite security guards. They are typically assigned crowd control at events where dignitaries are present. One of them is eternally upbeat, the other shows signs of cracking under the stresses of their jobs, the general disorder of urban life, and the weight of having recently committed adultery, for which he is tearfully contrite. A particularly unruly crowd brings matters to a head and threatens the friendship of these two men.

The actors are all great and wonderful. Gyllenhaal and Dukakis are similarly gifted in that they both express so much with such economy, subtlety, and spontaneity -- a darting eye, the hint of a smile, a despairing slouch -- and they both radiate earthiness. Gaffigan plays impressively against his caustic Comedy Central personality, but still manages to be funny in a pitiable way. All in all, this is one of the biggest little films of the year, despite the likelihood of its being lost in obscurity among splashier summer fare with big marketing budgets, such as...


WORLD TRADE CENTER (B)

It almost seems irreverent to get too critical about a film of such noble purpose, and truth (as I see it) be told, “World Trade Center” manages to accomplish what it should -- it takes a heinous act of terrorism and overrides it with humanitarian acts of heroism, leaving filmgoers with the more lasting impression that, global conflicts and atrocities notwithstanding, people are intrinsically decent. Whether one buys into that premise depends on one’s levels of world-weariness, political cynicism, and disenchantment with the human condition.

Oliver Stone (JFK, Nixon, The Joy Luck Club) has partially redeemed himself for his 2004 turkey “Alexander” by directing this inspirational drama about a pair of critically injured New York Port Authority cops -- John McLouughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Pena) -- pinned deep inside the rubble and ruins of the collapsed twin towers, awaiting a team of lionhearted volunteers willing to risk their own lives on a perilous rescue mission. But by its very nature, “World Trade Center” is no nail-biter -- we know what’s going to happen from the very beginning. There is shock value, to be sure, in the horrific enormity of the event, and Stone, as master storyteller, captures graphically and spellbindingly the incredulity, fear, chaos, and ultimate carnage that shattered the bustling, but comparatively tranquil routine of a Manhattan business day.

In a gorgeously filmed and protracted opening scene, Stone lets us see The Big Apple come to life with the reassuring calm and clarity of brilliant sunshine and an azure sky, through the eyes of cops arriving on the job at the break of dawn. Within the first half-hour of the film, sun and sky are obliterated by clouds of smoke and a suffocating pall of pulverized concrete and debris, and Stone intercuts live action and video footage to capture the ensuing bedlam and heartbreak. His visuals, and perhaps even more so, the sounds of the towers imploding and pancaking, are absolutely harrowing.

But the terror and trauma are essentially front-loaded, and once the dust has settled, what follows is an intensity-diminished, perhaps overly long, predictable, and cliched narrative about the trapped cops and their distraught families who, for most of the film, know nothing about the whereabouts of the men and, of course, are fearing the worst. And even though the foregoing comment may appear harshly critical, what I’m saying is that “World Trade Center” doesn’t really chart any new territory in storytelling, aside from its special effects. It’s a disaster film, pure and simple, and despite the unprecedence of this kind of calamity on American soil, there is bountiful precedent in film for the search and rescue heroics that “World Trade Center” portrays and pays tribute to.

To his credit, Stone doesn’t over-sentimentalize the material or over-manipulate the filmgoer, but why would you go see such a film if you didn’t want your chain jerked and your eyes moistened. Unless, of course, it’s just morbid curiosity. There are the frantic phone calls and wives doing their best to put up a brave front for their kids. There is at least one kid who doesn’t think his mom is doing enough to locate dad. “You really don’t care, do you,” he rails. There are heated disagreements among the anxiously awaiting adults regarding courses of action.

Stone shuttles us back and forth between 1) the men all but buried and losing the will to endure under tons of twisted steel and crumbled concrete at Ground Zero, trying to keep each other awake and gutting it out with fortifying words like “pain is your friend, it keeps you alive” and 2) the high anxiety taking place on their respective home fronts. Interspersed are snippets of back story to give us deeper insight into character and personality. An ongoing theme is an amicable disagreement between Will Jimeno and his wife Allison (Maggie Gyllenhaal again) regarding what they will be naming their unborn daughter -- will it be Olivia or will it be Alissa? In the interest of not giving away too much, I decline to reveal the outcome of that dispute.

Then there are the heroes -- among them, the strapping, clean-shaven figure of a gung-ho Marine in battle fatigues -- the archetypical patriot; a more modestly framed former medic whose career got sidetracked by drugs who is now clean and eager for redemption; and a Wisconsin cop, on vacation in the city but answering a strong call to duty, all converging on the rescue scene as saviors and samaritans, because, after all, this is a movie that wants us to believe, at least for two hours and five minutes, that we’re all good people underneath, and all it takes is a catastrophe for that good to veritably ooze from our pores. It’s the opiate of the masses.


CULTURE CLASHES IN LA-LA LAND

QUINCEANERA (A)

Two gay guys named Richard (Glatzer) and Wash (Westmoreland), known heretofore in select circles for their slight 2001 porn industry spoof “The Fluffer,” set out to make a weightier film about cross-cultural life in their Los Angeles neighborhood, cast largely with first-time actors, some even drawn from Echo Park friends, neighbors, and street people. In little more than a year, they write the screenplay, secure the financing (a “shoestring” budget by any measure), produce the film, and get it up on the screen at the 2006 Sundance Festival, where it captures both the jury prize for best dramatic film and the audience award in the festival’s popularity contest. It goes on to be voted audience favorite at the Provincetown International Film Festival, where I saw it in June.

Most critics agree that “Quinceanera” is irresistibly charming, while marveling at its charmed life even before its midsummer release. I saw a reference to “Quinceanera” as being a “joyful upper,” another to it being “fresh, spirited, and unpretentious.” But the one I like best comes from Ella Taylor writing in The Village Voice: “A winning tale of sex, real estate, and more or less immaculate conception...” A New York Post critic grudgingly judged it a B- for its certainty as a crowd pleaser. For certain, the movie is all these things and more.

First off, a quinceanera is the Mexican Catholic variant of the Jewish bat mitzvah -- the celebratory rite of passage into womanhood, except that for Mexican Latinas it comes at 15, two years later than the magic age for their Jewish American princess counterparts. The film opens with the quinceanera of Eileen (Alicia Sixtos), for whom her parents have pulled out all the stops, including the rental of a Hummer limo to cart around the attendant teen entourage. When Eileen’s outcast brother Carlos (Jesse Garcia) tries to crash the party to give his sister several stems of roses he’s just swiped from a street vendor, their father Walter (Johnny Chavez) intercedes and punches him out. Carlos’s kindhearted, great-great uncle Tomas (Chalo Gonzalez) mediates the ugly confrontation, urging Carlos to go home -- home meaning the elderly man’s funky cottage on a terraced hillside overlooking downtown L.A. Carlos, a car-wash jockey who sports a tattoo of the L.A. area code on the back of his neck, has worn out his father’s welcome because he moonlights as a petty criminal to finance his pot-smoking habit, and Walter caught him cruising a gay Website.

Carlos and Eileen have a cousin on their mother’s side named Magdalena (Emily Rios), who’s within weeks of her own quinceanera. Because her parents are of more modest means, Magdalena will have to wear Eileen’s hand-me-down formal, let out a little to accommodate her fuller waist, and forego the Hummer limo. So says dad Ernesto (Jesus Castanos-Chima), security guard by trade, but storefront preacher and Jesus freak on the side.

As it turns out, the gown and limo are the least of Magdalena’ s worries. After an on-again episode in her on-again off-again relationship with boyfriend Herman (J. R. Cruz), Magdalena’s finds herself pregnant, and, get this, without incident of actual intercourse. (In rare instances, conception can take place without penetration from semen spilled on the vagina during the male’s orgasm.) Learning that his not-yet 15-year-old daughter is with child, Ernesto blows a holier-than-thou gasket and sends her packing, also to be taken in by Tio Tomas. Now, Magdalena and Carlos are living in exile under the same roof, and Herman’s mother, unaware that her son bears equal responsibility for Magdalena’s delicate condition, has packed him off to college.

Enter Gary (David W. Ross) and James (Jason L. Wood), thirty-something gay couple on the rise, who buy and rehab the house up the hill from Tomas on property that includes the cottage the old man has rented for almost three decades. The two men, A-list wannabes, throw a party for 30 or 40 of their closest friends to show off the place, and, confident that their gaydar is unerring, extend a last-minute invite to Carlos to show him off as well, as their slightly thuggish Latino boy-toy. (“Fascination,” the song popularized in the 1957 movie, “Love in the Afternoon,” is playing in the background) Carlos, feeling awkward and out of his element, gets hammered and doesn’t resist when his hosts seduce him at the end of the evening.

The rule in their “open” relationship is that Gary and James only play together. But Gary, a TV talent temporarily out of work, has time on his hands, and, in the menage a trois, he’s become Carlos’s favorite. It doesn’t hurt that Gary, a smooth-talking Brit transplant, is seen by Carlos as an “in” to the TV business. When James, the older and more moneyed partner, finds out about their afternoon delights, he lays down the law to Gary and accelerates their pragmatic plan to evict Tomas and renovate and sell the cottage, converting Tomas’s funky terrace, his life’s sanctuary, into a garden spa with hot tub and other guppy amenities. Now Tomas joins Carlos and Magdalena in exile. When Carlos realizes he’s been used and his great-great uncle is being summarily displaced, he commits an act of revenge that costs him his job at the car wash but signals a positive turning point, a wake-up call that it’s time to take control of his life.

Meanwhile, Magdalena, shaken from her impassivity and lassitude, sets out to find the trio a new place to live, a quick-study experience in the helpless upheaval in the lives of working-class residents when a wave of gentrification sweeps over their neighborhoods. That she proves so resourceful in striking a rental deal with another upscaling property owner offsets and softens, to some extent, an overall impression of single-minded ruthlessness among gentrifiers.

I am reminded how subjective are the judgments of those of us who write film critiques when I read summary statements like the one about “Quinceanera” that follows, from Lisa Schwartsbaum (Entertainment Weekly): “It’s suds being sold as ethno-sensitive reality.” This from a woman who laughed herself silly while watching the grimmest humanity-insensitive reality in “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu”. From Steve Murray in the Atlanta Constitution: “A culture-clash drama that could use more clash.” Apparently, with Mr. Murray a heavy hand, or a mallet to the head, is the only way to make a point.

“Quinceanera” often speaks with an economy of words and a camera that lingers on sensitive imagery. Nothing says “culture clash” like Gary and James’s coldly formal dining room with leaded crystal and objets d’art fussily displayed on backlit shelves implying a certain level of attainment and affluence, juxtaposed with Tomas’s topsy-turvy, thoroughly lived-in abode, haphazardly cluttered with a lifetime collection of kitschy but cherished mementos, implying a man at peace with the cultural and financial limits imposed upon him.

Messrs. Glatzer and Westmoreland -- are they really Gary and James? -- take us on an emotional roller-coaster ride during their film’s final quarter-hour, with unsentimentalized counterpoints of sorrow and joy, but the movie’s lasting imprint is that quinceanera as the rite of passage into womanhood isn’t always ceremony over substance. Magdalena’s coming-of-age takes root in her early encounters with a few of life’s harshest realities, experiences she shares increasingly with cousin Carlos. Her quinceanera at the end of the film, with him staunchly at her side, trumps Eileen’s earlier, purely frivolous event, because it carries with it a strong sense of commitment and responsibility. And, as added dimension, it’s a time of reconciliation and cultural validation.


WASSUP ROCKERS (A)

Writer-director Larry Clark has given us an endearing, grim, scary, and piercingly observant view of ghetto mentality, racism, and the schismatic sociological forces that undermine the melting-pot ideal of American society. Thematically, it mimics last year’s best picture Oscar winner, “Crash,” but the situations and characters are dissimilar, which even heightens the despairingly gloomy outlook for future relations between the haves and have-nots in this country.

A group of Latino street kids from the South-Central Los Angeles ghetto -- a restive mix of black and brown populations -- decides to board a bus and take their skateboards to a more tranquil, hospitable neighborhood, where they can pursue their sport without looking over their shoulders for marauding antagonists. Oh boy, is their social guilelessness shattered in a hurry. Within minutes of arriving at the campus of Beverly Hills High School and its challenging terrain, they are solicited first as sexual curiosities by a pair of lustful female students, then confronted as low-life predators by their intervening preppy boyfriends. The resulting scuffle brings an investigating patrolman who can’t figure out what a half-dozen ragtag Mexican youths are up to and brands them as trespassing and trouble making aliens. “I’m not Mexican,” 15-year-old spokesman Jonathan Velasquez pipes up. “I’m Guatemalan.” None of the six boys are Mexican actually, but the cop is in no mood for ethnic distinctions.

The boys may be naive about some things, but they’ve honed their survival instincts. They’re devious and fleet and nimble of foot, and manage to escape being booked for who-knows-what at the local precinct. But their escape route takes them away from main thoroughfares and into posh enclaves where they encounter personalities, lifestyles, and adventures that open their eyes to a whole new world. Unfortunately, how they are received depends on how they are perceived, and, on two occasions, it’s as sexual objects. The outcomes of those encounters, including one with a rifle-toting Charlton Heston-like character, are ambivalently humorous and grievous. Some critics have complained that the film starts out as realism, then degenerates into cartoonism. I don’t agree. I see it as a two-hour social lament. These kids may be dirt-poor, grubby, and streetwise, but they’re not thugs; they’re not even mischievous. Regrettably, much of their energy is expended on just living one more day and fitting in a little fun.

The title, “Wassup Rockers,” by the way, is misleading in that the film has little to do with rock musicians, although the boys do play instruments and get together for informal jams. They’re viewed as rockers by the black dudes in their community because they wear tight-fitting shirts and jeans instead of conforming to the more acceptable baggy look.



DAZZLING DOCUMENTARIES


WRESTLING WITH ANGELS: PLAYWRIGHT TONY KUSHNER (A)

This is an extraordinary documentary from Frieda Lee Mock about Pulitzer Prize winning playwright (Angels in America), political activist, pundit, and self-proclaimed “citizen of the world” Tony Kushner, which follows him at fever pitch with a hand-held video cam as he careens from project to project from just after 9/11, when he was mounting the production of his anti-Taliban play “Homebody/Kabul” at the New York Theatre Workshop, through 2004 as he was working on John Kerry’s presidential campaign, marrying longtime partner and Entertainment Weekly editor Mark Harris, and preparing his Broadway musical production of “Caroline, or Change”. The 102-minute film, which tends to move at the pace of Kushner’s life and never seems overlong or over-the-top, will debut in limited release next month and will not, of course, reap huge commercial riches, though it is an altogether intelligent, involving, and entertaining film.

The title of the documentary derives from a book Kushner co-edited with Alisa Solomon in 2003 called Wrestling with Zion, a compendium of divergent points of view on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict dating all the way back to 1891. Kushner has often been criticized by Zionists and Jewish publications for his ambivalent (or is ‘fair-minded” a more apt descriptive) views about Israel’s handling of its nearly 60-year struggle with neighboring Arab enemies, and the particularly thorny issue of lands wrested in the 1967 Six-Day War that it still occupies. Kushner is the consummate multi-tasker -- his fingers dipping into artistic and political pies of such diverse crusts and fillings -- yet his energy is unflagging, he never appears to be stretched thin. Informed and impassioned, he’s so personally connected to the large issues of life he can’t help but be anguished by succeeding generations of “invisible” young Americans “who don’t stand for anything.” That said, we never see Kushner as a shrill, whiny, or hostile activist. He prefers an incisive, coherent approach to bringing about political and social change, and his plays, as well as his speeches, articulate brilliantly for that change. There are clips of his university commencement address, a galvanizing speech at an antiwar protest, a frank talk about sex to a group of lesbian and gay employees at JPMorgan Chase.

But Mock’s documentary divides into nearly equal parts professional, political, and personal -- partitioned into three acts as a metaphor for the plays Kushner is best known for. The filmmaker takes us down to Lake Charles, LA, Tony Kushner’s childhood home, for his father William’s 80th birthday celebration. Kushner alludes to the unlikelihood of a thriving Lithuanian-Jewish family in the deep South but concedes, with his tongue firmly pressed against his cheek, that the business his grandfather founded, Kushner Lumber and Building, “was the source of our great material wealth.” We see the family’s synagogue and learn, as an aside, that the rabbi was a peeping tom. Of his own sexuality, Kushner is equally candid: “I thought boys were cuter than girls at the age of six.” Shortly after enrolling at Columbia University, Kushner consulted a therapist whose opinion was emphatic, if not reassuring: “You will not change.”

We also learn that father William is a clarinet player and former conductor of the Lake Charles and Rapides symphony orchestras, his mother, Sylvia, who died in 1990, was a bassoonist with the New York City Opera and other orchestras, and that brother Eric has followed in his parents’ footsteps and is principal horn player with the Vienna Symphony. We spend time at Kushner’s “writing house” in the Hudson River Valley, and we’re there when he and Harris tie the knot. There are interviews with theater colleagues, an hilarious clip of Marcia Gay-Harden as Laura Bush in a scene from one of Kushner’s lesser-known plays, and a heart-rending clip of Meryl Streep reading a prayer that Kushner wrote as a personal appeal for divine intervention in the AIDS epidemic.

Mock traces the origins of “Angels in America,” Kushner’s monumental two-part, seven-hour Gay Fantasia on National Themes, a searing political commentary on the AIDS crisis, to its commission by Oscar Eustis when he was artistic director of San Francisco’s Eureka Theater. The play’s first act -- Millennium Approaches -- premiered at the Eureka in May, 1991, moving to the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles a year later, and finally to Broadway’s Walter Kerr Theatre in May, 1993, to be tandemed with the play’s second act -- “Perestroika” -- the following November. “Angels in America” earned the 1993 New York Drama Critics Circle and Tony awards for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Its legendary history culminated in an HBO film production directed by Mike Nichols in 2003 that won both the Golden Globe and Emmy awards for Best TV Miniseries, as well as Golden Globe and Emmy acting awards for all of its principal players.

However, the documentary makes it abundantly evident that Tony Kushner has not rested on his “Angels” laurels. Just in the five years since Mock began her “Wrestling” project, there have been two more Kushner plays (one a musical), a co-authored Academy Award-nomInated screenplay (“Munich”), several book collaborations, magazine articles, an operatic libretto, musical compositions for a Klezmer group, accompanying voters to Miami polling places, interviews, panel appearances, rally speeches, honorary degrees. All this, and, mygod, the man is only 50 years old.


THE WAR TAPES (A)

Be forewarned, there are many disturbing images in “The War Tapes,” featuring video shot in the heat of battle by three National Guard servicemen on a one-year tour of duty in Iraq, together with their frank, ironic, and often ghoulish commentary on the roiling bloodbath our government cynically refers to as Operation Iraqi Freedom. This is footage -- much of it shot in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah -- you’ll never see on any of the TV news networks because of the broadcast industry’s purported respect for dignity, propriety, and the delicate sensibilities of its viewers.

The three Guardsmen are Sergeant Steve Pink, a carpenter and aspiring writer in civilian life; Sergeant Zack Bazzi, a Lebanese-American university student; and Specialist Mike Moriarty, a forklift operator downsized by his employer. All three are New Englanders, though Bazzi was actually born in the Middle East and came to the United States with his family when he was 10. Among the three, he alone can speak Arabic, which comes in handy when bartering with the locals for smokes, knives, and porn. The film makes the strong point that most American servicemen in Iraq have no training whatsoever in the language and customs of the place, where even “hello” and “stop” can be a linguistic challenge. The culture chasm contributes to the dehumanization of the natives. The “gooks” of Vietnam have been replaced by the “hajis” of Iraq. Add to the mix the so-called TCN’s -- third country nationals such as Pakistanis and Afghans, plus likely insurgents from Syria.

Poignantly, the families the men leave behind all have serious misgivings about their enlistment, their patriotic motivations, and the grave perils of their mission, which is convoy security. On camera, Bazzi’s mother is tearful about her opposition to his enlistment and the interruption of his education. Moriarty’s wife, two children in tow, is fatalistic: “Mike needed to do this.” Pink tries his best to be philosophical and courageous at the same time: “You can’t let fear get to you. Hopefully, I’ll be someone’s hero.” Moriarty is more candid: “You have to have a false sense of security to do this job.”

And a very strong stomach. There are scenes in “The War Tapes” that are excruciating to look at and impossible to forget. Dismembered and gruesomely charred bodies are de rigeur. There are dogs tearing at flesh hanging off the bones of a dead man. In order to maintain their composure, protect their sanity, Pink, Bazzi, and Moriarty banter back and forth about the human carnage, likening it variously to raw pot roast, ground meat, even bubbling pizza cheese. There is the heartbreaking, to say nothing, of grizzly scene of an innocent woman trying to make it from one side of a road to the other in the midst of a passing convoy and getting brutally cut down in the exchange of fire between the convoy and insurgents. At times fear, frustration, and revulsion reach a breaking point, and one of the men wonders out loud -- “why can’t we just nuke the country and get it over with?”

Some will deem the footage inappropriate and the commentary callous. Those who take the side of the Bush Administration will bristle when the butchery and gore is intercut with excerpts of the President’s speeches on behalf of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Nor will they be amused when Pink, Bazzi, and Moriarty openly seethe in their criticism of KBR Halliburton, insinuating that the contractor puts profits ahead of military safety.

But perhaps the most surreal scene of all -- one that is serenely quiet -- shows a group of Iraqi children -- perhaps a half dozen or so dressed in their school uniforms -- leisurely strolling to class as American troops are poised with artillery on a rooftop above, acting on a tip of insurgents in the neighborhood.

When their tour of duty is completed, we follow them onto the C130 transport plane that will take them home to peace and quiet and harmony. Or will it? Pink suffers from a hearing loss and the nightmares of post-traumatic stress disorder. He says matter-of-factly: “We’re there for the money and oil, not to create democracy.” But he still wears his dog tags.

Moriarty is, perhaps, the most severely damaged emotionally of the three Guardsmen. His temper is back and he suffers from violent flashbacks. “There are days I don’t like him,” his wife says. “He doesn’t live in reality.”

Bazzi seems less adversely affected than his two buddies: “Well, the Patriots won,” he offers with a nervous grin. His mom calls him “smart and handsome,” then adds fervently -- “let him finish this love of the Army.” We wonder, though, if he’ll ever “finish.” “I love being a soldier,” he says resolutely. “The only bad thing about the Army is you can’t pick your war.” The Bushes, Cheneys, and Rumfelds must love this guy.



DEPARTMENT OF DIFFERENT DRUMBEATS

ADAM AND STEVE (B)

Those who complained after “Brokeback Mountain” that too many films about gay men in love end tragically -- as if to imply that filmmakers who dare to take on such projects feel compelled to mete out just punishment for the sins of their characters before the end credits roll -- should rejoice about the payoff of Craig Chester’s high-strung, idiosyncratic romp “Adam and Steve”, which he wrote, directed, and stars in as Adam. Of course, Chester and Malcolm Gets, as Steve, though perfectly credible and endearing in their roles, are genre personalities in their early 40’s, known mainly to coastal big-city gay audiences. They will never achieve the celebrity status of Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, and “Adam and Steve” doesn’t even pretend to be a mainstream film. Its box office fortunes are tied to the obvious centers of gay critical mass -- i.e., New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, and Fort Lauderdale. Its run in Burlington, Vermont, if “run” isn’t hyperbolic, consisted of one showing a night for one week, for reasons that don’t need explaining.

Stereotypes get under the skin of a lot of enlightened people, because it’s injudicious and politically incorrect to categorize and broad-brush communities on the basis of certain behaviors or characteristics, no matter how commonly perceived. I reject oversimplified, rigidly fixed notions about anything or anyone, but I also reject that stereotypes have no basis in fact because certain behaviors and characteristics do pertain to communities as the result of their common cultural history and experiences. “Adam and Steve” is laden with stereotypes that are familiar to gay men and the straight women who love them. They generate big knowing laughs -- in the case of “Adam and Steve,” from moviegoers who have been there and done that and can tell from the scenarios that big love will win out over high anxiety in the end. The ballad of Ennis and Jack drew its power and profundity from the manner in which it challenged every male stereotype, including the inflated stereotype of the American cowboy as an heroic icon, and, in so doing, resonated intensely with both gay and straight filmgoers. And only the most hardened homophobe could have left the theater with the impression that “Brokeback Mountain’s” tragic outcome carried a just desserts message.

“Adam and Steve” is really an odd brew of conventions within unconventions. Adam is Adam Bernstein, and he’s the comically neurotic byproduct of a particular brand of Jewish angst, not unlike most Woody Allen characters, except that, besides his Semitism, Adam is also gay. He’s also less of a nebbish. As a stereotypically mixed up and rebellious youth in the late 80’s, he gravitates toward the goth subculture, has a messy sexual adventure that leads to coke addiction, and for most of the film, which takes place in the present, is in a precariously delicate state of recovery and reinvention. He is best friends with an ex-goth fag-hag named Rhonda (Parker Posey), who’s as thin as the proverbial rail, but still thinks she’s the two-ton Tillie she was in the days when she and Adam were cloaked in black, wore white face paint, and hung out in gay discos. It’s in one such stereotypical venue that Adam meets dazzle dancer Steve. It’s love at first sight for both, but their first night together is their last because of bodily malfunctions too gross to describe. Let’s just leave it as a double dose of incontinence of the worst kind at the wrong time.

Fast forward 17 years. Rhonda is now a standup comic. A shadow of her former self, she tells embarrassing, self-deprecating fat jokes in a sleazy L.A. club because she still thinks and feels obese. Her love life is indeed a big fat zero, and Adam’s still her best bud. Adam’s best bud is his dog, which he accidentally stabs one night while carelessly slicing into a pepperoni while engrossed in a TV program. In a state of remorseful hysteria, he rushes his bleeding pooch to the nearest hospital emergency room, where the only medic on call who will respond to his manic implorings is a staff psychiatrist named Steve who “trained as a veterinarian.”

For Adam and Steve, the chemistry is instantaneous, and the sparks fly -- a second time. But each has undergone such an extreme makeover that neither recognizes the other from their brief encounter nearly a generation before -- which is just as well for the rekindling of their romance. Just when it appears that they’ve worked through their issues of commitment and trust and Adam is coming to terms with his demons of self-doubt and strained relations with his freakish accident-prone family, he and Steve happen to revisit a landmark that brings back painful memories about their first meeting. Now it’s Steve who is suffering -- from shame and guilt -- and their relationship is in great peril.

Meanwhile, an unlikely romance is emerging between Rhonda and Steve’s straight sponger roommate Michael (Chris Kattan) that produces diversion while Adam and Steve are sorting out their recriminations and rebuilding their life together.

“Adam and Steve” has a literate script, energetic direction, and a talented bunch of offbeat comedic actors.


LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE (A-)

“Crowdpleaser” is the word you’re most likely to come upon if you scan through reviews of “Little Miss Sunshine.” The run up to its release was every bit of seven months -- I was seeing previews of the film just after the first of the year. It was “Coming Soon” for so long that Fox Searchlight trotted out three different trailers to advertise it. Does it live up to its advance hype? Most definitely, thanks to a sharp-witted screenplay by Michael Arndt and cutting-edge direction by the team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, their first theatrical film after many years directing award-winning music videos, rock band documentaries, and TV commercials for such high-profile client innovators as Sony Playstation, Apple, Gap, Ikea, Target, ESPN, and VW.

By “crowd pleaser,” do we mean to imply that “Little Miss Sunshine” is a feel-good movie? Absolutely not. It’s mostly a comedy, all right, but a dark one, because it exposes the sham of certain values that a large segment of Americans hold near and dear. Like the obsession to win at all costs, even if you have to bend the rules...or ignore them altogether. Richard Hoover (Greg Kinnear), the patriarch of the dysfunctional New Mexico family at the heart and soul of “Little Miss Sunshine,” has developed and is attempting to market a nine-step dynamic strategies program advancing the doctrine of winning. Kinnear is right on the mark with his character’s skewed priorities and false sense of propriety and decorum.

Richard has a high-minded, meditative teenage son, Dwayne (Paul Dano), who has taken a vow of silence, so utterly tuned out and turned off he is by the family values. Dwayne also considers himself a disciple of German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche. He scribbles notes or holds up cue cards when he wants to communicate. One of the cue cards reads “I Hate Everyone.” He has aspirations of becoming a airline pilot.
His grandpa (Alan Arkin), Richard’s father, never outgrew his hippie youth; he’s a heroine addict and, it turns out, the driving force behind his son’s obsession with winning. According to grandpa “losers are people who are so afraid of not winning, they don’t even try.” He’s back living with Richard’s family because his drug habit and insatiable lustfulness got him kicked out of Sunset Manor, a senior citizens residence. “T’was a paradise,” he recalls fondly. “(There were) four women for every guy. .. I had second-degree burns on my Johnson.” Arkin’s performance is worthy of a best supporting actor nod come Oscar time.

Richard also has a daughter, a precocious and borderline obnoxious eight-year-old named Olive (Abigail Breslin), who keeps asking grandpa if she’s pretty. She’s not, but grandpa tells her she’s “the most beautiful girl in the whole world.” He sounds sincere, and he probably is -- but, remember, he’s wigged out on drugs. Olive has been hard-bitten by her dad’s winning bug. There’s a “Little Miss Sunshine” contest coming up in California, and she’s set her sights on entering. Grandpa signs on as creative consultant and coach.

Richard also has a wife named Sheryl (Toni Collette). She’s the sane one of the family, relatively speaking. She bites her tongue, rolls her eyes, and swallows hard a lot, trying to be patient and understanding without overindulging the loonies. She holds the family unit together, if only with crazy glue and lengths of transparent tape. Her brother Frank (Steve Carell), a college professor, has recently come to live with them. Frank is recovering from a suicide attempt, and Sheryl is on watch in case he has a repeat meltdown. He’s despondent over the breakup of a love affair -- with one of his grad students -- a male grad student! The student left him for a colleague of Frank’s when the colleague won out over Frank as top-ranked Proust scholar. Olive is incredulous. “You fell in love with a boy,” she exclaims, “that’s silly.”

When she gets accepted in the talent contest, and the entire crew, including a reluctant Uncle Frank, piles into the family’s dilapidated VW minibus, headed for California, “Little Miss Sunshine” becomes one helluva road movie. There are hilarious encounters and misadventures all along the route, even one whopper of a tragedy with farcical overtones. Dwayne’s dreams of flying planes are unceremoniously shattered; dad’s dynamic strategies bubble bursts on a detour to Scottsdale, AZ; the minibus strips its first gear, and its horn gets stuck in full blare; a stash of grandpa’s porn gets them out of a sticky situation with a highway patrolman; but, jeezum crow, they almost misplace the passenger of honor.

Against all odds, the Hoover clan makes it to La-La Land -- specifically, Redondo Beach -- in the nick of time, and “Little Miss Sunshine” enters its final phase -- as sardonic commentary on a particularly exploitative and hypocritical segment of American culture. How does Olive fare up against glossier rivals with pushier moms? Let’s just say that spice trumps nice.


RUSSIAN DOLLS (Poupees Russes) (A)

The classic Cole Porter tune, “What Is This Thing Called Love?” -- penned as the Roaring 20’s were about to collide head-on with a plunging stock market -- sums up the essential quandary of “Russian Dolls,” which revisits the romantically diverse and entangled lives of an ethnically and racially diverse group of Europeans who originally met as college exchange students sharing a Barcelona flat in writer-director Cedric Klapisch’s 2002 international indie hit, “L’Auberge Espagnole.” Now, five years (in story time) after their Spanish summer together, Klapisch has reassembled most of the same characters -- played by the same actors -- and has them reuniting in St. Petersburg for the wedding of William (Kevin Bishop), now a stagehand by trade, and Natacha (Evguenya Obraztsova) , a neophyte Russian ballerina he met while she was in London for an audition. William, an obstreperous Brit who talks before he thinks, is brother to Wendy (Kelly Reilly), one of the Barcelona Six in the first film. Wendy’s flatmates were not amused by her brother’s intrusive antics and his insensitive motor-mouth when he came for an extended visit in the 2002 film.

Once again, the multilayered story is told from the perspective of Parisian Xavier Rousseau (Romain Duris), caught in a vice between the well-meaning expectations of just about everyone around him and his innate willingness to please and do the right thing. The whole business of love is anathema to Xavier, even though his meal ticket at the moment is a sappy TV sudser he co-writes called “Love and Passion in Venice”. He also moonlights as a reporter and ghost writer, but our dashing leading man really wants to be a novelist, and everyone keeps needling him about it, including his judgmental, ex-hippie mother (Martine Demaret), his 98-year-old grandfather (Pierre Gerald), and his overwrought ex-girlfriend Martine (Audrey Tautou), with whom he broke up just as he was completing his summer economics course in Barcelona and the denizens of the Spanish apartment were saying their farewells. It was a particularly bittersweet goodbye for Wendy, who had developed a serious crush on Xavier in “L’Auberge Espagnole”, partly because of his success in mediating the ugly differences between brother William and the others.

Martine and Xavier are buddies now; he is her sole confidante and she his severest critic. When she gets exasperated enough with the revolving door of her love life (he was the fourth of seven suitors), she takes it out on Xavier, upbraiding him as an underachiever and such. Meanwhile, Xavier is trying his damnedest to fall in love with a dress shop clerk named Kassia (Aissa Maiga), with disappointing results, and find the time to administer to lesbian pal Isabelle (Cecile de France) who’s having girlfriend trouble. In order to deflect grandpa’s salacious inquiries about his love life, Xavier gets Isabelle to femme it up and accompany him on an obligatory visit to the old man, after which he has pangs of conscience: “I feel dirty pretending to be so clean,” he says to the camera. Turnabout is fair play, and Xavier owes Isabelle big time. He has to dress in drag and accompany her to a dyke party.

From there, the story takes so many twists and turns in three European capitols you’ll be huffing and puffing to catch your breath. When William comes to Paris to visit Xavier and announce his engagement to Natacha, Wendy also reenters Xavier’s life. She’s breaking up with a boyfriend in London and needs some tender loving care from her eternally empathetic Parisian pal. But Xavier has taken up with a model named Celia Shelburn (Lucy Gordon), whom he thinks might finally be “the one”. “Celia is the stuff dreams are made of,” he earnestly exclaims to the camera. Then, unexpectedly, the tender loving care he’s administering to Wendy turns sexual, just about the same time her ex-boyfriend decides to patch things up and busts in on them. Now, Xavier is involved in an unpremeditated cycle of deceit as the story shifts back and forth between Paris and London, then ultimately to Russia’s culture capitol where a symmetrical thoroughfare he comes upon reminds Xavier metaphorically of his quest for the feminine ideal -- a woman of perfect proportions. The Kassias and Celias he’s been chasing are like Russian dolls. As William and Natacha are tying the knot, Xavier is searching his soul and reevaluating his priorities. “Stop dreaming,” he scolds himself, “and get back to real life.”

To call “Russian Dolls” a romantic comedy is to do it a grave disservice because of what that label has come to mean in terms of Hollywood product (read “The Wedding Crashers” and “The Forty Year-Old Virgin”). The European equivalent doesn’t resort to adult male characters acting like libidinous adolescents, humiliating sight gags, and grossout situations to get its laughs.. “Russian Dolls” joins “Queens,” “Kinky Boots,” “Mrs. Henderson Presents,” and “Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont” as intelligent European films released in the past year that explore human frailties and quandaries without compromising the dignity of its characters -- characters that are imperfect and conflicted in ways that are forgivable, even endearing, to most audiences.

“Russian Dolls” is a superbly entertaining film, high on adrenaline and gorgeously photographed, but it is also introspective and compassionate. And testament to the ability of Romain Duris’ to totally inhabit a character -- he was absolutely mesmerizing in a far darker role in last year’s “The Beat That My Heart Skipped” -- Xavier, at his most injudicious, uncommitted, and flummoxed, is irresistibly appealing. Wendy reflects that assessment when she pours out her heart to him: “I’m in love with your imperfections.” The question then becomes, can he subdue his fantasy of the ideal and love her for hers?



WHEN BAD MOVIES HAPPEN TO GOOD ACTORS

TRUST THE MAN (D+) HOLLYWOODLAND (D+)

Behold! A pair of films that should never have been made.

“Trust the Man” rehashes the pain and punishment couples go through after they’ve been together long enough to take each other for granted, lose interest in one another sexually, and start mutual campaigns of antagonism while, at the same time, seeking solace and stimulation between the sheets with another party.

In “Trust the Man” we have two couples who keep in close touch and hang out occasionally because the woman of Couple #1, Rebecca (Julianne Moore), is sister to the man of Couple #2, Tobey (Billy Crudup). Rebecca’s husband Tom (David Duchovny), your average puppy-dog male with a libido to match, is still turned-on by his wife, but she, despite the cycle of inventive approaches he tries, seldom responds -- calls him a sex maniac, in fact, when they visit a therapist (Garry Shandling) together. She complains further that too many of those approaches are from behind. To which Tom responds, “that’s because she always has her back to me.” You get the kind of humor we’re dealing with here? Tobey and his live-in mate of seven years Elaine (Maggie Gyllenhaal, yet again) are suffering less from sexual disaffection than from ideological differences. In short, they’re tired of each other’s bad habits and idiosyncrasies; she’s shrewish, and he’s irresponsible.

And so the couples claw at one other, grab onto dalliances with others, soon enough regret their actions, and -- guess what -- return to their respective folds to live restlessly ever after. You’ve seen it all before; there are no new twists or evolutionary gems of wisdom.
Presumably, Moore signed on to this project ‘cause hubby Bart Freundlich wrote and directed it. Her presence will not remind you of her best work (The Hours, Far from Heaven, The End of the Affair, An Ideal Husband), but she does exhibit a flair for agitation, brass, and comedy we may not have seen before. And Freundlich’s script isn’t half bad -- it's quite literate, in fact, and there are a dozen or so zingers and harangues worth at least a snicker or chuckle, if not an outright howl. It’s the subject matter that’s stale and tiresome.

Of the starring quartet, Duchovny is especially adept at decent, straight-from-the-heart characters (Return to Me, Connie and Carla, House of D) I find myself rooting for. Crudup, on the other hand, is best when he’s edgy, offbeat, unthinking, and opportunistic. His character in “Trust the Man” is a little of all four -- not a man you can easily trust. Gyllenhaal commands the screen even in a role as lightweight as this. Her performances -- even her facial expressions and body language -- remind me strongly of the late Jennifer Jones in their sensual, mercurial content. But she’s capable of a lot more than “Trust the Man” allows her to do. And it surely isn’t that she needs audience exposure. Two more Gyllenhaal films -- “Sherrybaby” and “Stranger Than Fiction” -- debut before the end of the year, adding up to five 2006 releases altogether, topping brother Jake’s three of a year ago.

*****

“Hollywoodland,” from TV veterans Paul Bernbaum (writer) and Allen Coulter (director), takes on the high-profile 1959 death of 45-year-old actor George Reeves, whose sole claim to fame was his cheesy but hugely successful Superman TV series (1952-1958). Reeves’ death, in his bedroom from a gunshot wound to the head, was ruled a suicide, but skeptics insist to this day that circumstantial evidence points to foul play. Messrs. Bernbaum and Coulter hypothesize murder scenarios involving a number of Reeves’ associates and acquaintances, two or three of whom were partying downstairs the night the fatal shot was fired. While the theories and the cast of would-be perps may be mildly interesting to contemplate, they do not a gripping yarn create. At the end of “Hollywoodland” nothing more is settled or solved about what went on that June night 47 years ago than at the beginning.

One of the problems with the film is the irritating impassivity, the utter banality of the central character himself. Perhaps the fault lies with Ben Affleck, who looks appropriately swollen and out -of-shape -- Reeves is seen as a boozy hedonist -- but whose performance lacks clarity and vigor, except for one showy outburst. It’s hard to imagine, while watching “Hollywoodland,” that a such an apathetic chap would be capable of suicide, much less pressing anyone’s buttons to the point of murder. It’s also hard to fathom how in the world Affleck wound up with the “best actor” prize for this role at the recent Venice International Film Festival.

That said, every other actor in “Hollywoodland” makes the most of the movie’s flimsy raison d’etre. Diane Lane coos, cajoles, and cudgels as Toni Mannix, the seductress of a certain age who takes Reeves under her wing, sets him up with a house, then hangs on for dear life. She’s married in name only to pragmatic and nefarious studio mogul Eddie Mannix (Bob Hoskins), in the mold of Harry Cohn, who keeps her on a very long leash so that he can be on one of at least the same length. If the film is definitive about anything, it’s that during the golden age of Hollywood, the major studios would stop at nothing short of malicious mischief to protect and preserve their hallowed reputations. Studio heads had their trophy wives, plus a stable of grateful ingenues to satisfy their basic instincts.

The character with the most on-screen time, private investigator Louis Simo (Adrien Brody), a gumshoe in classic noir tradition, feels the heat of the industry’s fierce protectionism firsthand when he starts asking too many questions in the wrong quarters. And it is Brody’s wry, rakish, penetrating performance that underpins and propels the bloated narrative along its 125-minute course and keeps “Hollywoodland” from being the unequivocal snoozer of the year.


ODDS AND ENDS

THE NIGHT LISTENER (C+)

Purported to be “inspired by actual events” in the life of popular San Francisco novelist, screenwriter, and former journalist Armistead Maupin (Tales of the City, Babycakes) “The Night Listener” starts out like it’s going to be a ripping good yarn, then drifts into the twilight zone of mighty tall tales, only to end up as an exceedingly tough act to swallow. Perhaps a clue to its fraudulent feel is a disclaimer -- perhaps “acknowledgment” is a gentler term -- in the end credits to the effect that certain characters have been invented and situations fictionalized.

The story is based on telephone conversations Maupin had with a 14-year-old boy in the advanced stages of AIDS, whose family history of sexual abuse is shockingly documented in a manuscript the boy has submitted to the author on spec. At the time (the early 90s), the boy was living in Wisconsin at the home of his social worker. During the period the conversations were taking place, Maupin claims to have been emotionally vulnerable because he and his partner-in-life had just ended their eight-year relationship.

In the movie -- based on Maupin’s novel of the same title -- the author’s alter ego is Gabriel Noone, a 50-something, Manhattan-based radio commentator played by Robin Williams, who fictionalizes incidents from his own life and others close to him, creating stories of tenderhearted human interest to his night listeners. The social worker and foster mom is Donna Logand, played by Toni Collette.

In effect, Noone has the tables turned on him, and he becomes a night listener himself on behalf of his doomed but articulate and upbeat adolescent fan Pete (Rory Culkin), whose nocturnal calls distract the radio icon from the split with his partner, replenish his capacity to nurture, and provide Pete with the male role model the boy so eagerly seeks. Ironically, it is Noone’s ex Jess (Bobby Cannavale), an AIDS survivor in his late twenties, enjoying a new lease on life from his new protocol of meds, who begins to suspect that something’s oddly similar about the voices of Pete and Donna he overhears on Gabriel’s answering machine.

For awhile, “The Night Listener” is tantalizingly creepy, but when Gabriel travels to Wisconsin on a mission to prove to himself and to Jess that Pete is for real, the mission turns into a wild and silly goose chase that includes domestic breaking and entering, unauthorized searches of hospital rooms, and, finally, a surreal confrontation with Donna, who turns out to be blind and a certifiable wack job. The whole ordeal brings Gabriel to his senses, and we are meant to believe that he is confronting his demons and coming to terms with life on his own. And we are left to wonder about the very existence of Pete, as well as what becomes of the boy. As for Donna, well let’s just say she’s as much a survivor as Gabriel and Jess and a mistress of disguise and reinvention.

Despite being called upon to do things inconsistent with his character and the circumstances of the script (co-written by Maupin and Terry Anderson), Robin Williams turns in a finely tuned performance. Toni Collette, an Australian thriving on flawless American characterizations, is certainly a busy bee in front of the cameras, having had major roles in 15 films since the start of the new millennium. She’ll be seen at least twice more before the end of the year, in “Little Miss Sunshine” and “Like Minds” and has five more projects waiting in the wings. As Donna, she’s convincingly enigmatic and menacing, though be advised that some of her scenes border on the improbable, considering the story’s authentic roots. If there’s nothing more intriguing on the shelves of your local video store, rent “The Night Listener” for its acting performances at half the price of a theater admission when it’s released in DVD in the late fall.


THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU (C)

Romania is the last of the Cold War, Iron Curtain countries to fully emerge from the suffocating oppression and battleship gray pallor of Communism, and, among Eastern European capitals, Bucharest remains shrouded in dark mystery for most Americans who are more inclined to travel only as far east as the hospitable, tourist-oriented destinations of Prague, Budapest, and even Warsaw.

The Municipality of Bucharest, with a population of two million plus, once enjoyed a poetic image as the “Paris of the East,” even as recently as the 1920’s and 30’s, but came under heavy attack during World War II, first from Allied bombers, then from the Luftwaffe when Romania’s allegiances shifted towards the Soviets. Under Nicolae Ceausescu’s quarter-century reign of terror, brutality, suppression, and historical irrelevancy, much of Bucharest’s grand architecture fell to the wrecking ball, replaced by utilitarian high-rise apartment blocks. A massive earthquake in 1977 finished off other historic neighborhoods, taking 1,500 lives in the process.

Little wonder then that when I think of Romania and Bucharest, I conjure up images of a desensitized population trudging about life under a cloud of gloom and doom, a dyspeptic society in which if anything can go wrong, it will. So when I saw a lobby poster advertising an absurdist black comedy from writer-director Cristi Puiu called “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu”, quoting critics, like Lisa Schwarzbaum (Entertainment Weekly), whose sides were splitting from 154 minutes of nonstop hee-hawing, I had to find out firsthand what all the hilarity could be about.

I now suspect that the effusive quotes on the lobby posters, hand-picked by the distributor Tartan USA as marketing enticement for a film of limited American audience appeal, came from reviewers under the age of 50, for whom the mournful decrepitude of the film’s ailing central character, played with stunning credibility by Ion Fiscuteanu, and the callous and blundering ineptitude of the health care system he’s at the mercy of, is as yet more comedic than tragic. Perhaps that damnable fine line between agony and ecstasy is, in this case, generational. But for someone like me, pushing hard toward 70, “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu,” drummed out in virtual real time over two-and-a-half excruciating hours, largely spent in an antediluvian ambulance clattering the length and breadth of Bucharest between beleaguered hospital emergency rooms, was interminable and almost unendurable.

A prematurely old 63, Mr. Lazarescu is already a tragic figure even before the travesty of his emergency “care” begins, doddering about the dreary, cluttered apartment he shares with three cats he obviously adores. One senses he’s always been fiercely independent, coarse, abrasive, and purposefully detached from the rest of humankind -- the kind of man people often refer to as a loner. From a telephone conversation early in the film, it’s clear that he’s pretty much burned his bridges with family and has few friends other than the couple next door, who are reluctant to get involved the night he becomes gravely ill and is waiting for an ambulance that takes an agonizing eternity to arrive.

That I was so distressed by Mr. Lazarescu’s dire condition and so infuriated by the cavalier dispassion and bureaucratic mindset of his caregivers is testament, I grudgingly acknowledge, to the production’s success as cinema verite, and to the fact that I’m already older than Mr. Lazarescu, live alone with one cat, and was commiserating on a very personal level with this dying and utterly disposable senior citizen. Oh, and yes, there’s also the dispiriting realization that “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” hits much closer to home than Romania -- that in more ways than we may care to admit, our own health care system is becoming as overtaxed, insensitive, inattentive, and bound up in bureaucratic and costly red tape.

Puiu and Razvan Radulexu have written a plodding, dolorous, and ultimately exhausting screenplay whose characters are chafing from, but submissive to and desensitized by the humdrums and hardships of their everyday lives. Its situations are explicitly, gallingly enacted; the performances are provocatively brilliant. In the end, Puiu’s failure at black comedy -- if indeed black comedy was really his intent -- is that the absurdity of the film’s circumstances is totally overshadowed by their insidious inhumanity.

I’m reminded of an incident in my own life. When I was 19, my father came home from work one afternoon, had a heart attack, and died in the hospital three hours later. Next morning my mother and I went across the street to break the news to a neighbor, one of my dad’s cronies. The guy’s face went blank for a second or two and then he began chuckling. I was stunned -- appalled -- by his reaction. So was my mother, but she managed a lame “we thought you’d like to know” before the two of us turned and retreated. I’ve reflected on that scene many times since and, at some point I was mature enough to understand that the poor fellow was so blindsided by our news that he just didn’t know what to say and he certainly was too much a man to cry. So what was his only other option.

From one of the golden age of radio’s most popular addresses, 79 Wistful Vista, came this famous one-liner intoned at least once every week for 16 years by a beloved character named Molly -- which succinctly sums up this movie: “T’ain’t funny, McGee.” Or, how about this one from Milton Berle: “Laugh? I thought I’d never.”