Bone Up On Sundance

"How come nobody asks me any questions. It's cuz I'm a TV actor, I bet?""

Well it was my first official year of actually going to film after film, hopping shuttles and zipping around Park City like I was being pursued by Tommy Lee Jones for criminal acts I'm quite sure I'm innocent of. Going to bed only to arise a scant few hours later to do it all over again. Usually I leave this kind of dirty business to Adam Mast, my intrepid film editor - a 12 year veteran of Sundance who has it down to a science. In any case here is my first report - once I get caught up I plan to write a Boneman about the experience - lots of funny stuff to put you up on. You see when they're free to walk among the rest of us peasants without fear of paparazzi and other such crazies, celebrities are actually just strange, short little creatures. Roger Ebert, oddly enough, is a hobbit - I almost got a picture of his great big nasty feet.

FRIENDS WITH MONEY (R)
Frances MacDormand, Katherine Keener, Jennifer Aniston, Joan Cusack
Directed by Nicole Holofcener

Friends With Money is a charming and extremely funny look at the various ways in which money (or the lack thereof) effects our lives and particularly our relationships with loved ones and Friends. Writer/Director Nicole Holofcener has also given us such winning fare as Walking and Talking and Lovely and Amazing, and the fact that this keenly observant ensemble piece was chosen as the premiere film for the opening night gala of Sundance 2006 is testimony to the fact that Holofcener has arrived as not only a vibrant voice, but a standard-bearer in the changing landscape of American cinema.

In it's candor and jugular jousting way of keeping the laughs coming fast and furious, Friends With Money compares favorably to the best work of both Woody Allen and Steven Soderberg. Her defining comedic M.O. is to serve up the punchline as the first words uttered after cutting away to a new scene. A devise that she doesn't abuse, but uses to marvelously funny affect. Her writing also plays to the strengths of her cast in a way that is beyond uncanny. Part of this comes of having worked with certain cast members in the past, but it is no less amazing to watch Frances MacDormand's un-self-conscious loose-cannon personae just go off like runaway shopping cart full of dog doodey and dynamite.

As a director she just has that knack for knowing how to set her actors up so they're swinging confident wood in their wheelhouse and the characterizations are so genuine that if you don't know people like these you certainly have no doubt that they exist. Conversely it could be argued that anyone could direct a cast of this caliber - Joan Cusack, Katherine Keener and Jennifer Aniston join MacDormand as the female nucleus of this ensemble. A group not brought together by circumstance and coincidence (Ala. Robert Altman) rather a group of friends who have remained close from high school and college well into early middle age.

Though she's never been a story-teller, Holofcener has a masters eye for this kind of group dynamic and dives into it's many quirky dysfunctions with an a fiendish pleasure that borders on the sadistic. Financially, the gals are all set well enough (Cusack's character being the obscenely wealthy one courtesy of family inheritance) with the exception of Aniston who washed out as a high school teacher and now cleans people's houses for a living. She is the poster child of the groups constant concern, joking and gossip - she smokes pot, wallows in her low self-esteem and is in love (or at least still obsessed) with a married man with whom she carried on a short-lived dalliance. Kind of a big city version of her character in The Good Girl with a screw-it attitude and a bevy of rich friends to watch over and judge her.

MacDormand, God love her, gobbles up the scenery as a successful designer of her own line of women's high fashion, whose own slovenly appearance has been exacerbated of late due to her growing aversion to shampoo. Her marriage is not a close and passionate one, but she loves her husband (Simon McBurney a Roman Polansky look-alike) whose effeminate manner is the fodder for gay jokes among the gals as well as wrongful assumptions regarding his sexual preference from gay men. MacDormand is hilarious in a running gag where she is all but ignored by waiters who can't help but dote on her husband, "can I get another cup of coffee for the love of God - or has the man fallen off the face of the earth?"

It is Keener's marriage that is in trouble. She and her husband are a screenwriting team in the midst of a home renovation that has caused them to become the pariahs of the neighborhood. Her husband (Jason Isaacs) isn't the least bit troubled by the fact that their neighbors, who had always been friends or at least friendly, are suddenly firing withering glares across the street or through the hedges. Little things like this as well as professional disagreements are now rapidly eroding the respective shores of the gulf that exists between them.

The title of the film is a bit deceptive in that money issues or more often used as subtext and don't really amount to all that much in the plot. The issue of money as it relates to the film is best summed up by the idle musings of Cusack's character. There is a scene where she asks Keener, "hypothetically" if she thought that they'd be interested in Aniston's character as a friend if they hadn't known each other for years and they happened to meet today for example. Sadly they both agree that the answer would probably be no. Happily, Aniston's character enjoys the last laugh in that regard.

Fortunately Friends with Money doesn't dwell on a lot of pathos, Holofcener had the good sense to realize that with an opportunity like this, where laughs seem to come out of the woodwork, that she should capitalize. And that she does. They come by way of knee-slappers, medium-sized chuckles all the way down to quick snickers, but Friends With Money will have you smiling throughout. Best of all the laughs arise naturally from the situations and with women this adept at comic timing the humor flows effortlessly, like a master composing for four gifted performers, Friends With Money comes across much like comedic chamber music.

A-

THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP
Gael Garcia Bernal, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alain Chabat, Aurelia Petit
Director: Michel Gondry

It was wise of Michel Gondry to do a follow-up what I consider to be the most brilliant film of the century (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) with this light-hearted, surreal piece of brain-candy. The Science of Sleep is clever and funny, and is of course, filled with the director's trademark visual stylings - and though on the surface it may seem little more than a lot of irreverent farcical fluff (a 7 year-old boy's conception of a Romantic Comedy) there's quite a bit more to it. It will probably be interpreted in a hundred different ways and I have my own ideas about it that you may or may not agree with - still for the most part I believe that Gondry shot this picture as a palette cleanser for himself and the multitudes whom, after Eternal Sunshine, probably expect his farts to have catchy melodies.

The title of the film itself is intended as a joke, and before the first minute of the film has elapsed it's become abundantly clear that there will be nothing scientific, much less drowsy about this frenetic tip of the hat to the classic French farce. The story begins inside the head of the films' central character Stephane, (Gael Garcia Bernal) just as he is about to succumb to slumber and we get a taste of the kind of science involved in the film. Stephane is the host, band, announcer, chief cook and bottle washer of a show he produces in his mind - intended, I would think, to represent those strange, nonsensical, distorted thought patterns that we experience just before falling asleep. The subject of this nights program is cooking, and a lively Chef Stephane is standing behind a big boiling pot, walking us through the recipe for dreams. He tosses in such ingredients as "the events of the day" a dash of "random thoughts" and so on and when the recipe is complete and brought to boil he steps to a doorway at the back of the set, pushes open a shower curtain and steps into an endless blue void where dreams are found. Though he returns to this set several times during the film the dream-formula is the sum total of our brush with science.

Stephane is a bit of an odd lad, who has grown up with a disorder of some kind that limits his ability to distinguish between dreams and reality and Gondry draws the audience into this condition. By the midpoint of the film it has become almost impossible to know if what we're seeing at any given moment is reality or a dream. Stephane's father has recently passed on, an occasion that his mother uses to persuade her son to stay in his hometown by getting him a job as a graphic artist. His workplace is populated by 3 bizarre characters who gabble about swearing at each other in various languages some of which we get as hilariously abbreviated subtitles - in a way it all reminded me of something out of Benny Hill. Just as an example of how loopy Gondry's world is, Stephane is sat down and shown his job which consisted of pasting the name of the month at the top of calendar pages. Taking this as a grievous insult to his artistic abilities, he flies into a rage and barges into the bosses office to show him a calendar of his own creation where the picture for each month are graphic illustrations of major tragedies and disasters (airplane explosions, massive earthquakes etc.)

As you may well imagine, particularly if you've followed Gondry's career, The Science of Sleep is a visual stunner, and there are several images in the film that will remind many of his work back in the day when he was directing music videos. The majority of the film revolves around Stephane's infatuation with his beautiful next door neighbor in his apartment building. Her name is Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg - 21 Grams) and though she is attracted to Stephane there is some confusion as to whether he is interested in her or her friend. She is also concerned by his strange and childish behavior. As Gondry has shown in the past, he has a preternatural understanding of love and how it works and often fails when pent up and distorted by the confines of relationships. In Eternal Sunshine he spent much of the film unraveling it's complexities and in The Science of Sleep he examines love at it's essence, breaking it down to it's most simple elements. In this sense, Science of Sleep works as an interesting companion piece to it's complicated older brother Eternal Sunshine. In the end Stephane and Stephanie are like children playing with love as if it were some fascinating old board game they've discovered in the attic.

The two lovers argue and become cross with each other when the game isn't going their way. They storm off and refuse to speak to each other, and pretend not to be interested in the silly little game any more. In the end, however, they find the game to be too compelling and eventually want to play some more. They're so childish. What a genius, this Frenchman. Not bad for a palette cleanser.

On a sidenote, The Science of Sleep was the second major buy at Sundance with Warner Independent shelling out just over 6 million for the palette cleanser.

B+

KINKY BOOTS (PG-13)
Joel Edgerton, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sarah-Jane Potts, Nick Frost, Linda Bassett
Director: Julian Jarrold

Kinky Boots follows in the tradition of films such as The Full Monty and Calendar Girls, that finds rather staid and conventional people cast into desperate circumstances in order to make ends meet. Thus we begin in industrial Northampton where the venerable shoe manufacture Price and Sons is giving a modest send-off to young Charlie Price (Joel Edgerton) who is off to college to study marketing. Despite the expectations of taking over the business in due time, Charlie has never developed an interest or much of an affinity for shoe manufacture, thus his interest in college represents more of an escape from the dreary confines of Northampton and the factory life, both for himself and his overjoyed fiancee, Nicola (Jemima Rooper).

As fortune would have it, Charlie has scarcely unpacked his bags when he receives word that his father has died. Consequently he must return to Northampton and face his destiny. Upon his first look around his father's office he finds documents that indicate that the business is in serious trouble and straight away he is forced to lay off many of his father's loyal employees. He learns that a massive yearly order from a major wholesale distributor has been canceled and yet his father had gone ahead and produced some 500 pair of shoes in hopes that the order would be reinstated, or that he might sell the business and drop the burden on the new owner. Now young Charlie is not only faced with running the family business, but acting as it's reluctant savior.

After a trip to one of his Father's loyal customers only results in unloading a few hundred pair at cost, Charlie stops into a pub for a skin-full and upon stumbling out of the establishment finds the course of his life forever changed. In what he imagines to be a gallant effort to protect a damsel in distress he chases after some drunken toughs giving a black woman a hard time, and before he knows it he's knocked unconscious by a wild swing of the woman's purse. He awakes in her flat and soon enough discovers that the damsel in distress was actually a dandy in his dress. Enter the enormously entertaining force of nature Chiwetel Ejiofor as the large and lovely lounge sensation, Lola.

Lola, is a cross-dressing black man - physically imposing out of drag, but a statuesque Amazon TKO in full costume. She is a feature performer in a cabaret show of sorts that caters to a wild assortment of patrons - Lola lives out his/her dreams on stage before adoring crowds with her signature song from Damn Yankees "What Lola Wants, Lola Gets." Though the two men couldn't be any more different, they recognize in each other a common bond. Both are putting on brave faces for the world to see, but deep down both, in one way or another, each feels like a fraud. Yet destiny is at work as Lola begins to complain of her sore feet.

Kinky Boots, as Adam pointed out to me as we watched, is a classic example of a film that despite it's obvious and predictable plotline, still manages to win you over on the strength of it's performances. Ejiofor gave one of the great performances of the century in Stephen Frears' Dirty Pretty Things, and by accepting the role of Lola took a calculated risk that pays off marvelously and will undoubtedly see his stock rise. Though Edgerton has played high profile roles in the Star Wars Revenge of the Sith and has received several awards in his native Australia, for my money he made his mark as a wannabe concert promoter in The Night We Called It A Day, playing opposite Dennis Hopper as Frank Sinatra. His long blonde-haired party animal in that picture bears little resemblance to his restrained take as a conservative Briton, whom with his studied buttoned-down personae bears an undeniable resemblance to Conan O'Brien.

As Charlie begins to realize that men who dress up as women must force their fat, unfeminine feet into the petite footwear of women, a light blinks on in his sore head. And the two of them brainstorm the tenability of producing racy footwear for this niche market of men who get their jollies dressing up as women. Giving the notion even more credence is the fact that Kinky Boots is quite accurately based on a true story, that made it's way around the news markets in Great Britain - catching the attention of the film-makers responsible for turning another unlikely British story into a hit movie - Calendar Girl.

Though from this point on (including a twist in Price's romantic fortunes) it's pretty plain to see where the film is headed, the story is smartly parsed out with enough heart and sole as well as sweetness and subtlety, that it comes off as an unabashed crowd-pleaser. Nick Frost who put a lot of the funny in Shaun of the Dead, plays a factory worker with a bit of a chip on his shoulder toward his new boss. But in a well-conceived scene Ejiafor is able to sort him out and Frost brings a good bit his comedic stylings to the film, as do many of the character actors that populate the factory including the ever-reliable Linda Bassett and Ewan Hooper.

On as Charlie's own personal Jiminy Cricket is the pixie-esque cutie Sarah-Jane Potts, who doesn't let the King of the Kinky Boot get away with a thing and as a result manages to gain his respect and eventually sort out his sore heart. In order to create the kind of demand for their product that would be sufficient to save the factory and the jobs of those who've spent their adult lives working there, they must put together a snappy line of wears and give them a proper run up the flagpole on the catwalks of Milan. This sequence offers a few dramatic surprises, but ultimately we know we're on our way to a happy ending. Still there is much along the way (including a good bit of soul-searching on the part of both Charlie and Lola) to give the film enough poignant substance to make it more than a mere Discovery channel curiosity. I'm giving it a B and any miserable sod who gives it less needs a kinky boot right up the backside..

B

LEONARD COHEN: I'M YOUR MAN
Biopic/Concert Film
Starring Leonard Cohen, Bono, Rufus Wainwright, Beth Orton, Nick Cave
Director: Lian Lunson

Leonard Cohen has always remained something of an enigma. Even if you haven't heard of him, it's likely that you've hummed along to a few of his songs in your day. I'm Your Man is an insightful biopic and concert film that serves as a lovely introduction for those who aren't as familiar with the man as they should be and a terrific tribute for those who are. Cohen speaks candidly of his past, his decision to become a songwriter (along with his fascinating philosophy about what it is to be a songwriter) his loves, his daughter and a host of other fascinating things. What a serious treat this is, to get a glimpse into the mind of this beloved man, and to hear him discuss a wide range of topics with his singular intelligence and charm.

The documentary portion is intercut with mesmerizing concert footage, featuring a number of his gifted contemporaries offering their interpretations of his seminal work. The performers are perfectly suited to the task and include the likes of Rufus Wainwright and his brilliant sister Martha, as well as their venerable mother and aunt The McGarrigle Sisters, Nick Cave, Beth Orton, Antony from Antony and the Johnsons, among others. The musical portion was inspiring to say the least, but I'd have to say my favorite came from that strange androgynous creature Antony, his and the last performance where Leonard himself croons the title song with a little back up outfit known as U2.

Cohen was surprisingly open about his infamous tryst with Janice Joplin, and his tea and oranges with the real "Suzanne." Among the many things I learned during the course of the film is why he has always chosen to wear suits, and that his songs come about from a yeoman like work ethic much more so than fleeting inspiration. In carefully worded and paced conversational language he offers his revelatory anecdotes about his life freely. After deciding to pursue a life as a songwriter he speaks of the process as a job with regular hours that he observes just like any other. The amount of time he frequently takes to perfect a song is legendary. Each word is tirelessly scrutinized and when he's finished, as U2's the Edge described it, "it's like a man come down from the mountaintop with tablets of stone."

Through it all Cohen remains humble and self-deprecatory, cautious and a little bit sly - but for a man who has always shied away from the limelight and has been out of the public eye for decades this intimate and illuminating glimpse into the life of one of the most fearlessly brilliant men to ever put word to melody, is a rare thing.

B+

OPEN WINDOW (R)
Robin Tunney, Joel Edgerton, Elliot Gould, Cybil Shepherd, Scott Wilson
Director: Mia Goldman

Open Window marks the writing and directing debut of long-time film editor Mia Goldman. Her film stars Robin Tunney and Joel Edgerton as a Los Angeles couple, very much in love - whose relationship is put to the strongest of tests after an act of violence rocks their lives.

The couple live in Venice Beach in one of those classic Craftsman style homes, Peter (Edgerton) is an assistant professor at a local University, and Izzy (Tunney) is a photographer with dreams of selling her work professionally. Soon after the film begins, Peter heads out to visit his estranged father who lives on the outskirts of Southern California's endless city. It turns out his father has summoned him because he is planning on moving back to his hometown in the midwest and wants Peter to have something. It turns out to be the wedding ring his mother had worn, and though we can sense the ring carries with it a lot of complicated baggage, Peter accepts it with thanks. When he returns home he offers it as an engagement ring to Izzy who simply responds by saying yes.

To show his appreciation for her quick and ready affirmation, he surprises her by cleaning up their old workshop out back and sets it up with a small dark room and everything else she needs to stop procrastinating and start working toward her career dreams. As he is leaving he opens the window to let in some fresh air and we linger there as it creeks ominously as a gust of wind blows in.

Later that evening Izzy is in the workshop arranging some of her old work when a bird lands on the window sill, she steps over to take a look at it, and standing beyond it is a blonde bearded man in running clothes who leaps through the open window and violently rapes Izzy. Inside the house Peter is engaged in some sort of noisy housework and is thus unable to hear her screams. The rape itself is shot with intense visceral realism, and we return to the act throughout the film in flashback as further details of the attack come into play.

Izzy is taken to the hospital and given a check-up, but refuses to have the procedure done that would allow them to retrieve the assailant's DNA and she opts not to go to the police. Peter finds this perplexing, as does her mother and Izzy also requests that her father not be told about the rape. This and a few other odd facts begin to arouse suspicion about there being more to the crime than meets the eye. Particularly a scene where Peter comes out to look around the workshop and finds a bit of torn material in the window which he takes with him and never mentions it to anyone.

Izzy soon shuts down, keeping to herself and sleeping away the days - moping around in her pajamas like a refugee in her own home. She turns a cold shoulder to Peter any time he tries to offer consolation or affection, she stops eating and becomes more and more withdrawn and uncommunicative. Peter becomes increasingly frustrated to the point where he actually seeks the advice of his father, whom he hasn't spoken more than a Merry Christmas to for years due to issues involving his treatment of his mother during their divorce.

The ripple effect begins to take a toll on Peter and after being turned down for a position at the University he was counting on, he lashes out at her and she decides to move out. During all this Izzy's mother (an annoyingly over-the-top Cybil Shepherd) has been trying in her no-nonsense fashion to set things right, but it is her father (Elliot Gould) who manages to draw Izzy out.
Gould is quietly effective in his role, as is Izzy's Psychiatrist (Shirley Knight).

Ultimately Open Window is a straight forward look at the effects of violence and as such it works well enough. The material is slightly out of Tunney's reach as an actress and wearing his constant dour expression Edgerton looks so much like Conan O'Brien that it does become a bit disconcerting. Thinking about the film as I write this, when I try to picture Edgerton's face all I can conjure up is that expression Conan gets on his face when he and Max do their little awkward silence bit. If this strikes you as a ridiculous thing to mention in critique I understand - but I can't imagine any American reviewer not having at least a little bit of a problem with it. The resemblance is so uncanny that it's literally like watching Conan acting upset at his wife's gradual disappearance.

The problem with Open Window is that it doesn't offer any new insight into a subject that has been explored ad nauseum. There is a scene where Tunney has an imaginary confrontation with her assailant where she manages to subdue him, wrap him in the drapes and push him out her high rise apartment window. Goldman wants us to think this is actually happening until the drapes flutter away lightly in the wind. Then after this event she is soon her old self again and before you know it, she's having a successful show of her photography with everybody standing around sipping wine. The ending is satisfactory if not entirely satisfying and the film leaves you with the feeling that you've stepped out to take a 10 minute phone call and missed something important. The movie is just plain lacking - there needed to be more to it to push it beyond the caliber of your run of the mill WE Channel feature. Sorry Mia Goldman, it's just Mia Pinion.

C