Emma and Elvis
From the Chicago Reader (May 7, 1993). — J.R.
This entertaining first fiction feature of Julia Reichert (Union Maids) is at least 25 times better than The Pickle in making a filmmaker’s creative/mid-life crisis meaningful, engaging, and interesting — so the fact that it’s taken two years for this enjoyable independent movie to open here (and at Facets rather than, say, Water Tower) must have more to do with the vanity of cock-waving industry honchos than with the needs of ordinary spectators like you and me. The filmmaker is a married woman (Kathryn Walker) in Dayton, Ohio, who’s bogged down in a documentary about the 60s counterculture. She becomes involved with a bitter, disaffected cable-access video artist in his 20s (Jason Duchin), which creates an ongoing dialogue between 60s and contemporary approaches to political protest — particularly when both characters become involved with a local censorship issue involving a gay activist with AIDS. The story is set in spring 1989, during the Tiananmen Square protests, and all the characters are fresh and unpredictable. The film-within-a-film features interviews about the 60s with Angela Davis, Tom Hayden, David Horowitz, Greil Marcus, and Holly Near. Mark Blum is effective as the filmmaker’s neglected husband; Steven Bognar and Martin M. Read more