Peter Greenaway’s most controversial feature (1993, 122 min.), in part because it’s so unrelievedly unpleasant without ever actually seeming atypical of his work. Set in France during the mid-17th century, it centers on the birth of a baby boy that’s mythologized for various ends, initially because it marks the end of childlessness in a city. The child’s older sister (Julia Ormond), a virgin, claims to be his mother; when she attempts to seduce the bishop’s son (Ralph Fiennes), he’s gored to death by a cow. Ultimately the baby is dismembered, and the sister is raped to death by 217 soldiers, each one pardoned in advance by the church. This being a Greenaway film, no character is shown sympathetically, the action is lushly and rather beautifully filmed (by Sacha Vierny) on a single set, and the whole thing is staged as a play within the film. I watched it to the end out of a sense of duty, not with pleasure or any hope of edification. (JR) Read more
The most popular non-American movie shown at the 1995 Cannes film festival, this fresh and unpredictable comic thriller from Iran is a first feature by Jafar Panahi, a former assistant to the great Abbas Kiarostami (Through the Olive Trees), who’s credited, with Panahi and Parviz Shahbazi, with the screenplay. The film describes in real time the adventures of a seven-year-old girl and her older brother in the streets of Tehran during the 85 minutes that elapse just before the celebration of the Iranian New Year. After convincing her mother she needs another goldfish for the celebration, the girl sets off to buy one, but twice en route to the store loses the banknote she’s been given; most of the remainder of the film is devoted to her efforts to get the money back. If the plot sounds slender, the movie is both gripping and charming, with well-sketched characters and expert storytellingand Panahi’s efforts to redefine our sense of time along the way are remarkable. A masterpiece, one that grows in impact and subtlety over repeated viewings.84 min. (JR) Read more
A mainly routine Hong Kong action film from fleet and floppy-haired action hero Jackie Chanthe number-one box-office hit in mainland China in 1995, released here the following year. It’s light on plot and character, but the stunts are well staged: Chan plays a Hong Kong cop vacationing in New York who tangles with street gangs. This was mainly shot in Vancouver and looks it. Directed by Stanley Tong from a script by Edward Tang and Fibe Ma. 89 min. (JR) Read more
The brutally mauled corpse of a teenage girl is found in a small Massachusetts town, and all the evidence seems to point to her boyfriend (Edward Furlong), the son of a local pediatrician (Meryl Streep) and sculptor (Liam Neeson) who has mysteriously disappeared. The father decides to suppress evidence before he even knows what happened. Adapted by Ted Tally (The Silence of the Lambs) from Rosellen Brown’s best-selling novel, and very well directed by Barbet Schroeder, this movie becomes an absorbing meditation on the separate claims made by family loyalty and social responsibility that both divide and unite the family (which also has a young daughter, played by Julia Weldon, who serves as narrator). Curiously, we are never told why the girl’s corpse is so badly disfigured, though everything else gets explained. Over the course of exploring this troubling all-American subject, the filmmakers do a fine job of fleshing out the major characters (I especially liked Alfred Molina as the son’s defense lawyer), and the New England locations are beautifully integrated. With Daniel Von Bargen, John Heard, Ann Magnuson, and Kaiulani Lee. (JR) Read more
After making a name for himself as a director of postnoirs (Red Rock West, The Last Seduction), John Dahl switches genres to SF thriller, and thanks in part to a sprawling and undisciplined, if not preposterous, script (by Bill Geddie, the executive producer of several Barbara Walters specials), complete with a mad forensic pathologist (Ray Liotta), he hits the skids. Helped by a resourceful neurobiologist (Linda Fiorentino), Liotta discovers that memories are stored in cerebral spinal fluid. He then injects himself with his dead wife’s in order to solve the mystery of who killed her. Maybe this would have worked as a modest trashy thriller compressed to 75 minutes, but Dahl lets it run for almost two hours, punctuated with more flashy flashbacks and sweaty close-ups of Liotta (the poor man’s Jeffrey Hunter) than any one person can take, and it becomes increasingly hard to sustain an interest in the plot, much less in whodunit. One nice dividend, though, is Fiorentino, who seems to have consciously striven to play the reverse of her character in The Last Seductionshe’s klutzy, nurturing, and ethicaland does a charming turn with it. With Peter Coyote, Christopher McDonald, Kim Cattrall, Kim Coates, and David Paymer. (JR) Read more
Highly personal and informative, Helena Solberg’s feature-length 1994 documentary about Brazilian musical star Carmen Miranda and her complex identities–a Broadway and Hollywood icon who caricatured Brazilian traits, a woman who became a campy “bombshell”–is an eye-opener. A Brazilian-American herself, Solberg may have more invested in this subject than she can handle, but most of what she has to say and show is so interesting and intelligent you’re not likely to object. Facets Multimedia Center, 1517 W. Fullerton, Friday, February 16, 7:00 and 9:00; Saturday and Sunday, February 17 and 18, 3:00, 5:00, 7:00, and 9:00; and Monday through Thursday, February 19 through 22, 7:00 and 9:00; 281-4114.
–Jonathan Rosenbaum
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): film still. Read more
Like her previous works, Trinh T. Minh-ha’s fifth film, her first in 35-millimeter and her first narrative feature, is both beautiful and difficult (1995). The difficulties begin with the title: this is not a tale, and it doesn’t really concern love–though one of its points of departure is “The Tale of Kieu,” the 19th-century Vietnamese national poem of love. Set in San Francisco, the story focuses on a Vietnamese writer named Kieu who works for a women’s magazine and as a photographer’s model to help support her family back in Vietnam. The beauties include the aggressive music score and the oddly contrapuntal mise en scene, which often seems to have a very different agenda from that of the actors. At times a frankly erotic film that interrogates its own eroticism, it challenges the audience as well with its acting styles and disorienting means of storytelling. Clearly not for everyone, but nothing else around is even remotely like it. Kino-Eye Cinema at Chicago Filmmakers, 1543 W. Division, Friday and Saturday, February 16 and 17, 8:00, 384-5533.
–Jonathan Rosenbaum
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): film still. Read more
These two remarkable Polish features by Krzysztof Kieslowski, made respectively in 1987 and 1988 (and being shown for separate admissions), are both expanded versions of segments in his Decalogue, one of the key works in contemporary cinema, with each segment illustrating one of the Ten Commandments–though regrettably unseen and unavailable in this country apart from a few festival showings. A Short Film About Killing is a feature that might be called terminally Polish in its bleak handling of a brutal killing and the public execution of the murderer. It won the jury prize at Cannes and is probably the most powerful movie about the death penalty ever made. A Short Film About Love, located more centrally in the housing complex that recurs throughout Decalogue, is about the voyeuristic relationship between a troubled 19-year-old postal worker and a woman he spies on every night through his telescope–a relationship that becomes more complex and takes on certain overtones recalling Rear Window once the woman becomes aware of his gaze and decides to seduce him. Facets Multimedia Center, 1517 W. Fullerton, A Short Film About Killing: Friday, February 9, 7:00; Saturday and Sunday, February 10 and 11, 3:00 and 7:00; and Monday through Thursday, February 12 through 15, 7:00; A Short Film About Love: Friday, February 9, 9:00; Saturday and Sunday, February 10 and 11, 5:00 and 9:00; and Monday through Thursday, February 12 through 15, 9:00; 281-4114. Read more
To promote the first volume of his two-part biography of Orson Welles–a fascinating if contestable book–actor-director Simon Callow is presenting a Welles tribute consisting of two half-hour shorts. Hilton Edwards’s 1951 Irish ghost story Return to Glennascaul (narrated by Welles), who also appears briefly and probably directed the short bit that allegedly shows him filming Othello, won an Oscar when it came out. But the real gem in this program is The Fountain of Youth, Welles’s first and best TV pilot–shot for Desilu in 1956 and first aired two years later. Based on John Collier’s story “Youth From Vienna,” this dark period comedy about youth potions and aging (narrated by Welles, who also appears centrally as a kind of lecturer) is in some ways as innovative in relation to TV as Citizen Kane was in relation to movies; the pilot never sold but the nastiness of the humor still carries a rude bite. The Fountain of Youth tweaks Welles’s own narcissism as well as that of his characters–played by Joi Lansing, Dan Tobin, and Rick Jason–while making novel use of still photographs and quick lighting changes to mark shifts in space and time: it presents the medium of TV itself as a kind of mirror to get lost in. Read more
The title of this entertaining Hong Kong movie (1996), also known as Stage Door, is a Cantonese opera term for the imaginary line separating the stage from backstage, and it becomes emblematic of the various crossovers in the story itself. Adapted by Raymond To Kwow-wai from his own play, it concerns the producer and star of a Cantonese opera company (Josephine Siao) who’s about to abandon her career to emigrate to Australia with her husband and adopted daughter. (The anticipation of Hong Kong’s return to the mainland is a major theme here, as it is in many recent Hong Kong films.) The adopted daughter is showing lesbian tendencies and the heroine, a specialist in male roles, is experiencing some gender confusion of her own. Shu Kei, the directora central figure in the Hong Kong film scene who is known as its most outspoken film critic, as a prolific screenwriter who’s worked for the likes of Ann Hui, Yim Ho, and John Woo, and as a programmer and novelistnavigates genre and gender alike with wit and aplomb. (JR) Read more
It’s questionable how much Barry Gifford has benefited the work of David Lyncheither in furnishing the source material for Wild at Heart or in collaborating on this even more noir-heavy scriptbut this 1996 feature was Lynch’s most audacious break from conventional narrative since Eraserhead. The enigmatic plot, shaped like a M Read more
Though Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne are creditable print journalists, they become shameless hacks whenever they write screenplays, and this deeply offensive Disney picture about TV journalism in Miamitraversing various areas already treated in both Broadcast News and To Die For, and suggested by Alanna Nash’s book Golden Girlis no exception. The usually wonderful Michelle Pfeiffer plays a former waitress and casino worker from Reno determined to become a big-time anchorperson, and Robert Redford plays her patriarchal boss, guru, and eventual lover. Maybe if this sentimental, dim-witted, sexist claptrap about showbiz had been written 30 years ago it might have been a little less offensive, but somehow I doubt it. Prepare to shed a tear or two if you fall for it; I kept looking at my watch. Directed by Jon Avnet (Fried Green Tomatoes); with Stockard Channing, Joe Mantegna, Kate Nelligan, Glenn Plummer, and James Rebhorn. (JR) Read more
This autobiographical Austrian feature (1994) by Wolfgang Murnberger is likable, even if it’s not especially compelling as plot. It focuses on the erotic fantasies, medieval and otherwise, of a bored and alienated 18-year-old private, the son of a movie-theater manager, stationed on the border between Austria and Hungary in 1980. (His dreams are in black and white, but the remainder of the film is in color.) Well acted and nicely filmed. (JR) Read more
Seven years before Woody Allen started cornering the English-language Bergman market with Interiors, the brooding Swedish master tried his hand at it and came up with this Swedish-American color production (1971). Most American critics were horrified that he cast Elliott Gould, but Gould isn’t at all bad, and neither is Bibi Andersson, playing a woman who leaves her doctor husband (Max von Sydow) for Gould. Not exactly Bergman at his best, but still well worth a look. (JR) Read more
Stephen Frears directs the umpteenth version of the Jekyll and Hyde story, this time Christopher Hampton’s adaptation of a novel by Valerie Martin that recounts the tale from the viewpoint of Jekyll’s maid (Julia Roberts). This is a creepy and upsetting mood piece, with lots of fog and dank, evocative Victorian sets; though there’s some awkwardness in finding an American Jekyll and Hyde (both John Malkovich) and what sounds like either an American southern or Irish maid (in Julia Roberts’s wavering performance) inexplicably surrounded by English people and settings, Malkovich otherwise gives an effective performance, making Hyde positively lewd with innuendo. Too bad the overreaching script has to go after effects recalling Alien, but as a stylistic exercise this still has its chills. Others in the cast include George Cole, Michael Gambon, Kathy Staff, and Glenn Close. (JR) Read more
