Tribeca 2011: Critic's Notebook 2.
by Steve Dollar
Jurors at the 10th annual Tribeca Film Festival followed GreenCine Daily?s own recommendations, awarding the best narrative feature prize to Lisa Aschan?s edgy, estrogenized psych-out She Monkeys and top doc honors to Alma Har?el?s sweet and lyrical Bombay Beach ? one film rigorously composed, the other a shambling, handmade assemblage.
Also richly rewarding was best actress winner Carice van Houten?s performance in Black Butterflies. Biographical dramas about tortured artistic souls set against a tense historical backdrop can be predictable, grandiose and rather pious. Dutch director Paula Van Der Oest avoids many of the pitfalls associated with the genre, although part of that is the relative obscurity of her subject, a poet with whom most Americans are not familiar (and therefore unable to draw comparisons to real-life knowledge of the character). Known as South Africa?s answer to Sylvia Plath, Ingrid Jonker killed herself in 1965 by walking into the sea at Three Anchor Bay in Capetown. The end is foreshadowed by the film?s opening scene, a ?not waving, drowning? moment in which a struggling Jonker is rescued by her soon-to-be lover, the writer Jack Cope.
Van Houten (Black Book) is marvelous to watch, a tough, passionate whirlwind of an actress who summons the steely verve of a Judy Davis. She gives real backbone to the familiar arc of the self-destructive artist pushing against the social constraints of her time (South Africa in the Apartheid clampdown of the 1960s) while engaging in turbulent relationships with difficult lovers and a repressive politico father who, in horrific irony, was South Africa?s censorship chief (played by that hobo with a shotgun himself, Rutger Hauer, in art-house mode).
Movies like these earned the fest, which continues through Sunday, a little more respect this year. Even the array of pre-release star vehicles, a Tribeca trademark and/or curse, didn?t all suck.
Everything Must Go, in which professional jackass Will Ferrell trades in his Ron Burgundy persona for a 12-pack of PBR to play an alcoholic fuck-up, was a nice surprise. Written and directed by Dan Rush from the Raymond Carver short story ?Why Don?t You Dance??, it?s a loose adaptation that taps into Ferrell?s inner sad sack to get at behavioral truths and, yes, redemption. The actor spends most of the film camped out on a front lawn in suburban Phoenix, portraying an ace corporate player whose fall from grace (and his AA meeting schedule) costs him his job, his wife, and everything else, save for all his possessions, now scattered across the front yard.
It could almost be a one-man play, as Ferrell interacts with his man-stuff, veering into monologues not unlike Tom Hanks stranded in Cast Away. But when the pretty pregnant lady who just moved into the neighborhood turns out to be Rebecca Hall, a woman with marital issues of her own, you suspect the movie may take a certain turn. It doesn?t, and Hall doesn?t even steal the show. A chubby kid called Christopher ?C.J.? Wallace shows up, and makes the whole narrative click. The young actor (son of rappers Biggie Smalls and Faith Evans) is another lonely soul in this lawn-sprinkler limbo, and while the cranky-bonding/children-speak-the-hard-facts/mentoring-as-therapy scenario is completely predictable, you haven?t seen a 12-year-old performance this assured in a long time. The movie functions at a slightly absurdist level of reality ? it?s a long way from realism ? yet when it milks the tears of a clown, Ferrell makes the waterworks feel earned.
By hook or by crook, I?m going to find the full six-episode BBC series that Michael Winterbottom edited down into his feature-length foodie wanderjahr, The Trip. No doubt, this reduction serves the comedic jousting of director favorites Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon (picking up where they left off in Tristam Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story), playing versions of themselves ? a la Curb Your Enthusiasm ? as middle-aged British frenemies on a dining tour of the breathtaking Lake District. But there?s less fodder for foodies and more droll foolery in the big-screen edition, which only offers fleeting glimpses of various gourmet ecstasies that await the actors. Coogan, or ?Coogan,? has been dumped by his girlfriend and invites Brydon to take her place on the journey, paid for by a magazine that has assigned Coogan a feature piece.
As such, the story is a little reminiscent of Sideways, with Coogan?s narcissism as the ?issue,? rather than alcoholism, and the pair?s unendingly hilarious dueling Michael Caine impersonations taking the place of Paul Giamatti?s wine-soaked rants. Underneath the fancy tablecloths, the flowing libations and Coogan?s string of one-night stands (a pretty concierge, a celebrity photographer), there?s a nuanced exploration of the nature of friendship and the self-esteem rattling demands of the actor?s life ? an air of melancholy that makes the punchlines land harder than you first realize.
Addicts of sheer, unadulterated gastro-porn were better served by Jiro Dreams of Sushi. David Gelb's low-key documentary, which was picked up for theatrical release by independent distributor Magnolia last week, should be irresistible to Top Chef addicts. A 20-course meal at Sukiyabashi Jiro, a tiny sushi restaurant in Toyko's fancy-pants Roppongi Hills, will cost about $300 and be over within roughly 15 minutes. One of fewer than 100 restaurants in the world to be awarded three stars by the Michelin Guide, it is the sacred temple of master chef Jiro Ono, a tireless icon of Japanese cuisine who, at age 85, still never takes a day off. Much as I love close-ups of perfect toro being sliced and the gauzy, fashion-spread presentations of various fish after meticulous preparation, Jiro feels awfully restrained. It?s an engaging anecdotal history of a living legend that will make you crave a seat at Ono?s 10-seat sushi bar. But it could use some wasabi to enliven its pickled ginger style.
A Matter of Taste has no such methodical slickness. Its run-and-gun feel is, however, in synch with the chaotic life of its subject, Tribeca chef Paul Liebrandt. Due to air on HBO this summer, it chronicles a decade in the life of the bold young Englishman trying to make his bones in the cut-throat Manhattan restaurant business. Liebrandt?s avant-garde concepts are a tad ahead of the curve, and his struggles to express a unique culinary vision make for unexpected drama as he learns New Yorkers would be just as happy with a good burger as with espuma of calf brains and foie gras.
Director Sally Rowe had the smarts to latch onto Liebrandt at the beginning of his career, following him straight through to his current success at Corton, and the long-term perspective gives her no-fuss documentary welcome if perhaps unintended affiinites with Michael Apted?s Up series. As Liebrandt speaks passionately about his cooking philosophy, the film becomes a climactic drama about a looming make-or-break review from (now former) New York Times critic Frank Bruni. The chef's self-deprecating wit keeps his Olympian ambitions on a human scale, but as he pushes to realize them the film turns into a gastronomic thriller.
Posted by cphillips at April 29, 2011 2:18 PM
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