Critic’s Notebook: Awkward Embraces, Assured Directors
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: March 27, 2011
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Nikhol Boosheri and Sarah Kazemy in "Circumstance."
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Written and directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari, “Attenberg” pivots on a 23-year-old late bloomer and only child, Marina (Ariane Labed), who, as she prepares for her father’s imminent death, enters her first (and hilariously awkward) sexual relationship with a man. Shifting between deadpan comedy and dry-eyed drama, the film unwinds episodically, starting with one of the most spectacularly terrible kisses in the history of movies between Marina and her close friend Bella (Evangelia Randou). As they face each other in front of a white wall, they keep their bodies about a foot apart and their tongues sloppily in motion. Coming up for air, Bella asks how hers felt. “Like a slug,” Marina says flatly. “It’s disgusting.”
The title refers to a mispronunciation of the last name of Richard Attenborough, whose nature documentaries Marina raptly watches and which mirror Ms. Tsangari’s observational if sympathetic approach toward her characters. Complementing these nature films, which Marina mimics with animal vocalizations and gestures — she is a bit untamed — are scenes of her and Bella wearing similar dresses and high-heeled boots, and silly-walking on a sidewalk or street. Initially the two look like proper ladies out for a stroll, a pantomime that gives way to funny faces and charmingly goofy choreography. During one walk they sing and saunter past a line of indifferent men. The women are at their most physically expressive in this private world, but then life and death come calling and spin that world right off its axis.
Ms. Tsangari, who grew up in Greece and has a master’s degree in performance studies from New York University, was an associate producer on “Dogtooth,” a New Directors selection from last year. That film’s director, Yorgos Lanthimos, plays the visitor whom Marina beds. Both “Dogtooth,” which was nominated for the best foreign-language Oscar this year, and the superior “Attenberg” (which won Ms. Labed an acting award at last year’s Venice Film Festival) are part of a handful of Greek movies that, if not necessarily constituting a new cinematic wave, have raised attention both at home and on the international scene. In the latest issue of the online journal Senses of Cinema, for instance, Petro Alexiou cautiously described the current situation as “a period of renaissance.”
At its best New Directors/New Films, now in its 40th year, offers a representative sampling of national and global themes, and narrative and technological strategies. At its worst it seeks movies from across the globe, some of which, to be blunt, are not ready for prime time. Given how many directors in the festival shoot in digital these days, the programmers should consider changing its name to New Directors/New Movies to acknowledge that film, as the material of cinema-making choice, is becoming increasingly rare, especially in cash-strapped independent productions. The shift to digital technologies from start to finish is evident in the image quality (digital sometimes looks less visually dense than film) and the ubiquity of hand-held (lightweight) cameras.
Digital is affecting how stories are being told and perhaps also the kinds of stories being told. A movie like “Microphone,” about the underground music scene in Alexandria, Egypt, could certainly have been shot on film. But the rough-looking visuals complement its street-culture milieu and underground art theme. Directed with energy and discernible passion by Ahmad Abdalla, and shot in Alexandria from April to June 2010 on a Canon EOS 7D (the same model that Lena Dunham used for “Tiny Furniture”), this somewhat disjointed if timely movie involves a would-be producer who, along with a pair of video documentarians, plunges into a vibrant music world — with skateboarders, graffiti artists and break dancers — that points to a new reality frowned on by obstructionist officials.
Signs of changing Middle East times are also evident in “Circumstance,” a plaintive lesbian love story set in Tehran — though shot in Lebanon — from the director Maryam Keshavarz. (Unlike most of the movies in this year’s festival it has an American distributor.) The affair between the story’s two teenage girls, sealed with kisses and heated up through an erotic fantasy, certainly attracted attention when “Circumstance” had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January. But it’s how Ms. Keshavarz, who was born in New York, blends the love story with a portrait of liberal Iranians struggling against fundamentalism in their homes and out in the world — the brother of one of the girls has recently found God, with a vengeance — which gives the movie its power.
The best of the rest include “Octubre,” about a Peruvian pawnbroker who unwillingly finds himself the custodian of an infant daughter and a romantic foil for her nurse. The movie’s directors, the brothers Daniel and Diego Vega, walking the line between pathos and bathos, come perilously close to cute but pull off an emotional coup with humor. Though P. David Ebersole’s cluttered, distracting visuals in “Hit So Hard” can be irksome, he wins you over with his unexpectedly poignant portrait of Patty Schemel, a former drummer for Courtney Love’s band Hole. In “Summer of Goliath,” the director Nicolás Pereda (working under the obvious influence of the Argentine filmmaker Lisandro Alonso) uses documentary and fiction for a harrowing, visually strong look at the violence washing over contemporary Mexico.
Though uneven, “Hospitalité,” a slow-to-boil comedy from Koji Fukada about a Japanese family gradually overrun with strangers (and thereby facing issues of isolationism and immigration), is worth a look. And the same holds true of “Copacabana,” Marc Fitoussi’s overly quirky mother-daughter tale with the real mother-daughter team of Isabelle Huppert and Lolita Chammah. Ms. Huppert is invariably interesting to watch, no matter her material. The same is often true of the British actor Peter Mullan (familiar from movies like “Miss Julie”) though not in “Tyrannosaur,” the almost parodically unpleasant feature directing debut of the actor Paddy Considine that opens with a man killing a dog and goes downhill from there.
