DAY TWO
A day of movies, my favorite! With the snow coming down in big flakes on a bright sunny day, we decided to forgo the lines at Sundance Film Festival shuttles and walk through the beautiful town to the theatres. It was a treat to watch our first movie of the day, Attenberg, at the infamous Egyptian Theatre in Park City. However, an early morning after an evening spent at the Sundance Film Festival’s Opening Night Party may not have been my best scheduling! My wet hair froze as we stood in line awaiting the opening of the theatre.
Attenberg, was funny, quirky and intelligent. But it really took the Director’s insights in the Q& A after the film to put it all together. In a discussion the next week about art, friends and I discussed that art is often more engaging after hearing what the artist has to say about the painting/sculpture/etc. I’m not sure whether I agree or not that the same should be necessary to enjoy a feature film. But to enjoy this film to its fullest, the comments from the Director were invaluable.
Attenberg opens on a funny scene where two girls stab their tongues together in what seems to be an awkward experiment, or a bizarre kiss. When Bella asks, “Did you like it,” Marina replies “It felt like a slug.” This sets the tone for the entire movie, a bit sad and a bit curious. Marina lives in Greece, but not the beautiful blue ocean travel brochure Greece but a rather dismal industrial area along the coast where she is torn between the excitement of her sexual awakening and the miserable terminal illness of her father to whom she is very close. The cinematography is out of this world, you can almost feel the hum of the fluorescent lights overhead when the father visits the hospital, making it both heart wrenching and gruelingly realistic.
During the Q&A, the Director, Athena Rachel Tsangari was quite thrilled that someone asked about the meanings of color throughout the film. It was really interesting to learn that the reds represented both death and sex, and the whites were reminiscent of Greece and the modernist aluminum factory town. Dancing scenes between Marina and Bella were funny albeit out of place until you learn that Ms. Tsangari fashioned these dances like the breaks in a Greek tragedy, like a chorus in a narrative, giving the audience a chance to take a break before joining the story again. The dialogue was completely on point, a little like the dialogue in Juno, but you had to keep up when reading the subtitles.
I loved seeing so many wildly different movies and yet seeing so many commonalities. Tsangari noted that “casting was torture.” Casting came up again when the Director of Circumstance noted that she looked at 1000 actors until she found the right ones. But casting seemed a critical, yet small task for the low budget Uncle Kent where one of the two main players was found online and hired from a Skype interview. Language was an issue for many Directors, in Circumstance actors had to speak at least two languages in case in real life they had to relocate when the movie pissed off the Iranian heads of state, and Ariane Labed, the actress that played Marina in Attenberg, is French, and was only in Greece one year before the movie, yet she did such a great job with the language and the part that she won a best actress award at the Venice Film Festival.
Between movies we grabbed at bite at Robert Redford’s restaurant, Zoom, where the menu was exceptional. Harry Belafonte and his posse sat at the table next to us. Lots of good energy as it turned out to be a seen/be seen kind of eatery, and I would bet multiple movie deals were made there.
Next on our agenda was a really terrific film, Incendies, directed by Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve. (A regular on the festival circuit, with most recent awards for his short, Next Floor 2010 and Polytechnique 2009.) Mr. Villeneuve, coming straight from the airport, jumped onto the stage wearing a giant parka and what he referred to as his “plane hair,” which he acquired during his delayed flights into the festival. I loved his down to earth attitude, which seemed to seep into this film and its characters.
Incendies is based on a play of the same name, which is based on a book titled “Scorched.” Both the book and play were written by Wajdi Mouawad, and the screenplay by Denis Villeneuve and Valerie Beaugrand- Champagne.
The film Incendies follows the story of Nawal Marwan’s children who try to complete the challenge she has left them in her will. It is a journey of sadness and pain, and finally redemption as they learn the terrible things that have shaped their mother. It’s an incredible story, and true theatre fans will fully enjoy the dramatic ending that piles tragedy upon tragedy, then ties it all in a neat package. (It’s a little too pat for me, and I understand the real life story on which the book is based does not end this way.) The casting was amazing, using both professionals and amateurs. Just try picking out the two professionals among the crowd of women in Nawal’s hometown during her daughter’s visit. Lubna Azabal who played Nawal, is also at Sundance with another film in which she stars, called Here.
I was quite surprised to learn that Mr. VIllenueve shot the film in a very quick forty days, on what he referred to as a “Quebec budget.” He said the film was not quite what he imagined, regretting the little time he got to spend working with the actors. Given the final product, I suggest it was an almost perfect use of limited resources.
Our last movie of the day was Senna, a movie about one of the greatest racers of all time, Ayrton Senna. Jim’s love of Formula One racing drove us to this film and it was absolutely captivating, a story of skill both on and off the track. Senna is not only one of those great documentaries that pulls you in even though you know the outcome, but it was all done using only archival footage. Asif Kapadia, the Director, and Manish Pandey, the screenwriter, did an incredible job piecing together the story. And it was interesting to note that they were originally afraid there would be no dialog because all the footage was of the races or drivers wearing helmets, and obtaining the Drivers’ Meeting and family footage was a big coup. After seeing it, it is no surprise that Senna won the World Documentary Audience Award at Sundance.
We caught a late dinner at Chez Betty. Dinner was solid, the décor was similar to that found in older restaurant in Florida. Service was amazing.
ATTENBERG, Presented at Sundance as its first US showing,
Directed/Written by Athina Rachel Tsangari
1/21/11, Spotlight
INCENDIES
Directed Denis Villeneuve
Written by Denis Villeneuve and Valerie Beaugrand- Champagne,
1/21/11, Spotlight
SENNA
Directed by Asif Kapadia
Written by Manish Pandey, presented at Sundance as its first US showing, 1/21/11, Documentary
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