Tribeca 2019: "The Projectionist" and "Circus of Books"

Here is Jason Adams reporting again from the Tribeca Film Festival.

Sex is disappearing. Look at the Ken-like plains of our Marvel Superhero pant-fronts -- or even look how sexless our superstars made the concept of Camp look at the Met Gala this week, as if horn-dog horniness doesn't go hand in hand with that over-heated sensibility. Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls: the true end of an era. On this theme two documentaries that played Tribeca last week looked back at two nearly extinct modes of orgiastic delivery -- the porn theater and the porn shop...

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NYFF: Pasolini, or One Day of Sodom

Our coverage of the New York Film Festival continues - here is Jason tackling Abel Ferrara's biopic Pasolini with Willem Dafoe.

This is a review of Abel Ferrara's Pasolini, but let me just start by saying that I loved Bertrand Bonello's Saint Laurent. Nathaniel reviewed Saint Laurent and he was more measured in his appreciation of it than I would be - I was bowled over by its style and its sex appeal. I loved it. I went into it with next to no expectations - I'm usually indifferent to fashion bio-pics, I haven't seen Bonello's other films, and Gaspard Ulliel's left me cold up to now - but near to three hours later I was a disciple. Saint Laurent tells the story of a gay man, a creative force to be reckoned with, whose flirtations with reckless sex in the 1970s led him to a muddy field, beaten bloody...

the real Pier Paolo Pasolini... which brings us to Pasolini, the story of a gay man, a creative force to be reckoned with, whose flirtations with reckless sex in the 1970s led him to a muddy field, beaten bloody. I took the long way around but I got there, bridging the two, and I bring up the way the two films shadow each other for more than superficial purposes - it's in the part about "a creative force to be reckoned with" where I see Bonello's film sparking to life while Ferrara's remains curiously distant.

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Venice: Angry Filmmakers, Smoking Lights, Disappointing Films

[Editor's Note: Manolis, our correspondent from Greece, is wrapping up his time in Venice. But hopefully he'll go out on a higher note that this day, which disappointed him.  -Nathaniel R]

The last two days were bad days for me at the festival. Films I had high hopes for proved to be less that satisfying and smaller films that I hoped would surprise me didn't.

People Mountain, People Sea
This was the ‘surprise film’ of the Competition section of the festival announced just a few minutes before its first press screening. But this was not the only surprise for the press attending. Halfway through the film smoke started coming out of a headlight in the screening room and many journalists started running towards the exits panicked. The screening was interrupted, the firemen came and fixed the problem that could have resulted in a fire. After 25 minutes the screening resumed and the remaining critics watched the rest of the story. The movie is about a man Lao Tie in a small province of China who realizes that the local police force are unable to catch his younger brother’s killer, so he decides to do it himself. He embarks a journey that not only brings him face to face with the killer but also brings out all the fears and anger hiding inside him for many years. Unfortunately the fire incident was far more interesting than the film. I would say that this was the worst film I saw in the festival thus far, if it wasn’t for...

4:44 Last Day on Earth
In a large New York penthouse a couple of lovers (William Dafoe & Shanyn Leigh) are spending their last night talking and making love. Tomorrow at 4:44 pm the world will come to an end. Director Abel Ferarra's (Bad Lieutenant, Dangerous Game, Mary) new film, which describes the way this couple faces the impending collapse of the world it thematically interesting (Don McKellar made a fine film on the topic with “Last Night” in 1998) but the potential is never fulfilled. What Ferrara has to offer is ideological deliriums and a cheap morality lessons. 

[SPOILERS] The movie goes like this: the couple make love, they watch an Al Gore interview about global warming, they make love, they meditate, they make love, they watch a Dalai Lama speech about human nature, they quarrel, the clock shows 4:44 and they die. The audience should only hope that the world ends at 3:20 so that they won't have to endure the 84 minutes of this movie. A few of the reporters left during the screening and some of those who chose to remain till the end, did not hesitate to boo.

And More...
Both Dark Horse by Todd Solondz and Himizu from Sono Sion were also nothing to write home about.  The former started off promising but soon fell into the same category as nearly all of Todd Solondz's films: not exactly a failure but nowhere near the quality of his masterful Happiness (1998). The latter film, from Japan, was advertised here in Venice as one of the first films to deal with the Fukushima catastrophy but its use of the shots of the tsunami's aftermath played more like a marketing device than an essential or important part of the story. The average acting didn’t help either. 

Wuthering Heights
The biggest disappointment for me was Andrea Arnold's newest film. I've been a fan since Red Road and especially loved Fish Tank so I expected that her new film would be absolute festival highlight, rather than just a good film with intriguing elements. She gambled on unknown and teenage actors in the leading roles which was gutsy but doesn't always pay off. The story is told from Heathcliff’s point of view, but unfortunately we never understand his very complicated relationship with Catherine. Worse Catherine comes off as a very unlikable and it's hard to understand how two men both become so obsessed with her. The cinematography is the standout element in the film, with Robbie Ryan (who lensed both Red Road and Fish Tank) delivering truly exceptional work. Arnold reveals a strange obsession with mud and with hanged puppies and though her angry filmmaking is fascinating it doesn’t suit this kind of film. It’s not that her black teenage ex-slave Heathcliff is the problem but it feels rather strange when he says, in the true Bronte fashion, “F*ck you, you c*nt”. It’s an original approach for sure but, for me, an experiment that could lead to future greatness but doesn't do so here.