Interview: Actress Dánae Reynaud on "Club Sandwich"

Dánae ReynaudThe 51st New York Film Festival continues with Jose's interview with Dánae Reynaud, co-star of Club Sandwich

In a relatively short time, the young director Fernando Eimbcke has become one of the most original voices in Latin American cinema. With a mere three movies to his name, he's one of the few auteurs working outside the standard subjects of drug trafficking, crime and magical realism. His movies tend to focus on young people living ordinary lives and coming to terms with impending adulthood. To call them coming-of-age films wouldn't do justice to the larger truths they carry. His latest, Club Sandwich, is no exception; it deals with a single mother (María Renée Prudencio) who takes her son Hector (Lucio Giménez Cacho) to a resort during the low season.

The first part of the movie finds them bonding over sunscreen application, discussing Prince's sexiness and ordering the title meal. Things change when more guests arrive to the hotel, one of them being Jazmín (Dánae Reynaud), a sixteen year old who catches Hector's eye. Suddenly he doesn't want to be with his mom for long, he starts noticing he's growing a tiny mustache and secretly washes his underwear so that his mother won't notice the accidents he's been having at night. The film is a delight made even more special by the naturalistic performances of the three lead actors. Reynaud in particular brings a sense of mischief to a character that could've been villainized by a lesser actress. I asked the charming Dánae about working with Eimbcke and when she realized she wanted to act. You'll relate to her profound love of movies (after the jump). 

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NYFF: A Queer Revelation

TFE's coverage of the 51st New York Film Festival (Sep 27-Oct 14) continues with Jose discussing What Now? Remind Me and Stranger by the Lake.

At one point during Joaquim Pinto’s What Now? Remind Me his confessional style got so raw and introspective that all I wanted to do was look the other way. His story is one that I felt I should’ve been more receptive to since he is a gay filmmaker with a deep passion for the arts and culture. Listening to him talk about an ancient book he saw in Spain, how badly he wanted to inspect it, reminded me of the way I feel about certain artworks. Watching him farm with his husband Nuno (who I felt was so my type) and their dogs, inspired in me a sense of domestic bliss I sometimes crave. What made me want to look away then? The way in which Pinto tells us about his harrowing battle with HIV.

Even if we live in a world of information, where everything we might want to know is a click away, the movies - and media in general - have done so little to discuss HIV that I’m ashamed to admit sometimes I react to it the same way conservative audiences react with onscreen sex: it makes me uncomfortable. I had this very thought during the screening and was instantly reminded of the movie I’d seen the day before, Alain Guiraudie’s Stranger by the Lake.

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Burning Questions: Captain Phillips and Ugly Audiences

Michael C. here.  On the Boogie Nights DVD commentary track, Paul Thomas Anderson tells the story of how the audience cheered at the film’s first screening during the scene where William H. Macy’s Little Bill snaps and shoots his adulterous wife. PTA recalls sinking in his seat, wondering how he stepped so wrong that the moment he intended to be a nauseating gut punch was being received as a crowd pleaser. He was relieved moments later when, as he tells it:

William H Macy's gut punch as "Little Bill" in Boogie Nights

Bill Macy walked out and he shot himself in the face and they shut the fuck up real quick. And they weren’t laughing, and they weren’t cheering, and it was dead silence. And I thought, “Good.” I’ve done my job okay. It’s them that’s fucked up. It’s really the moment where you blame the audience and go, “No, you’re wrong.

The question Anderson asked himself in that theater back in ’97 is one that flares up every time a crowd has the “wrong” response to a movie:

How responsible is the filmmaker when a movie provokes an ugly response from the audience?

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NYFF: Nobody's Daughter Haewon

TFE's coverage of the 51st New York Film Festival (Sep 27-Oct 14) is picking up pace. Here is Jose discussing Nobody's Daughter Haewon.

Hong Sang-soo seems intent in preserving the cinematic style the French specialized in during the early 1960’s. His movies often combine two of the topics most favored by New Wave filmmakers: the blurry line between fantasy and reality and the movies. In Nobody’s Daughter Haewon, the director delivers one of his most enjoyable films to date in telling the story of Haewon (Jeung Eun-chae), a bubbly young woman trying to succeed as an actress while having a tormentous affair with her married professor (Lee Sunkyun).

Hong captures his heroine in an assortment of intimate moments, mostly involving her hopelessly romantic takes on life. When she meets a visiting scholar who confesses he’s looking for a wife just like her, she immediately announces to her friends that she might be getting married soon and she assumes a guy is “the one”, because she ran into him more than once on the same day.

Even if the film never tries to dig deep into the characters, the director leaves enough clues for us to try and decipher why this woman turned out the way she is. One of the very first scenes shows her mother coldly say goodbye to her before moving to Canada, among her final pieces of advice is the suggestion that Haewon try to become Miss Korea since she can’t act. Through moments of quirk and “is it a dream?” confusion, we are led to believe that this woman is simply trying to stay away from real life as possible, she’s also developing a slight drinking problem which makes for some of the film’s funniest moments.

With endless mentions of pretending, setting up faux chance meetings, inner jokes that turn into insults, endless moments where a secret truth becomes public and an unexplainable Jane Birkin cameo that also references Charlotte Gainsbourg, Nobody’s Daughter Haewon, resembles a farce written by Moliere himself, if he too had been obsessed with the children of Marx and Coca Cola.  

Nobody’s Daughter Haewon plays during the festival on 09/29 and 09/30. Go see it and come back here to help us figure out what Birkin was doing in the movie.

NYFF: Like Father, Like Son, Like Excellent

TFE's coverage of the 51st New York Film Festival (Sep 27-Oct 14) is picking up pace. Here is Glenn discussing Like Father, Like Son. 

That foreign language category at the Oscars just continues to be a lightning rod for controversy (or "controversy" drummed up by eager beavers wanting get extra attention for their movies). Nathaniel already discussed some of the issues of that category as pertaining to the French non-selection of Blue is the Warmest Colour. Even curiouser than that, however, was the selection of Japan. Let's face it, a three-hour lesbian drama was always going to be a stretch for a nomination even if it did qualify and even if France did select it. Japan, however, appeared to have a slam dunk in the form of Kore-eda Hirokazu's Like Father, Like Son.

Even if we ignore the fact that it also won a big award at Cannes (the Jury Prize) from Steven Spielberg's jury and that the man himself has snapped up the rights for a remake. Even if we ignore that it's issues of frought father and son relationships put it in line with many other winners from the category. Even if we ignore that it's more refined palate, less scrappy and hip, is the sort of thing voters in this category tend to err towards. Even if we ignore all of that, the fact remains (for my two cents, at least) that the film is just really very good.

I, nor many other western audiences it would seem, have seen Japan's selection. The Great Passage. It may not only be a great film and I'm sure an Oscar nomination would make its producers double proud given the stink that has been raised by the American distributor of Kore-eda's film (the same company that is releasing Blue is the Warmest Colour - double ouch!). Still, it’s curious that Japan didn’t choose the Kore-eda when it seems to perfectly made for the ghetto category. I know it sounds entirely selfish and commerce-inclined, but I enjoyed Like Father, Like Son so much that it would have been nice to see it vying for the statue. It’s such a quality production that surely audiences, spurred by a nomination, could have turned it into a mild hit. Its likely February release now looks rather foolish and presumptuous, but it’s easy to see why the distributor thought they had a winner on their hands.

Like Father, Like Son is a wonderfully effective film about two families from vastly different socio-economic backgrounds who discover their babies were swapped at birth six years earlier. It sounds kind of silly and ripe for turgid melodrama, but it’s handled sublimely by the Kore-eda. He doesn't settle for simple sentimentality, but instead allows his characters to stumble, make bad choices, attempt to redeem themselves, and try to do what's right. The difference in their class background (one family is affluent, the other working class), their differing philosophies on raising a child (one fosters independence, the other family), the myth of motherly bonds, and their own individual sense of right and wrong are challenged by the sudden familial discovery.

Their world is very identifiable and it’s no wonder Spielberg wants to remake it. There are likely tears to be shed, but it earns them through the strength of the performances, especially by Ono Machiko and Yôko Maki as the wives, and the emotion wrung out of the complicated central story. It's also rare to see modern day Japan presented with such visual panache with its juxtaposition of cityscapes and rustic "authentic" locales. Whatever happens to the film now that it's out of foreign language competition, I just hope audiences get to discover it. Spielberg's future remake can only help audiences discover this affecting gem of a film.