Retro Sundance: 1986 Special Jury Prize Winner, Desert Hearts

Team Film Experience isn't at Sundance this year, so instead we're going back through the years to discover and revisit some Sundance classics. Here is Glenn with the 1986 winner of the Special Jury Prize, Donna Deitch's Desert Hearts.

It was a happy accident that on a whim I picked the 1985 drama Desert Hearts to write about today given we’re still very much wrapped up in the warm bosom of Carol. I had not seen Donna Deitch’s film before and had no idea prior to sitting down to watch it that it shared so much in common with Carol, 30 years its senior. I was aware of course that it was a lesbian romance, and I was also aware that the film is (famously) regarded as the first film to allow a lesbian romance to end without tragedy. Still, there were moments where beat-for-beat the films are almost identical. I would be interested to read the novels side by side and see if they’re as alike as their adaptations.

Adapted from Jane Rule’s novel Desert of the Heart, this Sundance Special Jury Prize winner is also set in the 1950s with two women (Helen Shaver and Independent Spirit Award nominee Patricia Charbonneau) of a significant age difference, the eldest of whom is currently in the process of a divorce, who come together much to the surprise of at least one of the pair – although this time it is the younger of the two who finds herself attempting to coax the older woman out from behind her guard. Most striking is how both end not just on similarly optimistic notes, but with almost identical build. Of course, Desert Hearts differs in the way its romance blossoms under the heat of a Reno sun, Shaver’s impractical clothing choices and sever hairstyle slowly becoming more free and loose as her worldview expands thanks to the frank openness of Charbonneau’s younger casino floor-girl a neat costume-oriented touch among the film's mise-en-scene.

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A New Trailer for "Krisha"

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! We hope you're having a safe and festive holiday. Hopefully, you're at least having an easier go of it than Krisha.

Set over the Thanksgiving holiday, Krisha follows its titular prodigal mother as she drops into her family after a years long (and substance induced) absence. Things naturally don't go so well. Just in time for the pumpkin pie, a24's next stunner dropped a new trailer!

Awarded both Grand Jury Winner and Audience Award at SXSW this year, this is no straightforward melodrama, but a consuming dive into both Krisha's fractured psyche and the absurd chaos of a bustling family gathering. I was lucky enough to catch it on the festival circuit earlier this month and was over the moon for Trey Edward Shults's debut. The overall package is far less conventional than the trailer here suggests, with nerve-wrattling sound design and editing giving the film a fiercer bite. Though it was recently nominated for the John Cassavettes Award (for features with a budget below $500,000), I was surprised it didn't show up elsewhere - especially considering what an audacious first feature this is.

And just you wait until you get a look at what star Krisha Fairchild can do. Rarely is a female leading role as taxing and broadly demanding as this (let alone for an unknown), yet she remains unflinching, raw, and fully realized.

Krisha will be released in March 2016, and it belongs at the top of your Most Anticipated lists.

Carol Leads Spirit Award Nominations

The Film Independent Spirit Award Nominations are out with Carol leading the way with six nominations. Cary Joji Fukunaga, who the Spirits have always loved, is also on fire with five nominations for his Netflix streaming Beasts of No Nation. 

Yes, darling, six nominations!

BEST FEATURE

• Anomalisa
• Beasts of No Nation
• Carol
• Spotlight
• Tangerine

Two Oscar threats (Carol & Spotlight) two singular critical darlings (Anomalisa & Tangerine) and one whatsit straddling the line between TV & Movie & New Distribution Models (Beasts of No Nation). A shortlist with strong range of comedy, drama, procedural, romance, and queer content.

Sean Baker and his movie camera, the iPhoneBEST DIRECTOR

• Sean Baker, Tangerine
• Cary Joji Fukunaga, Beasts of No Nation
• Todd Haynes, Carol
• Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson, Anomalisa
• Tom McCarthy, Spotlight
• David Robert Mitchell, It Follows

The critical darling horror flick It Follows (reviewed) just missed the Feature list but was probably close given that it forced a six-wide category for direction. Fun Fact: This is Todd Hayne's sixth (!) nomination at the Spirits for Best Director, which means that, yes, he has been nominated in this category for every single one of his theatrically released features. He's only won it once though (2002's Far From Heaven). More after the jump...

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Special Report: Spirit Awards Preview/Predictions

?????The Spirit Award nominations are announced a week from today. Here's special guest and our podcast cohort Joe Reid to preview/predict the nominations.

The 2015 Film Independent Spirit Awards will announce their nominations next Tuesday, the earliest full slate of nominations (the Gothams can call me when they get supporting categories) and for many the clearest opening bell for awards season. After them, the critics awards start rolling in, then the Golden Globe nominations, and by then we're off to the races. I have always found the Spirits to be the most difficult to predict and the most fun. Partly because they happen so early in the season but also partly because the qualifications are always just a bit mysterious.

A reminder, per the Spirits' rules and regs: to qualify, a film must be an American film made for under $20 million, and have either been released in theaters in 2015 or played one of six major U.S. festivals (Sundance, Los Angeles, New Directors/New Films, New York, Telluride, Toronto). Of course, even with those rules, there are splittable hairs. 

predictions after the jump

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Women's Pictures - Jane Campion's An Angel at my Table

With her 1990 film An Angel at my Table, Jane Campion solidified a pattern for herself. Her films would be about extraordinary women in stifling circumstances. Whether it is mental institutions, marital institutions, family, or society, Campion’s heroines have to overcome great difficulties in order to live truly as themselves. An Angel at my Table, based on the autobiographies of New Zealand author Janet Frame, stands out as the only film of Campion’s early body of work that could be comfortably called a biopic. But to dismiss An Angel at my Table as just another biopic would be to ignore the unusual film Campion has made about an unusual woman.

Janet Frame’s life was as strange as any of the twenty works she wrote. She spent her childhood poor but happy in rural New Zealand, grew into an awkward woman whose anxiety was mistaken for mental illness, spent eight years in a mental institution, was freed when her writing was published, and went on to become a New Zealand icon. Campion cast three actresses to play Frame as she matured: Karen Fergusson, Alexia Keogh, and finally the incredible Kerry Fox. The three actresses are unified by a shock of red, unruly hair, and an awkward physicality that show someone more comfortable in her imagination than in the world.

An Angel at my Table is shot in a straightforward style far removed from the canted camera angles and wide angle lenses of Sweetie. The practical reason for this was the film's humble beginnings as a TV miniseries. However, beyond practicality, this less showy camera blocking lends itself to grounding Janet Frame’s story in reality. Frame’s impoverished but happy upbringing, her nightmarish eight year detention in a mental institution, and her subsequent successful writing career are shown in mostly medium or long shots, with Janet at the visually at the center. Typically subjects are set off-center in a shot, because symmetrical framing looks odd to the audience’s eye. Placing Janet at the center of the frame visually sets Janet apart - reacting to, but separate from, the world around her.

Janet Frame's colorful inner life after the jump.

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