Quinzaine des Réalisateurs / Semaine Internationale de la Critique

The line-ups for both the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs (Directors' Fortnight) and Semaine Internationale de la Critique (International Critics' Week) for Cannes this year. Both schedules are dominated by first-time filmmakers and, perhaps not surprisingly, slim on American features. Of the two American films playing during the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, Cam Archer's follow-up to his lovely Wild Tigers I Have Known, entitled Shit Year, will screen. The film stars Ellen Barkin, Melora Walters, Luke Grimes and Theresa Randle. Christoffer Boe, who won the Caméra d'Or in 2003 for his (lousy) Reconstruction, has his latest, Everything Will Be Fine [Alting bliver godt igen], screening during the Quinzaine. Another short directed by actor Louis Garrel, Petit tailleur, will also be showing during the Quinzaine; his first outing as a director, a short called Mes copains, played in 2008. Frederick Wiseman's latest, Boxing Gym, will premiere at the Quinzaine as a "special screening." The feature film line-ups are below:

Quinzaine des Réalisateurs

- Algeria, d. Marina Méliande, Felipe Braganca, Brazil
- All Good Children, d. Alicia Duffy, UK
- Alting bliver godt igen [Everything Will Be Fine], d. Christoffer Boe (Reconstruction, Allegro), Denmark/Sweden/France, w. Paprika Steen
- Año bisiesto, d. Michael Rowe, Mexico
- Benda Bilili!, d. Renaud Barret, Florent de la Tullaye, France
- La casa muda [The Silent House], d. Gustavo Hernandez, Uruguay
- Cleveland vs. Wall Street, d. Jean-Stéphane Bron, Switzerland/France
- Des filles en noir, d. Jean-Paul Civeyrac (À travers le forêt), France
- Illégal, d. Olivier Masset-Depasse (Cages), Belgium/Luxembourg/France
- The Light Thief, d. Aktan Arym Kubat (Beshkempir), Kyrgyzstan
- Little Baby Jesus of Flandr, d. Gust Vandenberghe, Belgium
- La mirada invisible [The Invisible Eye], d. Diego Lerman (Tan de repente), Argentina/France/Spain
- Picco, d. Philip Koch, Germany
- Pieds nus sur les limaces [Lily Sometimes], d. Fabienne Berthaud (Frankie), France
- Le quattro volte, d. Michelangelo Frammartino (Il dono), Italy/Germany/Switzerland
- Shit Year, d. Cam Archer (Wild Tigers I Have Known), USA, w. Ellen Barkin, Melora Walters, Luke Grimes, Theresa Randle
- Somos lo que hay [We Are What We Are], d. Jorge Michel Grau, Mexico
- Tiger Factory, d. Woo Ming Jin, Malaysia
- Todos vós sodes capitáns, d. Oliver Laxe, Spain
- Two Gates of Sheep, d. Alistair Banks Griffin, USA
- Un poison violent, d. Katell Quillevéré, France
- The Wanderer, d. Avishai Sivan, Israel

Special Screenings

- Boxing Gym, d. Frederick Wiseman, USA
- Stones in Exile, d. Stephen Kijak, UK

Semaine Internationale de la Critique

- Armadillo, d. Janus Metz, Denmark
- Bedevilled, d. Jang Cheol So, South Korea
- Belle épine, d. Rebecca Zlotowski, France, w. Léa Seydoux, Johan Libereau
- Bi, dung so! [Bi, Don't Be Afraid!], d. Phan Dang Di, Vietnam/France/Germany
- The Myth of the American Sleepover, d. David Robert Mitchell, USA
- Sandcastle, d. Boo Junfeng, Singapore
- Sound of Noise, d. Ola Simonsson, Johannes Stjärne Nilsson, Sweden/France

Special Screenings

- Le nom des gens [The Names of Love], d. Michel Leclerc, France, w. Jacques Gamblin, Sara Forestier
- Copacabana, d. Marc Fitoussi, France, w. Isabelle Huppert, Lolita Chammah
- Rubber, d. Quentin Dupieux, w. Stephen Spinella, Jack Plotnick, Roxane Mesquida

The Decade List: Wild Tigers I Have Known (2006)

Wild Tigers I Have Known - dir. Cam Archer

In thinking back on my Film 1 class, I seem to recall the way in which my professor defined cinema. All of the students were asked to present the ideas for their final projects in front of the class and place them into one of three categories: narrative, experimental or "experimental narrative." It was the first time I'd ever had to apply those specific labels to my idea of film, and for the most part, it was the last… at least until I saw Cam Archer's Wild Tigers I Have Known. The film perfectly represented that fleeting image I had of such a silly distinction and managed to suppress the negative connotations I associated with placing something in such strange parameters.

Borrowing heavily, but not irritatingly, from Kenneth Anger's Fireworks (which becomes explicit when the school principal introduces the "Tolerance Statue," which bares a strong resemblance to the Christmas tree in Fireworks), Wild Tigers I Have Known visualizes the soaring imagination of thirteen-year-old Logan (Malcolm Stumpf) through vibrant color schemes, kinetic editing, unsynchronized dialogue and gorgeous photography. Something of a visual contradiction, Logan's waïfish androgyny never quite aligns with his deep, masculine voice and rare lack of self-consciousness. That contrariety is, thankfully, not representative of the whole of Wild Tigers I Have Known in terms of perspective. Archer strives, with mostly success, for matching the dreaminess of youth with the film itself, keeping the old hat of nostalgia out of the equation.

While many of the more "vanguard" sequences are astounding (especially the ones where Logan disguises himself as a girl in order to coax his crush Rodeo into having phone sex), some of the finer moments of Wild Tigers I Have Known occur in its static "reality," the places where Logan is forced to step out of his own mind. Fairuza Balk, who appears to have barely aged since playing her own variations of teenage outcasts in the 1990s, provides a genuine tenderness as Logan's mother. In one scene, she endearingly cleans Logan's make-up off his face, sympathetically recalling her own struggles as a teenager. Balk, who is never given a name during the film, might as well be playing the grown-up version of her character from Allison Anders' Gas, Food Lodging, a teenager with similar confusion and restlessness (even one who, like Logan, dons a blonde wig to unsuccessfully woo the boy of her dreams). This association, whether intended by Archer or not, makes her relationship with her son all the more intimate.

Though he may be guilty of a certain fetishization of youth, which is most evident in the way he dresses his characters, Archer shouldn't be accused of exploiting his influences. With a bit of Derek Jarman and Gus Van Sant, who executive produced the film, tossed alongside Anger, Wild Tigers I Have Known mixes those elements into Archer's own distinguishing spectacle. Unlike, say, Lynne Ramsay's Ratcatcher, it functions and prevails on a small scale, but despite that, the film marks one of the finer directorial debuts in American independent cinema over the past ten years.

With: Malcolm Stumpf, Patrick White, Fairuza Balk, Max Paradise, Kim Dickens, Tom Gilroy
Screenplay: Cam Archer
Cinematography: Aaron Platt
Music: Nate Archer
Country of Origin: USA
US Distributor: IFC Films

Premiere: January 2006 (Sundance Film Festival)

2009 Notebook: Vol 4

I still haven't decided on how I want to list the films I've watched. Putting them into a hierarchical grouping feels like a cheap way of reducing the films to star ratings and grades, which always end up changing the more I think (or don't think) about them. I also don't feel like writing cute, singular titles for them either as that's just an even lazier version of a capsule review. So for now, they'll just be placed into two: First viewing and Revisited.

First Viewing

The Cabin Movie - dir. Dylan Akio Smith - Canada - 2005 - N/A - with Arabella Bushnell, Ben Cotton, Brad Dryborough, Ryan Robbins, Justine Warrington, Erin Wells

The Dark Hours - dir. Paul Fox - Canada - 2005 - Freestyle Releasing - with Kate Greenhouse, Aidan Devine, Gordon Currie, Iris Graham, Dov Tiefenbach

Doubt - dir. John Patrick Shanley - USA - 2008 - Miramax - with Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Viola Davis, Joseph Foster II

Dream Boy - dir. James Bolton - USA - 2008 - N/A - with Stephan Bender, Maximillian Roeg, Thomas Jay Ryan, Diana Scarwid, Randy Wayne, Owen Beckman, Tricia Mara, Rickie Lee Jones, Tom Gilroy

Six Days, Six Nights [À la folie] - dir. Diane Kurys - France - 1994 - N/A - with Anne Parillaud, Béatrice Dalle, Patrick Aurignac, Alain Chabat, Bernard Verley

The Story of Piera [Storia di Piera] - dir. Marco Ferreri - Italy/France/West Germany - 1983 - N/A - with Hannah Schygulla, Isabelle Huppert, Marcello Mastroianni, Bettina Grühn, Angelo Infanti, Tanya Lopert, Renato Cecchetto, Maurizio Donadoni

Revisited

Buffalo '66 - dir. Vincent Gallo - USA - 1998 - Lionsgate - with Vincent Gallo, Christina Ricci, Anjelica Huston, Ben Gazzara, Mickey Rourke, Rosanna Arquette, Jan-Michael Vincent, Kevin Corrigan

Exotica - dir. Atom Egoyan - Canada - 1994 - Miramax - with Bruce Greenwood, Elias Koteas, Mia Kirshner, Don McKellar, Arsinée Khanjian, Sarah Polley, Victor Garber

Freeway - dir. Matthew Bright - USA - 1996 - Republic - with Reese Witherspoon, Kiefer Sutherland, Dan Hedaya, Wolfgang Bodison, Brooke Shields, Amanda Plummer, Michael T. Weiss, Bokeem Woodbine, Alanna Ubach, Brittany Murphy, Guillermo Díaz, Tara Subkoff

Wild Tigers I Have Known - dir. Cam Archer - USA - 2006 - IFC Films - with Malcolm Stumpf, Patrick White, Fairuza Balk, Max Paradise, Kim Dickens, Tom Gilroy