A Guide to the 66th Locarno International Film Festival, 2013

After a short two month break following Cannes, the major film festival season begun again this week with the 66th Locarno Film Festival, which is the first in a quick succession of major premiere festivals in the autumn of each year followed closely by San Sebastián, Venice, and Toronto chronologically. In addition to those top tier festivals, there are a handful of other notable premiere fests that will be starting soon, including the Festival des Films du Monde in Montréal, the Tokyo International Film Festival, and the Torino Film Festival. Locarno opened with the latest Hollywood crime film from Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur, 2 Guns, with Mark Wahlberg and Denzel Washington.

There are two main competitions that take place at Locarno: the Concorso Internazionale (International Competition) and the Concorso Cineasti del Presente ("Filmmakers of the Present" Competition for emerging filmmakers). Last year, the top prize of the Concorso Internazionale, the Golden Leopard, went to a surprise choice, Jean-Claude Brisseau's La fille de nulle part (The Girl from Nowhere). Pedro González-Rubio (Alamar) won the Golden Leopard in the Cineasti del Presente section with his documentary/narrative Inori. This year, the Concorso Internazionale features a mix of films from some major figures in Asian cinema as well as a few burgeoning auteurs.

You can access the full line-up for the Concorso Internazionale through Locarno's website, as I'm trying to steer clear of unnecessary list-making these days. The competition features the latest work from Shinji Aoyama (Eureka), Joanna Hogg (Unrelated), Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani (Amer), Albert Serra (Birdsong), Thomas Imbach (I Was a Swiss Banker), Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Tokyo Sonata), Júlio Bressane (Killed the Family and Went to the Movies), Emmanuel Mouret (Shall We Kiss?), Guillaume Brac (A World Without Women), Daniel & Diego Vega (October), David Wnendt (Combat Girls), Chang Tso-chi (When Love Comes), Pippo Delbono (La paura), Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucci (Oh! Uomo), Joaquim Pinto (Twin Flames), Yves Yersin (Les petites fugues), and Hong Sang-soo, who will be presenting his second film of 2013 at the festival after Nobody's Daughter Hae-Won played in competition at the Berlinale. The only American film competing this year is Destin Cretton's Short Term 12, an expansion of his Sundance prize-winning 2008 short of the same name; Short Term 12 won the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at this year's SXSW Film Festival.

While several of the competition films have piqued my interest, there are two that top my list: Corneliu Porumboiu's When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism (Când se lasă seara peste Bucureşti sau metabolism) and Claire Simon's Gare du Nord. When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism is writer/director Porumboiu's first film following the international acclaim of Police, Adjective (Poliţist, adjective) in 2009—though he did co-write the screenplay with director Igor Cobileanski for The Unsaved (La limita de jos a cerului), which played in the East of the West Competition at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival this past summer. Porumboiu's latest follows the exploits of a movie director (played by Bogdan Dumitrache, who won the Best Actor prize for the film The Best Intentions at Locarno in 2011) whose affair with one the actresses begins to disrupt the film shoot. In Gare du Nord, four strangers–played by Nicole Garcia, Reda Kateb (A Prophet), François Damiens (The Wolberg Family), and Monia Chokri (Heartbeats)–find casual encounters in the famous Parisian train station. The extensive ensemble cast also includes my biggest crush of the year, Christophe Paou from Alain Guiraudie's Stranger by the Lake (L'innconu du lac), Lou Castel, Samir Guesmi, Jean-Christophe Bouvet, André Marcon, Ophélia Kolb, and Jacques Nolot. Simon's sadly overlooked previous film, God's Offices (Les bureaux de Dieu), also utilized an enormous cast (including Emmanuel Mouret, whose new film is also in competition) in a single location, with Garcia again at the center of the picture. Additionally, Simon also has a documentary called Human Geography (Géographie humaine) screening at the festival out of competition that almost sounds like a non-fiction version of Gare du Nord.

As I don't have much to reference regarding the Concorso Cineasti del Presente, I'll instead focus on some of the other notable films playing and/or premiering at Locarno this year. Following winning turns in Xavier Dolan's Heartbeats (Les amours imaginaires) and Laurence Anyways, Canadian actress Monia Chokri, who can be seen in Gare du Nord, makes her directorial debut with the short An Extraordinary Person (Quelqu'un d'extraordinaire), which co-stars another Dolan regular, Anne Dorval. In the Piazza Grande section, you'll find the latest comedy from director Sam Garbarski (Irina Palm), Vijay and I, which stars Moritz Bleibtreu, Patricia Arquette, Michael Imperioli, Moni Moshonov, and Hanna Schygulla; cult French filmmaker Quentin Dupieux's black comedy Wrong Cops, which re-teams Laura Palmer's parents Grace Zabriskie and Ray Wise alongside Marilyn Manson, Eric Wareheim, and Jack Plotnick; a May-December Parisian romance between Michael Caine and Clémence Poésy in Sandra Nettelbeck's Mr. Morgan's Last Love, which also stars Gillian Anderson, Jane Alexander, and Justin Kirk; Jeremy Saulnier's acclaimed thriller Blue Ruin, which won the FIPRESCI Prize for the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs at Cannes this year; Sebastián Leilo's Gloria, the Best Actress winner (Paulina García) at this year's Berlinale, which will be playing soon at both the San Sebastián and Toronto Film Festivals; and the latest film from Swiss director Lionel Baier (Garçon stupide), Longwave (Les grandes ondes (à l'ouest)), a road movie/comedy with Valérie Donzelli and Michel Vuillermoz.

Two new shorts from directors João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata, Mahjong and The King's Body (O Corpo de Afonso), will screen at the festival. The directors' previous feature The Last Time I Saw Macao (A Última Vez Que Vi Macau) played in the Concorso Internazionale last year. An experimental documentary co-directed by acclaimed filmmakers Ben Russell and Ben Rivers, A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness, will also play out of competition, alongside Que d'amour, the new film by director Valérie Donzelli, and How to Disappear Completely, the latest from Philippine director Raya Martin. In a special section highlighting the work some of the festival's jury members work, there will be a screening of the president of the Concorso Internazionale jury Lav Diaz's film Norte, the End of History, which played at in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes earlier this year. There will also be a complete retrospective of the films of George Cukor at the festival, and it's always worth taking a look at their annual Open Doors section, which assists filmmakers in nations where funding can be difficult, as well as showing a selection of films from the particular region. This year, the focus is on the Southern Caucasus, highlighting films from Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. Expect some more festival guides to pop up on the blog over the next two months.

Queer Lisboa 16

Though, more often than not, I don't much care for specifically GLBT film festivals, there are a small number of them around the world that do consistently program great stuff and not just the latest installment of the Eating Out series. Along with Turin International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival and the Tel Aviv International LGBT Film Festival, the Queer Lisboa Film Festival, Lisbon's oldest film festival, is certainly one of the best of its kind. They began their 16th edition on 21 September, with Andrew Haigh's excellent Weekend (just released on DVD and Blu-ray in the US by Criterion) kicking off the festival, which runs until the 29th.

One of the highlights of the program this year is a section dedicated to Peter de Rome, a French-born queer filmmaker who directed a number of short and feature length erotic films in the United States from the 1960s until the mid-1980s. The BFI recently restored a number of his works for a DVD release earlier this year of The Erotic Films of Peter de Rome. QL16 will be showing his shorts Double Exposure, The Fire Island Kids, Prometheus, Scopo, and Underground along with the documentary Fragments: The Incomplete Films of Peter de Rome by Ethan Reid. You can find all of the films on the BFI disc.

You'll also find a pair of films from both Travis Mathews and filmmaking duo Jean-Marc Barr and Pascal Arnold at the festival. Mathews' excellent feature I Want Your Love, an extension of the short of the same name he directed in 2010, is screening in competition, and though Mathews is a personal friend of mine, I don't have any qualms in mentioning that it's one of the best films I've seen all year. His other film, In Their Room: Berlin, the second installment of his documentary series following queer boys discussing intimacy and sexuality in their bedrooms, will play as part of the Queer Art section. Barr and Arnold's 2011 feature American Translation will also screen in competition. The film stars Pierre Perrier and Lizzie Brocheré, who were both previously in the duo's 2006 film Chacun sa nuit (One to Another), play a pair of Bonnie and Clyde-esque lovers who like to seduce gay hustlers. Their other offering at the festival is this year's sexually-explicit comedy Chroniques sexuelles d'une famille d'aujourd'hui (Sexual Chronicles of a French Family), which was released in a tamed down edit by IFC Films in the US earlier this year.

The feature film competition also includes Ira Sachs' somber Keep the Lights On, winner of this year's Teddy at the Berlinale; Oliver Hermanus' Skoonheid (Beauty), South Africa's submission for best foreign language film at this year's Oscars and winner of the Queer Palm at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival; Lisa Aschan's Apflickorna (She-Monkeys), which made the festival rounds last year winning major prizes at both the Göteborg and Tribeca Film Festivals; Aurora Guerrero's Mosquita y Mari, which played in the national competition at Sundance in January; the feature film debut of acclaimed short filmmaker Bavo Defurne, Nordzee Texas (North Sea, Texas); Mark Jackson's Without, which also made the festival rounds last fall, which I've also heard is quite good; Odilon Rocha's Brazilian drama, A Novela das 8 (Prime Time Soap); and Zoltan Paul's Frauensee (Woman's Lake), which I didn't get a chance to catch at Frameline this past summer.

Some other notable films playing around the festival: the latest film from director Vincent Dieutre, entitled Jaurès, which premiered at Forum at this year's Berlinale; a trio of shorts from Portuguese/British director António Da Silva, Bankers, Pix, and the wonderful Julian; Gabriel Abrantes and Alexandre Melo's short Fratelli, an experimental, loose adaptation of Taming of the Shrew, co-starring Carloto Cotta (Odete) and Alexander David (To Die Like a Man); Matthew Mishory's Joshua Tree 1951: A Portrait of James Dean; the great Rosa von Praunheim's latest documentary, König des Comics (King of Comics); Matthew Akers' doc Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present; a short directed by João Pedro Rodrigues' long-time collaborator João Rui Guerra da Mata, O Que Arde Cura (As the Flames Rose), which stars Rodrigues; An Afternoon Siesta and Summer Romance, a pair of dirty Greek films from director Panajotis Evangelidis (The Life and Death of Celso Junior); and the omnibus film Fucking Different: XXX, which includes shorts by Bruce LaBruce, Maria Beatty, Todd Verow, and Émilie Jouvet.

Like every year, QL has a program or two spotlighting some of the best queer music videos, or to be more accurate, a bunch of music videos the gays love. This year, there's a program directed entirely to the music videos of ABBA, nearly all of them directed by Lasse Hallström, who also directed ABBA: The Movie before moving on to Hollywood junk like The Cider House Rules and Chocolat. Other featured videos include the latest from Kylie Minogue, Sigur Rós, The Magnetic Fields, Spiritualized, Pet Shop Boys, Rufus Wainwright, and, yes, Madonna.

And finally, you can head on over to the site I used to work for, where there are a number of films available streaming for free, including one of João Pedro Rodrigues' first shorts, Parabéns! (Happy Birthday!). Trevor Anderson's The Man That Got Away, Mauricio López Fernández's La santa (The Blessed), Juanma Carrillo's Andamio (Scaffolding), and Daniel Ribeiro's Eu Não Quero Voltar Sozinho (I Don't Want to Go Back Alone), among others. I imagine not all of the films are available in every region. Additionally, you can pay to watch the feature Venus in the Garden, directed by Telémachos Alexiou, which is playing in the Queer Art section. It looks as though Venus in the Garden is streaming for free now.

All My Friends: Millennium Mambo, Take 1: Jason Huettner

Jason and I established a cyberspace amity based on two great mutual obsessions: PJ Harvey and queer cinema. He's my go-to man when it comes to PJ news and rumors, a job of no small importance for someone like me. He currently resides in New York City. I'm happy to have Jason as the first entry in this series. Neither of his lists are in preferential order.

On Music: "I hate lists that are aimed at developing some kind of consensus about art. Here are ten albums, in no particular order, released in the 00's that are essential to my 00's experience. This list isn't definitive at all (plenty of other 00's albums that I love).. but all are quality and have sentimental value. The music speaks for itself."

Life Without Buildings - Any Other City (DCBaltimore2012, 2001)
Diamanda Galás - Guilty, Guilty, Guilty (Mute, 2008)
Various Artists - Give Me Love: Songs of the Brokenhearted - Baghdad, 1925-1929 (Honest Jon's, 2008)
Scott Walker - The Drift (4AD, 2006)
Mayyors - Deads 12" (self-released, 2009)
A Frames - "1" (S-S Records, 2002)
Quasimoto - The Unseen (Stones Throw, 2000)
Stars of the Lid - And Their Refinement of the Decline (Kranky, 2007)
The Thing (with Joe McPhee) - She Knows... (Smalltown Superjazz, 2002)
Power Douglas - Pentecostal Fangbread (FiveSix Media, 2008)

On Film: "Again, sentimentality plays a big part here. Picking just ten is hard. I am prone to alarming lapses of taste in films."

Bad Education [La mala educación], 2004, d. Pedro Almodóvar, Spain
Brick, 2005, d. Rian Johnson, USA
Children of Men, 2006, d. Alfonso Cuarón, UK/USA/Japan
Dancer in the Dark, 2000, d. Lars von Trier, Denmark/Netherlands/Germany/France/USA/UK/Sweden/Finland/Iceland/Norway
Eastern Promises, 2007, d. David Cronenberg, UK/Canada
O Fantasma, 2000, d. João Pedro Rodrigues, Portugal
Mulholland Drive, 2001, d. David Lynch, France/USA
Notre musique, 2004, d. Jean-Luc Godard, France/Switzerland
Pan's Labyrinth [El laberinto del Fauno], 2006, d. Guillermo del Toro, Mexico/Spain/USA
The Proposition, 2005, d. John Hillcoat, Australia/UK
The Raspberry Reich, 2004, d. Bruce LaBruce, Germany/Canada
The Royal Tenenbaums, 2001, d. Wes Anderson, USA
Strange Circus, 2005, d. Sion Sono, Japan
There Will Be Blood, 2007, d. Paul Thomas Anderson, USA
Waltz with Bashir, 2008, d. Ari Folman, Israel/Germany/France/USA

Goodbye, Picture This!

Picture This! Entertainment has closed their doors, something I've suspected was about to happen for a while. Over the summer, they announced their first release in a long while with Jiří Chlumský's Broken Promise [Nedodržaný sľub], which Slovakia recently named their Foreign Oscar submission for 2010, but according to IndieWire, they've filed for bankruptcy. While I've always frowned at the graphic layout of their DVD covers and website, they have brought a number of significant films to the US, including Sébastien Lifshitz's Come Undone [Presque rien], Claude Miller's Class Trip [La classe de neige], João Pedro Rodrigues' O Fantasma and Brillante Mendoza's The Masseur.

The Decade List: Odete (2005)

Odete [Two Drifters] - d. João Pedro Rodrigues

Though his first attempt at consternating his audience, the Pasolini-inspired O Fantasma, wasn't a grand success, João Pedro Rodrigues' Odete hit the mark a lot harder than its predecessor. Released in the US as Two Drifters, the film is an exuberant and decidedly Eurotrashy take on obsession which takes joy in nullifying the romanticized, politically-correct trends in contemporary queer cinema. The central figure of Odete is a handsome twenty-one year old boy named Pedro (João Carreira), who dies in the opening scene in a bloody car crash. As the film's catalyst, his death affects both his cherished boyfriend Rui (Nuno Gil) and a woman he’s never met named Odete (Ana Cristina de Oliveira). Rodrigues presents Rui and Pedro's relationship mockingly, magnifying their cheeseball displays of affection as they exchange one-year anniversary rings, engraved with "Two Drifters," a nod to Breakfast at Tiffany's. They’re an agonizingly perfect couple, in the most extreme sense - in the sense that, in this world, they cannot thrive.

When Pedro perishes, the "Moon River" dries up, and "two drifters" takes on a separate meaning, referring instead to the grief-stricken Rui and the tall, beautiful and emotionally unstable Odete, who uses the Pedro's death as a way of coping with her own boyfriend's (Carloto Cotta) departure. Their drifting is wiped clean of its previously embellished sentimentality as the two empty souls wander through their lives like emotionally-stricken zombies, without the strength to move past their own infatuation.

For Rui, Odete is a mystery; despite living in the same building, they first meet after Pedro's passing when Odete starts claiming to be pregnant with Pedro's baby. This leads Rui to believe she might be the reincarnation of his lover. She’s not, and we know this, but the film presents a number of mythical situations, all of which would have made sense had the film existed in that fantasy world Rui and Pedro seemed to be inhabiting in the opening scene. For a portion of the film, we don’t really know whether Odete is lying or not about her pregnancy. Rodrigues doesn’t allow this misinterpretation to stay for long, as his film is about two tortured young people holding onto the desire of lost happiness. For Odete, Rui functions like as a way to erase “Odete” and assume the role of Pedro, a person who, unlike "Odete," is loved deeply.

Odete is a fascinating film, denying expected conventions and narrative structure in favor of exploring complex and strange emotional responses to grief and loneliness. Perhaps certain elements in the film don't really work, but when a director takes risks like Rodrigues does, some ventures will inevitably fail. And more often than not, I'm more inclined to forgive when ambition is high.

With: Ana Cristina de Oliveira, Nuno Gil, João Carreira, Teresa Madruga, Carloto Cotta
Screenplay: Paulo Rebelo, João Pedro Rodrigues
Cinematography: Rui Poças
Music: Olivier Bombarda
Country of Origin: Portugal
US Distributor: Strand Releasing

Premiere: 18 May 2005 (Cannes Film Festival)
US Premiere: 23 June 2006 (New York City)

Awards: Cinémas de Recherche - Special Mention (Cannes Film Festival)

New York Film Festival line-up, 2009

Yesterday the New York Film Festival announced their prestigious line-up, all of which only serves to give the high profile international releases of the year their premiere in the States. This year is heavily populated by European auteurs, and only three American films will screen (Life During Wartime, Don Argott's doc The Art of the Steal, Ilisa Barish and Lucien Castaing-Taylor's Sweetgrass and Lee Daniels' Precious, which will have played at nearly every single major festival in 2009 before Lionsgate throws it onto theatres with a giant Oscar push in November). The line-up is listed below:

- 36 Views of Saint-Loup Peak [36 vues du Pic Saint-Loup] - d. Jacques Rivette
- Antichrist - d. Lars von Trier
- The Art of the Steal - d. Don Argott
- Bluebeard [La barbe bleue] - d. Catherine Breillat
- Broken Embraces [Los abrazos rotos] - d. Pedro Almodóvar
- Crossroads of Youth - d. An Jong-hwa (the oldest surviving Korean film)
- Eccentricites of a Blonde [Singularidades de uma Rapariga Loira] - d. Manoel de Oliviera
- Everyone Else [Alle Anderen] - d. Maren Ade
- Ghost Town - d. Zhao Dayong
- Hadewijch - d. Bruno Dumont
- Independencia - d. Raya Martin
- Inferno [L'enfer d'Henri-Georges Clouzot] - d. Serge Bromberg, Ruxandra Medrea
- Kanikosen - d. Sabu
- Lebanon - d. Samuel Maoz
- Life During Wartime - d. Todd Solondz
- Min Yé - d. Souleymane Cissé
- Mother - d. Bong Joon-ho
- Ne change rien - d. Pedro Costa
- Police, Adjective [Politist, adjectiv] - d. Corneliu Porumboiu
- Precious - d. Lee Daniels
- Room and a Half - d. Andrey Khrzhanovsky
- Sweetgrass - d. Ilisa Barish, Lucien Castaing-Taylor
- Sweet Rush [Tatarak] - d. Andrzej Wajda
- To Die Like a Man [Morrer Como Um Homem] - d. João Pedro Rodrigues
- Vincere - d. Marco Bellocchio
- White Material - d. Claire Denis
- The White Ribbon [Das weiße Band] - d. Michael Haneke
- Wild Grass [Les herbes folles] - d. Alain Resnais
- The Wizard of Oz - d. Victor Fleming, 70th Anniversary

8 of the films above are going in with US distribution (I'm not counting The Wizard of Oz, which will receive a special anniversary DVD and Blu-ray release in November): 3 from Sony (Broken Embraces, Wild Grass, The White Ribbon), 3 from IFC (Vincere, Police, Adjective, Antichrist), 1 from Lionsgate (Precious) and 1 from Seagull Films (Room and a Half).

Cannes 2009 Line-Up: Updates

Via Variety, the full jury, headed by Isabelle Huppert, has also been announced: Asia Argento, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Lee Chang-dong, James Gray, Hanif Kureishi, Shu Qi and Robin Wright Penn. In addition to that, a number of other screenings have been announced out of the festival's main competition. Marina de Van's Ne te retourne pas, her second feature after Dans ma peau [In My Skin], will screen along with Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell in the Midnight Program. The film stars Sophie Marceau, Monica Bellucci and Andrea Di Stefano. Michel Gondry's L'épine dans le coeur, Souleymane Cissé's (Yeelen) Min ye and Keren Yedaya's (Or My Treasure) Jaffa will receive special screenings. In the Un Certain Regard category: Denis Dercourt's (The Page Turner) Demain des l'aube; Alain Cavalier's (La chamade) Irène; Bahman Ghobadi's (A Time for Drunken Horses) Nobody Knows About the Persian Cats; Bong Joon-ho's (The Host) Mother; João Pedro Rodrigues' (O Fantasma) To Die Like a Man; Tales from the Golden Age from Romanian directors Hanno Hofer, Razvan Marculescu, Cristian Mungiu, Constantin Popescu and Ioana Uricaru; Pavel Lounguine's (Taxi Blues) Tzar; Pen-ek Ratanaruang's (Last Life in the Universe) Nymph; and Lee Daniels' (Shadowboxer) Precious, formerly known as Push. Check the Variety link above for more information.

The Decade List: Some Honorable Mentions for 2000

As time is not on my side, I probably won't get the chance to write about (or even view) all of the films I'd like to for The Decade List. To make up for this, I've singled out a few other notable films from the year 2000, most of which aren't likely to show up on the big list down the road. Some of them are annotated, others not. Of the films below, only five have been revisited within the past year. You can still expect a bunch of other 2000 films throughout the year. I'll probably continue to do this with other good, if not amazing, films from the past 10 years. The films below are in no particular order, though the annotated ones are listed first.

Seom [The Isle] - dir. Kim Ki-duk

A rewatch of the film that introduced me to Kim Ki-duk proved less satisfactory than I had remembered. Outside of its grotesqueness, Ki-duk conducts a breathtaking landscape, a dream/nightmare world of floating houses on a Korean river with dialogue at an absolute minimum. This setting/tone of a cinematic poem works a lot better in Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring, but on a visual level, The Isle is still quite lovely.

With: Suh Jung, Kim Yoosuk, Park Sung-hee, Jo Jae-hyeon, Jang Hang-Seon
Screenplay: Kim Ki-duk
Cinematography: Hwang Seo-shik
Music: Jeon Sang-yun
Country of Origin: South Korea
US Distributor: First Run Features

Premiere: 22 April 2000 (South Korea)
US Premiere: 2002 August 23

The King Is Alive - dir. Kristian Levring

Of the notable Dogme 95 films of the 21st century (which, I believe, Lone Scherfig's Italian for Beginners, Susanne Bier's Open Hearts and Ole Christian Madsen's Kira's Reason: A Love Story may be the only others), Kristian Levring's The King Is Alive always stood as my favorite, despite the handful of problems that lie within. The premise, in which a group of tourists get stranded in the middle of an African desert when their bus veers off-course, isn't remarkable. It's a classic pre-reality TV boom exposé of the dark side of the human condition, in which a group of strangers resort to greed and treachery as their hope diminishes, and it doesn't break new ground there. However, when meta psychdrama takes precedence over bleak survival drama, The King Is Alive becomes a lot more intriguing. Of the uniformly excellent cast, Levring provides his actresses with the best material, with Romane Bohringer as an Iago-esque French woman, Jennifer Jason Leigh as a seemingly vapid party girl, Janet McTeer and Lia Williams as women unsatisfied by their husbands. Though certainly contrived, The King Is Alive is rather beautiful when it's hitting the right notes.

With: David Bradley, Romane Bohringer, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Janet McTeer, David Calder, Bruce Davison, Lia Williams, Chris Walker, Vusi Kunene, Miles Anderson, Brion James, Peter Khubeke
Screenplay: Kristian Levring, Anders Thomas Jensen, with inspiration from William Shakespeare's King Lear
Cinematography: Jens Schlosser
Music: Derek Thompson
Country of Origin: Denmark/Sweden/USA
US Distributor: IFC Films

Premiere: 11 May 2000 (Cannes)
US Premiere: 2001 May 11

Awards: Best Actress - Jennifer Jason Leigh (Tokyo International Film Festival)

Psycho Beach Party - dir. Robert Lee King

An amalgam of Frankie & Annette beach films, slasher pics and 60s Americana, Psycho Beach Party finds nothing new to say about its gender or sexual politics, but in such a rambunctious, vibrant package, it's hard to complain. The year 2000 was a strong one for Lauren Ambrose, whose hysterical performance as the spunky schizo Chicklet here and the lost teenager Frankie in Robert J. Siegel's somber Swimming would lead her to the amazing Six Feet Under the following year. Though Psycho Beach Party has a few casting missteps (Nicholas Brendan as Mr. Perfect?), Amy Adams, as the boycrazy Marvel Ann, is one of the bright spots.

With: Lauren Ambrose, Charles Busch, Thomas Gibson, Nicholas Brendon, Beth Broderick, Kimberley Davies, Matt Keeslar, Danni Wheeler, Amy Adams, Nick Cornish, Andrew Levitas, Kathleen Robertson, Nathan Bexton, Buddy Quaid
Screenplay: Charles Busch, based on his play Psycho Beach Party
Cinematography: Arturo Smith
Music: Ben Vaughn
Country of Origin: USA/Australia
US Distributor: Strand Releasing

Premiere: 23 January 2000 (Sundance)

Awards: Outstanding Actress - Lauren Ambrose (L.A. Outfest)

Trolösa [Faithless] - dir. Liv Ullmann

Ingmar Bergman screenplays directed by other people always lack the filmmaker's visual and emotional touch, but his frequent actress and former lover Liv Ullmann does an impressive job with Faithless, even if it does feel like something's missing. There's a strangeness about the unveiled disclosure of the screenplay, in which Erland Josephson, another regular in Bergman's troupe of actors, plays a character named Bergman, living on the island of Fårö, where many of the master's great works were filmed and where he'd later die. Ullmann keeps things ambiguous however, intertwining imagination and memory and keeping the narrative from feeling too confessional.

With: Lena Endre, Erland Josephson, Krister Henriksson, Thomas Hanzon, Michelle Gylemo
Screenplay: Ingmar Bergman
Cinematography: Jörgen Persson
Country of Origin: Sweden/Italy/Germany/Finland/Norway
US Distributor: Samuel Goldwyn Films

Premiere: 13 May 2000 (Cannes)
US Premiere: 2001 January 26 (Palm Springs International Film Festival)

Happy Times - dir. Zhang Yimou

Happy Times would be the turning point in Zhang Yimou's successful, if overpraised, career. His fascination with human drama ended on a high note with Happy Times before giving way to shit-fucking-awful martial arts epics Hero and House of Flying Daggers (as well Curse of the Golden Flower, which I never saw, and Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, a "return to form").

With: Zhao Benshan, Dong Jie, Dong Lifan, Fu Biao, Li Xuejian
Screenplay: Zi Gai, based on the novel Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh by Mo Yan
Cinematography: Hou Yong
Music: San Bao
Country of Origin: China
US Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics

Premiere: 31 December 2000
US Premiere: 2002 July 26

Erin Brockovich - dir. Steven Soderbergh

As wildly diverse as Steven Soderbergh's career may be, he found one of his best films, Out of Sight, under the Hollywood umbrella. While not nearly as good as Out of Sight, Erin Brockovich was, for this writer, the better of Soderbergh's offerings in 2000. Erin Brockovich's "empowerment" and sense of humor made for a much more enjoyable filmgoing experience than Traffic's "grittiness." Both could be thrown together as "message movies" about giant social issues, and while their insincerity comes from divergent reasons, Erin Brockovich never strives for anything bigger than its real-life subject does, and thankfully a few of those things are a tight-top, big hair, high heels and plenty of sass. All snark aside, Julia Roberts' performance is quite good, and her Oscar for it is certainly justified from a Hollywood perspective (though, of course, plenty of other actresses were even better with more challenging roles).

With: Julia Roberts, Albert Finney, Aaron Eckhart, Marg Helgenberger
Screenplay: Susannah Grant
Cinematography: Ed Lachman
Music: Thomas Newman
Country of Origin: USA
US Distributor: Universal Studios

Premiere: 14 March 2000 (USA)

Awards: Best Actress - Julia Roberts (Academy Awards); Best Actress - Julia Roberts (BAFTAs); Best Actress, Drama - Julia Roberts (Golden Globes); Best Actress - Julia Roberts, Best Director [also for Traffic] (National Board of Review)

Dancing at the Blue Iguana - dir. Michael Radford

As a film, Dancing at the Blue Iguana isn't much, but as an acting experiment, which was how the film became what it is, it's fantastic. Surrounding the personal and professional lives of five strippers at the Blue Iguana, Daryl Hannah, Jennifer Tilly and Sandra Oh deliver some of the best performances of their careers. All three tool around with their own expected cinematic personas (Hannah as the ditzy blonde, Oh as the introverted nice girl and Tilly as the fiesty vixen) with remarkable results. As one might expect from a film based around improvisation, Dancing at the Blue Iguana works better in individual scenes than as a whole. The most memorable occurs when Tilly, after finding out that she's pregnant, tries to smoke in the waiting room of the doctor's office and goes off on the irritating mom-to-bed next to her. Though neither Hannah nor Oh are physically believable as strippers (I always assume chest size is a pre-requisite for such a job), they make up for it in other areas. Dancing at the Blue Iguana is one of the few examples of a film that overcomes the fact that the sum of its parts greatly out-weight the whole.

With: Daryl Hannah, Jennifer Tilly, Charlotta Ayanna, Sandra Oh, Sheila Kelley, Elias Koteas, Robert Wisdom, Vladimir Mashkov, Kristin Bauer, W. Earl Brown, Chris Hogan, Rodney Rowland, Jesse Bradford, Christina Cabot
Screenplay: Michael Radford, David Linter
Cinematography: Ericson Core
Music: Tal Bergman, Renato Neto
Country of Origin: USA
US Distributor: Lions Gate

Premiere: 14 September 2000 (Toronto Film Festival)
US Premiere: 21 April 2001 (Los Angeles Film Festival)

Trasgredire [Cheeky!] - dir. Tinto Brass

Taken from my earlier review: Tinto Brass still makes films as if it were the 1970s. We open Cheeky! with our heroine, Carla (Yuliya Mayarchuk), strolling through a London park like Jayne Mansfield in The Girl Can’t Help It to an amusingly high-cheese score, where it just so happens everyone around her is engaging in lusty sex. Everywhere she turns, there’s a woman uncrossing her legs to reveal she forgot to put her panties in the laundry that morning. Or there’s a couple in heat, appeasing one another’s sexual urges. Of course, Carla, looking like an Eastern-European streetwalker dressed up as Brigitte Bardot, joins in on the fun, wearing a see-through skirt and exposing her buttocks to passer-byers. There’s a story that follows involving Carla’s tight-ass boyfriend and her search for an apartment, but really this is only an excuse to introduce Carla to as many sexual partners as possible or place her in a situation where others are about to bang. The playfulness of Cheeky!’s sexuality is admirable and refreshing, even if the film is simply pretext for close-ups of Mayarchuk’s ass and sexual experimentation.

With: Yuliya Mayarchuk, Jarno Berardi, Francesca Nunzi, Max Parodi, Mauro Lorenz, Leila Carli, Vittorio Attene
Screenplay: Tinto Brass, Carla Cipriani, Nicolaj Pennestri, Silvia Rossi, Massimiliano Zanin
Cinematography: Massimo Di Venanzo
Music: Pino Donaggio
Country of Origin: Italy
US Distributor: Cult Epics

Premiere: 28 January 2000 (Italy)
US Premiere: 30 May 2006 (DVD Premiere)

Sordid Lives - dir. Del Shores

With: Beth Grant, Delta Burke, Ann Walker, Leslie Jordan, Bonnie Bedelia, Beau Bridges, Kirk Geiger, Olivia Newton-John, Newell Alexander, Rosemary Alexander
Screenplay: Del Shores, based on his play
Cinematography: Max Civon
Music: George S. Clinton
Country of Origin: USA
US Distributor: here! Films

Premiere: 2000 May 25 (Toronto InsideOut Lesbian and Gay Film Festival)
US Premiere: 31 May 2000 (Seattle International Film Festival)

Awards: Outstanding Soundtrack (L.A. Outfest); Best Feature Film, Best Actor - Leslie Jordan (New York International Independent Film & Video Festival); Best Feature (Philadelphia International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival)

Faites comme si je n'étais pas là [Pretend I'm Not Here] - dir. Olivier Jahan

With: Jérémie Renier, Aurore Clément, Sami Bouajila, Alexia Stresi, Nathalie Richard, Emma de Caunes, Johan Leysen, Ouassini Embarek, Bouli Lanners
Screenplay: Olivier Jahan, Michael C. Pouzol
Cinematography: Gilles Porte
Music: Cyril Moisson
Country of Origin: France
US Distributor: N/A

Premiere: 2000 June (Avignon Film Festival)
US Premiere: N/A

101 Reykjavík - dir. Baltasar Kormákur

With: Hilmir Snær Guðnason, Victoria Abril, Hanna María Karlsdóttir, Þrúður Vilhjálmsdóttir, Baltasar Kormákur
Screenplay: Baltasar Kormákur, based on the novel by Hallgrímur Helgason
Cinematography: Peter Steuger
Music: Damon Albarn, Einar Örn Benediktsson
Country of Origin: Iceland/Denmark/France/Norway/Germany
US Distributor: Wellspring

Premiere: 1 June 2000 (Iceland)
US Premiere: 25 July 2001 (New York City)

Awards: Discovery Award (Toronto International Film Festival); Best Screenplay, Best Sound - Kjartan Kjartansson (Edda Awards, Iceland)

Mysterious Object at Noon - dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Cinematography: Prasong Klimborron, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom
Country of Origin: Thailand
US Distributor: Plexifilm

Premiere: 2000 October 2 (Vancouver International Film Festival)
US Premiere: 2001 June 23 (New York City)

Dayereh [The Circle] - dir. Jafar Panahi

With: Nargess Mamizadeh, Maryiam Palvin Almani, Mojgan Faramarzi, Elham Saboktakin, Solmaz Panahi, Fereshteh Sadre Orafaiy, Fatemeh Naghavi, Monir Arab
Screenplay: Kambuzia Partovi
Cinematography: Bahram Badakshani
Country of Origin: Iran/Switzerland/Italy
US Distributor: Fox Lorber

Premiere: 6 September 2000 (Venice FIlm Festival)
US Premiere: 1 March 2000 (International Film Series)

Awards: Golden Lion (Venice); Freedom of Expression Award (National Board of Review)

O Fantasma - dir. João Pedro Rodrigues

With: Ricardo Meneses, Beatriz Torcato, Andre Barbosa, Eurico Vieria, Joaquim Oliveira, Florindo Lourenço
Screenplay: Alexandre Melo, José Neves, Paulo Rebelo, João Pedro Rodrigues
Cinematography: Rui Poças
Country of Origin: Portugal
US Distributor: Picture This!

Premiere: 8 September 2000 (Venice Film Festival)
US Premiere: 2001 June 2 (Seattle International Film Festival)

Awards: Best Feature (New York Lesbian and Gay Film Festival)