The 2007 Miami International Film Festival

[oscar jubis]

It was awkward. I was standing in the back, behind a raised area where the cameras where set. The day's highlight for me was a nice conversation with Bertha Navarro. She's the mother-in-law of director Paul Leduc and has produced his films. She also produced or co-produced Cronicas and all the films directed by Guillermo del Toro, including Pan's Labyrinth. Nice lady. She's here as a juror.
I plan to skip the Luc Besson conference. His new movie certainly failed to turn me into a fan. What I'll miss is another opportunity to socialize with all kinds of people connected with the festival. The ladies at the Press Dep. have been swell. I got tickets to every screening I wanted.

[oscar jubis]

ANTONIA (Brazil)

A hiphop band allows their four backup singers to play one song to open a concert. The talented girls get an enthusiastic response from the audience and hire a manager. They sing at private parties and get gigs at clubs and festivals. Then the group starts to fall apart. Preta (Negra Li) catches Mayah (Quelynah) flirting with her husband and a rift develops between the two childhood friends. Mayah ends up leaving Antonia, as their group is called. Lena (Cindy Mendes) gets pregnant. Her boyfriend agrees to live together and recognize the child if she stops performing. Barbarah (Leilah Moreno) gets taunted in the street by a boy who claims responsibility for the beating of her gay brother. A fight ensues in which Barbarah pushes the boy against a concrete wall and dies. She is sentenced to jail for manslaughter. Preta performs solo while manager Marcelo tries to keep up her spirits. Antonia jumps to moments of crisis resolution, and rushes to Antonia reunited to deliver two outstanding numbers at a music festival.

Antonia, a musical directed by Tata Amaral, is grounded on life as lived in the hilly working-class neighborhoods of Sao Paolo, South America's largest city. Dramatic situations are familiar and handled conventionally. Key to Antonia's ability to deliver solid entertainment is the casting of the four attractive and talented singers, none of which has previous acting experience. The dramatic scenes are delivered with conviction and credibility, perhaps a sign that that Ms. Amaral is a skillful director of actors. The musical numbers, a mix of rap, ballads, and r&B, exude on-stage chemistry.

[Chris Knipp]

I plan to skip the Luc Besson conference. His new movie certainly failed to turn me into a fan.

I'm sure you don't only attend confereences of people of whom you're a fan! You would be more likely to admire Besson from his earliest films, not his later ones--as I should think you would know. The Last Combat (1983), La Femme Nikita (1988), and The Big Blue (1990) are his best work. He's more a producer than a director now, produced for instance The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and in the recent Rendez-Vous that I covered, produced The Singer (one of the best in the series) and Tell No ONe (one of the most awarded in France). So I personally would have been interested in what he had to say -- but not going by his recent filmmaking.

[oscar jubis]

Chris: I would attend if I didn't have to leave work at a most inconvenient time and day (Wed 10:30 a.m) although I don't "admire" any of the films he's directed, not even the ones you mention. Besson has "co-produced" a ton of films and it's hard to find out the nature of his involvement with these projects. I know that some of them are merely "investments".

*Guests and Members: I have opened a 2007 MIFF thread in the "Festival Coverage" section (upper right corner). I will provide links here to the reviews I'm placing there just in case it's hard to find. That section doesn't allow replies but I hope those who have comments or questions continue to post them here. I'll continue to post 2 reviews per day and conclude by reporting the lineup of films that receive jury and audience awards.

La Lupe: Queen of Latin Soul (USA)

[Chris Knipp]

That wasn't the reason you gave for eschewing his talk at first. I suspect with so many producing credits he has had an influence on French and American movies, whether a good one or a bad one I don't know. I'd be curious to know more about him simply because of his evidence of energy -- or money, whatever it is, he's some kind of force and we need to know about those. The fact that he was a producer of The Singer suggests that his influence isn't all bad.

That section doesn't allow replies but I hope those who have comments or questions continue to post them here.

I was hoping for that too for the Rendez-Vous but it hasn't happened. Some people have visited the reviews though.

[oscar jubis]

*I can't deny that if it was O. Assayas or P. Chereau at the conference I'd find a way to be there.
*I've read your Rendezvous section with great interest. Shame that in the past month or so all my free time has been dedicated to watching as many of the MIFF films and writing reviews.
*There are 92 features being shown, about the same as last year when I managed to watch 54. I should be able to surpass that number this year. But I'll miss over 30 and one hopes one can manage to watch every good film that doesn't have distribution.
Most of what I'm missing are docs or films scheduled for commercial release.
*Tonight I'm seeing a film from Bolivia that looks very promising if not quite something that has potential for distribution like the Colombian Satanas and the Mexican A Wonderful World.

[Chris Knipp]

I've read your Rendezvous section with great interest.

Glad to hear that and I'm going to try to follow your Miami reports much more closely this year.

There are 92 features being shown, about the same as last year when I managed to watch 54. I should be able to surpass that number this year. But I'll miss over 30 and one hopes one can manage to watch every good film that doesn't have distribution. .

94 in a sense is a manageable number, not that one can see them all but that one has a better chance of assessing or guessing how worth seeing them may be. When it's 150 or 200 or 300, it's really hopeless. But my imporession is that you can never really know, and that you (I,one) guess (guess, guesses) wrong quite often sometimes. But still, it's quality rather than quality that matters. That's why I like the NYFf better than the SFIFF and enjoy the very small series like the N.I.C.E. and the Rendez-Vous, which one can actually encompass. I would not necessarily want to skip documentaries, but I can see skipping commercial releases, assuming that you can see them when they're in commercial release. Context helps and things I see in Paris or New York or at the NYFF look better and make more sense to me than elsewhere or at other times, so I have gotten a lot out of seeing commercial release films at the NYFF, but then, there were only 28 total to see.

[oscar jubis]

The MIFF was modeled after New York's fest up until maybe 2000. Then it was possible to watch everything, especially everything undistributed. I like being able to watch close to 60 films rather than 28, but there are drawbacks, of course.
I am watching several films coming to theatres, but I'm also missing a bunch.
New Review, a bit of a dissapointment coming from the director of Lantana:
Jindabyne

[Chris Knipp]

I like being able to watch close to 60 films rather than 28, but there are drawbacks, of course.

I don't see any advantages. Beyond a certain point one becomes saturated, and to write intelligently about three films a day is something one can't do for long. It's too wearing and becomes like cramming for an exam. You can say something coherent the next day, but next month you've forgotten most of it. The brain needs time to digest. It needs space, time free of static and overstimulation. Of course if you're just sifting through to see if something is worth distribution, worth hyping; worth coming back to later, one can learn to flit in and out like a butterfly making a few mental notes. But that's not the process I've come to enjoy.

I have a feeling you somewhat underrate Jindabyne. I can see it may have some flaws, but it also sounds very interesting and well acted. Lawrence showed a desire to work on many levels in Lantana, which is good but not so marvelous that this would have to be seen as a terrible falling off just because it has some dubious edits and is a little overcomplicated or feels padded in places compared to Altman and the Carver story. (Not many people or films could be as spare as Carver's stories.) I would guess Jindabyne might be worthy of serious and thorough discussion. Anyway I'd like to see it and judge for myself.

[oscar jubis]

*There were a couple of 3-per-day on weekends. But the first film screened for the press was Feb. 1st and the last film I'm watching is the Closing Night film, on March 11th. So, it's close to 60 films spread over 39 days. A huge task to review all those but not unreasonable.

Jindabyne is worth seeing but not a "must see" and not as good as Lantana ("several notches below" said Variety, whatever that means specifically). I wrote:
"Jindabyne boasts very good performances and evocative use of landscape. It's an imaginative re-thinking of Carver's original story that serves as an allegory of the history between Europeans and aborigines in Australia. The film generates great interest when focused on the crumbling marriage of Stewart and Claire."
So it's good enough to give it a chance but "a bit of a disappointment coming from the director of [i]Lantana". Looking forward to your review when it opens.

And the reviews keep on coming:
Dark Blue Almost Black

[Chris Knipp]

So, it's close to 60 films spread over 39 days.

I didn't know they were spread out that thin. It's a long go, but more doable than I thought. Yes, a task to review. Why not just skip reviewing some of them? Can 60 really all be worth a detailed notice? But that's up to you.

I know what Variety said about Jindabyne, but your assessment is closer to Variety's than to anybody else's that I've seen.

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
Yes, a task to review. Why not just skip reviewing some of them? Can 60 really all be worth a detailed notice?
I appreciate this. I do have a lot on my plate right now. But so far, I've managed. But I'll keep your suggestions in mind. I guess it's nice to have a record of my thoughts/opinions, even of films I didn't like. A kind of memento of the festival.
Angel-A

[Chris Knipp]

Easy for me to say but I'm pretty driven and compulsive myself--that's why it's good for me to go to the Rendez-Vous or NYFF because it's possible to review them all. But with 60, I'd edit some out. In my opinion, it is a winnowing process, always. And at the bottom, are ones that maybe you don't have to write about at all, just keep notes on.

[Chris Knipp]

Angel-A.

who owns thousands of Euros to some bad guys Typo for "owes."

the Siene Typo for "Seine."

Anja Garbarek Daughter I see of Jan Garbarek, who has played with Keith Jarrett in his nice Standards albums.

It does indeed sound like a crap movie. Wonder why they included it. The visuals sound nice though. Indeed lousy reviews in France. Cahiers du Cinema said "like Amelie but without color and without the gags." I gather they didn't like Amelie. Libération: "Angel-A is just a dumb film. And it's pretentious dumbness, as if they thought fine filmmaking was just a matter of piling up pretty images."

[oscar jubis]

*I knew there was something odd about my spelling of Seine. Thanks Chris.
*Brit critics were even more uniformly negative about Angel-A than French critics. That doesn't mean the film won't have fans. Mostly due to the Paris locales and readymade sex fantasy for a segment of the male population.
*Cristi and friends watched a Spanish thriller called Las Vidas de Celia (Celia's Lives). She didn't like it much (fractured chronology seemed more like an affectation, gratuitous sex scene, unconvincing narrative...). Crowd reaction negative. Audiences often feel compelled to clap politely when the director is in the audience but Cristi reports people filed out quietly. Variety gave it a decent review though. IMDb viewers don't seem to like it.

The Most Beautiful of My Very Best Years