San Francisco Independent Film Festival 2019

[Chris Knipp]

DENNIS COOPER, ZAC FARLEY: PERMANENT GREEN LIGHT (2018)


BENJAMIN SULPICE IN PERMANENT GREEN LIGHT

Self-destructive youth

A French youth in a series of quiet encounters eventually decides to blow himself up, hoping to disappear completely in a beautiful fashion.

Sixty-six-year-old California-born Dennis Cooper, best known for his 1989-2000 five-part George Miles Cycle. has been active since the Seventies. It's safe to say that his writing , which focuses on "Sexual fantasy, existentialism, death, troubled teenagers, drug use, the inadequacy of language" (Wikipedia), is both transgressive in nature, and reflects a queer sensibility. All of the young men in Permanent Green Light are good looking. The only one crush on Roman is on the part of another boy, Guillaume (Sylvain Decloitre). Cooper now collaborates with Zac Farley and since their first film in 2015 he has chosen to focus exclusively on the activity of their making films together. I thought of Grauerholz and Burroughs, though I'm not sure this comparison is relevant.

Permanent Green Light was originally inspired by the news story of an Australian youth called Jake Bilardi who joined ISIS in Syria and blew himself up, but here, the handsome youth, Roman (Benjamin Sulpice, who lives in an unspecified French suburb of stark walls and blank spaces, has no political alliance or much discernible emotion or clear sexual orientation. The style is slow, austere, intimate, with only diagetic music. I thought of Eugène Green, whose recent films have taught me the pleasures of slow cinema. I think Cooper has mentioned Bresson's Le diable, probablement, and he is a self-declared longtime admirer of Bresson, but he considers himself not a very visual person, hence the value of his collaboration with Farley - who obviously may inject some youthfulness into work that often focuses on adolescent boys.

This is an austere and elegant work that rewards careful attention and repeated viewings. I was as fascinated by it as I was put off by it, somewhat like its attractive protagonist, who is something of a cock teaser. Roman sends his best friend Ollie (Julien Fayeulle) to a fair alone, and we next see Ollie at the fair with his face streaming with tears. Another friend suggests they get high together and Roman asks just to take the drugs home to use by himself.

Scenes involving a collapsed building, a piñata, a suicide vest, and a purveyor of explosives gradually lead to Roman's radical self-annihilating act. Along the way, three other young people do away with themselves, who Roman is aware of.

See the review by Shame Khanna in TheWhiteReview. Cooper describes the film himself in Artforum, where he is a contributing editor. He and his young collaborator Zac Farley have given filmed interviews discussing their first film at the Festival du Film Subversif and this one at Rotterdam. There is a recent interview with them by Ezra Marcus in Interview.

"Cooper and Farley’s film follows a French teenager named Roman, who enlists a group of friends to help him blow himself up — not as an act of terrorism, nor out of suicidal despair, but simply because he wants to die in a large spectacle that leaves no trace of himself behind.

"What follows is an extraordinarily quiet and thoughtful movie, steeped in the culture and feeling of childhood and adolescence, as well as a highly successful collaboration."- Daniel Felsenthal, Los Angeles Review of Books. It was #10 on John Waters' ten favorite films of 2018 list announced in Filmforum.

Permanent Green Light,, 91 mins., debuted 27 Jan. 2018 at Rotterdam, showing in Oct. 2018 at Queer Porto. It was screened for this review as part of SF Indiefest. Showtimes below.

* Feb. 3, 9:30 pm: San Francisco @ SF IndieFest/Roxie Theater
* Feb. 4, 9:15 pm: San Francisco @ SF IndieFest/Roxie Theater

TRAILER

[Chris Knipp]

CAROL BRANDT: PET NAMES (2018)


RENE CRUZ AND MEREDITH JOHNSTON IN PET NAMES

A young couple back together again briefly in an intimate gem

There are always surprises at festivals and this little gem is a big one. It's a splendid film that marks the third feature by its director and the debut of the amazing writer Meredith Johnston, who also costars brilliantly as the protagonist whose voice she, obviously, perfectly incarnates. She is Leigh, a young woman with bleached, pink-blush hair whose clipped speech and ironies mask worry and hurt. Call this Mumblecore without the mumble: no words, not even silences are wasted. The biggest surprise is how it creeps in and touches you. On top of that, the film is really quite beautiful, with lovely cinematography of a Wisconsin park in summer (the trees, the flora, delicate greens) and a now uncommon boxy 4:3 aspect ratio images that create a claustrophobic intimacy for our unaccustomed eyes.

The premise is a laughably obvious one: a too-close brief reunion of an old couple. It is, as mentioned, summer. Leigh has a bit of cabin fever. We see her in an opening sequence wandering in a bright amusement park, but she begins the day with a cigarette out front of the family house talking to a garden ornament pink flamingo. The thing is, she has quit grad school to take care of her bedridden mother. Mom can talk normally and sit up in bed to read, but she's on a drip and tight regime of meds and we understand she's mortally ill. Johnston the writer doesn't do backstories. We learn only well along that Leigh and Cam (Rene Cruz) dated in high school and through most of college, and there's no talk of diseases, majors, or dates.

Each morning Leigh goes for a run. She runs into the tall puff-headed boy, Cam and they exchange banter. Later it seems she and her mother had long planned a camping trip and it's agreed she will go, a nurse will be arranged for the days away, and she only has to find a substitute companion. At the last minute she asks Cam, who evidently has nothing to do and says yes, but looks surprised. Why would she want to do this? How could he say no? He brings along his fat little pug dog, Goose. His big tortoise he leaves in his back yard.

Millennials do banter, but not, unless forced, emotions or straight talk. Of course I don't know this, but the dialogue in Pet Names seems so real and natural it make me fell like I've gotten a slice of this generation's most intimate life. Here "JR's" summary for the SF Indiefest: "Falling into old patterns of familiarity is easy for the duo; what’s hard is facing deep-seated wounds between them that never healed. Between losing Cam's dog, tripping on mushrooms, drunken nights by the bonfire baring their souls, making up dumb songs, and jealous arguments, the 'vacation' becomes a constant guessing game of whether or not the two will find themselves back together, or never speaking again."

The comparison to early Kelly Reichardt no doubt refers to her 2006 Old Joy; also to the fact that we may have an indie-risen genius director on our hands. Every scene seems charmed. The "old patterns of familiarity" mostly prevail. Key thing: in the park, Leigh and Cam sleep together in a very small tent side by side, not touching, not kissing. But he sleeps shirtless and his skin beckons. Later they wake up lying arm in arm. A little caress in this warm Wisconsin night closeness is probably the most intimate and heartbreakingly touching thing I'll see all year. The dumb song is indeed awful. But to make up for it Leigh does an a cappella rendition of "Saint James Infirmary" that's haunting and lovely.

They play pickup games underlining that they're no longer a couple (I guess). At a rest stop enroute they think he's caught a girl's eye when it turns out she was eyeing Leigh. Losing Goose for a while looks like the movie's manufactured crisis. It soon ends but reconnects Cam with two girls, one of whom is cute. His leaving Leigh to hang out with them one morning leaving Leigh to wake up alone is the real sticking point that finally brings out Leigh's, then Cam's, well-kept pain: "You wrecked me," she says. The magic of the mushrooms and the whiskey, the soft greenery and sweet quiet and tent is suddenly shattered and they have to go back home. The suspended idyl and its shattering may not seem much but it's a lot, and of course nothing is "resolved," but this moving chain of tremendous trifles provides the satisfaction of art and kind of cauterizes the pain. Some who've written about Pet Names, though, say it's about facing death.

If you were at the SF Indiefest today, February 5th 2019, I'd say rush to the Roxie theater to savor its lovely smallness on the big screen. But I have good news for everyone: Pet Names is available on Amazon Prime any time, anywhere.

SF INDIEFEST showtime: Tue, Feb 5 9:15 PM Roxie Theatre

Pet Names, 75 mins., debuted 10 Mar. 2018 at SXSW (Austin), showing also at Mill Valley in Oct. 2018 at Mill Valley and Philadelphia and 10 Jan. 2019 at Rotterdam. It was screened for this review as part of SF Indiefest (5 Feb. 2019). It has received numerous favorable reviews, including ones by Sheri Linden in Hollywood Reporter and in The Playlist by Andrew Crump.

INTERVIEW
TRAILER

[Chris Knipp]

MELORA WALTERS: WATERLILY JAGUAR (2018)


JAMES LE GROS IN WATERLILY TIGER

James LeGros as a slick writer bored with his success

Bob (James LeGros), a writer in Los Angeles, is shutting down in this first feature directed by the busy actress Melora Walters, whose ninety-nine credits include Magnolia and Boogie Nights and who has the support of Paul Thomas Anderson as executive producer here. As the opening title appears, Bob is being feted for something at a rich lady's house full of "wonderful art", an experience he likens to his wife to an "endless colonoscopy." His British agent Bill (Dominic Monaghan)congratulates him; his wife Helen (Mira Sorvino)comforts him. Why the ceaseless tinkly Bach piano in the background, we don't know. Music for a colonoscopy? Next morning he grumpily orders his overdressed, uppity (and entirely too sexy) lady assistant Will (Stacey Oristano) to investigate a cave man era Tar Pit hologram lady he learned about at the party. Material for some edgy, hallucinatory new writing? "Waterlily jaguar" are words he spins by a pool musing on the Tar Pit lady, which eventually become the title of the new novel. "This is the book I've always wanted to write," he says."Finally some literature. Something that will come out of me." Oh gosh! We know that's not going to go well. Now the tinkly piano music is Chopin.

Bob has made himself and others rich writing his bestselling novels of the "airport" variety, successful potboilers. The success is attested by his posh appearance and spacious surroundings. I remember LeGros best as Matt Dillon's doofus sidekick in Gus van Sant's Drugstore Cowboy (where it was Dillon who was the "Bob"). LeGros is a veteran of a great many widely different roles, the consummate character actor. The giant leap from villainous retard to slick writer is a big one that he seems to make with perfect ease. Bob is a milder fellow than the hype for this movie, which speaks of a "spiral of obsession," would have us believe. It's partly a meltdown, partly a mid-life crisis, and evidently fueled by years of too much drinking, which those near him want to stop. So he does stop, more or less.

There is confusion, certainly, lack of communication. We feel a twinge of pity for the bestselling author who wants to go quirky and offbeat. But what a nice house he has, and that classic Porsche! And he has "families to support."

After the Tar Pit visit choppy editing tells us Bob's had a mental breakdown. That's when his wife puts him on a kind of cure, special diet, no alcohol, and a shrink. He writes poetry: his new novel is in verse. It's beautiful," says Will, admiring now. The tinkly piano music turns to what sounds like Eric Satie. And now we learn that Bill, though married, sleeps with Will. And by the way, the worried Helen is a painter,with a flirtatious gallerist, who's in love with her, Jackson, is played by Christopher Backus, Sorvino's longtime real-life husband. They have a conversation in a gallery that I can't make heads nor tails of.

The accoutrements of this movie are fine, the cast is good, but the theme is a tricky one to put over to begin with, and with the irrelevant affair of Bill and Will, things go astray. Partly Walters wants them to. But what is she getting at? It's not a good sign that the basic theme is being stated all over again, and fully for the first time, in a scene between Bob and his agent, two thirds of the way through the movie. But what's clear is that nobody supports Bob in his new direction. Are they right? Who knows? Come to the last night of the SF Indiefest, at the Roxie Theater, and decide for yourself.

SF IndieFest: Waterlily Jaguar: Upcoming Showtimes
February 14 7:00 PM SF IndieFest at the Roxie

Waterlily Tiger, an admirably slim 87 minutes, was the opening night film of the DTLA (Downtown Los Angeles) Film Festival last October, and is to be the closing night film at SF Indiefest, in connection with which it was screened for this review.

[Chris Knipp]

ALEX JABLONSKI, KAHLIL HUDSON: WILDLAND (2018)


A YOUNG FIREFIGHTER IN WILDLAND

A baptism of fire and service

Joblonski and Hudson made a documentary about fighting forest wildfires. This could not be more timely, since global warming is producing the largest land fires in American history and last year the largest wildfire yet raged in California, where there are the biggest ones, entirely destroying the town of Paradise, in Butte County, in the Sierra Nevada foothills, and wiping out houses and killing people in the south too, including Malibu.

The film is not a spectacular survey, though, but a quiet, intimate study of a small team of firefighters. Technically they are a Type II Initial Attack handcrew based in southern Oregon. It stays with the single team for a season, then another, through screening, hiring, training, and work. Most of them are young, as they need to be, since the job is a matter of twelve and sixteen hour days, or worse, backbreaking work. They have a tough, experienced instructor, Tim, who quotes: "Fighting fire is just long hours of hard, boring work punctuated by moments of sheer terror."

I don't think we see the terror. What we see is boredom and disappointment, followed by excitement when they're sent to California to fight the big one, at last, then more boredom, perhaps exhaustion, but, in the end, exhilaration and a sense of having done something about as worthwhile as anything you could do. At first we see only digging row after row of connected trenches and they don't even see smoke. Then in California eventually they are on hillsides rimmed with fire, the flames are approaching them and they are choking from the smoke and we say, "Oh my God!" This is really dangerous. You can die.

Many of the crew members are first-timers. A number of them have just gotten out of jail. They are alone, or with families. They're young, mostly or sometimes middle-aged. (One guy says this is probably his last time: his body can't take it any longer. And we worry. But nobody falters.) I couldn't help it: the line, "Toughest job you'll ever love" occurred to me, along with the sense that this is really something special to do. The literature about the film describes the crew as "working-class men." But the film follows one of the young guys home, one of two, Charlie and Aiden, who joined together after dropping out of bible college. His family house is large: he comes from wealth.

The crew members are not doing this for the lack of anything better, then, but sometimes they join for an adventure, a challenge, for something real, for a coming of age experience, for a sense of redemption, to get completely away, to banish depression. At least one is a recovering addict. All are seeking a tempering and purification. But the film's aim is twofold. It means to show us the men in some depth, as individuals. But of course it's about fighting forest fires. It shows that in detail on the ground. But there's no "big picture" here, despite a few excerpts from daily news broadcasts about fires. What we do get is a sense that the crew members are performing well as a team and that they have made a contribution. After a while it also becomes true that the filmmakers and photographers are imbedded with the team. They became firefighters themselves and shared the risk when they were plunged into the heart of the California fire and at one point are hemmed in for a while, with no escape. “We actually became firefighters to make this film," Jablonski. said in an interview: "If we were going to do this story right, we needed to experience it with these guys, and just be there all the time." Jablonski and Hudson and those who worked with them paid their dues, and Wildland is admirable for its simplicity and authenticity. You feel that throughout in a film that is as visceral as it is unpretentious.

See full article at Filmmaker Magazine_Director Interviews »

This film was presented in one-hour form on PBS’s Independent Lens series. The full eighty-minute form is being shown in festivals and select theaters. It was screened for this review as part of the 2019 SF INDIEFEST.

Showtimes:

Fri, Feb 8 - 5:01 PM Roxie Theatre

Sat, Feb 9 12:30 PM Roxie Theatre

[Chris Knipp]

TAKUMI SHIMUMKAI: CENTERLINE



Artificial intelligence on trial in a slightly futuristic Japan

Due to the development of self-driving AI, traffic accidents are drastically decreased in 2027. Amane Yonago, a new Prosecutor, is assigned to the Transportation Division. Unhappy with her new job, she decides to indict the self-driving car's AI which crossed the center line in error and caused an accident. The instant the trial begins, the AI admits that they killed the victim on purpose. Because of this allegation, Amane Yonago must find a way to prove the AI has feelings. -JM (Indiefest blurb).

This is a fascinating and timely idea. Especially fans of Asian sci-fi and of Japanese film will enjoy it. I got a bit lost in the relatively dry details of the trial, however.

SF INDIEFEST SHOWTIMES:
Sun, Feb 10
2:45 PM Roxie TheatreBuy Tickets

Mon, Feb 11
7:01 PM Roxie TheatreBuy Tickets