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THE 39th NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL FILMS
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WHAT TIME IS IT THERE? Having exposed the dark, dank side of his talents with The River, Tsai Ming-liang now gets relatively giddy. A few days after his father’s death, a Taipei street vendor (Tsai regular Lee Kang-sheng), meets a young woman on her way to Paris. Oppressed by his mother, who prays constantly for the return of her husband, and yearning to bridge the distance between himself and his new friend, the young man starts resetting all the clocks in Taipei to French time. The woman, meanwhile, has her own set of disorienting encounters (including a classic one with Nouvelle Vague icon Jean-Pierre Léaud). Like several other eminent Taiwanese filmmakers, Tsai has used his island nation to reflect the inherent solitude of the modern world. Endowed with a deadpan sense of humor only hinted at in his previous work, What Time is it There? is an elliptical, elevating and drily funny movie. 116 min. Taiwan, 2001 A Winstar Cinema Release. 29A Sat. Sept. 29, 12 noon 30D Sun. Sept. 30, 9:30pm See video footage from the press conference for WHAT TIME IS IT THERE? |
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I’M GOING HOME Walking offstage after concluding a brilliant performance of Ionesco’s Exit the King, actor Gilbert Valence (Michel Piccoli) learns that his wife, daughter and son-in-law have been killed in a car accident. Several months later, Gilbert confronts the two challenges still left to him: how to raise his six-year old grandson with whose care he’s been entrusted, and how to manage the twilight years of his highly regarded acting career. An American film director (John Malkovich) offers him the part of Buck Mulligan in a new screen adaptation of Joyce’s Ulysses—but can he really undertake such a role in a language he hardly speaks? Manoel de Oliveira, the spryest 92-year old you’ll ever meet, has created an elegant, deeply affecting portrait of a man caught between the overwhelming presence of death and the awesome fullness of life. As Gilbert Valence, Michel Piccoli gives one of his greatest performances, endowing even the most simple acts, such as deciding whether or not to buy a new pair of shoes, with a remarkable resonance. 90 min. Portugal/ France, 2001 29B Sat. Sept. 29, 3:30pm 30C Sun. Sept. 30, 7:00pm |
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WARM WATER UNDER A RED BRIDGE A combo platter of Keatonesque whimsy, improvised mythology and Shohei Imamura’s own facility with the, shall we say, underbelly of life, Warm Water is about rebirth, renewal and a rather raucous cheering for the power of the feminine. Starring Koji Yakusho, star of Imamura’s The Eel and last year’s festival entry, Eureka, Imamura’s 20th film is about a 40-ish middle-ager whose wife has left him and who travels to a far-off village in search of a hot golden Buddha. What he finds instead is a woman with a strange case of kleptomania and a propensity for expressing pleasure with a shower of ... well, on the big screen at Tully Hall, it should come across a bit like fireworks in July. 119 min. Japan, 2001 A Cowboy Pictures Release 29C Sat. Sept. 29, 6:30pm 30B Sun. Sept. 30, 4:00pm
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STORYTELLING A two-part film from Todd Solondz, who delights as usual (Welcome to the Dollhouse, Happiness) in making his audience as uncomfortable as possible. Part one, "Fiction," is a sketch about a college student (Selma Blair) who sexually submits to her African-American writing teacher out of a sense of political correctness. The second part, "Non-Fiction," is a frontal attack on American independent filmmaking in its ghoulish, exploitative mode, with Paul Giamatti as a talentless documentary director who seizes on a clueless New Jersey teen as the subject of his contemptuous new film. Strong medicine, but good for you—and funny, too. 87 min. USA, 2001 A Fine Line Features Release 29D Sat. Sept. 29, 9:30pm 30A Sun. Sept. 30, 1:30pm
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MEN AT WORK Two new short fictions look at the state of the world through the prism of men's daily labor. In LA LIBERTAD, Misael, a lone woodcutter, fells trees, hauls them off to market, calls a friend and feasts on roasted armadillo. A typical day for Misael, perhaps, yet Lisandro Alonso's elegant, absorbing film transforms his routine into a meditation on how one negotiates a place in the world. Argentina, 2001. Alain Guiraudie's THAT OLD DREAM THAT MOVES begins as a young worker arrives at a soon-to-be-closed factory to dismantle the last major piece of equipment still standing. The factory's workers, still on payroll but with nothing to do, talk sports and politics, knock back a few, and make some unexpected discoveries. A remarkable film that subtly charts the shift from class to other forms of identity. France, 2000. Total program: 123 min. 1A Mon. Oct. 1, 6:00pm
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LA CIENAGA Mecha (Graciela Borges) and her family are nearing the end of their summer holiday when her cousin Tali and her family are forced to come and live with them. In the stifling heat of the Argentine summer, two families aimlessly amuse themselves with liquor, kinky crushes, swimming in a filthy pool, hunting, TV-watching. No one ever seems to get anywhere; indeed, parents and kids mostly lie abed, half-naked in communal, asexual sloth, but there are powerful undercurrents running beneath the seemingly languid country-house atmosphere. Lucrecia Martel’s astonishing feature debut constitutes a mesmerizing portrait, reminiscent of Buñuel, of the privileged class far gone in decay, unanchored from religion, nature, marital or blood ties. La Ciénaga signals the arrival of an authoritative, uncompromising talent. 102 min. Argentina/Spain, 2001 A Cowboy Pictures Release
1B Mon. Oct. 1, 9:15pm 2A Tues. Oct. 2, 6:00pm
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ITALIAN FOR BEGINNERS The continuing vitality of the Danish "Dogme" movement can be seen in this witty, charming exploration of life and love among thirty-somethings in a Copenhagen suburb. A newly ordained, recently widowed minister takes up the reins of a sparsely attended parish, where the center of social activity seems to be a nighttime Italian language class. Gradually, while struggling with the future tense and the proper use of definite articles, the participants discover each other, and eventually head off to Venice to work on both their language skills and romantic aspirations. A popular and critical sensation at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, director Lone Scherfig’s third feature film deftly weaves together several storylines, as we witness how each character learns that the solution to his or her problems lies in learning a new social vocabulary. 112 min. Denmark, 2001 A Miramax Films Release. 2B Tue. Oct. 2, 9:00pm 4A Thu. Oct. 4, 6:00pm
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TIME OUT With his first feature film, Human Resources, French director Laurent Cantet showed himself a talent to watch; with his powerful new film, Time Out, he proves himself already a master of the form. Aurélien Recoing, in a bravura, shattering performance, stars as a middle-class company man who’s lost his moorings. Recently fired from his job, but unable to confess the truth to his close-knit family, Vincent spends his days driving around the countryside, talking into his cell phone and staring into space; at one point, he even sneaks into an office building. As Vincent roams the building’s sterile halls, peeking into meeting rooms where men are busy at work, we see a man who yearns not just for a new job, any job, but for a place in the world. But while this pantomime of work initially registers as sad and even a little pathetic, it slowly and unnervingly becomes terrifying. Cantet’s politics may evoke Godard but his dazzling, lapidary style makes him an heir to Hitchcock. 132 min. France, 2001 3A Wed. Oct. 3, 6:00pm 4B Thu. Oct. 4, 9:15pm
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A New York Film Festival Retrospective THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER Charles Laughton directed one film in his lifetime, and it is a masterpiece: released originally in 1955, The Night of the Hunter has continued to spellbind audiences and fascinate critics with its combination of stylized, folkloric storytelling, violent sexuality and immense tenderness. And, of course, there is Robert Mitchum in his greatest role, as the itinerant preacher (with "love" and "hate" tattooed on his fingers). This will be the first public screening of the definitive restoration of the film by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. The presentation will include a selection from the outtakes also preserved by UCLA, including scenes in which Laughton can be heard giving off-screen direction. At this screening, the International Federation of Film Archives will present its first FIAF Award for preservation to Martin Scorsese. 93 min. USA, 1955 3B, Wed. Oct. 3, 9:15pm
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THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS The world premiere of the much-anticipated new film by Wes Anderson, whose Rushmore has achieved classic status in the two short years since its American debut at the 1998 NYFF. A true American original, Anderson mingles romance, tragedy, social observation and unforgettable characters in this dense but buoyant film about a family of eccentric geniuses living in a parallel New York (where Helvetica is the only typeface and all cabs are Gypsies). Gene Hackman is perfection as Royal Tenenbaum, the erratic, unscrupulous paterfamilias, long banished by his orderly wife (Anjelica Huston). Now, faking an illness, he has come home, there to settle accounts with his estranged children: financial whiz Ben Stiller, failed playwright Gwyneth Paltrow, and retired tennis champion Luke Wilson. 103 min. USA, 2001 A Touchstone Pictures Release 5A Fri. Oct. 5, 6:00pm 6E Sat. Oct. 6, 12 midnight
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THE LADY AND THE DUKE At 81, Eric Rohmer’s enters the digital age with The Lady and the Duke, a delightful companion piece to his earlier Marquise of O…, with its ironic play on character shaped by environment. Shooting before a blue screen, Rohmer sets the violent socio-political upheaval of the French Revolution in a heavily stylized milieu, composed of 18th-century paintings and hand-painted sets. This is the world as seen by Scottish expatriate Grace Dalrymple Elliott (Lucy Russell)—courtesan to princes, staunch friend of the monarchy, brave anachronism. Rohmer teases us into seeing Revolution as a form of extreme rudeness or breach of taste. Adroitly mixing melancholy with arrant absurdity, The Lady and the Duke celebrates the imagination’s power to make and unmake worlds. 125 min. France, 2001 A Sony Pictures Classics Release 5B Fri. Oct. 5, 9:15pm 7B Sun. Oct. 7, 5:00pm
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MAKING MOVIES THAT MATTER: THE ROLE OF FILM IN THE NATIONAL DEBATE. AN HBO FILMS PUBLIC FORUM At one point in the not-so-distant past, American filmmakers were hauled before Congress and even blacklisted because of the political positions espoused by their films. Lately, however, it seems American cinema is dedicated solely to entertaining us to death. At a time in which Americans are more divided than ever, on a whole range of issues, why are there so few films that address the vital issues affecting our daily lives? Is a new notion of political filmmaking beginning to emerge? Join us for a discussion, moderated by Newsweek Senior Critic David Ansen and featuring prominent filmmakers and cultural critics, on these and related issues. General admission, non-reserved seating only. 6A Sat. Oct. 6, 11:00AM
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SILENCE, WE’RE ROLLING A delightful, brightly-colored, toe-tapping valentine to the movies, Youssef Chahine’s 40th film is the story of Malka (the great Tunisian singer Latifah), a star of stage and screen whose life is at an impasse. Her husband has left her for her best friend, and her loyal screenwriter can’t seem to come up with a new script. Enter the suave Jean-Jacques Lamey, a Franco-Egyptian psychoanalyst whose prescription for her troubles includes becoming her leading man in more ways than one, despite the suspicions of Malka’s friends and family. Deliriously inventive, Silence, We’re Rolling is loaded with references to everyone’s favorite movie musicals and features eye-popping special effects, yet aided by the warm, generous performances of a splendid cast, the film never loses sight of the very human story at its core. A true master of the medium at the top of his form. 92 min. Egypt/France, 2001 6B Sat. Oct. 6, 2:00pm 8A Mon. Oct. 8, 6:00pm
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Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN Alfonso Cuarón (The Little Princess) comes home to Mexico with a bang, helming a funny, raunchy, sad, satirical road movie that’s breaking all box-office records. With their girlfriends off to Europe, horndogs Tenoch (Diego Luna) and Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal, superb in last year’s Amores Perros) set their sights on a curvaceous Spaniard (Maribel Verdu) unhappily married to a pretentious, womanizing writer. The trio head for a fictitious beach, driving ever deeper into the Mexican hinterlands; beyond their car windows, revelations about their country’s political, spiritual and sexual life abound. Even the bright Mexican sunshine can’t save these "children" from growing up and apart, pawns of mortality and an unforgiving class system. 105 min. Mexico, 2001 An IFC Films Release 6C Sat. Oct. 6, 5:00pm 7C Sun, Oct. 7, 8:30pm
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Festival Centerpiece MULHOLLAND DRIVE David Lynch’s newest feature, a site-specific cautionary tale about Los Angeles, is shot through with shivers as unsettling as they are pleasing. Terrific newcomer Naomi Watts plays a would-be actress with stars in her eyes and clichés on her lips. Stepping out of the airport into the L.A. sun, this dreamer all but bursts into song with an unfeigned enthusiasm that types her as yet another of Lynch’s naïfs whose comeuppance seems assured—she is and she isn’t—which is key to the film’s various surprises and its unexpected emotional warmth. A first-rate thriller about one girl’s once upon a time in Hollywood, Mulholland Drive revisits much of the same territory as a number of the director’s previous films—doppelgängers come and go, identities shift, as do time and space, hot girls and hair color—yet this is also Lynch’s most fully realized feature in years. 146 min. United States, 2001 A Universal Focus Release 6D Sat. Oct. 6, 8:00pm 7A Sun. Oct. 7, 1:30 pm
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FAT GIRL When it comes to exploring—with ferocious wit and style—the darkly erotic territories of sex and death, pleasure and pain, Catherine Breillat has no contemporary rivals. Twelve-year-old Anaïs sullenly hides out in glandular obesity during a languorous summer holiday, trailing after her indifferent mother and seductive older sister, an exquisite nymphet Anaïs both loves and loathes. Breillat deftly shades her rites of passage with growing dread: seething with primal lust and humiliation, her fat girl projects such a visceral appetite she’d be at home in a horror movie where, at any second, her hormonally charged fantasies might explode into fatal reality. 83 min. France/Italy/Spain A Cowboy Pictures Release 8B Mon. Oct. 8, 9:00pm 9A Tue. Oct. 9, 6:00pm
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BARAN On a cold, somewhat ramshackle construction site in Tehran, a young Afghan, Latif, grinds out a furtive living in the company of other illegal immigrants. One day Rahmat, another Afghan, arrives to work on the site; inadvertently, Latif chances upon Rahmat’s extraordinary secret, a revelation that sets him off on a new and unexpected personal journey. Graced with expertly nuanced performances by its nonprofessional cast, Majid Majidi’s film touches on many topics, from the continuing impact in Iran of war in Afghanistan to the exploitation of clandestine workers, but its true focus is really the emotional awakening of a young man for whom each day of his teenage years has been a struggle merely to survive. Majidi delighted NYFF audiences in 1999 with the award-winning The Color Of Heaven; with this marvelous new film, he confirms his place at the forefront of contemporary Iranian cinema. 94 min. Iran, 2001 A Miramax Films Release 9B Tue. Oct. 9, 9:00pm 10A Wed. Oct 10, 6:00pm
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DEEP BREATH Shot in exquisite high-contrast black and white, Damian Odoul's impressive debut feature offers a highly stylized, earthy portrait of a day in the life of 15-year-old David. Sent by his mother to spend some weeks with relatives on a farm, David helps with the chores, gets in everyone's hair, but mainly just hangs out, blasting music through his headphones. Then, as the all-male company of relatives and neighbors collects to drink, gamble and gorge, an unexpected, seemingly secret initiation rite begins, as everyday actions, gestures and statements start to take on menacing overtones. Perched somewhere between surrealist fantasy and Bressonian parable, DEEP BREATH's rendition of a young punker on the verge of manhood is squarely on the mark. 71 min. France, 2001 10B Wed. Oct. 10, 9:00pm
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SOBIBOR, OCTOBER 14, 1943, 4 P. M., At the heart of this extraordinary new documentary from Claude Lanzmann, director of Shoah, is an interview the filmmaker conducted in 1979 with a Holocaust survivor about the uprising at a Nazi concentration camp. Invariably tough-minded and rigorous, Lanzmann draws from the man’s memory, reconstructing the past with questions remarkable for their journalistic acuity and lack of sentimentalism, then sets the interview against images of modern Poland and models of the camp. Lanzmann originally slated the interview for Shoah but decided that the subject was too important to fold into the larger work. He was right. The new film isn’t just an epilogue to that landmark documentary; it’s a rebuttal to the dominant mythology of Jewish acquiescence and martyrdom, and as such, a critique of turning history into the comforts of fiction. 95 min. France, 2001 A New Yorker Films Release 11A Thu. Oct. 11, 6:00pm
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INTIMACY At once tender and tough, shot through with eroticism, Intimacy is a film that will haunt your head (and perhaps your bedroom) long after you’ve left the theater. Based on the fiction of British writer Hanif Kureishi, and beautifully directed by Patrice Chéreau (who wrote the screenplay with Anne-Louise Trividic), the film involves an intense affair between two London strangers. Once a week, Jay (Mark Rylance), a bitterly estranged married man, meets for sex with Claire (Kerry Fox), a married woman kept afloat on her dreams. In a grubby, dimly lit flat, the pair fumbles without clothes or inhibition, barely exchanging a word. Over time, however, their groping blossoms into an intimacy of the mind and not just the body, and ends up doing as much damage as good. Although much will be made of the film’s explicitness—and, yes, it’s definitely raw—Intimacy is finally most daring for its hard-core insistence on our need for human connection. 119 min. France, 2001 An Empire Pictures Release 11B Thu. Oct. 11, 9:00pm 13C Sat. Oct. 13, 6:00pm
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WAKING LIFE Richard Linklater, one of the handful of American independent filmmakers with a genuinely creative interest in style and structure, takes a genuinely radical turn with this new free-flowing, surrealist comedy. Linklater’s live-action footage, shot on digital video, has been transformed into light, pliable cartoon images by a team of animators under the direction of Bob Sabiston (who actually developed the innovative animation software used in the film). Waking Life is a companion piece to the director’s 1991 breakthrough Slacker; like that film, it consists of a series of vignettes, which may or may not be installments in one never-ending dream. Around a nameless central figure (Wiley Wiggins), who begins the film as a child caught in a dream of weightlessness, Linklater weaves a funny, moving and altogether dizzying experience. 99 min. USA, 2001 A Fox Searchlight Release
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THE SON’S ROOM The blossoming of grief, the rigors of self-recrimination—not exactly the stuff of what we glibly call "life-affirming" movies. But veteran filmmaker Nanni Moretti has used those very themes to create a film that’s both a slap in the face and a comforting embrace. Listening to the various misfortunes of his clients, a psychoanalyst (Moretti himself) receives a picture of the world that contrasts severely with the secure, loving and—oh yes—contented home life he shares with his daughter, son and wife (the wonderful Laura Morante). Then, death steps in. And the survivors have to reimagine their lives and world and the hard fact of no going back—and those who can resist the tender, ruthless, diabolically modulated emotions of Moretti’s movie are in desperate need of cardiac care. 99 min. Italy, 2001 A Miramax Films Release 12B Fri. Oct. 12, 9:00pm 13B Sat. Oct. 13, 3:00pm
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ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU-CHOU A man for all media, Shunji Iwai has, in scarcely a decade, brought his distinctive style to music videos, documentaries and feature films, essays and novels, and his own website. Originating as an interactive novel Iwai wrote and posted on the Internet, All About Lily Chou-Chou smartly nails down growing up absurd in Japan’s pervasive pop/cyber culture. As they negotiate teen badlands—school bullies, parents from another planet, lurid snapshots of sex and death—Iwai’s rebels without cause seek sanctuary, even salvation, through pop star savior Lily Chou-Chou, embracing her sad, dreamy songs and sharing their fears and secrets in Lilyholic chatrooms. Lily Chou-Chou climaxes in a fatal collision between real and virtual identities, a final logging-off from innocence. 146 min. Japan, 2001 13A Sat. Oct. 13, 11:00AM
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IN PRAISE OF LOVE (Closing Night) "It’s only when things are over that they make sense," says the protagonist of Jean-Luc Godard’s new film—an observation that here applies both to filmmaking and to human lives. Venturing out of his Swiss retreat, and returning to the Paris of the New Wave (filmed in pristine black-and-white), Godard sketches in the story of an artist with a vague project to create a work about the four ages of love. What he finds instead is the story of an old couple, Resistance fighters during the war, who reflect on the past while wondering about the future. The film’s second part, a lyrical rapture shot in color video, returns the viewer to present days and present styles, a way of completing the arc of history. A work of great intellectual freedom, elusive meanings, and overwhelming visual beauty, In Praise of Love is Godard’s richest theatrical film since Passion. 97 min. Switzerland, 2001 A Manhattan Pictures International Release 14A Sun. Oct. 14, 8:30pm AFH
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BLUE WILD ANGEL: JIMI HENDRIX LIVE AT THE ISLE OF WIGHT Jimi Hendrix's Isle of Wight appearance has always been presented on film heavily edited, with the numbers re-arranged and often truncated. Filmmaker Murray Lerner went back to his original footage, re-mastered the sound, and has now given us something wondrous to behold: a film experience that has the momentum and excitement of a real concert. Hendrix was a monumental, one-of-a-kind artist, and he was at the peak of his form here, tragically, only a mere 18 days before his death. 102 min. USA, 2001 All programs are on Sat Oct 6: 6V at 12 noon; 6W at 3:00pm; 6X at 6:00pm; 6Y at 9:00pm; 6Z at 12 midnight
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IL MIO VIAGGIO IN ITALIA In this moving film, Martin Scorsese traces this love for Italian cinema back to his earliest childhood memories of growing up in Little Italy and seeing his grandparents weep as they watched images of their homeland, devastated by war, in Rossellini's Paisan. Scorsese takes us through the films he loves best, some of them renowned classics like 8 1/2, some of them lesser known or more difficult films like Blasetti's The Iron Crown or Rossellini's Voyage to Italy. Il Mio Viaggio in Italia is at once a careful analysis, a historical investigation, and the spiritual autobiography of a great artist. 4hrs. 6min. USA, 2001 12V Fri. Oct 12, 6:30pm 13V Sat. Oct 13, 11:00AM
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