The Man Who Viewed Too Much
Special Edition: Fall 1997


The 35th annual New York Film Festival

Lincoln Center, New York City
26 September - 12 October, 1997



Ratings are on a four-star scale


Some folks head for the mountains for a couple of weeks; some take a cruise; some hit the beach. My own, rather less orthodox vacation runs from late September to mid-October each year, and I pitch my tent at Alice Tully Hall in New York City's Lincoln Center, preferably in row L or M. Yes, it's time once again for the New York Film Festival...and, as usual, I am stoked beyond words.

Unlike most other major festivals (e.g. Cannes, Toronto, etc.), the NYFF doesn't screen hundreds of films around the clock; instead, the selection committee chooses about 27 of the year's most remarkable features, which are shown only on evenings and weekends -- New Yorkers working a 9-5 job can see literally everything. Because of a scheduling conflict, I won't be seeing literally everything myself, but I will be catching all but one of the "official selections," as well as two of the four "special events." (What I'll miss, for the record: the closing night film, Pedro Almodovar's Live Flesh; a restoration of Griffith's Orphans of the Storm (which will be turning up at the Museum of Modern Art soon anyway, in all likelihood, since they restored it); and a documentary, Marcello Mastroianni: I Remember.)

Last year, I wrote a fairly short capsule review for every film immediately after seeing it, then addressed each film again at (usually) greater length if and when it opened commercially. That strategy turned out to be problematic, however, since in many cases several months, or even a year, passed before a given movie was released, by which time my memory was usually pretty hazy. This year, therefore, I've decided to write somewhat longer reviews (though still much shorter than the ones in my column), and then forever hold my peace. This inevitably means giving short shrift to some of my favorite films of either this year or next -- without fail, two or three NYFF entries annually wind up on my top ten list -- but the alternative is chaos, especially given the unusually large number of '97 NYFF films that are not still searching for a distributor, but in fact are opening a day or two after their festival screening; I'd have to double the length of my sort-of-weekly column in order to properly address them all. So this is it, folks: a guerrilla rundown of the 35th annual. Firmly grasp your chapeau, if you please.

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Ang Lee's somewhat portentous adaptation of Rick Moody's novel The Ice Storm kicked things off this year...not exactly in high style, perhaps (the last truly great opening night film was Pulp Fiction in '94), but with a welcome intelligence and sensitivity. Detailing the emotional and sexual confusion and frustration of two upper-class Connecticut families in the winter of 1973, it benefits from a superb cast (Christina Ricci and Tobey Maguire in particular, but everyone is terrific), a beautifully ethereal score by Atom Egoyan regular Mychael Danna, and a surprisingly frank -- for an American film, anyway -- exploration of teenage sexuality. (Merely acknowledging that children have sexual urges is too risqué for most Americans, it seems.) The film's evocation of the Me Decade is accurate without ever becoming distracting; I was only five years old in '73, but from what I can dimly recall of my early childhood, the details seem spot-on (my parents actually had a waterbed, incidentally). That The Ice Storm feels very much like a filmed novel is both a boon and a burden; its characters are gratifyingly complex and multifaceted, but Lee gets carried away with the visual metaphors (enough with the inserts of ice cubes, Ang!), and the final third, which takes place during the titular storm, gets bogged down in precious atmospheric foreboding. The tragedy that occurs in the final minutes is also problematic; it may have worked in Moody's book, which I haven't read, but it seems a bit much in the context of this two-hour film, especially since the tragic element is (again) entirely metaphorical. (No, I didn't just ruin the movie for you -- if you can't see by mid-storm that trouble's a-brewin', you need to get out way more often.) Still, however flawed, it's an incisive and often affecting portrait of an era, and probably the best film Lee's directed to date (keeping in mind that I was underwhelmed by Sense and Sensibility). I'd think about wearing a heavy jacket to the theater, if I were you.

Rating: ***

In attendance: who knows? Confession time: I didn't actually see this at the festival; by waiting a mere 17 hours, and catching it in commercial release, I saved more than $20. Opening night is ludicrously expensive.

U.S. distribution status: Opened 27 September in New York City (Fox Searchlight)

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As expected, the fest's first clunker was Aleksandr Sokurov's Mother and Son, a German/Russian co-production; watching this ultra-minimalist epic is truly -- much more so than with Rohmer, whose work I admire; and with apologies to Gene Hackman in Night Moves -- like watching paint dry, albeit on a spectacular canvas. I'd heard several horror stories about Sokurov's last NYFF entry, '94's Whispering Pages, so I wasn't terribly enthusiastic about seeing a film during which, as even the hyperbolic Toronto Film Festival program guide admits, "little happens." As it turned out, however, I was utterly entranced by the lengthy first shot; the muted browns and subtle distortion of the image reminded me of a Rembrandt oil painting. Subsequent compositions were nearly as lovely; unfortunately, because the title "characters" (I use the word loosely) are intended as emblems rather than people, a little of this visual virtuosity goes a long way. The mother is dying, and the son attends to her, and that's it, so far as narrative is concerned; given this simple and potentially moving scenario, I would have thought to have the two of them, you know, conversing, but Sokurov is content to photograph the son carrying his mother endlessly across the wooded grounds surrounding their rustic cottage. There's occasional dialogue, but it's essentially a silent film, and while any given scene or shot is impressive, the cumulative force accrued is neglible, because the tone never varies. "Watching it is like watching the last sunset," gasps J. Hoberman; if you're the kind of person who can happily sit on the beach and watch the nearest star sink below the horizon for 73 consecutive minutes, this is the movie for you. Personally, I've usually experienced all of the awe and wonder I can handle after about a quarter of an hour, and I start looking around for the Frisbee.

Rating: **

In attendance: Nobody

U.S. distribution status: Opens February 1998 at Film Forum, NYC

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John Hurt takes an early lead for various 1998 Best Actor honors in the hilarious and touching Love and Death on Long Island...or, as the wags will have it, Death in Venice 90210. (Oh yeah -- I'm one of the wags.) Adapted from a novel by film critic Gilbert Adair, it re-imagines Mann's tale of unrequited adoration as an experience with which I imagine that we're all familiar: the movie-star crush. Hurt plays a stuffy English writer, Giles De'Ath (the movie is so droll that that name isn't as pretentious as you might think), who mistakenly stumbles into a screening of Hotpants College 2 at a nearby multiplex and is immediately smitten by a beautiful young actor named Ronnie Bostock (a very good-natured Jason Priestley). First-time director Richard Kwietniowski has a flair for low-key comedy, and the first half of the film, which details Giles' growing obsession with all things Bostock, is sensational; in addition to the incongruity of a middle-aged literary man furtively purchasing copies of the English equivalent of Tiger Beat, there's also a flurry of genuinely funny fish-out-of-water gags, with Giles adrift first in the late 20th century (purchasing a VCR, for example, without realizing that another major purchase is an important prerequisite) and then on Long Island, to which he journeys in the hope of meeting his idol in person. The film takes a more poignant and somewhat less successful turn when Giles finally achieves this goal, and the conclusion, which Kwietniowski cheerfully admits has been changed drastically from the one in Adair's book (because Mr. K wanted a happy ending), is a bit disappointing. As a showcase for Hurt, however, it's indispensable; few other actors could have prevented Giles De'Ath from appearing either pathetic or psychotic, but Hurt's performance remains beautifully dignified no matter how ridiculous his character's behavior. I hope people still remember it come the winter of 1999.

Rating: ***

In attendance: Richard Kwietniowski, John Hurt

U.S. distribution status: Opens February 1998 in NYC (CFP)

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Now that I've alienated most of my readers with my passion for The Game, I may as well completely trash my reputation by admitting that I wasn't terribly impressed by Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry, which shared this year's Palme d'Or at Cannes (with Imamura's The Eel, not in NYFF). (Warning: You might not want to read any further until after you've seen the film; I can't explain what bugged me about it without revealing important plot details, of which Taste of Cherry, like most Iranian films, has few to begin with.) All I knew going in was that it involves a man who wants to commit suicide, but that minimal knowledge, in conjunction with the title, made me nervous. "Surely the great Kiarostami won't found an entire movie upon a facile homily," I thought. "Please tell me this isn't going to be a treatise asserting that life is worth living because, you know, it's so goshdarn beautiful." Well, it is. Call me an incorrigible cynic, but this theme strikes me as rather simpleminded; its prominence would have bothered me less had the film been packed with the kind of quiet but enthralling incident that characterizes many of Kiarostami's other films, but the forlorn protagonist's conversations with various potential helpers are largely banal (though the non-professional actors, as usual, are excellent). Furthermore, I think I've seen enough lengthy shots of vehicles driving around the Iranian countryside to last me at least until the dawn of the next century. I was thoroughly bored by the first Kiarostami film I saw, 1994's Through the Olive Trees, but after catching up with and loving some of his earlier works (e.g. Where Is the Friend's House, And Life Goes On, Close-Up), I wondered in retrospect whether I might have misjudged it, simply because I hadn't yet acclimated myself to the director's unique narrative rhythm. Now, I'm not so sure. Maybe he's just slipping.

Rating: ** ½

In attendance: Abbas Kiarostami

U.S. distribution status: Tentatively opens March 1998 in NYC (Zeitgeist)

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Attending a film festival isn't merely entertaining and stimulating -- it's instructive, too, at least for the aspiring filmmaker. The lesson I learned by watching Brigitte Roüan's Post coitum, animal triste is: Don't make a movie about your own failed love affair, because no matter how painful and traumatic it may have been for you personally, it will seem maudlin and self-indulgent onscreen, especially if you cast yourself in the lead role. The story is as old as homo sapiens: Girl meets boy; girl falls desperately in love with boy; boy fucks girl four or five times before losing interest; girl spends the rest of the movie alternately writhing around on her bed like a cat in heat (Roüan helpfully includes some footage of a cat in heat, lest we miss the point) and wandering about her apartment like an incredibly strange creature who stopped living and became a mixed-up zombie. While I imagine that we can all identify with this situation -- I sure as hell can, at any rate -- that doesn't necessarily mean that we want to see it acted out for an hour and a half, even with superlative French actors like the ones on display here; most of Post coitum amounts to an uninvolving catalogue of ecstasy and misery. That the girl in this instance is middle-aged, and the boy an impossibly handsome hunk not long out of his teens, makes matters a bit less hackneyed, but Roüan is neither inventive enough nor insightful enough to justify her confessional approach; for example, I spent a reel or more patiently waiting for a scene in which our heroine would examine her crows'-feet in the mirror, then remove her shirt to investigate the state of her breasts, and I was not disappointed (or, rather, I was). Indeed, Roüan spends so much of the film in the nude that it begins to reek of exhibitionism. As a voyeur, I prefer less blatant complicity.

Rating: **

In attendance: Brigitte Roüan

U.S. distribution status: None

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My original intention was to write at least 300 words about every festival film, but there seems little point in blathering on about From Today Until Tomorrow, the latest experimental film by longtime collaborators Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub. Shot in stark black-and-white, it's nothing more than a largely static performance of Arnold Schönberg's 1929 opera of the same title, and most of its 62-minute running time consists only of two singers warbling their hearts out (in German, with subtitles) on a single drab set. I don't like opera; I found Schönberg's score painfully atonal; and "avant-garde" cinema tends to make me itch -- I think it's probably safe to say that I do not belong to this picture's target audience. That the New York Times chose to assign the film to a music critic, rather than a film critic, is telling; the program notes claim that it's "at once highly theatrical and totally cinematic," but I'm afraid that I missed the "cinematic" part entirely, except insofar as it was, in fact, shot on film. For fans of opera and/or Schönberg only.

Rating: *

In attendance: Nobody

U.S. distribution status: Yeah, right

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Japanese actor/director Takeshi Kitano's films are a taste that I've yet to fully acquire, even after seeing three of his most celebrated efforts. (The other two that I've caught to date are Boiling Point and Kids Return.) Part of the problem with Hana-Bi, his latest, is that it stars Kitano himself, as an ex-cop trying to simultaneously settle a debt with yakuza thugs and act as a good samaritan toward his ailing wife and wounded ex-partner (for whose injury he feels responsible). A huge star in his native country, Kitano tends to favor the Impassive Mask school of acting pioneered by Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns of the 1960s; this technique is effective if all you're doing is slinging a gun and chewing on a cheroot, but somewhat inadequate for a movie as ambitious and formally complex as this one. More disconcerting, and a common factor in all the Kitano films I've seen, is the wildly varying tone, which in this case veers drastically from brutal to tender and back again, repeatedly. I hate to keep using J. Hoberman as a springboard, but his enthusiastic description of the film as "Ozu meets Don Siegel" is dead-on; trouble is, I don't really think that Late Spring would be improved by the addition of a scene in which someone is impaled in the eye by a pair of chopsticks. (Nor am I certain that Siegel's consistently ruthless pictures would benefit from a dose of sentimentality.) Maybe I'm getting all squishy in my old age, but I was far more interested in the nature of this violent cop's touching farewell gifts than I was in watching him phlegmatically blow away a dozen or more faceless scumbags; the violence in Hana-Bi isn't nearly as disturbing as that in Boiling Point -- parts of which I found almost unwatchable -- but much of it still feels cynically gratuitous. A masterpiece in bits and pieces.

Rating: ** ½

In attendance: Nobody

U.S. distribution status: Picked up during the festival by Milestone; release date pending

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If you're one of those people who goes to the movies primarily "to relax," for god's sake stay away from Errol Morris' byzantine Fast, Cheap & Out of Control, which is guaranteed to jump-start your brain and get it racing in about a dozen different directions at once. Morris, whose 1988 The Thin Blue Line ranks among the greatest documentaries ever made, wisely declines to overtly comment about the relationship between his four disparate interview subjects -- a wild animal trainer, a topiary gardener, a naked mole-rat specialist, and a robot scientist -- but the parallels are plentiful, and the film is simultaneously a fascinating biology/anthropology lesson and a profound meditation on a subject no less daunting than the very nature of existence. If that description makes Fast, Cheap sound remotely dry or academic, then I've done it a grave disservice; even if you think of nonfiction films as a chore, you should be running to see this one, which is more consistently entertaining than most of Hollywood's 1997 output combined. From Dave Hoover's explanation of why animal trainers use chairs as shields, which functions as a metaphor for the entire movie (in a nutshell: a lion is bewildered by the four "points of interest" the chair's legs present); to Ray Mendez' description of the excretory habits of the mole-rat, which (alarmingly) functions as a metaphor for much of human sociology; to Rodney Brooks' hypothesis that the intelligent machines that we're learning to build will eventually supplant us, which functions as a metaphor for divine creation, there's scarcely a word spoken or image seen in the picture's 82 minutes that doesn't resonate, often by bouncing off of some other word or image seen previously or subsequently. Only George Mendoça, the gardener, seems somewhat superfluous; not only is his profession the least interesting (to me, anyway), but Morris uses him mostly as an elegiac counterpoint to the others, a strategy which seems inspired less by the film's themes than by the recent death of his (Morris') parents, to whom the film is dedicated. (Admittedly, there's also a slightly elegiac tone in Hoover's segment, so it's possible that I simply missed a few connections as the film whizzed by; here's a movie that demands at least a second viewing.) In any case, this is the first absolute must-see of this year's festival.

Rating: *** ½

In attendance: Errol Morris

U.S. distribution status: Opened 3 October in New York City (Sony Pictures Classics)

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Considering how often it resembles a group therapy session, Adolfo Aristarain's Martín (Hache) is surprisingly effective, thanks largely to the collective effort of a superb quartet of actors. A family melodrama, its world is limited almost entirely to the four characters they play: Martín, a middle-aged film director (Cronos' Federico Luppi); his son, also named Martín but known as "Hache" (I believe that this is the Spanish word for the letter 'h,' which must somehow signify 'junior' in that language; in the subtitles, the boy is called 'Jay'; he's played by Juan Diego Botto); the father's lover, Alicia (Cecilia Roth); and the father's hedonistic best friend and favorite actor, Dante (Eusebio Poncela). Set alternately in Argentina and Spain, it's a tale of divided loyalties: the Argentine expatriates are torn between love for their native land and fear of the direction in which it's headed; while on a more immediate level, Martén, Alicia and Dante are engaged in a heated tug-of-war over Hache's future, provoked by a drug overdose that may have been accidental or may have been a suicide attempt. So accomplished are the performances that the movie remains watchable even when entire scenes are devoted to lengthy arguments about who's manipulating who for which ulterior motives; Aristarain's uniquely didactic narrative strategy is to show, then tell, then show again, then tell some more. A few moments amount to mere posturing -- there's a dreadful bit in which Dante, performing onstage, suddenly stops acting and launches into an embarrassingly facile tirade about audience complacency -- but by and large it's a perceptive and moving philosophical war story...not very cinematic, perhaps (I'm amazed that it wasn't adapted from a play, given how little we see of the rest of planet earth and its population), but impressive all the same.

Rating: ***

In attendance: Adolfo Aristarain

U.S. distribution status: None

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Sometimes a movie loses you right away, and Yim Ho's Kitchen, based on the popular novel by the improbably named Banana Yoshimoto, had me resigned for a long haul by the end of the first reel, in which our grief-stricken heroine ascends to the roof of her new home and reaches out to the sky in a maudlin attempt to capture the moon in her fists. Nothing else in this ho-hum romance is that nauseating, thank god, but the entire enterprise feels curiously hollow; and while the change of locale from Japan to Hong Kong may not have wreaked significant havoc, Ho's decision to make Louie, rather than Aggie, the film's protagonist almost certainly did. I haven't read the book, myself, but what I've gathered from folks who have -- some of whom were quite vocal during the Q&A -- is that Kitchen-the-novel is a distinctly feminine, if not feminist, work, which makes this adaptation roughly equivalent to depicting Pride and Prejudice from Darcy's point-of-view, or Jane Eyre from Rochester's. Whatever the cause, the film suffers from a singular lack of urgency; as in his previous The Day the Sun Turned Cold, which I found equally underwhelming, Ho's direction is confident and stylish, but I have yet to see any evidence that he's capable of doing anything more potent than merely establishing a mood. (Compared to Wong Kar-wai's Chungking Express and Fallen Angels, which touch upon similar themes, Kitchen is positively inert.) The waterlogged opening titles are gorgeous, and the actors are reasonably engaging, but I sat through the entire movie in a semi-comatose state. (Disclaimer: I was fairly tired that night.) Every year, the NYFF features a certain number of accomplished-but-not-for-me pictures -- Mother and Son and From Today Until Tomorrow, above, are classic examples -- but this was the first of several 1997 selections that crossed the line from inaccessible to inexplicable.

Rating: **

In attendance: Yim Ho, lead actress Yasuko Tomita

U.S. distribution status: None

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Another what-the-hell? choice was Bill Bennett's Kiss or Kill, from Australia, which so relentlessly and monotonously employs its sole stylistic device that it might as well simply be called Jump Cut. Don't get me wrong -- I can readily understand why Bennett felt the need to jazz things up a bit, since he's chosen, perhaps on a dare, to make what must be approximately the 829,748th movie about a murderous couple running from the cops since Nicholas Ray shot They Live by Night just half a century ago. Like its equally debased cousin, the gangster flick, the lovers-on-the-lam genre has been plumbed so thoroughly over the past few decades that innovation is, for the time being, virtually impossible; Bennett adds a dollop of paranoia, cross-pollinating it with the Joe Eszterhas did-(s)he-or-didn't-(s)he mystery, but to no avail. Again, I find myself gazing in astonishment at the festival program, which claims that Bennett's aggressive cutting (in conjunction with editor Henry Dangar) "virtually re-invents the form." What, just by discarding continuity editing? He's re-inventing the form by aping 1959 Godard? Have I gone mad? As the loving but increasingly mistrustful couple, Love and Other Catastrophes veterans Frances O'Connor and Matt Day do creditable work, but they're playing not characters so much as rusty icons. Still, as generally undistinguished as Kiss or Kill is, I'm not a bit sorry that I saw it, because amidst all of the familiar details and visual lurching is the finest, most delightful comic scene of the year -- a scene that's wonderful in part because it involves two peripheral characters and has exactly nothing to do with the rest of the movie. (Damn, that's faint praise.) I didn't give a hoot whether Nikki (O'Connor) or Al (Day) was responsible for the trail of corpses left in the pair's wake, or whether one of them might be planning to ice the other...but I started awake when one of the two police officers trailing them, for no apparent reason, began regaling his gullible partner with invented details about his home life, delivered with a magnificently straight face. In the Q&A, Bennett revealed that this was the film's only scripted scene: the rest was largely improvised. Next time, Bill, sit down and write the whole thing, okay?

Rating: **

In attendance: Bill Bennett, Frances O'Connor, Matt Day

U.S. distribution status: Opens in New York in November (October Films)

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The second scene in Frederick Wiseman's documentary Public Housing -- which dispassionately documents, in Wiseman's usual fly-on-the-wall style, a couple of weeks in the lives of residents of a Chicago project -- finds two housing cops giving a semi-friendly warning to a middle-aged woman who looks down on her luck at best, homeless and addicted at worst. For several minutes, one of the cops alternately lectures her in a condescending tone about the evils of drug abuse and urges her in a threatening tone to vacate the property now and to stay away from it in future; the woman nods her head a lot, and seems vaguely cooperative, but at the same time is clearly reluctant to move on. I was fascinated by the confrontation...but I was even more fascinated by the fact that none of its three participants ever so much as glanced at the camera, which can't have been more than a couple of yards away. The scene, like almost every scene in this three-hour-plus movie, begins in medias res, and I can't for the life of me imagine what must have occurred prior to the few minutes that we see; it's difficult to imagine Wiseman approaching the trio and saying, "Hi, I'm making a movie about this project, I'd like to film this conversation, would you mind just ignoring the camera and carrying on as before? Thanks a lot," but I'm otherwise at a loss to explain why a woman who's being hassled by police would studiously ignore a camera crew that's virtually breathing down her neck. This is but one example of many; several viewers touched on the subject during the post-screening Q&A, but Wiseman, who seems to be weary of talking about his method, steadfastly insisted that the people in his films behave no differently in the presence of his camera than they would behave in its absence, at one point flatly stating that "the Heisenberg uncertainty principle does not apply in this case." "Bullshit," say I...and so, while I admire Public Housing for its incisive, meticulous, and (incredibly) never boring examination of a culture in crisis, I don't entirely trust it. If I did, the rating below would be at least half a star higher.

Rating: ***

In attendance: Frederick Wiseman

U.S. distribution status: None, but it airs on PBS in December

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Agnieszka Holland's wan film of Henry James' Washington Square demonstrates conclusively that fidelity to the source material does not a superior adaptation make. Why directors are suddenly falling over one another in a rush to bring James to the screen in the first place -- see also Campion's Portrait of a Lady from last winter and the forthcoming Wings of the Dove -- is beyond my comprehension; while there are probably authors whose works are even less suitable for cinematic adaptation, I must confess that I'm having some difficulty thinking of one off the top of my head, apart from such obviously non- or anti-narrative writers as Burroughs and Dos Passos. James' drama is internalized, for the most part, eschewing pithy dialogue à la Austen or gothic melodrama à la the Brontës (The Turn of the Screw is a notable exception, and consequently the most potentially cinematic work in James' oeuvre; I haven't yet seen Jack Clayton's 1961 version, entitled The Innocents, which is reputedly excellent), so the only reliable way to convey his characters' heady emotions onscreen is to completely re-imagine the material. That's exactly what Ruth and Augustus Goetz did with their stage adaptation, The Heiress, which was beautifully filmed by William Wyler back in 1949; while it sometimes subverts James' themes, especially in its invented conclusion, it also achieves a dramatic power that Holland's more faithful version sorely lacks. With actors like Jennifer Jason Leigh (a bit too fluttery at first, she gradually settles into a more believable and affecting frailty), Albert Finney, and Maggie Smith in the cast, Washington Square isn't a total, um, wash, but Holland's attempts to pump up the volume with cheap devices like the opening trick shot (stolen outright from the opening shot of The Birdcage, where it was almost as meaningless) are transparently feeble. And hunky Ben Chaplin, as the enigmatic Morris Townsend, is way out of his depth (his physical similarity to Montgomery Clift in the final scene only heightens his mediocrity). Not unwatchable by any means, but hardly necessary, or even welcome.

Rating: ** ½

In attendance: Agnieszka Holland, Jennifer Jason Leigh

U.S. distribution status: Opened 5 Oct. in New York City (Hollywood Pictures)

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Ms. Holland could learn a thing or two from Atom Egoyan, whose first adaptation, The Sweet Hereafter, is a brilliant synthesis of Russell Banks' novel and Egoyan's own longstanding thematic obsessions; where Washington Square feels like generic costume malarkey, The Sweet Hereafter, despite its parentage, is recognizably related to its director's previous work. (The final shot even consciously echoes the final shot of Exotica.) Flitting effortlessly among numerous timelines -- this may be the most masterful use of screen chronology I've ever seen -- it uses the aftermath of an accident in a small town in British Columbia as a springboard to examine issues of accountability, displacement, and denial; Egoyan's genius is evident in his treatment of the traumatic incident itself, which would likely have either begun (see Alive) or concluded (see The Accused) anybody else's movie, but which he wisely a) buries in the middle of the picture, and b) shoots from a specific distance (I'm trying to avoid spoilers here) that renders the tragedy all the more horrifying. (Shudder to think of what, say, Sydney Pollack might have done.) The entire ensemble is top-notch, but Ian Holm, Bruce Greenwood, and Sarah Polley form something of a psychological triangle, and all three give towering performances (if Holm doesn't get an Oscar nomination for this film, we should all storm the Shrine Auditorium come spring, and I recommend that we not take prisoners). My only quibbles: this should have been a film about a community, and Egoyan doesn't really seem interested in connecting the various characters in geographical or emotional space -- they're as isolated as the folks in Speaking Parts or The Adjuster. And a few moments are atypically nudge-nudgey; I was particularly disappointed that Egoyan chose to repeat a key section of "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" late in the film, in case we'd somehow missed its resonance. Nevertheless, the best film in this year's festival; I've been citing Mike Leigh as my favorite contemporary director for several years now, but after seeing this movie and Leigh's disappointing Career Girls, I think I'm ready to change my allegiance.

Rating: *** ½

In attendance: Atom Egoyan, Russell Banks, Ian Holm, actress Arsinée Khanjian, producer Camelia Frieberg

U.S. distribution status: Opens 21 Nov. in New York City (Fine Line Features)

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I don't intend for my reviews to function primarily as a consumer guide (that's what the star ratings are there for), but concert films don't much lend themselves to close analysis, so here's the skinny: if you like Neil Young and Crazy Horse, go see Jim Jarmusch's tour documentary, Year of the Horse; if you don't, don't. It must have been Jarmusch's name that attracted the selection committee (though this film was technically a "special event" and not an "official selection"), because Year of the Horse, hip director or no, is utterly representative of this generally nondescript genre: lots of live footage (great if you like the tunes, tedious if not -- especially since Crazy Horse is prone to turning a three-minute pop song into a 13-minute extended jam) interspersed with backstage hijinks and banal interviews with the band members. (Stop Making Sense is the greatest concert film ever made in part because Jonathan Demme dispensed with the usual candid tomfoolery; Demme recently shot a Robyn Hitchcock tour film, incidentally, which I'm anxiously waiting, as I attended one of the rehearsals.) As a fan of Young both with and without Crazy Horse, I had a good time at my midnight screening; I'd feared that the movie would concentrate on recent Young material, about which I'm less enthusiastic, but was pleasantly surprised to find it dominated by such stellar chestnuts as "Barstool Blues," "Stupid Girl," "Tonight's the Night," and "Like a Hurricane" (a performance from the '96 tour stunningly segues into one from 20 years previously). Jarmusch includes a few entertaining backstage arguments from various previous tours (shot by god knows who), but his present-day Q&As are of interest only to rabid aficionados, and a little of his hallucinogenic road footage goes rather a long way. But, to his credit, it's the rock'n'roll that's front and center, and anybody who owns a worn-out copy of Zuma shouldn't miss this.

Rating: ***

In attendance: Jim Jarmusch, Crazy Horse sans Neil Young

U.S. distribution status: Opened 5 Oct. in New York City (October Films)

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So you've hit upon a sure-fire subject for a movie, one that's both unique and provocative: a little boy who wants to be a little girl. Now, how best to approach it? You could make a serious, emotionally grueling drama, in which the unfortunate child encounters hostility and misunderstanding both at school and at home; or, alternatively, you could make a pastel-colored, giddy fantasy, in which the lovable nonconformist lives happily in a solipsistic bubble that only vaguely resembles the real world. Ma vie en rose (which will probably be released in the U.S. as My Life in Pink), the first feature directed by Belgian (I think) director Alain Berliner (no relation to U.S. personal-essay filmmaker Alan Berliner), does both, incredibly enough, and the juxtaposition of tones works more often than not -- perhaps because the fantasy world is a invention provoked by the cruelties of the real one. (The two blend, however, and "reality" here is heightened considerably; the vacillating tone of Heavenly Creatures, though ultimately much darker, would make for an apt comparison.) Berliner, in collaboration with Chris Vander Stappen (a woman living as a man who chose to reverse the gender roles in his script, probably because a girl who wants to be a boy is considered harmless, a "tomboy"), expertly thwarts expectations; for example, young Ludovic's father is initially outraged, while his mother is sympathetic, but the pair gradually swap tolerance levels as the picture progresses, in a completely believable and psychologically defensible way. I was a bit disappointed, at first, that Ludovic's conception of what it means to be a girl is so stereotypical -- Barbie dolls, frilly frocks, garish makeup, etc. -- but it occurred to me later that somebody who seeks a more neutral gender identity isn't going to experience a dramatically interesting degree of emotional turmoil. (I also reminded myself that drag queens don't strive to look like, say, Emma Thompson...though I hasten to add that gender confusion and transvestitism are not the same thing, and this film makes no such assumption.) As Ludovic, Georges DuFresne gives a performance nearly as courageous as Heather Matarazzo's in Welcome to the Dollhouse, and one that's just as likely to be ignored by the folks who nominate actors for year-end awards.

Rating: ***

In attendance: Alain Berliner, Georges DuFresne

U.S. distribution status: Opens Christmas Day in New York City (Sony Pictures Classics)

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Egyptian director Youssef Chahine won a special lifetime achievement award at this year's Cannes film festival, and it's a testament to the pathetic provinciality of American film distribution and exhibition that Destiny, his latest, is the first of his 30+ features that I've had an opportunity to see since I began paying attention to foreign-language movies more than a decade ago. Unfortunately, it didn't make for the best introduction to his work. Most of what I know about Chahine I gleaned from a lengthy article written by Dave Kehr that appeared in the November-December issue of Film Comment; Kehr noted (approvingly) that "you are never alone watching a Chahine film, but sharing his company with a third party -- the phantom of whatever filmmaker he is invoking at the moment." I watched Destiny while sitting beside the ghost of Cecil B. DeMille, and since I don't much care for DeMille's grandiose religious epics, I was equally unmoved by Chahine's appropriation of their spirit. Set in 12th-century Andalusia, Destiny is a laudable but didactic plea for religious and intellectual tolerance, involving the real-life philosopher Averroës (Nour El Cherif, in a fine performance) and his disciples, as well as the Caliph (ruler) and his family; various parties scurry about attempting to make copies of Averroës' books and safely hide them away before the originals are burned. Like, say, the '56 Ten Commandments, the film is visually impressive but dramatically ponderous; it comes alive only during its two musical numbers (!), which are as stirring and exuberant as the rest of the picture is stifling and lethargic. Had it been a full-fledged musical, I would have more readily forgiven -- maybe even downright enjoyed -- its humanistic excesses.

Rating: ** ½

In attendance: Youssef Chahine

U.S. distribution status: None

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In his own review of Voyage to the Beginning of the World, my pal Steve Erickson began with a series of rhetorical questions: "When riding on a train, do you spend the time reading or staring at the window? When your grandparents brought out the photo album, slide show or home movies, did you stay awake? Do you know (or care) anything about the life and work of 89-year-old Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira?" I know what the "right" answers are -- that is, the ones that suggest that the hypothetical respondent might enjoy de Oliveira's latest film -- but I enjoy answering rhetorical questions, so here goes: (1) I definitely don't stare at the window, though I might occasionally glance out the window (look out! it's Semantic Man!). More often, however, I read, or write, or listen to music, and movies about landscapes do tend to bore me. (2) I'm interested in my grandparents' histories and memories, but that's mostly because I'm related to them, and so their past is a piece of my own past, in a sense. I wouldn't likely care to see your grandparents' photo albums, and I'm equally blasé about de Oliveira's memories, per se. That doesn't mean that I'm opposed to memory-based narratives, mind you, but I'd prefer that the reminiscing be a tad less languid than it is in Voyage, in which, as even Steve admits, virtually nothing happens. (3) My knowledge of de Oliveira's work is limited (I've also seen The Convent, which I liked a bit better than this one), and my knowledge of his life is essentially nil -- but a film that depends upon your foreknowledge of its subject, particularly its metaphorical subject, is on thin ice. Voyage to the Beginning of the World, like so many of the films in this year's festival, strikes me as a movie that was far more important for its director to make than it will be for most viewers to see -- it's cinema as personal therapy. Note to fans of Marcello Mastroianni: yes, this was his last film, but be forewarned that he's barely in it, even though he appears in virtually every scene.

Rating: **

In attendance: Nobody

U.S. distribution status: Probably an early '98 release (Strand)

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Deep Crimson, Arturo Ripstein's dramatization of the sad, sordid lives of the real-life Lonely Hearts Killers (the facts of the case were previously filmed by Leonard Kastle as The Honeymoon Killers), sports a misleading title; though a fair amount of blood has been spilled by the time the credits roll, as one would expect, the film's dominant hue is a particularly muddy brown, making Mexico look like the world's largest septic tank. To their credit, Ripstein and screenwriter Alicia Paz Garciadiego demonstrate enormous compassion for the human refuse that inhabits it -- more compassion, certainly, than I could have mustered. The film's murderous lovers (played with conviction and sensitivity by Regina Orozco and Daniel Gimenez Cacho) commit several acts of unspeakable depravity, yet their victims' deaths seem positively peaceful when compared to their own anxious, miserable existence; each time Nicolas fumbles to replace his toupee before somebody notices the bald spot that extends over most of his skull, or Coral's eyes narrow to slits as she watches Nicolas flirting with one of their matronly marks, it's as if somebody turned the theater thermostat down another ten degrees. This isn't Mickey-and-Mallory bullshit time, in other words: it's a clear-eyed, nonjudgmental look at the kind of people who tend to be either demonized or lionized by other movies, as well as a demonstration of how the deadly sins of Pride (sub-category: Vanity) and Envy (sub-category: Jealousy) are as compatible as oil and water. What Deep Crimson lacks -- what might have transformed this fine, sturdy picture into something transcendent -- is energy, either narrative or cinematic. Ripstein and Garciadiego understand these lost souls, and manage to pity them without condoning their actions (no easy task), but the spark is missing, somehow, and much of the film feels staid and controlled, as if we were watching a rehearsal rather than a performance. You will have recognized the contradiction: I respect the filmmakers for not mythologizing their subjects, and yet I complain that the result is ever-so-slightly too drab, insufficiently bold. You suspect that I am simply impossible to please. And you may well be right. All I can report is that Deep Crimson struck me, in the end, as just a little too brown for its own good.

Rating: ***

In attendance: Arturo Ripstein, Alicia Paz Garciadiego

U.S. distribution status: Opened 9 October in NYC (New Yorker)

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Less a sequel to Chungking Express than an extension of it, Wong Kar-wai's Fallen Angels, finally arriving in New York two years after its completion, has got energy in spades: frame for vivid frame, this is the most visually arresting picture not merely of this festival, but of the year, and maybe last year, and probably next. Shot almost entirely with wide-angle lenses, and employing jump cuts far more creatively than does Kiss or Kill (see above), it's a dazzling, vertiginous, freewheeling affair -- a cinematic roller-coaster ride that (unlike the standard Hollywood variety) doesn't feel the least bit mechanical. It pulses, throbs, vibrates, undulates -- and believe me, I wouldn't be using such breathy adjectives if its aesthetic nature weren't genuinely indescribable. A pity, then, that its characters and situations are so familiar; I wasn't at all surprised to learn, during the Q&A, that its story was originally intended for inclusion in Chungking Express, but was cut during production because Wong decided that the movie was getting too long. Narrative isn't Wong's forte -- mood is -- and it's no coincidence that Chungking Express, which divides its running time between two separate but thematically related tales, is his best work. (I haven't yet seen his debut, As Tears Go By, but I have yet to encounter anyone who has who'd consider it in the running.) Fallen Angels, which features more lovelorn urban misfits and obstinately stoic yearning, might have worked as a third part of a Chungking triptych, but on its own it's both disappointingly slight and absurdly bloated. Imagine the first story in Chungking -- the one with Takeshi Kaneshiro as the cop obsessed first with pineapple expiration dates and then with Brigitte Lin -- stretched to 96 minutes, but directed with even more flair, and you'll have a fair idea of what this add-on feels like. Paradoxically, it's both redundant and essential: you've already seen it, but you've gotta see it again.

Rating: ***

In attendance: Wong Kar-wai

U.S. distribution status: Opens January 1998 in NYC (Kino International)

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By this time, you don't need me to tell you that Boogie Nights is a mighty good film -- so let me instead expend my energy explaining why it isn't, contrary to popular (or at least critical) opinion, The Great American Movie of 1997. For one thing, an R-rated epic about the porn industry was a goofball idea from the get-go...and, sure enough, writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson, who has virtually nothing of interest to say about the subject in the first place (he's high on the era and the general decadence and naughtiness, but apparently couldn't care less about why these people do what they do, or even how they do it), is forced to convey what little he does have to say via a neverending succession of coy reaction shots. Exactly one (1) scene in the film takes place on a film set, which is as ludicrous as if only one scene in Day for Night had taken place on a film set; what we see there, in any case, feels phony and smug, like a parody of the making of a porn film that you might see in a real porn film. Its final phallus-shot notwithstanding, Boogie Nights is a disappointingly prudish and moralistic film -- particularly in its weaker second half, in which Anderson contrives bleak, nightmarish downfalls for a handful of his protagonists. (Admittedly, this section also includes the film's best scene, with Alfred Molina stealing the picture as a wacked-out hophead with a yen for Night Ranger and Rick Springfield.) And don't get me started on how many shots and ideas were lifted directly and brazenly from Scorsese's oeuvre, or we'll be here all week. Despite all of this carping, however, I did enjoy myself; it may be a watered-down, derivative picture, but it's highly entertaining all the same, from its doozy of an opening (not so much the blatantly bravura shot itself as the way that it first explodes onto the screen) to its gaggle of childlike oddballs (as in Hard Eight, Anderson's debut, John C. Reilly impresses most mightily) to its kitschy-nostalgic source music (I found myself eyeing Three Dog Night's greatest hits CD at Tower the other day; I managed to resist, but for how long?). Very good, in short -- just not that good.

Rating: ***

In attendance: Paul Thomas Anderson, Mark Wahlberg, Burt Reynolds, Heather Graham, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ricky Jay, Luis Guzman

U.S. distribution status: Opened 12 October in NYC (New Line)

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One of filmmaking's greatest challenges is the accurate portrayal of boredom and apathy; ironically, the closer you come to truly conveying the monotony of a dead-end existence, the more likely it is that your audience will wind up as bored and apathetic as your characters. Bruno Dumont, in his debut film, La vie de Jésus, does a superlative job of capturing the particular hell that is stasis -- so much so that I simply couldn't wait for the movie to end, so that I could seek some form of mental or physical stimulation. Apparently, there are only three activities available to the denizens of the small town in northern France in which the movie is set -- passionless fucking, aimless joyriding, and unprovoked attacking of the local minorities -- and Dumont provides endless variations of this unholy trinity, to diminishing effect. Worse, the film is numbingly predictable; as soon as the friendly Arab character, Kader (Kader Chaatouf), was introduced, I wondered how long it would be before our mindless, hulking protagonist, Freddy (David Douche), either seriously wounded or killed him. The answer, to my dismay, was: The entire damn movie. In other words, after a quarter of an hour I'd guessed exactly what would subsequently occur, and for the next 80 minutes or so I simply sat back and impatiently watched as my every suspicion was confirmed...very. very. very. slowly. I was alarmed and disturbed to find myself thinking things like "I wish this creep would hurry up and kill that nice Arab, so I can go home" and "Hasn't he killed that Arab yet? What time is it, anyway?" By the time the Cure song "Killing an Arab" started resounding in my skull, I was beginning to get peeved; Dumont's plodding approach had equated the brutal murder of an innocent man with the sound of the second shoe thudding onto the floor. Yes, it's possible to sustain interest and tension even when the outcome is patently obvious -- see Heavenly Creatures, Apollo 13, etc. -- but this requires storytelling, and there's none to be found in La vie de Jésus. (Let's just ignore the unbearably pretentious title, shall we?) There's only stagnation, and the sound of wheels spinning.

Rating: **

In attendance: Bruno Dumont

U.S. distribution status: None

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After seeing Telling Lies in America, the first NYFF selection ever to have been penned by Joe Eszterhas, I'm convinced that the selection committee is accepting bribes. A fictionalized account of the Showgirls scribe's formative years as a Hungarian immigrant in Cleveland, it's more heartfelt than Eszterhas' million-dollar Hollywood scripts, but it's every bit as inept: the dialogue is hamhanded, the subtext crushingly blatant, and Big Joe remains enamored of such tired screenwriting devices as the Cutesy Ironic Twist. (In Jagged Edge, Glenn Close types "He is innocent" on Jeff Bridges' typewriter, and the telltale flaw of the lowercase 't' at the end of the final word confirms his guilt. Here, we have Karchy [the very Hungarian-looking Brad Renfro], who has trouble with the English 'th' sound, repeatedly practicing his pronunciation in the mirror with the phrase "and that's the truth!" -- which he finally gets right the moment he stops lying. Egad.) Kevin Bacon, as a local DJ who befriends Karchy and winds up inadvertently teaching him valuable life lessons, gives a corker of a performance -- he's much more at home in the '50s and '60s than in the present day, as Diner also attests -- but his cocky grin and sharp delivery are all that this hackneyed, sentimental memoir has to recommend it. Director Guy Ferland, I suspect, has sold his soul to Satan: his terrible debut, The Babysitter, somehow escaped the straight-to-video fate that it so richly deserved and wound up with a run at New York's arthouse venue Film Forum, and now this utterly unremarkable picture somehow beat out such contenders (I assume that they were submitted) as Zhang Yimou's Keep Cool, Manuel Poirier's Western, and Shohei Imamura's co-Palme d'Or-winner The Eel for this NYFF slot. Enjoy the brimstone, Guy.

Rating: **

In attendance: Guy Ferland, Kevin Bacon, Brad Renfro

U.S. distribution status: Opened 17 Oct. in NYC (Banner)

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The Apostle, Robert Duvall's third film as director (he also wrote the script and plays the lead role), is 148 minutes long, or just shy of two-and-a-half hours. (Yes, I know you can handle basic arithmetic, but I thought I'd save you the trouble.) Of those 148 minutes, I'd estimate that about 48 are devoted to scenes in which Duvall's character, a slightly warped but basically goodhearted Pentecostal preacher named Sonny, lifts his voice to the Lord -- which is at least 30 minutes too many, for my money. If Boogie Nights (see above) largely ignores its protagonist's profession, to the film's detriment, The Apostle is a bit too enthralled with the details of its eponymous hero's workday; the last half hour, in particular, feels as long as a real church service, and almost as repetitive. Granted, Sonny's fiery exhortations exert a certain fascination -- this must be the most energetic, tireless performance given by a senior citizen since Cagney barked his way through One, Two, Three in 1961 -- but because this is Duvall's show from beginning to end (he even financed the entire thing himself, when nobody else would put up the money), the lengthy sermons often come across as self-indulgent grandstanding. More effective are the quieter moments: Sonny casually whacking his wife's lover upside the head with a baseball bat in a sudden fit of rage (yes, that's a quiet moment, which is what makes it so remarkable), or tentatively wooing the secretary at the local radio station (Miranda Richardson), or driving his rickety bus from house to house to pick up his (mostly black) flock every morning. It's a passionate, sincere, and gratifyingly complex film about the meaning of religion, and one that managed to intermittently affect even a godless heathen such as myself. It's just way too damn long. I'll be curious to see whether it stays that damn long.

Rating: ** ½

In attendance: Robert Duvall

U.S. distribution status: Opens in late December in NYC (October Films)

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Don't you hate it when a critic dismisses an entire movie just because (s)he doesn't care for the subject matter? Doesn't the review-by-genre strike you as distressingly superficial and obtuse, not to mention lazy? Personally, I think that that kind of shoddy, devil-may-care criticism ought to be forbidden by law...tomorrow. As for today: Happy Together, the other Wong Kar-wai film in this year's festival (this one is actually new), is an evocative exploration of an unhappy relationship, and features scene after scene after scene of its two lovers, Lai Yiu-fai (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Ho Po-wing (Leslie Cheung), bickering. Hong Kong natives living as expatriates, for no apparent reason, in Argentina, the pair quarrel, argue, accuse, deny, briefly reconcile, play torturous mind games with one another -- it's a completely believable portrait of the final weeks of a love affair. (Leslie Cheung, incidentally, for those of you who don't know, is a man; this is a rare "gay film" in which the characters' sexual preference is simply taken for granted, and what a breath of fresh air it is.) And, like Godard's renowned Contempt, which is equally accurate about the ways in which paramours grow apart, it bored me more often than not, simply because I find such behavior as tedious and pointless on the screen as I do in real life. Though less ostentatiously flashy than Wong's previous two films, Happy Together features all of the elements that have consistently impressed me in his other pictures: elegantly moody characters; stunning cinematography (courtesy Christopher Doyle, as ever); a loose-limbed narrative that careens from shot to shot without deliberation; a general air of cinema as possibility. All that's missing is the powerful romantic yearning that suffused Chungking Express, Fallen Angels (see above), and even parts of Ashes of Time and Days of Being Wild. In its place, to my irritation, is endless squabbling -- the very kind that, rather than engendering my sympathy, merely finds me nodding my head, waving my hand in a circular get-on-with-it gesture, and murmuring "okay, it's over, deal with it, move on." Those who aren't similarly afflicted may well find the couple's plight extremely moving; I wish you well, so long as we aren't dating.

Rating: ** ½

In attendance: Wong Kar-wai

U.S. distribution status: Opened 12 Oct. in NYC (Kino International)

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As much as I enjoyed the first installment of The Kingdom, the spooky-funny Danish soap opera directed by Lars von Trier and Morten Arnfred, I was a bit dismayed by the farcical turn that the story seemed to be taking in the waning moments of the final episode -- a turn that seemed to me to undercut the nervous tension that its creators had worked so hard to establish. As I feared, The Kingdom II, consisting of episodes 5-8 from the TV series (yes, there are still more to come), continues in the same goofy vein; often hilarious, it's never so much as a fraction as eerie or disturbing as its predecessor, and I was consequently very conscious of its nearly five-hour running time (though it still seemed shorter than the 73-minute Mother and Son, above), whereas the first movie fairly whizzed by even on a recent second viewing. Those of you who saw The Kingdom are no doubt wondering, as I was, where von Trier and co-screenwriter Niels Vorsel could possibly go with the (ahem) unusual plot twist that brought episode four to a (ahem) rather memorable climax; I won't reveal the answer, but suffice to say that it's both utterly bizarre and inappropriately maudlin -- Basket Case meets Terms of Endearment is the best vague description that I can think of. The good news is that the entire principal cast is back, albeit now almost completely dominated by Ernst-Hugo Järegaard as Stig "Danish scum!" Helmer, who returns from Haiti even more enjoyably obnoxious than when he departed. His presence alone makes The Kingdom II an intermittent riot, and it's more or less a must-see for everybody who saw and enjoyed The Kingdom, if only because the first part inspired a curiosity so strong that it simply must be satisfied. But my expectations for The Kingdom III, due sometime around 2000, are considerably diminished, and I can't claim to be waiting for it with my breath a-bated.

Rating: ** ½

In attendance: Nobody

U.S. distribution status: Undetermined 1998 release date (October Films)

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Finally, Pedro Almodóvar's Live Flesh, which I was able to see after all, turned out to be the last thing that I'd ever expected from the former maestro of the mischievous: one of those competent, not unpleasant films that leaves virtually no impression on you whatsoever. What now appears to have been his transitional picture, last year's rather somber melodrama The Flower of My Secret, still featured welcome flashes of the old Almodóvar spirit, particularly in its cleverly misleading opening scene; Live Flesh, by contrast, feels somewhat generic -- it's the first Almodóvar film since I became aware of his career in 1988 in which his signature isn't apparent on every frame. Not to harp on this subject or anything, but could this possibly have something to do with the fact that it's his first adaptation (of a novel by Ruth Rendell, whose books are suddenly in demand by European auteurs; A Judgment in Stone provided the basis for Chabrol's La Cérémonie)? The serpentine story of the aftermath of a shooting that paralyzed a young cop (Javier Bardem) and wrongly imprisoned a brash would-be Romeo (Liberto Rabal), it's consistently interesting yet curiously remote. The actors are first-rate, the direction is assured, the plot is intriguing, and yet I never felt emotionally involved, for some reason -- possibly, I must admit, because the ticket I was able to procure at the last minute placed me about seven miles from the screen, which I was able to see only by installing a series of carefully-placed mirrors along half of upper Broadway. I don't think that that's the whole story, though; for all of its surface pleasures, Live Flesh struck me as cinematic calisthenics -- a way for Almodóvar to keep his directorial muscles toned while he waits for his muse to start whispering. No law against that, and I'd hate to see those muscles atrophy, but this isn't one for the time capsule, I'm afraid.

Rating: ** ½

In attendance: Pedro Almodóvar, actresses Francesca Neri and Angela Molina

U.S. distribution status: Tentatively opens sometime in December in NYC (Goldwyn/MGM)

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I'd intended to write a few retrospective words about this year's festival -- easily the least impressive of the three I've attended to date -- but you can draw your own conclusions, right? You'd rather see me tackle some of the new releases that I've neglected while attending to this massive rundown, yes? That's what I thought. See you next year.