Seattlest Pix 09Nov21
Friendly Folk-Pop for the Kids: Hey Marseilles at Vera This Saturday
Seattlest Pix 09Nov22
Rainy Dawg Radio gets a local
Touch Me, I'm Sick
The main event last night was billed as "An Evening with Steven Soderbergh," but everyone knew he'd be showing his new film, The Girlfriend Experience. Steven himself commented on this presumed fact, saying that he didn't know how these rumors got started...and then he showed the new movie. Unlike Che, Girlfriend Experience (or at least the work-in-progress version we saw) is only about eighty minutes long, and made for a little under $2M in just over two weeks last October. Like Bubble, it's another one of Soderbergh's digital films, and it's his most non-linear story-telling since The Limey.
The scenes are all structured as to what will take place, but the dialogue is mostly improvised, and all the actors were non-professionals, save the lead, who's had tons of screentime. Perhaps you've heard of her: Sasha Grey is best known for being a porn star, and in this film, she plays Chelsea, a "sophisticated" escort who is good at what she does--while also having a committed relationship with her boyfriend. We see bits from their lives, apart and together, and see how their dynamic works and doesn't work.
Since it was filmed just a few months ago, the politics are timely, with talk of the election (most of Chelsea's clients are Republican and try to convince her to vote for McCain) and the struggling economy. It's the focus on the latter that we weren't quite sure of the larger meaning. Is Soderbergh saying that in economic times like these, the only investment safer than gold is pussy? Who knows, but Grey is a terrible actress--all flat affect and dead eyes--but it works, primarily because her character keeps her true self hidden deep down, far away from her clients, not to mention her boyfriend.
We also caught Push: Based on the novel by Sapphire, which should easily take home an audience award and seems to be very, very close to a distribution deal. It might be a tough sell to audiences, though, given that the film is the extraordinary story of Precious, a young girl in Harlem who has had a life of one horror after another, such that as the film begins, she is sixteen, morbidly obese, semi-literate, still in eighth grade, and pregnant for the second time with her father's child. Whoa. Still, despite it all, Precious has a positive outlook and bears her nightmares with grace and goodwill.
We can't say it better than Variety: "To simply call it harrowing or unsparing doesn't quite cut it; Push is also courageous and uncompromising, a shaken cocktail of debasement and elation, despair and hope. Everyone involved deserves credit for creating a movie so dangerous, problematic, and ultimately elevating." That "everyone" includes visionary director Lee Daniels, Gabby Sidibe (in her first film) as Precious, Mo'Nique as Precious's monster of a mother, and yes, even Mariah Carey, who is almost unrecognizably un-diva as a social worker.
This morning started off with One Day in a Life, an Italian film that captures just your typical day at the gay beach. There's a blowjob behind the dunes and some requisite cruising; meanwhile new friends are made, relationships are re-evaluated, dreams are analyzed, and of course there's some secrets and lies. It's a simple story, free of distractions and extraneous scenes. Director Stefano Tummolini crafts his characters with care, with the exposition and revelations meted out precisely, bit by bit. The speedos don't hurt neither.
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