Results tagged “foreignfilms”

HOME ALONE: Poor little Korean kids. In So Yong Kim's Treeless Mountain, two sisters (Jin, 6, and Bin, 4) must take care of each other after their mother leaves them to search for their estranged father. Parents of the Year all up in this piece! In this semi-autobiographical tale (whuuuuuuut?), things move slowly and tenderly while the children are left to their own devices and struggle to adapt to the new status quo. Treeless Mountain plays twice a night at the NWFF through Thursday. 7 p.m., 9 p.m. // Northwest Film Forum // 1515 12th Ave. // $9

Having already seen Gomorrah, we were at the Guild this weekend for the other film currently showing, The Class. All the people in front of us in line were also buying tickets for that film, prompting the man behind us to ask, "What's The Class about?" We told him something to the effect that it's a year in the life of a French teacher and his students at an inner-city Paris school. He nodded with vague recognition, and then proceeded to buy two tickets to "Gorma." We expect he'll be back for "The Calls" sometime soon.

LUNCH AND POLITICAL POEMS: Nation humorist Calvin Trillin does a special midday Monday event at Elliott Bay, reading from his collection of poems about the 2008 election cycle Deciding the Next Decider: The 2008 Presidential Race in Rhyme. The event is free and open to the public, but if you want to go one step further and make a lunch of it, call up the cafe (206-682-6664) to pre-order from your choice of box lunch: roast beef sandwich, albacore tuna sandwich, or egg salad sandwich, all of which are served with chips and a cookie.

On Thursday, we saw a final two films at Sundance before getting the hell out of Dodge Utah. First up was Adam, an unconventional love story that was flying way under the festival radar until it sold to Fox Searchlight late Monday night.

Writer-director Max Meyer has crafted a tender and wistful film about the title character, a cute, wide-eyed, outer-space-obsessed twenty-nine-year-old man who happens to have Asperger's. It's delicate in its treatment of the syndrome, as well as the romance that develops between Adam (Hugh Dancy) and his new neighbor, Beth (Rose Byrne). Adam is a charming, unexpectedly moving film, and Meyer pulls no punches. Just like all of us, Adam has a deep desire for connection and intimacy, independent of his condition.

Our last film of the fest was Unmade Beds, a British flick in the style of L'Auberge Espagnole.In a London art space/communal loft, young people move in and out, crashing on mattresses where they can. The film focuses on the storylines of two of the squatters: Axl, from Madrid who is trying to track down his absentee father (when he's not having drunken blackouts), and Vera, a French girl trying to get over her ex (when she's not still thinking about him). Alexis Dos Santos infuses the film with playful direction, and lots of music and energy, including several live performances by indie British bands. But ultimately, we were a lot more interested in Vera's story than Axl's. Hell, we were more interested in all the other goings-on in the apartment than poor, boring Axl.

As to the festival itself, it was delightfully more low-key than in previous years (last year in particular was ridiculously overcrowded). The economic downturn kept the yahoos away, the industry asshole numbers down, and the movie tickets relatively readily available. But it is more than a little disconcerting to see Main Street looking like something out of 28 Days Later--in past years, it was perpetually crowded, day or night. Thankfully we didn't run into Mike Tyson, nor the Real Housewives of Atlanta's Kim Zolciak (whom we find equally terrifying). This year really was about the movies, and for that we are grateful. Sundance, we love you, and we'll see you next year.

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.

Of all the quintessentially American genres, hardboiled crime fiction is the one that's lasted the longest, but in a strange twist of cultural fate, that longevity owes at least as much to the French as it does to the people here at home. The attraction to noir (they even gave it the name!) is pretty obvious: These are the stories of the American urban wasteland, born of the early- to mid-twentieth century cities, teeming with immigrants in bitter competition, ruled by corrupt political machines, manipulated by a dark underworld of gangsters. While the middle class could live in a comfortable world of increasing prosperity with the option of deluding themselves with happy, moral stories that reinforced that worldview, noir represented the popular dissent. Good doesn't always win, women aren't always virtuous, things are essentially bad and not subject to change, and heroes are frequently less than heroic.

Interior: A mysterious downtown Seattle condo known only as "Seattlest HQ."
Characters: A mysterious blond woman slightly cuter than Brigitte Bardot (to be referred to as Femme Seattlest-Hater) and a mysterious man not quite as cute as Michel Piccoli wearing nothing but a towel and black socks (to be known as Homme Seattlest-Hater). Cue that awful Contempt theme music, whatever it's called, that plays over and over again throughout the movie.