IT'S A TOUGH JOB, BUT SOMEBODY'S GOT TO DO IT
It's grand to have a job that pays me to see movies and go
to film festivals, grander still when one of those festivals takes place on a
cruise in the Caribbean. Organized every other year by Dusty Cohl, the founder
of the Toronto Film Festival, the Floating Film Festival this time brought
together 150 movie buffs, critics, and programmers aboard the fancy MS
Ryndam for a series of mostly independent films interspersed with
island-hopping excursions. The festival had its share of
crowd-pleasers--Marleen Gorris's Antonia's Line won the audience award,
with Jon Blair's fine documentary
Anne Frank Remembered and Tim Reid's
worthy but conventional Once Upon a Time. . . When We Were Coloured
running close behind. Time magazine critic Richard Corliss presented the
delightfully sophomoric Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie (opening
in late April), about a man and two robots marooned in space who are forced by
a mad scientist to watch old B-movies--in this case the hilariously awful
1955 sci-fi classic This Island Earth.
Corliss, an Asian-film specialist, presented two Hong Kong films already in
commercial release--Wong Kar-Wai's superlative romantic comedy Chungking
Express, and Rumble in the Bronx, a delirious action vehicle
for Jackie Chan, directed by Stanley Tong--along with Chinese director Jiang
Wen's ("as in John Wayne") enthralling In the Heat of the Sun, about
teenagers cruising Beijing during the Cultural Revolution. Similar in theme,
though less impressive conceptually, was the beautifully shot but assaulting
Cyclo (coming this August), by the Vietnamese director Tranh Anh Hung
(The Scent of Green Papaya), about rickshaw bicyclists on the violent
streets of Ho Chi Minh City.
Aside from a karaoke evening (no, I didn't) and a Robbie Burns Night, in which
otherwise sane men showed up for dinner in skirts, one of the most enjoyable
events was a chat between critic Roger Ebert and writer Donald E. Westlake.
Westlake discoursed with charm and wry wit about his work and about the making
of The Grifters, for which he wrote the screenplay--and made my day by
describing the movie Seven as "loathsome."
For me the highlight of the festival was a modest first feature with (as yet)
no distributor. Written and directed with astonishing assurance by Michael
Shoob, and presented by former New York Daily News critic Kathleen
Carroll, Driven tells the stories of three Los Angeles cabbies who work
for a two-bit taxi company. The film is a small miracle of good writing coupled
with superlative ensemble performances from Tony Todd, Daniel Roebuck, Whip
Hubley, and Chad Lowe. Distributors, step right up.
Cabbies from Driven
Photo: Shelby Wood
A SURVIVOR'S STORY
During and after the Second World War thousands of mostly orphaned Jewish
teenagers were brought from Nazi-occupied countries to Israel to live in youth
villages--many run by kibbutzim--alongside troubled Israeli youths. Eli Cohen's
Under the Domim Tree is a tribute to the operation, known as Youth
Aliyah. Adapted from an autobiographical book by one of Israel's finest
actresses, Gila Almagor, the film is a sequel to her well-received 1988
collaboration with Cohen, The Summer of Aviya. Directed with tact and
sensitivity, Under the Domim Tree explores the terrors and triumphs of a
group of Polish-Jewish teenagers as they struggle with their memories, their
night sweats, and their longing for families that in all too many cases have
disappeared without a trace. What the movie lacks in sophistication is more
than made up for by greathearted sympathy and an imaginative flair for
dramatizing inner turmoil.
The children of Youth Aliyah
Photo: courtesy of Strand Releasing
OF FLAPPERS AND FARM HANDS
Director John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy) has mobilized the wicked pen
of British novelist Malcolm Bradbury (The History Man) to adapt Cold
Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons's darkly funny 1932 novel of English village
life. No rural nostalgia here. Kate Beckinsale stars as Flora Poste, a pert,
compulsively tidy London flapper who, after being orphaned, descends on a pack
of glum country relatives intending to write a novel, and ends by shaking up
everyone's life, including her own. Shrewdly observed, with Schlesinger's
sardonic flair and an edge of broad comedy, the movie boasts a stellar cast,
featuring Joanna (Abfab) Lumley as Flora's bra-collecting friend, Ian
McKellen as her fire-and-brimstone preacher cousin, Eileen Atkins as his
sad-sack wife, and Rufus Sewell (Carrington) as their hunky son. There's
an improbably happy but oddly satisfying ending.
A city girl takes on the country
Photo: Chris Capstick
Ella Taylor is a film critic for LA Weekly.
