Jill's Film Festival Diary for Tuesday, April 4th and Wednesday, April 5th

Fuck
I will admit that, sometimes, I have the same reactions to dirty words as your average twelve-year-old boy. So when I realized that I might have time to catch a Festival Film after my press screening of Take the Lead (more on that tomorrow, I promise), opened up the Festival website on my computer at work, and scrolled down to the 9:30 and 9:45 movies, I would be a liar if I told you I did anything but shout out: "There's a movie called FUCK?!" and burst into laughter. Judging from the composition of the audience last night, I wasn't alone.

I've got to admit, I totally enjoyed Fuck. The film features interviews with folks as diverse as Alan Keyes and Hunter S. Thompson (interviewed shortly before his death), Pat Boone and Janine Garofolo, Miss Manners and Kevin Smith. The editing is clever, the research is impressive, and the content is delightfully crass. That being said, I think my friend Adam put it best, when he said to me: "That was a lot less like a documentary and a lot more like an episode of VH1's I Love the 'Fuck Word'." The film lacked a central message and often got a little lost in itself, such as when it spent fifteen minutes talking about Lenny Bruce.

Director Steve Anderson was present at the screening and led a quick Q&A after. The man who's been living and breathing "fuck" for a couple of years now confessed that he felt that television and radio should be kept "fuck"-free, and told audiences that, when his five-year-old nephew asked him exactly which bad word his new movie was about, he responded "fart." (This, after Kevin Smith adamantly opposed self-censoring in front of children.) Over the course of the Q&A, it became obvious that Anderson felt his film had a point, but he didn't tell us what it was, and my companions and I didn't take it away from the film. I'd watch it again, and probably will (it's going to be released around the country this fall), but it wasn't as much of, if you will, a mind-fuck, as I'd hoped.
Festival rating: Very Good

Time Off
I've spoken Spanish my whole life, so it's hard for me not to watch a movie and find fault with the way some things get translated, or the fact that they're not necessarily translated consistently. Although Chilean Spanish is quite different from the Mexican Spanish I learned growing up, I was still able to pick up on odd translations. Namely, the one in the title. When the film's title card is displayed, the audience is treated to a textbook definition of what a "parenthesis" is. Only problem: the subtitles translate "parenthesis" as "time off," made even stranger by the fact that the movie's Spanish title is displayed above the captions, bracketed by said punctuation marks: (Paréntesis). And, halfway through the movie, the characters stop talking about "time off" and start talking about taking a "parenthesis." My two foreign film pet peeves!

Once I got a better handle on the Chilean Spanish and could stop reading the subtitles, I was able to enjoy the film a lot more. It tells the story of a twenty-something in a dead-end job whose girlfriend wants to take "a parenthesis," just for a week, and what happens over the next seven days. It was kind of like High Fidelity with Kevin Smith as Silent Bob rather than Jack Black playing the best friend (oddly enough, the best friend handed Pola, our hero's girlfriend, a copy of the Hornsby novel when she said she just wanted to understand how he felt about her), and cinematography by those kids from The Blair Witch Project. The film is proof of what you can do with a DV camcorder and a handful of talented performers, and even though it lagged at some times and completely baffled at others (an English-language music video in black-and-white, as performed by the film's cast), it certainly kept the audience entertained. I'll admit that I was hoping for more, but I wasn't let down by what I got.

And, on a completely different note: who knew that Chileans watched so many American movies and listened to so much American music?
Festival Rating: Very Good

Next Door
Jesus. I got out of the movie about an hour and a half before writing this, and I still can't get the final shot out of my head. I can't say any more than that without a spoiler, but just consider yourselves warned.

I chose to watch Next Door because it was playing in U. City, and I was in U. City, and it sounded more interesting to me than the films at the other two U. City locations. (I'm a big Hitchcock fan, so the idea of catching a "psychological thriller" was all it really took. Of course, to me, "psychological thriller" means significantly less blood than this film ended up containing.) It would be hard to summarize the plot of Next Door without giving away most of it, so I won't try. Just know that people in Norway live in huge apartments, that it's entirely possible to call up the Norwegian telephone company and ask them for the phone number of any address, even if it's unlisted, and that if your coworker shows up at the office with bruises all over his face, he's not telling you the whole truth if he says he got them while moving a cabinet.

At a mere seventy-eight minutes long, Next Door still could have been significantly shorter. But the movie is tense, aided by appropriate bass notes, thumps, and Norwegian heavy metal. Nothing jumps out from around a corner or chases anyone down a hall. The suspense builds because of the (sometimes infuriating) slowness. But a minute less here and a minute less there still might have been appreciated. Or maybe my reaction is exactly what the filmmakers were going for: extreme discomfort, almost from the start.
Festival Rating: Very Good to Excellent

Image via the DIY Walk of Fame at Boutell.com