Founders of the Tribeca Film Festival Jane Rosenthal and Robert de Niro
One hears (and has heard) many things about the Tribeca Film Festival over the years. That it is too 'money orientated', that it really doesn't get the most interesting films and tries far too hard to be inclusive. None of which, I hasten to add, is very close to a truth. Though, truth and reality are of course very different fish. And a festival such as Tribeca does beg many questions. Who is the Festival really for when there are so so many mini-festivals - the Society of Lincoln Center being the most obvious example -all year round in New York City. And it's easy enough to be cynical about such things especially in the 'mother..' of them all NYC. But the proof is in Tribeca's cinematic cuisine. Some years Studio or mini-majors fare better with their product at this fest than in other times. And MoMA's New Directors New Films every March will always outdo Tribeca in shear quality of new talent. Indeed the former fest's poster this year boasted that it would be the place to discover the newest emerging Steven Soderbergh et al.
What Tribeca does do probably better than anyone else is give creative film talent a chance. In the same vein that the festival began in re-building confidence in the downtown area after the 9/11 attacks. The film on view may not prove to be the filmmaker's greatest effort in retrospect. But there is rarely (if ever) a film screened at the Fest that you don't think, "I know why the programmers chose that". In fact at yesterday's press conference one of the team answered a question about Tribeca not being an 'A-list' festival like Toronto/Cannes/Karlovy Vary/London and cited a film such as The Flat that mightn't have screened elsewhere and the relief that the Tribeca Fest didn't feel the pressure to a greatest world hits of the year dance routine (my words but their thoughts;)
Just as with the London Film Festival many distributors try to use Tribeca as a pre PR showcase for their film but to the festival's credit they are very few in number (only a dozen odd out of 106 feature narratives and documentaries) compared to those on show without a future ahead of them. One of the most anticipated, Lynn Shelton's (Humpback) Your Sister's Sister (IFC opening NYC in June, London June 29) is a kinda textbook (if there could be such a thing) in quirky, heartfelt, indie film. You watch and try to work out why this engages you more than other indie narratives on offer. Is it strength of casting, directing, script...and it ain't easy to come up with an answer except, it just works. The only thing one could say is that it doesn't try so hard to be a quirky, relationship film as some others on offer. And yet on paper it would seem to defy that accolade.
A Cannes Fest winner this year Polisse (May 18 NYC, opening June 15, London) offers another dialectic into why make dramatic fictionalised narratives out of documentary- in this case a French police Child Protection Unit. The press notes glow with a quote from the Boston Globe that proves my point: "A thrilling kitchen-sink crime drama. I wanted to go wherever Maiwenn [the director] wanted to take me. Her filmmaking paces and perceives the way [esteemed doc filmmaker] Frederick Wiseman does. It's as if she's taken one of his documentaries about systems and their discontents and added Sidney Lumet's grit, naturalism, and fireworks." My question is do we want to mix our Lumet and Wiseman in one film when they are polar opposites of filmmaking. Wiseman defies the standard doc length and makes you jog with him until you pass that point of seeming exhaustion breathing more deeply into the subject in hand. Lumet, on the other, finely crafts a thriller that gets under your skin very quickly indeed so the matter at hand couldn't possibly let you go. A PR asked my opinion of Maïwenn's film (she is an actress/director and appears in Polisse) after the screening and I thought of Brit filmmaker Molly Dineen and the way she admits to what amounts to 'casting' her lead doc subject so as to hold an audience's attention as well as to bringing more into focus the doc's other characters.
Polisse makes you think of the Dardennes' films and their 'heightened' realism. When the truth is stranger than the fiction what does one do? Harmony Korine asks this in his latest collaboration The Fourth Dimension. Korine writes/directs the first of three segments using Val Kilmer as an evangelistic 'self-helper' motivating the unemployed and unempowered Lotus Community Workshop. The triptych drifts theron until finally we're in a tiny Polish town with youths wandering the deserted streets before a flood overtakes all. One could say that it's uneven but on the other hand that unevenness is probably far truer to life than a slicker effort. Brave, fine doc directing from Canadian Nisha Pahuja in The World Before Her that paralells the two lives of local township girls becoming Miss India and those in a Hindu fundamentalist movement, Durga Vahini. This is Tribeca at its best: very disturbing, provocative viewing.
As Luck Would Have It is slick but very true to life. Spanish director Alex de la Iglesia shows a man who down upon his luck as an ex-ad exec is up upon it as he falls down from a crane and onto an archaeological excavation just as the press conference is underway. He becomes a TV celeb complete with product branding potential as they try to remove an iron rod lodged in his head. He finally says what we all really want to say...yet totally empowered by market forces. Let's hope that I don't suffer celluloid exhaustion in front of the dazzling latest Cadillac - on show at Tribeca's press centre and sponsors of the coffee, alongside loads of Magnum ice-cream and healthy vitamin waters. Iglesia's film reminds one a bit of Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond and his near fatal accident. He became more famous (and richer?) after surviving the event than from being on the BBC. No reflection on the virtues of the latest Cadillac we hasten to add;)
Some vid here and of the opening press conference.
Iranian born Japanese director Amir Naderi in Cut gives us an obsessive cineaste who, to pay and his debts and keep his rooftop art house screenings alive, offers his body for punching for a price. It maybe a one statement film but that final thumping - each blow a classic 100 film countdown of world cinema - couldn't be a better metaphor for the struggle for anyone in the creative arts. Existential gangster pic Headshot - another from Thai director Pen-ek Ratanaruang (remember Ploy?) - isn't a patch on Cut's singular cri de coeur for cinema but it looks fantastic and is a blessed relief from other arty shoot em ups - Indonesian The Raid was a New Directors New Films choice, and there are a couple more of the genre (extremely well executed) in the Tribeca Fest. But almost all releases are embargoed until the time of this posting. A couple more that can be mentioned is the very funny, astute Canadian Zombie pic Eddie- The Sleep Walking Cannibal, another pic about how far should we go in obsessing about our creativity. Talents well-worth keeping tabs on the strength Una Noche and Babygirl. And hopefully a UK company such as Peccadillo (is there any other?;) may release Yossi, a gay Israeli 'dromedy' whose heart is far more than just a cheeky grinning sleeve note. Elles (opening in London later this month) is rather a disappointment in engendering any interesting debate on Parisian student prostitution. Catherine Briellat this just aint. Still, one actress has the great distinction of being probably alone in cinema history of having pasta spattered upon her by Juliette Binoche.
Tomorrow (Friday) look out for festival premieres:
Sexy Baby
Downeast
The Revisionaries (who needs a horror movie when we have the Texas State Board of Education?)
Jack and Diane
Unit 7
Graceland
All In
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