TC Film Festival: Six Films in Four Days

My wife, Liz, and I ended up seeing six films during the TC Film Festival. Perhaps the hardest part in attending the film festival is realizing there are probably over 20 really excellent films showing and only five days to see them all. If you're like me and your head begins to spin if you watch more than two movies a day, my recommendation is to keep the viewing at around six or seven total films. See one on Wednesday, two on Thursday, one on Friday and Saturday, and conclude with two on Sunday. That's more or less what Liz and I did, and it was just about right.

Below are reviews for the six films we ended up watching. Liz loves the french language, so we ended up seeing three french movies. My recommendation for someone new to the festival would be to see two foreign films, two American independent films, two documentaries, and one of the evening showings of a classic at the Open Space. That's what I'll do my best to do next year.

On to the reviews...

"The Valet" (PG-13)

"The Valet" is a light-hearted french comedy, effectively directed by Francis Veber, about a Paris valet, François (Gad Elmaleh) who is innocently caught in a paparazzi photo of billionaire Pierre (the famous french actor Daniel Auteuil) and his supermodel mistress, Elena (Alice Taglioni). To avoid a messy, and expensive, divorce, Pierre convinces his wife, Christine (a devious Kristin Scott Thomas) that François, not he, is dating the supermodel. The movie then presses forward as a screwball romantic comedy, with Pierre paying both the supermodel and François to live together in the hopees of convincing his wife they are a real couple. The film does a nice job of keeping the impact of François' friends finding out he is "dating" a supermodel from falling into cliche, and his preoccupation with his own love interest, Elena (Virginie Ledoyen), has some touching moments. Still, while the film is plenty entertaining, it spends too much time building cheap laughs to fully develop any of the characters. The comedic performances (other than the cheeky Dany Boon as Richard) are overacted and slap-stick, and the movie never completely sheds it's "sit-com" pilot feel. Enjoyable, but certainly not memorable.

"The Lives of Others" (R)

An Oscar winner last year for Best Foreign Language film, this movie is nothing if not memorable. A historical film about the spying on playwrite Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) by the Secret Police (Stasi) of East Germany during the waning days of communism, the film charts the impact serveilance has on a society. Although slow to get off the ground, the film truly takes off in its final reel, paving the way for one of the most heartbreaking moments of cinema in the last year and puncuated by the most sincere and emotional conclusions movies have to offer. Ulrich Mühe gives one of the best performances of the year as Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler, the idealistic and by-the-books Stasi officer whose sympathy for the subject of his spying leads him to risk his career to protect people he's never met. Both a scary reminder of a not-so-distant period of history and a commentary on today's post-9/11 world, "The Lives of Others," is a powerful look at the actions of kind men in the face of overwhelming, instittutional oppression. A much watch.

"Fireworks Wednesday" (similar to PG-13; officially NR)

"Fireworks Wednesday" is a snapshot of a day around a housing complex in Iran on the eve of the Persian New Year. The constant sound of firecrackers going off in the background give the film a discerniting feeling as the film-makers attempt to weave a story of several relationships in various states of evolution and devolution. I've forgotten most of the characters' names, but the movie contains a soon-to-be-married young cleaning woman sent to a high-rise apartment, where she witnesses a couple preparing for a holiday even as their marriage falls apart. The film does a nice job dealing with the subtilities of domestic challenges in an Iran few Americans even know exists, but it can help the fact that the film's pacing is flat and its many characters are hard to follow or care about. The script, by Asghar Farhadi and Mani Haghighi, highlights this film; the rest falls flat.

"My Best Friend" (PG-13)

Another french comedy starring Daniel Auteuil, this time as François Coste, a Paris art dealer with no friends. On a bet with his assistant, Catherine (the lovely Julie Gayet), he has 10 days to produce a best friend or he'll have to give her a Greek vase he purchased for over $200,000. François eventually enlists the help of his taxi driver, Bruno (Dany Boon, also in "The Valet") to help him make friends. The fact that they become "best friends" as the movie progresses is obvious, the twists the movie comes up with in getting there are not. Unfortunately, those twists break the first rule in comedy; it's okay for your main characters to be unrealistic, but the world they inhabit should be grounded in reality. "My Best Friend" loses that grounding in its final reel, but it doesn't stop it from being a heartfelt look at loneliness and friendship. There's a great movie hidden in this storyline; "My Best Friend" only takes us halfway there.

"Paris, Je T'Aime" (R)

I'm usually not a big fan of vignette-based movies, and "Paris, Je T'Aime" is no different, even though I thoroughly enjoyed most, if not all, the vignettes. Especially memorable were the shorts about a dying woman and her husband, the lonely tourist (her French is horrific; her plight melancholic and memorable), and a story of a young man and his Muslim immigrant crush. The movie was directed by 18 of the most celebrated directors in the world (check out the official site for everyone's name; it's too long to mention here). Each short works in its own way, but like most collective movies, the individual parts are worth more than their sum. Some very moving moments, but the attempt at a collective, universal moment at the end of the film falls flat (it's too short and contains no real narrative strain). Worth watching, but nothing Oscar worthy.

"In the Shadow of the Moon" (documentary: NR)

"In the Shadow of the Moon" tells the story of the Apollo flight missings from 1969-1972; the story of man's trips to the moon, and, perhaps even more extraordinary, their returns. It can be easy in our world to overlook the fact that 9 brave and brilliant (white) men once walked on the moon(!), and this movie does an outstanding job of bringing that amazing fact back to the forefront of our thoughts. While the file footage and interview-led narrative with the original astronauts is impressive, I was most moved by the thought that once upon a time, the United States completed a political and cultural goal that inspired the entire world (instead of tearing it apart). Footage of a french woman in 1969 saying (I'm paraprhasing), "I always knew the Americans would do it; their such a wonderful people," will be enough to make even the hardest neo-conservative question what we've been doing internationally during the 21st-century.

Overall, I enjoyed the experience of all six films we watched. As I mentioned in the previous blog, the film festival is about more than "Just Great Films," although, more often than not, it has those, too, in spades.

In Praise of the Traverse City Film Festival

A few weeks before it began, my buddy Zac and I were talking about the Traverse City Film Festival. As a person who attended at least three screenings over the past three years, I was trying to articulate to Zac the"coolness" of the whole thing. As I was attempting to do so, Zac scrolled between Netflix and the film festival's website, saying "I usually check to see what movies are playing, then end up renting them," as if seeing great films was what the film festival is all about (to be fair, the festival's motto is "Just Great Films"). Well, seeing the movies doesn't even begin to explain the festival's appeal.

Yes, the Traverse City Film Festival shows good movies (and also some bad ones), but its appeal is much broader. Perhaps the only way I can explain its appeal to Zac without having him experience it for himself is by saying this: "The Traverse City Film Festival is the National Cherry Festival for Traverse City residents."

Anyone from Traverse City reading that statement knows the power of the sentiment.

Some background: The Traverse City Film Festival was founded in 2005 by filmmaker Michael Moore and co-founded by photographer John Robert Williams and writer Doug Stanton. Each year, the festival shows between 30-50 films at five downtown Traverse City locations: Lars Hockstead Auditorium, the Old Town Playhouse, the State Theatre, the Traverse City Opera House, and free evening outdoor screenings at the Open Space. The films range from classics (usually at the Open Space) to American independent films, documentaries, foreign films, and overlooked "classics" (can an old film that "bombed" be a "classic?"). Films show at 1, 4, 7, and 10 pm at all four indoor venues Wednesday through Sunday, with panel discussions, opening and closing night shows (this year was "Once" and "Moliere," respectively), and other special events scattered throughout the first week in August (this year, July 31-August 5). As far as the quality of films, that can obviously vary, but as a showing of the festival's previous success in picking winners, last year if a person in the Midwest wanted to see either "Little Miss Sunshine" or "Borat" months(!) before they broke nationally, the Traverse City Film Festival was the place to go.

(Ben's Note: Tomorrow's blog will feature short reviews of the six films my wife and I watched at the 2007 festival.)

But concentrating on the films would merely concede Zac's Netflix argument, which completely misses the point of the film festival. The simple fact is that Zac (and all my other friends from Traverse City who have since moved away) need to come see the film festival AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, because it is everything they would like to see from Traverse City in the summer without the crappiness that has become the Cherry Festival.

What do I mean by that? Well, if you have to stand in line for something during the Cherry Festival, you have to listen to some idiot talk about how awesome his "TC cherries" (they're actually probably from Washington state) are. If you have to stand in line for something during the Film Festival, chances are you're standing next to someone you know and haven't seen in years. You'll end up talking about what their kids are doing, and the new pizza place (Pangea's; it's very good). During the Cherry Festival, a person will have to wait two hours for a table at North Peak; during the Film Festival, five minutes. The point is that while Traverse City is way too busy, and full of "fudgies," during the Cherry Festival, it is only moderately busy, and full of locals, during the Film Festival. As Frank Costanza would have said in 1995, "It's a festivus for the rest of us!"

What makes the local flavor of the film festival so great is that the festival itself is so well put together, and, well, (to us the words of the previously mocked "fudgy") awesome. From the local bands playing before the showings, to the funny public service announcements that are filmed right in good 'ole TC, the MC's revving up the crowd, the programs, the sectioned-off seating for the jury, the recognition the local sponsors get from the audience, and the panel discussions with Hollywood big-wigs (and how those big-wigs then show little patience with our local, idiot reporters). Going to even one showing of the Traverse City Film Festival is making the realization that: wow, this is a BIG deal, and it's really cool.

Side Story: Not everyone realized how big this was going to be when it first opened in 2005. In protest of the inaugural film festival, a few local conservatives tried to produce a competing festival during the same week (the idea that the TC film festival might be liberal propaganda is so ridiculous it's not worth mentioning). They showed some "alternative" documentaries at different locations, culminating in a showing of "Michael Moore Hates America" that was so poorly planned the "children friendly" festival got an un-edited cut of the film that included graphic language, an oversight that begs for so many jokes I'm just going to leave it alone. What the protesters didn't realize with their "film festival" in 2005 is that they were competing against the "Real Deal," and there is no way to compete against that. My analogy at the time was it was like a person who hated Starbucks getting back at the mega-corporation by selling "real" coffee from a stand in their front yard. It's not really a protest, just pathetic.

And, of course, this gets us to the urgency for my friends to visit the Traverse City Film Festival now. Because, like the Cherry Festival used to be, all good ideas eventually become too big and too good to be left alone to their local populations. The Traverse City Film Festival can really only go in two directions: it can get really huge (like Sundance) and lose all its local charm (although it would be cool to see our local paper try to interview George Clooney and Steven Spielberg), or it can slowly die. It's a dilemma as old as time, and one that the Cherry Festival fought for a long time before finally becoming the behemoth it is today.

So, Zac, come see the Traverse City Film Festival before it gets too big. It's the local event you've been waiting for since carnival rides started making you sick.