Movies – The 2017 Chicago International Film Festival – Sunday, October 22nd

The Chicago International Film Festival is back again, from Thursday, October 12^th to Thursday, October 26^th, and I’ll provide capsule reviews of as many of the films as I can manage to see. All films are shown at the AMC River East Theaters, 322 E. Illinois St. here in the great city of Chicago, Illinois.

 

Juliette Binoche in “Let The Sunshine In.” credit: criterion.com

I’ve been doing some homework on the wonderful French actress Delphine Seyrig; as her career progressed through the late sixties and early seventies, she gravitated more and more to female directors, female filmmakers (Chantal Akerman, Marguerite Duras, Ulrike Ottinger, Márta Mészáros). She found collaborating with female artists to be far more liberating – they spoke a common socio-cultural language, had far more instinctive creative affinity with each other, and the work was fostered in a far more beneficial and gratifying environment. Much of that symbiosis seems to be evident in Let The Sunshine In (Un Beau Soleil Intérieur) (France, 2017), an engaging collaboration – ostensibly a loose adaptation of Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments – between writer /director Claire Denis, novelist and playwright Christine Angot, and the actress Juliette Binoche. Binoche plays Isabelle, a successful painter who is juggling a number of intimate relationships – an alpha banker (Xavier Beauvois), an attractive but feckless actor (Nicolas Duvauchelle), her ex-husband (Laurent Grévill), a moody loner she meets in a night club (Paul Blain) and a longtime friend only now making overtures to her (Alex Descas). Intelligent and ordered, impulsive and emotional, dismissive and irresistible, Binoche’s fascinating Isabelle is superbly surveyed and expressed. The male characters are typically reductive in films like these, but Denis and Angot give their roles real import, especially when Gérard Depardieu makes a short but crucial cameo at the end. Denis approached the film as a smaller project between large ones, but this is a wonderful film, sexy, involving and graceful, but pleasingly rough around the edges.

“Let The Sunshine In” screens on Sunday, October 22nd at 5:45 pm and Monday the 23rd at 5:45 pm as well.

Movies – The 2017 Chicago International Film Festival – Sunday, October 15th Pt. 2

The Chicago International Film Festival is back again, from Thursday, October 12^th to Thursday, October 26^th, and I’ll provide capsule reviews of as many of the films as I can manage to see. All films are shown at the AMC River East Theaters, 322 E. Illinois St. here in the great city of Chicago, Illinois.

Nato Murvanidze in “Scary Mother.” credit: http://www.asiapacificscreenawards.com

A fiercely impressive debut feature film, Ana Urushadze’s Scary Mother (Sashishi Deda) (Georgia/Estonia, 2017) observes Manana (Nato Murvanidze, excellent here), a devoted, selfless wife and mother who has shown loving deference to her family for the years the kids have been growing up. But, no longer little kids, the family decides to now let Mom pursue her own real passion – writing. As the film opens, Dad and the kids have taken over the chores and upkeep of the small family apartment for quite some time now. Dad has even relinquished his place in the bedroom for her private efforts – ‘a room of one’s own’ indeed. But with the novel being completed, tonight’s the night she’ll read it out loud to those whose love and support have made it possible. And their jaws will drop, and not in a good way. Manana’s free-associative epic is her long-dormant id unleashed – all that she’s repressed or privately reconfigured comes gushing out. All of the body mileage, repetitive labor and drudgery that the average mother withstands over 15 years and 3 children is cathartically expressed in almost Lovecraftian physical and sexual metaphor. Manana has invited along her neighborhood acquaintance Nukri (Ramaz Ioseliani), who runs the local stationary shop, and he thinks it’s a worship-worthy masterpiece. But her husband Anri (Dimitri Tatishvili) is vehemently dismissive, and deeply disappointed that Manana would even indulge such thoughts. Start over, he admonishes, we’ll make all the same sacrifices for your next book. But this one will never see the light of day anywhere. (The kids just basically duck and cover – what else would Anri expect?) They even burn the manuscript the next morning, thinking it’s the only copy. But Nukri knows better.

Manana just thinks she has drawn from her own experiences and turned them into far-more-interesting fictional abstractions. She still loves her family dearly, but drifts away nonetheless in the face of their (i.e. Anri’s) non-support. She leaves the apartment and moves into a back room at Nukri’s store, and starts to prowl around the city after he’s closed up for the night. Is she indulging liberated eccentricity, or is she actually losing her grip on reality? A big clue is provided by the knowledge that her scholarly father is translating her novel into another language (presumably English) without knowing that Manana is, in fact, the author.( “I have never read such a filthy author – the text is ingenious and obscene at the same time.”)

Ana Urushadze is the daughter of Georgian/Estonian director Zaza Urushadze (Tangerines), but his fingerprints are nowhere to be found here. This is clearly Ana’s film, with her own out-of-the-park screenplay, a strong visual narrative artfully shot by Konstantin Esadze and an obviously strong rapport with her skilled actors. There are a lot of very good films here this year, but this is the first Do Not Miss item of the bunch. It’s quite wonderful.

‘Scary Mother (Sashishi Deda)’ will be shown on Sunday, October 15^th at 8:00 pm, Monday the 16^th at 5:45 pm and Friday the 20^th at 3:15 pm (an $8.00 matinee).

 

Movies – The 2017 Chicago International Film Festival – Sunday, October 15th Pt. 1

The Chicago International Film Festival is back again, from Thursday, October 12^th to Thursday, October 26^th, and I’ll provide capsule reviews of as many of the films as I can manage to see. All films are shown at the AMC River East Theaters, 322 E. Illinois St. here in the great city of Chicago, Illinois.

 

Eliane Umuhire in “Birds Are Singing In Kigali.” credit: Materiały prasowe

Birds Are Singing In Kigali (Ptaki Spiewaja W Kigali) (Poland, 2017) concerns Anna Keller (Jowita Budnik), a Polish ornithologist doing research on vultures with a close in-country colleague… in Rwanda in 1994. But rather than being another chronicle of the genocide itself, the film follows Anna’s escape from Rwanda with the daughter of her Tutsi mentor/colleague, her post-trauma settlement back into her life in Poland after three years, and the daughter’s efforts to make a life for herself there after everything else has been taken.

The daughter, Claudine Mugambira (Eliane Umuhire) insists on going to the refugee center rather than Anna’s home. Clearly derisive of charity on her behalf, we learn later of another reason for her distance. Nonetheless, Claudine eventually ends up with Anna, fending off nosy immigration agents and gamely trying her hand at a few different occupations. Anna is clearly deeply scarred – she ends her university-sponsored research and donates away years of personal research archives. Reaching a still-painful détente with each other, Anna accompanies Claudine back to now-Tutsi-controlled Kigali, where she’ll seek to find her family to bury them properly while reconnecting with a lost relative.

The film, directed by Joanna Kos-Krauze, was a co-directing project with her husband Krzysztof Krauze before his sudden death in 2014. Cinematographer Krzysztof Ptak also passed away before completion as well, so the final film is a genuine labor of love and a tribute to Kos-Krauze’s resilience. She hasn’t compromised much – we accumulate details as it cruises along, a long slow blending smear of events and feelings rather than a conventional, step-by-step episodic narrative. But the film is ultimately uplifting and hopeful, without reducing any of the horror that these two women have lived through. I recommend it.

‘Birds Are Singing In Kigali’ screens on Sunday, October 15^th at 5:30 pm and Monday the 15^th at 5:30 as well.

 

Reza Akhlaghirad in “A Man Of Integrity.” credit: http://www.gaiff.am

Mohammad Rasoulof was arrested in Iran with Jafar Panahi in 2010 for making films critical of Iranian politics and culture. While Panahi languishes in house arrest, he still manages to make underground films like This Is Not a Film (2011) and Taxi Tehran (2015), which are then smuggled out of Iran and avidly shown in the rest of the world. Rasoulof served one year of his sentenced six in prison before being granted bail. He’s since made Goodbye (2011), Manuscripts Don’t Burn (2013) and our film today, A Man Of Integrity (Lerd) (Iran, 2017), all shot under clandestine circumstances, all having been banned in Iran and smuggled out. His latest seems to have been met with the usual reaction from Iranian authorities – Rasoulof had been allowed some limited travel, but Iran seized his passport upon his return from Cannes and Telluride last month.

Most of Rasoulof’s films concern themselves with big-hearted people being brought to heel by their corrupt government, or corrupt private enterprise that government turns a blind eye to. A Man Of Integrity follows Reza (Reza Akhlaghirad), his wife Hadis (Soudabeh Beizaee) and their young son, who live on a rural northern farmhouse on a small river farming goldfish. Once a rebellious college student in Tehran, he was expelled and forced to settle north, where he presumably landed on the first practical business opportunity presented to him. But the farm, and the river, is under control of a larger land-use corporation, and Reza is at the mercy of their greedy whims. They control the banks, the police, the real estate, the insurance and the lawyers, and nothing moves forward, and no problem is solved, until all of the proper palms have been greased. Religious authorities, cracking down on miniscule domestic vices like Reza’s spiked watermelons, have no interest in messing with any of these bigger fish. His neighbor Abbas (Misagh Zare Zeinab) is one of the company’s field agents; when Abbas closes a dam up the river to spite Reza, they quarrel and fight. The honest Reza must now sit in jail for days while the quickly-freed Abbas fabricates an injury that Reza must now compensate. Mishaps accumulate – Reza pays the penalty on an overdue mortgage loan rather than bribing the banker for relief, then can’t sell the farm for its true worth. Hadis, the head teacher at the local school, tries to pressure Abbas through his young student daughter, which backfires maliciously. The goldfish, the farm itself, and even their lives are all imperiled solely because of Reza’s insistence on good-faith business, mutual respect, paying his honest debts and earning the fruits of his labors. A Man Of Integrity is notable for its resemblance to Russian and Eastern-European films of the last twenty-or-so years, or even American westerns pitting common folk against cattle or railroad tycoons. It’s only when Reza is on his last noble legs, and starts dishing out some of the same malicious medicine he’s been taking, that the powers-that-be, rather than finishing him off, start liking him and offering him a piece of what they’ve got.

The film is excellent work – the lead performances are terrific (especially the steely Beizaee), it’s admirably composed and shot by cinematographer Ashkan Ashkani, and Peyman Yazdanian’s musical score is affecting without being intrusive. My only complaint, and it’s a minor one, is the film’s length; Reza’s business struggles are fastidiously detailed from jail cell to office to warehouse to office to car interior to office, and there are only so many graying middle-aged overweight wheeler-dealers with five-o’clock shadows one can keep track of. Every inch of Rasoulof’s footage is clearly hard-won, but his film is about twenty minutes too long. Rasoulof’s film is a very good one, though, and richly deserves our support. Go.

‘A Man Of Integrity’ will be shown on Sunday, October 15^th at 8:30 pm and Wednesday the 18^th at 8:30 pm as well.

Movies – The 2017 Chicago International Film Festival – Saturday, October 14th Pt. 2

The Chicago International Film Festival is back again, from Thursday, October 12^th to Thursday, October 26^th, and I’ll provide capsule reviews of as many of the films as I can manage to see. All films are shown at the AMC River East Theaters, 322 E. Illinois St. here in the great city of Chicago, Illinois.

 

David Asavanond and Chermarn “Ploy” Boonyasak in “Samui Song.” credit: ecodelcinema.com

According to the press materials for his film, Thai director Pen-ek Ratanaruang was interested in exploring interracial marriages as status signification, mixed with his jaundiced interest in the predominance and variety of Buddhist cults in Thailand. “Basically, insecurity is a lucrative business in this country.” The resulting film, Samui Song (Thailand, 2017) is an adventurous narrative mash-up that doesn’t always work, but is smartly and darkly entertaining nonetheless. Viyada (“Vi”), a well-known daytime television actress (Chermarn “Ploy” Boonyasak, a prolific young Thai actress often billed as Laila Boonyasak) crashes her car on a rural road. Being treated at the hospital, she meets the eccentric but engaging Guy Spenser (David Asavanond) and, sharing cigarettes and lunch with him, gives him the dirt; her husband Jerome (Stéphane Sednaoui, a photographer and filmmaker worth Googling…) is an impotent, abusive, privileged, navel-gazing western white guy in the thrall of The Holy One (Vithaya “Pu” Pansringarm), a cult priest “healer” who has his way with her, his follower’s wife, as Jerome’s religious offering to him. Easily convinced, Guy offers his services to her as her husband’s assassin, since he could use the money to help care for his sick, elderly, Alzheimer’s-addled mother. So much for the Double Indemnity – Postman – Body Heat exemplars – Ratanaruang is more interested in their value as signifiers than concrete references, and slowly but persuasively pulls us into his own meta-narrative rabbit-hole. The title refers to Koh Samui, a quiet resort island where Vi finds refuge, and a new lover, to start a better life. Or does she?  I had a lot of puzzle-wrestling fun with this confident film, but the final ten minutes feature a fair amount of excessive cruelty and gore that may be a dealbreaker for some viewers. Ratanaruang’s amiably loose hand on the helm leads to some underwhelming performances and some temporal confusion, but his ideas are pretty intriguing and he’s a seasoned technical storyteller. Give this one a shot, by all means.

‘Samui Song’ will be shown on Saturday, October 14^th at 8:30 pm, Sunday the 15^th at 8:15 pm and Monday the 16^th at 2:00 pm (an $8.00 matinee).

 

 

Movies – The 2017 Chicago International Film Festival – Saturday, October 14th Pt. 1

The Chicago International Film Festival is back again, from Thursday, October 12^th to Thursday, October 26^th, and I’ll provide capsule reviews of as many of the films as I can manage to see. All films are shown at the AMC River East Theaters, 322 E. Illinois St. here in the great city of Chicago, Illinois.

 

Arnaud Valois in “BPM (Beats Per Minute).” credit: © Celine Nieszawer

David France’s excellent, affecting 2012 documentary How to Survive a Plague chronicled the rise of ACT UP in the U.S. from the late eighties into the nineties, and it’s catalytic role in spurring genuinely aggressive medical research for the treatment, and potential cure, for the HIV virus and AIDS. It remains one of the go-to film sources on the subject. Now we have another equally powerful chronicle of the era crafted by the French filmmaker Robin Campillo, who himself was a member of ACT UP Paris in the 1990s. A collaboration with fellow screenwriter and ACT UP Paris member Philippe Mangeot, BPM (Beats Per Minute) (120 Battements Par Minute) (France, 2017) is a fictionalized but still-impressive account of these same sexual, cultural and political issues in France. It’s a very thorough but passionate ensemble overview of ACT UP Paris’ membership, structure and tactics, as well as an intimate and moving portrayal of one couple’s joining together, both as fellow activists and lovers, and, regrettably, the sad and too-typical demise of one of them.

Campillo thrusts us into the action from the start – the interruption of a government presentation by the activists proceeds far more intensely than one of the activists feels they agreed to; some join her questioning of the tactical extremity and its effect on potential allies, while others defend whatever level seems to have the most actual results. One of the most vocal participants, Sean Dalmazo (the excellent Argentinian actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) is quick to start an argument, a fight or a party. A flamboyant queen and fiercely loyal friend, Sean has serious differences with the leaders of the chapter, Thibault (Antoine Reinartz) and Sophie (Adèle Haenel) ; Sean is dying, and wants results now, feeling frustration at those who don’t share his survivalist sense of urgency on behalf of thousands of others. Drawn by Sean’s fearsome resolve and love of life, Nathan (Arnaud Valois) is discreet about his HIV-negative status, but knows he’s been lucky and is resolved to help his community.

We follow the activists to a French high school, where they pass out explicit leaflets and condoms, and are met with a mix of positive and negative reaction from the faculty and administration, while another action, at a pharmaceutical corporation’s Paris headquarters, becomes a fake-blood-drenched mess of (again) dubious effectiveness. But we also have a raucously joyous parade (with cheerleaders!)  and a series of nicely stylized visual interludes in dance clubs. Interspersed within it all are Sean and Nathan and their mutual love, expressed in both intimate conversations, and impressively frank nearly-explicit sex. But no matter what else is presented to us, their relationship consequently comes to the fore, and the film’s penultimate scenes are both heartbreaking and joyful. Campillo strikes a superb tone here, graciously sympathetic without overdoing the sentiment.

The film is France’s Foreign Film submission to the 2018 Academy Awards – considering the annual field of films in France, yours had better be good. This one is quite wonderful. It’ll get a regular theatrical run from November 17^th, but these should be well-attended early screenings you’ll be glad you made time for.

‘BPM (Beats Per Minute) (120 Battements Par Minute)’ screens on Saturday, October 14^th at 8:45 pm and Sunday the 15^th at 11:30 am.

 

Tomáš Maštalír in “The Line (Čiara).” credit: Wandal Production

 Peter Bebjak is a very good Slovakian director whose prolific TV work seems to allow him his more adventurous feature film work. His newest film, The Line (Čiara) (Slovakia, 2017) is an urgent, smoldering crime drama about inter-generational smuggling syndicates along the Slovakia – Ukraine border in 2007. That’s the year the EU established the Schengen Area – 26 European states that did away with passports and border control to allow unrestricted travel between them. In Slovakia’s case, it opened their shared north, west and south borders in Europe, but reinforced the border at Ukraine, making the already tight smuggling routes practically impassable. Cigarettes and refugees have been the normal contraband that Adam Krajnak (a very good Tomáš Maštalír) transports for the sordid but successful Krull (Stanislav Boklan), but when Krull starts slipping narcotics shipments in without Adam’s knowledge, then business-as-usual starts to deteriorate. With the border tightening, Krull needs to pump up his margins, but Adam wants to stick to the old-school program he’s used to living with – he has a family, after all. Adam trusts his friend Jona (Eugen Libezňuk) to handle the Ukrainian side of things [with Slovak border police captain Peter Bernard (Andrej Kryc) on his side of the checkpoint], but, with Jona’s son in a Ukrainian jail, he’s mightily tempted to let Krull help him out for a price.

It’s easier to make delineations if you’re aware of the language shifts from Ukrainian to Slovak – we Americans are at a disadvantage there, unfortunately – but, still, with the subtitles it’s not a tough story to follow. The efficient management of a longtime criminal enterprise, and where that intersects with profoundly deep familial concerns, is Godfather territory, but Bebjak works both aspects admirably – some of Adam’s family turmoil is indeed genuinely heartbreaking. Peter Balko’s script sets a well-structured course, but leaves plenty of room for the actors to show and not tell. Many of cinematographer Martin Ziaran’s visual strategies mimic surveillance – things seen from two views simultaneously, through windows, over other people’s shoulders, or things we probably shouldn’t see at all from skewed, intrusive angles. But he’s not afraid of settling in to harder geometric, Gordon Willis-like chiaroscuro compositions either.

I liked this film a lot. It’s technically excellent, visually vibrant to watch and follow, and well-told as a complex but compelling story. It’s Slovakia’s Foreign Film submission to the 2018 Academy Awards, and well worth seeing.

‘The Line (Čiara)’ will be shown on Saturday, October 14^th at 8:30 pm, Sunday the 15^th at 2:30 pm, and Tuesday the 17^th at 3:15 pm (an $8.00 matinee).

 

 

 

Movies – The 2017 Chicago International Film Festival – Friday, October 13th

The Chicago International Film Festival is back again, from Thursday, October 12^th to Thursday, October 26^th, and I’ll provide capsule reviews of as many of the films as I can manage to see. All films are shown at the AMC River East Theaters, 322 E. Illinois St. here in the great city of Chicago, Illinois.

Ardalan Esmaili in “The Charmer.” credit: Jason Alami

Milad Alami’s The Charmer (Charmøren) (Denmark, 2017) is not only a sometimes amusing, sometimes nerve-wracking examination of the trials and tribulations of a male immigrant working Europe for matrimonial prospects, but it’s also a darkly incisive examination of the middle-Eastern male psyche.

We don’t meet the, indeed, charming Esmail (Ardalan Esmaili) at the film’s outset – we see an unsettling out-of-context domestic tragedy instead, and its effect can’t help but color what comes after for us. Esmail finds himself at a disadvantage as well – he’s clearly on the last nerve of his current romantic partner, and she ends the relationship intimately but unmistakably. Esmail, an Iranian citizen with an expiring migrant visa, then anxiously resumes what seems to be his regular routine, frequenting the same upscale Copenhagen brass-and-fern bar to seek yet another candidate for romantic partnership and state-licensed marital bliss. One particular night he meets two lovely young Danish ladies, but one of them, Sarah (Danish pop singer Soho Rezanejad, very good here) is of Iranian heritage and cannily calls out Esmail’s marry-me opportunism. Oddly, it’s this relationship that turns surprisingly ‘real,’ since any participation in that arrangement has been pre-empted. Now they can just befriend each other, surprise each other, and socialize with each other; he meets her mother, a famous singer, and, despite his cautiousness, starts to ingratiate himself into Copenhagen’s Persian community. But, inevitably, some other incidental loose ends and unintended consequences slowly start to surface (again) that cast a darker personal urgency to his present situation.

Alami (with co-screenwriter Ingeborg Topsøe) builds a compellingly escalating narrative structure around Esmail’s practical / amorous pursuits. But there are darker reasons why his potential scores develop into washouts – Denmark seems to be full of smart and self-capable women who spot the sweaty desperation underlying Esmail’s seemingly earnest striving towards his expat aspirations. I don’t want to create spoilers, but let’s just say that Esmail carries a variety of assumptions about the uses to which the women in his life can be put in the pursuit of his own happiness, which then lead to a fitting-but-still-open conclusion. The filmmakers are assisted admirably by Sophia Olsson’s superb cinematography and Martin Dirkov’s rich and edgy musical soundtrack. It’s a great character study, a smart examination of complex cultural  delineations, a brooding psychodrama, and utterly fascinating throughout. This is a terrific film.

‘The Charmer (Charmøren)’ will be shown on Friday, October 13^th at 6:30 pm, Saturday the 14^th at 3:00 pm and Monday the 16^th at Noon (an $8.00 matinee).

 

Claes Bang in “The Square.” credit: Magnolia Pictures

Ruben Östlund’s The Square (Sweden, 2017) was this year’s Cannes Palme D’Or winner, and is Sweden’s Foreign Film submission to the 2018 Oscars. It’s pretty smart, pretty funny and pretty entertaining, but has enough ironic and/or disturbing moments to keep you from taking it too lightly. I liked this film much more than his previous family comedy Force Majeure (2014), which I found a little mean-spirited. He’s more charitable here, working a wider dynamic, following a museum curator, Christian (the measured, superb Claes Bang), and his efforts to promote the museum’s newest installation – The Square, a 6-meter-square square, illuminated, set into the museum’s outer entrance plaza, which represents A Safe Space and the assumed high humanist ideals and aspirations of those who chose to stand In It.

Östlund’s satirical critiques of Modern Art, and the earnest white snobs who market it, are well-executed, and clever at the time, but after-film scrutiny doesn’t raise them much above My-Kid-Could-Do-That territory, even considering the uncomfortably violent lengths to which he takes one particular performance piece in the film. He’s far more successful with the smaller strokes of just following Christian and his own trials and tribulations; his quest for retribution towards a perpetrated criminal act against him, his can’t-be-bothered blundering of the video promotion of The Square, his awkward seduction of an American art critic (the excellent Elizabeth Moss, bringing her own dark and sparkling humor to the role), and his distressingly nonchalant attitudes towards his young daughters by his recently estranged wife (whom we tellingly never encounter). Bang is a superb straight-man, grounding the chaos constantly surrounding Christian – we tend to always give him the benefit of the doubt, even when someone else’s cries for help echo weakly in the background. I still think Östlund’s pretty mean-spirited overall, but it’s tempered here – he’s aspiring to a lot more in both ideas and scale, and I don’t begrudge him that. Many people will enjoy this film more than I did, but this time I won’t blame them.

‘The Square’ will be shown on Friday, October 13^th at 8:15 pm and Saturday the 14^th at 5:15 pm.

Lautaro Bettoni and Germán Palacios in “Hunting Season (Temporada De Caza).” credit: cinergiaonline.com

Hunting Season (Temporada De Caza) (Argentina, 2017), on the surface, seems to read as one of those tedious male-rites-of-passage slogs that we’ve seen countless times. A high-schooler, Nahuel (Lautaro Bettoni) has been living in Buenos Aires with his mother and stepfather. But, upon her passing unexpectedly, Nahuel has become surly and withdrawn, losing interest in his studies, snubbing his stepfather and starting fights. After his expulsion from school, the decision is made for Nahuel to live south, in deep rural Patagonia, with his natural father. He, Ernesto (veteran Germán Palacios), lives essentially off-the-grid with his wife and four young daughters, as a hunter and hunting guide for others. Nahuel is his usual acting-out self for a bit, but Ernesto refuses to take the bait. He, instead, starts to give Nahuel chores, and brings him along on hunts, letting Nahuel make his own mistakes but emphasizing a sense of shared responsibility rather than enforcing his own paternal authority.

I must say it’s an intriguing first-feature material choice for writer / director Natalia Garagiola – this is pretty thick testosterone territory, and yet Garagiola’s quiet, deliberate, one-thing-at-a-time approach works. She takes their communication shortfalls as a given, and constructs her scenarios around that. No hugs, no valuable lessons, just men finding their way through to the next thing. Cinematographer Fernando Lockett’s work goes a long way in supporting Garagiola’s efforts (he was one of the two DPs to shoot last year’s Kékszakállú); interior and exterior, social and solitude, urban and pastoral – Lockett makes clear visual distinctions that help to define the characters’ own stages in the ongoing narrative. Garagiola’s done well with short films over 4 or 5 years – her first feature is good, not great, but she’s a good writer and technically proficient director who clearly works well with her actors. This is nice work that I recommend.

‘Hunting Season (Temporada De Caza)’ will be shown on Friday, October 13^th at 8:30 pm, Saturday the 14^th at 1:30 pm and Tuesday the 17^th at 1:00 pm (an $8.00 matinee).