Sundance '09: Dispatch Two

By Sarah Sluis

Reporting from Park City, Utah, FJI contributor Daniel Steinhart lets us in on the films and acquistions of the Sundance Film Festival.

Even though attendance seems down his year, the Sundance Festival was in full swing Saturday night and all day Sunday. Shuttle buses were packed and Main Street in Park City was teeming with locals, tourists, cineastes and the odd celebrity.

At the festival's midpoint, favorites have emerged with rumors of buyers circling a half dozen films. Since the last update, Sony picked up the Blaxploitation homage Black Dynamite, Fox Searchlight signed a deal for the romantic drama Adam, and Magnolia Pictures nabbed Humpday (see previous post for my review of that film.)

In the Dramatic Competition, this viewer has yet to find anything on par with last year's impressive award-winner Ballast, which injected new life into American independent cinema. This year, Cherien Dabis' Amreeka looked to stand out from the crop of American indies. The film, actually a U.S.-Canadian-Kuwaiti co-production, follows a Palestinian divorce and her teenage son who emigrate to Illinois to live with relatives. They have high hopes for a new life of opportunity but arrive just as the U.S. invades Iraq, encountering prejudice and bad luck in their new home. Aiming to shed light on the effects of American aggression on the Arab diaspora in the U.S., the film doesn't offer much penetrating insight. Ultimately, the depiction of cultural differences and ignorance seems more in the service of melodramatic effects.

A different kind of cross-cultural story is offered up in Sophie Barthes' Cold Souls. Paul Giamatti plays a version of himself, an actor who finds it increasingly difficult to separate himself from his lead role in the Chekhov play Uncle Vanya. His solution is to have his soul extracted by a soul storage company. When his new soulless self produces only bad acting, he rents the soul of a depressed Russian poet, which seems to deliver the goods. In the meantime, his original soul is stolen away to Russia, where Giamatti must track it down. All of this should be original material, but the questioning of identity, the self-reflexive performance, and the mix of fantasy and comedy recall Being John Malkovich.

In the Documentary Competition, Jeff Stilson's Good Hair examines African-American hair culture with Chris Rock as guide. Like too many documentaries these days, the film uses a competition as a structuring device�in this case, an annual Atlanta hair battle with stylists staging ludicrous coiffures. This is the stuff of reality TV, but the film is thankfully saved by amusing tangents on the process of hair straightening and production of the weave.

Also in the Doc Comp, Tom DiCillo's When You're Strange serves as a personal love letter to Jim Morrison and the music of The Doors. This too could have been fodder for television, wherein band members and witnesses recount the formulaic rise, fall and redemptive coda of a rock star. Instead, DiCillo fashions his film entirely out of historical footage, overlaid with matter-of-fact narration. For Doors fans, the material will be familiar, but the concert and studio footage still holds amazing power. And it all moves with the driving rhythm of a song like "Not to Touch the Earth."

The World Dramatic Competition offered very strong work. Lone Scherfig's An Education has been one of the more highly anticipated films of the festival. This well-made British film tells the story of Jenny (wonderfully played by Carey Mulligan), a beautiful and intelligent 16-year-old who attracts the attention of an older and charming admirer (Peter Sarsgaard). Jenny, whose tastes and curiosity transcend her drab surroundings, is swept up by the worldliness of her suitor, but their infatuation comes at a devastating cost. The movie has many elements in the right place: a fine script by Nick Hornby, assured direction, and strong performances from its leads and supporting roles (Alfred Molina is particularly good as Jenny's father). This film will undoubtedly make its way to theaters and please crowds.

Another British film, Unmade Beds, takes a looser approach to love and longing. Made by Argentine director Alexis Dos Santos, the film is a nice evolution from his debut, Glue. While Glue focused on a punk teenager stuck in a dead-end Patagonian town, Unmade Beds opens up, exploring the lives of two foreigners searching for fulfillment in vibrant London. Axl is a young Spaniard in search of the father who abandoned him. Vera is a young Belgian reeling from a break-up and exploring a new romance. Both live in the same squat, yet their paths rarely cross, with objects�a mattress, a jacket, a Polaroid�connecting the two. Unmade Beds is episodic and a little nebulous, but Dos Santos brings an exciting, impressionistic style to the film and a natural sense of visuals and music. As Glue's soundtrack had me listening to the Violent Femmes' "Kiss Off" endlessly, this new film inspired me to put Good Shoes' "We Are Not the Same" on repeat. Not a bad way to pass the time on the bus between screenings.