Tribeca Film Festival enters year nine

By Kevin Lally

The ninth annual Tribeca Film Festival (TFF) kickedoff Wednesdaynight with the world premiere of DreamWorks Animation's Shrek Forever After, one of 85 features to be presented over the course of the 12-day event.

Launched in 2002 with the aim of revitalizing downtownManhattan after the Sept. 11 tragedy, TFF has grown quickly into a signature New York event, a more wide-ranging alternative to the highly selective New York Film Festival held at Lincoln Center each fall.

The selections span the globe and every imaginable genre, from disturbingdocumentaries to light comedies, from poignant dramas to pulpy horror films. Among the hottest ticketsare Freakonomics, the movie adaptation of the best-seller which brought a social dimension to economics, with contributions from some of today's top documentary makers including Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side), Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) and Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight), and Saturday Night, actor James Franco's inside look at the making of a "Saturday Night Live" episode, which will be followed by a panel discussion with Franco and "SNL" cast members. Alex Gibney returns with an untitled new documentary about disgraced New York governor Eliot Spitzer, and rap icon turned movie auteur Ice Cube delivers Straight Outta L.A., a documentary about the Oakland Raiders and the early West Coast rap scene.

So far, I've caughtthirteenof the Tribeca selections, and for me the clear highlight is Soul Kitchen, the new film from Turkish-German director Fatih Akin, whose The Edge of Heaven was one of my favorite movies of 2007. Soul Kitchen is much lighter in tone than that fatalistic drama, even if its young Greek protagonist suffers from an awful run of bad luck. Zinos Kazantsakis (played by Akin's co-writer Adam Bousdoukos) runs an unpretentious restaurant in Hamburg and makes plans to leave the country when his girlfriend lands a job in China. But complications ensue, from his thieving brother on parole, to a onetime friend who's scheming to take over his property, to a slipped disc that seems to get progressively worse as his problems mount. Akin's latest features a zany cast of characters, great music, delectable-looking food, and a breakneck pace as Zinos' fortunes rise and fall and rise again. IFC Films opens it in August, and audiences will leave Soul Kitchen will a satsified smile.

IFC also has Cairo Time, a lovely showcase for leading actress Patricia Clarkson and the sights and sounds of Egypt. Clarkson plays Juliette, who arrives alone for a vacation in Cairo after her husband, a U.N. worker, is delayed by a crisis in Gaza. Her husband's Egyptian former business associate Tareq (Aleander Siddig of Syriana) picks her up at the airport and becomes her host and confidant. As Juliette opens herself to the beauty and contemplative rhythms of the Egyptian culture, it becomes clear that the two are falling in love. Will they act on their attraction? Ruba Nadda's understated romance casts a spell, and will certainly find an enthusiastic audience among women "of a certain age."

On the wilder side, Tribeca is presenting Arias with a Twist: The Docufantasy, a look at the collaboration of veteran New York drag performer Joey Arias and master puppeteer Basil Twist. This double portrait makes the casefor both men as special and unique artists, and I for one now regret having missed their 2008 stage show. The movie opens with Arias, hair in a tight bun and wearing a severe, skimpy Thierry Mugler costume, performing Led Zepellin's "Kashmir" while strapped to a gyroscope, as Twist's space aliens surround him. From the glimpses seen here, the uninhibited Arias and the visionary Twist are an ideal theatrical match.Bobby Sheehan'smovie doesn't have an unkind word to say about either artist and borders on gushiness, but Arias and Twist come across as genuinely likeable anddown-to-earth creative whirlwinds. As abonus, thedocumentary also offers a breezy history of the downtown New York performance-art scene that Arias helped nurture.

Another wild fellow was Ian Dury, lead singer of the British punk band The Blockheads, who gets a colorful tribute in the British biopic sex & drugs & rock & roll. Dury, who died in 2000, was a singular groundbreaker, a music star who never let the crippling effects of his childhood polio stand in his way. Mat Whitcross' film has trouble finding the narrative momentum in Dury's life, and depends too much on the thread of the musician's bad influence on his young son (played by Bill Milner of Son of Rambow), but it's a sensational showcase for Andy Serkis (so memorable as the CGI Gollum in the Lord of the Rings films), who creates an uncanny impersonation of the raspy, volatile singer and even performs his own vocals with the real Blockheads.

Sony Pictures Classics has two excellent films in the Tribeca lineup: Nicole Holofcener's Manhattan ensemble comedy Please Give, opening April 30 and already reviewed on the Film Journal website, and Micmacs, the highly imaginative new film from Amelie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who will be profiled in the June issue of FJI.

Tomorrow I'll be at the tenth anniversary screening of Christopher Nolan's twisty Memento, which will be followed by a panel discussion with stars Guy Pearce and Joe Pantoliano and co-writer Jonathan Nolan. It will be a busy weekend in downtown Manhattan. Look for more Tribeca coverage here next week.