Take Two

Chilean film "The Maid" liberates a genre

We think we recognize Raquel (Catalina Saavedra), the titular figure in writer-director Sebastian Silva’s The Maid, right away. She’s a familiar fictive type: The treacherous servant, suspicious, resentful, manipulative, surely up to no good as far as the welfare of her upscale Santiago employers are concerned. They’re privileged, pretty, relatively care-free. She’s plain, middle-aged, and not at all taken in by the condescending pretense of her being almost “one of the family,” even when they celebrate her birthday at dinner one night. A dinner she nonetheless cooks and serves.

topics: actors, landmark theatres, south american film, world cinema

Take Two

The mystery of Lucrecia Martel and "The Headless Woman"

Newcomers to Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Martel’s work might wonder what’s going on as her latest film The Headless Woman begins. In the same vein as her two earlier films, La Ciénega (2001) and The Holy Girl (2004), her story plunges viewers instantly into a microcosm without offering any introduction or explanation. We are simply there, immersed in the senses and perceptions of the scene along with the characters. We hear the same natural sounds vying for our attention: snippets of conversation, shrieks from children, car doors slamming, dogs barking, car engines igniting—it’s a kind of madness but at the same time a perfect replica of reality. We hang on, wondering how this all will unravel and make sense. Martel’s extraordinary cinematic gifts amplify the tension she creates by fully immersing viewers in her story, where plot plays a secondary, though pivotal, role. Martel’s camera shots are like the paintings of Rembrandt or Caravaggio; her brilliant and relentless use of chiaroscuro in darkish, sensual interiors arrest the eye and breath, eliciting excitement.

topics: bay area, directors, sffs screen at the sundance kabuki, south american film, women filmmakers, yerba buena center for the arts

Take Two

The sad dance of "Tony Manero"

Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s sophomore feature Tony Manero, opening Friday on the SFFS Screen at the Sundance Kabuki, concerns itself with Raúl Peralta (Alfredo Castro), a man in his 50s obsessed with the idea of impersonating Tony Manero, John Travolta’s character in Saturday Night Fever. It’s a fixation situated in the midst of the tough social context of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. Raúl leads a small group of dancers regularly performing at a bar located in the outskirts of the city and every Saturday evening he unleashes his passion for the film’s music by imitating his idol. His dream of being recognized as a successful showbiz star is about to become a reality when the national television station announces a Tony Manero impersonation contest. His urge to reproduce his idol’s likeness drives him to the edge.

topics: hollywood, latin cinema, sffs screen at the sundance kabuki, south american film, world cinema

Take Two

Instinct propels "Lion's Den"; a fact-fiction mix animates "24 City"

The best filmmakers working in the neorealist tradition today—the Dardenne brothers, Kelly Reichardt, Ramin Bahrani—turn the ordinary into the extraordinary with deceptive ease. Argentinian director Pablo Trapero has joined them with a growing list of films whose protagonists battle the pressures of the everyday in stories that turn out to be phenomenally unique.

He gained public attention at festivals, including the SF International, in 1999 with Mundo Grua (Crane World), a 16mm black-and-white character study of an ex-musician with an obesity problem attempting to find work in construction. His demons were beef and pasta and his charms, against a wide-open South American sky, were many.

topics: asian cinema, bay area, film festivals, landmark theatres, san francisco international film festival, sffs screen, south american film, world cinema

In Production

Tejada-Flores takes first-person in ‘Road’ for a change

For every Nick Broomfield or Ross McElwee, there are 50 documentary makers who break out in hives at the thought of being in front of the camera. Rick Tejada-Flores was one of those guys. But when he decided to explore his family’s checkered Bolivian past, he accepted that he had to be a character. “I don’t think American audiences are really too interested in what happens in the rest of the world unless there’s a connection to our society,” Tejada-Flores observes. “By my telling the story, and also by relating it to my experience of defining myself as a Latino in this country, it gives people a point of reference. I’m struggling to find my way through what happened in Bolivia, and so are they.”

topics: bay area, directors, diy, documentary, south american film

In Production

From Iran to Chile and back, Cyrus Omoomian pushes 'Democracy'

Cyrus Omoomian is an inveterate traveler who distills his extensive experience into a cut-through-the-haze phrase: "Anywhere you go, the truth is on the wall." I take his meaning to be literal, a reference to the political graffiti spray-painted by the powerless everywhere, as well as metaphorical. I’m only half-right. The Iranian-born filmmaker, currently in postproduction on his long-form debut about Chile’s protracted post-Pinochet rebirth, Pushing Towards Democracy: Voices of Chile, isn’t particularly interested in symbolic representations. As his title indicates, it’s unfiltered talk from the source he’s after, served straight up.

topics: diy, documentary, political film, south american film, world cinema

Director's Chair

César Charlone turns to directing with "The Pope's Toilet"

Celebrated Oscar-nominated cinematographer César Charlone recently codirected his first theatrical feature film, The Pope’s Toilet, a darkly comic farce about Pope John Paul II’s visit to a sleepy Uruguayan hamlet. (SF360.org editor’s note: The film kicks off the new year of programming at SFFS Screen with a one-week run at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas on January 30.)

Like most filmmakers on the world stage, César Charlone is a recurrent traveler. Driving to the Sao Paulo airport, he talks to me on his cell phone about his trip. “I’m on my way to Poland for the Plus Camerimage film festival,” he says modestly. This little-known festival is dedicated to the art of cinematography, and Charlone, nominated for an Academy Award for his work on Fernando Meirelles’s City of God, will be the featured guest. Two recent examples of his work as a cinematographer will be featured: Stranded: I’ve Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains (SFIFF 2008), directed by Gonzalo Arijón, and Blindness, directed by Meirelles. Moreover, Blindness is in competition for the grand prize and Charlone will serve on a jury.

topics: comedy, film festivals, hollywood, south american film, world cinema