Kim Jee-woon’s Cobweb

It was a time of censorship, but not necessarily Puritanism. Director Kim Yeol is a 1970s Korean filmmaker was a long stretch of lurid sexual potboilers under his belt. His first film was critically acclaimed, but many suspect it was greatly shaped by his mentor, Director Shin, who died during its production. He now has a vision for how to make his latest film a masterpiece, but neither his studio boss nor the censors want to let him recall the cast for reshoots. He will just have to work around them in Kim Jee-won’s Cobweb, which releases tomorrow in theaters and on VOD.

Director Kim is absolutely not based Kim Ki-young, the late cult filmmaker best known for the original The Housemaid, as his heirs and the producers of Cobweb clearly established through an arbitration agreement. No, this “Director Kim” has been grinding out trashy thrillers since his tragic debut made a notorious splash. After wrapping his latest movie, also titled Cobweb, he literally has a flash of inspiration, prompting him to rewrite most of the second half.

President Baek, the studio boss and Director Shin’s widow, does not want the additional expenses and the state censors will not approve his new pages, because they are weird, especially the ending (which is true). However, Shin Mi-do, Director Shin’s niece and the studio finance chief, recognizes the brilliance of his revisions. She also has an in with the head of the censorship office, so she approves his reshoots while her aunt is out of the country on business. Since they are revising extensively, the one promised day of reshoots will not be sufficient, so Mi-do literally locks cast and crew inside the soundstage. Chaos and tension ensue.

Cobweb is sort of like Noises Off with the pressure of state censors looking over everyone’s shoulders. The manic farcical action is a bit of throwback to Kim Jee-woon’s zany The Good, the Bad, the Weird, from the filmmaker better known for darker horror and thrillers like I Saw the Devil, The Age of Shadows, and Dr. Brain. Some of the supporting characters are maybe a bit too wacky, like the method actor playing a detective, who pretends to investigate Director Kim, to stay in character. However, the way the film-with-the-film evolves and takes on greater significance as we learn Director Kim’s backstory is quite clever.

In fact, the black-and-white retro-horror-looking scenes from the fictional film are wonderfully stylish and affectionately droll. Director Kim’s “weird ending” lives up to its promise. Kim Jee-won and cinematographer Kim Ji-yong stage some incredible sequences, like Director Kim’s long climatic tracking shot, which we see from an incredibly messy behind-the-scenes perspective and as a finished product. In fact, their use of the sealed soundstage and its impressively designed sets is consistently inventive.

World War III, at UCLA’s Celebration of Iranian Cinema

In a way, it is pretty impressive that this film even exists. Former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made Holocaust denial part of the government ideology, launching the first of three national Holocaust-mocking cartoon competitions. Yet, this film would lose much of its bite if viewers bought into the Iranian government’s poisonous delusions. The drama escalates precipitously among the crew working on possibly the stilted and tone-deaf Holocaust film-within-the-film in Houman Seyedi’s World War III, which screens as part of the 2023 UCLA Celebration of Iranian Cinema.

Shakib is a middle-aged wreck of a man, who found comfort in the arms of Ladan, a deaf sex-worker, after his wife and child were killed in the earthquake. He wants to start a new life with her, but the brothel owner considers Ladan his property and Shakib lacks even two-thousand tomans to rub together. As a day-laborer, he helps construct the concentration camp set to be used for an independent Holocaust film, directed by Rastegar, a pretentious director obviously inspired by several Iranian auteurs (including Kiarostami, but he completely lacks Panahi’s down-to-earth humility).

By saving the producer from a bonk on the head, Shakib gets to stay on, first as the nightwatchman and then as one of the extras. Much to his confusion, Shakib gets a further promotion when the thesp playing Hitler has a heartache. Initially, Shakib hardly looks like a dead-ringer, but the makeup brings out something Chaplinesque, circa The Great Dictator, in him. However, he requires a lot of direction, because Shakib has never heard of Hitler (in his defense, in Iran, how would he have?).

From there, the drama gets wildly crazy and brutally intense. By Western standards, Seyedi’s use of Holocaust themes are daring, pushing the boundaries of good taste, but it is clear he understands their significance better than his country’s leaders. It is definitely edgy, but it also highlights the fictional film crew’s total lack of awareness or empathy. It is hard to watch and even harder to miss the point when they force an intimidated group of extras to strip down in the gas chamber set. Of course, none of this would make any sense to anyone who denies the events the film-within-the-film recreates.

The emotional violence in WWIII steadily escalates, in a manner very similar to the films of Farhadi. However, Seyedi (and co-screenwriters Arian Vazirdaftari and Azad Jafarian) have created an extreme set of circumstances, well outside the course of ordinary life, in marked contrast to Farhadi’s realistic domestic dramas that spin out of control.

Slamdance ’16: Director’s Cut

Even with the rise of digital technology, you still need some expertise to make a credible film. However, with the advent of crowd-funding, any joker with a paypal account can buy a producer’s credit. Herbert Blount is one such donor, but he will take it upon himself to finish a troubled serial killer thriller. He’ll finish it alright. Viewers will see his final absolutely-not-studio-approved edit and hear his commentary in Adam Rifkin’s Director’s Cut (promo here), which screened at the 2016 Slamdance Film Festival.

As the opening credits roll, Blount explains why Adam Rifkin’s Knock Off was initially poorly received by audiences and critics—not enough Missi Pyle. Blount clearly has a thing for Pyle that will become increasingly problematic as he starts to chronicle the behind-the-scenes chaos. He will even splice some of it in for our viewing benefit. After all, as the top crowd-funder, he bought the rights to be the making-of videographer.

Harry Hamlin co-stars with Pyle as himself, Harry Hamlin, playing the misogynistic, compulsively vaping police detective Godfrey “God” Winters. Blount is convinced Hamlin is Knock Off’s weak link and he might be right in that limited respect. As the FBI profiler, Pyle must work with the sleazy Hamlin and Hayes McArthur playing himself playing Winters’ partner Reed. In the film, they are directed by the harried Adam Rifkin, while in the film-with-the-film, they are bossed around by their lieutenant, played by Lin Shaye, in an inspired bit of casting.

About ten minutes into the film, Blount gives us a strong indication he is a bit off the rails when he installs spy cameras in Pyle’s room. Of course, his behavior will only get more erratic. Just for the record, Director’s Cut was itself crowd-funded, but it sure doesn’t seem to think much of the practice. Whether it be Blount invading Pyle’s space or Rifkin mailing out t-shirts, the film just doesn’t make fundraising strategy look like it is worth the hassles.

You have to give Hamlin and his wife Lisa Rinna credit for poking fun at their celebrity images. However, nobody is a better sport than Pyle, who soldiers through all sorts of embarrassing situations and allows the film to remind the world she was in A Haunted House 2, with Hayes McArthur. Rifkin shows some nice comedic timing of his own. Yet, Penn Jillette dominates every second with his in-character, relentlessly un-self-aware narration and his larger-than-life, uncharacteristically unsettling presence.

Sure, we have heard Teller talk here and there, but his whacked-out speaking cameo in Director’s Cut will be absolute catnip for Penn & Teller fans. It is consistently amusing, in an awkwardly creepy sort of way, but Tim Kirk’s conceptually similar Director’s Commentary—Terror of Frankenstein creates a richer, more subversive secret history for its ostensive meta-text-film. Anyone who has seen

Penn & Teller Get Killed knows Jillette is the sort to go for broke on the big screen—and Director’s Cut is no exception. It is funny and sometimes acerbically insightful, but Rifkin and Jillette get a bit bogged down during the endgame. Still, whenever this much self-referential humor is offered in such questionable taste, no self-respecting cult film fan should pass it up. Recommended for fans of Penn & Teller and the films of Kirk & Rodney Ascher, Director’s Cut just had its world premiere last night at this year’s Slandance in Park City, Utah.

Neighboring Scenes ’16: The Gold Bug, or Victoria’s Revenge

Who produces better films, feminists or anti-colonialists? Supposedly, a prominent Swedish feminist filmmaker and her grungy Argentine colleague will be joining forces to co-direct a typically co-financed, festival-only kind of film, but nobody is working in concert on this shoot. Every kind of ism and all sorts of international film production conventions are skewered in Alejo Mouguillansky & Fia-Stina Sandlund’s self-referential many times over The Gold Bug, or Victoria’s Revenge (trailer here), which screens during the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Neighboring Scenes: New Latin American Cinema film series.

Moguillansky, playing himself, is about to start co-directing an explicitly feminist film with the Swedish Sandlund, funded with hipster European grant money. The idea is to make a bio-treatment of Swedish feminist author Victoria Benedictsson. However, unemployed actor Rafa convinces his colleagues to make a film about failed radical Leandro N. Alem instead, because he has come into possession of a map to buried treasure outside the city of Alem.

Frankly, the town has nothing to do with Alem besides being named in his honor, but that hardly matters. Caught up in his enthusiasm, Moguillansky calls Sandlund to convince her to make the eleventh hour switch (swapping one Nineteenth Century suicide for another), shamelessly playing the colonialism card. He can bamboozle the European producers, but Sandlund remains dubious. Presumably, since she is stuck at a feminist conference in Miami, she will be powerless to stop them. However, like Charlie on the phone to the Angels, the heard but never seen Sandlund will exert a powerful force from the shadows (remember the second part of the title).

Of course, the meta-meta film isn’t called The Gold Bug for no reason. Just as in Poe’s story, the map is only one clue to the treasure’s location. There is also a cryptogram to be cracked. Naturally, this will require a lot of madcap running around. Unbeknownst to Rafa and his cronies, two women on the crew, acting with Sandlund’s counsel, are conspiring to grab the treasure for themselves. There is also an incomprehensible anti-colonialist, supposedly feminist film to be made—not that they have a script to follow.

Obviously, Gold Bug follows in the tradition of chaotic movie-making films, like Day for Night and Irma Vep, but it has distantly sharp satirical edge. When Moguillansky and Sandlund were thrown together as part of some grant-writing, international financing deal in real life, the concept grew out of the absurdity of their situation. Frankly, they expose a lot of the sausage-making of multinational “prestige” filmmaking for ridicule.

Sandlund’s frosty voiceovers are absolutely hilarious and Moguillansky delivers some of the film’s best lines as the (hopefully) fictionalized version of himself. As Rafa, Rafael Spregelburd (recognizable from The Critic) deftly balances raging insecurity and manipulative game-playing, which probably comes naturally to many actors. In fact, the entire ensemble seems to have a collective talent for rapid-fire cross-talk.

Gold Bug was co-written by Mariano Llinás, who wrote and directed the utterly brilliant Extraordinary Stories (not to be confused with Extraordinary Tales or Wild Tales). We can easily see his Russian doll influence in the narrative digressions and intriguing historical flashback interludes. It might be too clever for its own good, but anyone who has seen an unwatchably pretentious film at a festival and wondered how it got produced may find their answers here. Recommended for cineastes who do not mind a little metaphorical ox-goring, The Gold Bug, or Victoria’s Revenge screens Thursday (1/7) at the Walter Reade, as part of this year’s Neighboring Scenes film series.

Let Me Out: Korean Zombie Student Films and the People Who Make Them

In an era when technology allows Jafar Panahi to be about as prolific as Woody Allen, would-be filmmakers are running out of excuses.  After years of snarking from the sidelines, senior year film student Kang Mu-young is suddenly put on the filmmaking spot.  Bedlam will ensue as he tries to shoot his zombie melodrama in Kim Chang-Lae and Jae Soh’s Let Me Out (trailer here), which screens in select cities this Wednesday, via Tugg.

A bit Holden Caulfield-ish, Kang loves to call out directors for being phonies.  However, after a rather tactless Q&A session, Yang Ik-june (the indie director playing himself) turns the tables on the student, offering $5,000 in start up money for Kang’s senior film.  Hurriedly, Kang dusts off his old discarded zombie screenplay (titled Let Me Out, probably because the characters are constantly banging on locked doors) and assembles a cast and crew who are not already attached to other projects.

Yang’s producer buddy Yong-woon recruits a motley but workable group, including Hong Sang-soo’s camera loader for their director of photography.  The casting of Sun-hye, a third rate starlet enrolled in their film school, opens the door for some sponsorship opportunities—mainly from liquor and cigarette companies.  This will definitely be a boozy set.  Ah-young, a vastly more talented fellow classmate, also agrees to be the female co-lead.  She is actually good in her part, even though she lacks confidence in both her abilities and Kang’s script.

Like the zombies it crudely portrays, the film-within-the-film takes hit after hit, but refuses to die.  Cast and crew members will quit, equipment will break, and they will be evicted from their locations, but the film lumbers along erratically, just the same.  Co-directors (and Seoul Institute of the Arts faculty members) Kim and Soh maintain a manic energy level, but they never lose sight of the human element.  Despite all of Kang’s humbling frustrations, LMO remains a big, earnest valentine to scrappy DIY filmmaking.

Kwon Hyun-sang, the son of Cannes award winning director Im Kwon-taek, clearly relates to the wannabe Tarantino, nicely portraying his long deferred maturation process.  K-pop and Korean TV star Park Hee-von provides an appealingly down-to-earth foil as Ah-young, while Jessica Choi relishes creating chaos as Sun-hye, the hot mess.

This is indeed the sort of film that will recharge your cineaste batteries.  There are scores of in-jokes and cinema references, but that is all frosting on the cake.  At its core, LMO is really all about a young filmmaker getting his act and his film together.  It is a story a wide spectrum of viewers should be able to relate to, but it will have special resonance for fans of zombie movies, like the one Kang is trying to complete.  Surprisingly heartfelt at times, Let Me Out is highly recommended for fans of Korean cinema and cult movies.  It screens this Wednesday (9/25) in New York (at the AMC Loews Kips Bay), as well as San Francisco, Dallas, and Atlanta, but since these are Tugg shows, you had better book now to be sure you will have a ticket and the screenings will go forward.

DWF ’12: Attack of the Bat Monsters

Technically, there is only one bat monster in Francis Gordon’s latest B-movie, but it would hardly be the first time the zero-budget mogul delivered slightly less than promised.  It will certainly attack though, rest assured.  By hook or by crook, his cast and crew will pound out his next drive-in programmer in Attack of the Bats (trailer here), Graham Kelly Greene’s affectionate love letter to campy late 1950’s and early 1960’s monster movie-making, an alumni selection returning to officially open the 2012 Dances with Films this Thursday.

Attack is not about Roger Corman per se, but it would not have been made without his example.  Gordon is definitely a grindhouse showman in the Corman mold.  He is convinced he can fix anything in the editing room as long as they follow his cardinal rule: “when the monster’s dead, the movie is over.”  Paralleling the genesis of Corman’s Little Shop of Horrors, Gordon wrapped production on his latest film early, but he still has three paid-up days in the southern California rock quarry he does not intend to waste. 

Suddenly, AD Chuck Grayson is rushing about lining up a screenwriter (the least important part), a pseudo-star, and a new monster (that would be the biggie).  The beatnik poet Bobby Barnstone and his Barnstone method of Benzedrine-fueled stream-of-consciousness screenwriting looks like the best bet for generating fast pages.  They don’t have to be good after all.  Larry “The Cat Creature” Meeker, Jr. seems to have fallen on hard enough times he would consider a Francis Gordon movie and a former creature making colleague has just been fired by a major studio.  However, he still harbors bad feelings over The Snake Woman, a Gordon production so notorious, the mere mention of the title sucks the air out of rooms.

All the Corman motifs are present and accounted for, including spaced-out beatniks, a jazzy soundtrack, and a ridiculously cheesy monster.  What sets Attack apart from thematically similar B-movie pastiches is Greene’s confidence in the behind-the-scenes story.  There will be no real life monsters or aliens invading their set, just the union goon extras from a studio gladiator movie sent to run the crew out of the quarry ahead of schedule.

Attack had its world premiere at DWF back in 2000.  Frankly, the fact that the film has yet to develop its own cult following is downright mystifying, because it really delivers the goods.  Greene knows the Corman lore inside-out and his cast of not exactly household names is way funnier than you would expect.  There is also a real edge to his dialogue, as when Gordon indignantly defends his honor by declaring he always pays his taxes and pays-off his unions.  Indeed, what more could one ask of a good Hollywood citizen?

There are some hilarious supporting assists here, particularly Robert Bassetti as Barnstone and Douglas Taylor as Meeker, Jr.  Fred Ballard is also pitch-perfect as the prickly Gordon, while Michael Dalmon gamely holds the madness together as the put-upon Grayson.

Without question, Attack is generously stocked with goofy humor, but it can also be quite sly.  Yet, there is a real heart beneath the bedlam that cares about its characters, precisely because on some level they also care about the B-movies they are churning out, despite being fully aware of their schlockiness.  A completely satisfying, all-around good show, Attack of the Bat Monsters is ripe for re/discovery when it opens this year’s Dances with Films this coming Thursday night (5/31) in Hollywood, USA.

ContemporAsian: The Woman in the Septic Tank

Desperately poor, Mila is about to sell one of her seven children to a sexual predator.  Relax, it is only a movie.  It isn’t real.  It isn’t even really happening in the film either, just the film-within-the-film, if it ever gets made.  The poverty fetishism of international festival films gets a healthy skewering in Marlon Rivera’s The Woman in the Septic Tank (trailer here), which is currently screening at MoMA as part of their continuing ContemporAsian film series.

Mila is in for a host of degradations, but we will only see a few scenes of her painful life over and over, as first-time director Rainer, his producer Bingbong, and their PA Jocelyn try to best calibrate the privation porn for politically correct film festival audiences.  Whenever possible, they crank up the transgressiveness and even contemplate turning it into a musical (bringing to mind a certain Lebanese Oscar wannabe). 

Of course, the key will be casting a big star as Mila to secure the financing.  As luck would have it, real life comic superstar Eugene Domingo is looking for a prestige project.  There will have to be a meeting of the minds on certain creative decisions first though, including which of Domingo’s three forms of [over]-acting Rainer would prefer she employ for the film.

Displaying an unusually sporting sense of humor, Domingo plays herself and really lets herself have it.  It is definitely a larger than life diva turn, but it aptly serves the film’s sharp satire.  The indie filmmakers are certainly on the receiving end of plenty of jokes as well, particularly as they wax ghoulishly rhapsodic about the cinematic potential of the teeming slum locations, until reality rudely intrudes.

Kean Cipriano and JM de Guzman are a bit colorless as Rainer and Bingbong, respectively, largely functioning as straightmen to Domingo and the overriding concept.  However, Cai Cortez adds a bit of spark to the film as their not yet completely disillusioned assistant.

If there is one thing indie films do well it would be taking themselves too seriously.  That is why Septic is such a welcome corrective.  Screenwriter Chris Martinez (who previously directed Domingo in the popular tearjerker 100) dishes out some rather bold comedy.  Ironically, audiences at MoMA might actually pick up on a few more jokes than Filipino viewers, because the films Septic sends up are produced almost entirely for foreign venues (like MoMA).

Although diminishing returns start to set in, the film sure signs off with a happy ending.  It might be somewhat small in scope, but it is wickedly pointed.  Heartily recommended for cineastes who will both get and appreciate the humor, The Woman in the Septic Tank runs through Monday (5/28) at MoMA.

Pitch Hard: Brother’s Justice

Dax Shepard thinks he’s famous. You are supposed to recognize him from films like Employee of the Month and more likely NBC’s Parenthood. However, Shepard is about to throw a curve ball to those who might be fans, giving up comedy to become a martial arts superstar. His transformative vehicle will chronicle the Justice Brothers’ fight against a vicious crystal meth-dealing biker gang, or something like that. This dubious project will be pitched many times in Brother’s Justice (trailer here), a mockumentary of the film-within-a-film’s early development, or lack thereof, which has its belated New York opening this Friday as part of a showcase of Tribeca distributed films.

Shepard picks his indulgent friend Nate Tuck to produce his proposed Brother’s Justice, securing his agreement to split all the development costs. Given the industry’s interest in the project, this will probably only involve a few trips to Starbuck’s. Yet, Shepard plugs on, trying to call in favors with the big names he knows, including the likes of Jon Favreau and Ashton Kutcher, playing themselves in guest appearances (as well as one surprise saved for the post-closing credits stinger). Tom Arnold however, has a major supporting role as himself, promising to pitch the film to his pal James Cameron, in return for a part (opinions vary as to which it should be).

Essentially, Justice is sort of a more Hollywood-centric version of Eric Schaeffer and Donal Lardner Ward’s My Life’s in Turnaround and its pseudo-sequel, while still allowing Bradley Cooper and David Koechner an opportunity to slum it up in an indie in between their Judd Apatow and Todd Phillips comedies. In fact, they are both very funny in two extended centerpiece sequences, constituting considerably more than mere cameo walk-ons.

Frankly, Shepard is not the most charismatic screen presence and I knew far more martial arts at thirteen than he ever will (which is all part of the joke). Still, he establishes some decent bromantic chemistry with Tuck, while convincing his famous friends to ham it up like nobody’s business. Arnold in particular, seemed to require little prompting in this regard. Perhaps the closest analogs to Justice are old school Burt Reynolds films, in which viewers are supposed to appreciate how much fun he and Dom DeLuise had making them. Believe it or not, that makes for a pleasant weekend afternoon Netflix streaming (where it is already available).

Throughout Justice, Shepard takes plenty of shots at Hollywood business practices, but nothing so pointed that it might jeopardize his career (real or fictional). It is not The Player, but it has some clever moments. Though interested viewers can stay at home and watch it, Justice also kicks off a weeklong run this Friday (9/9) at the Tribeca Cinemas.

Hellman’s Road to Nowhere

It is a notorious crime that apparently has everything: millions of dollars missing, a crooked politician, and dodgy business in Cuba. Nevertheless, it is only the femme fatale director Mitchell Haven is interested in—or rather his leading lady. Is there even a difference between the two? Much gets blurred as the filmmaker doggedly struggles with his indie film within an indie film in Road to Nowhere (trailer here), the first film in twenty-one years from widely respected Roger Corman protégé Monte Hellman, which opens this Friday in New York.

Rather than face the music for their duplicitous dealings, Velma Duran committed suicide along with Rafe Tachen, her crooked politician lover (with the best movie name of the year so far). Or did they? The local North Carolina blogger who owned the story suspects they faked their deaths. It should be lurid grist for Haven’s film, but the self-defeatingly indie director is more interested in a character study of Duran. While he started the project with halfway commercial intentions, he has become fixated on her as an extension of Laurel Graham, the unknown actress he cast in the part.

Graham is so good as Duran, it is difficult to distinguish between the two. Indeed, she seems to have suspiciously perceptive insight into the character. The audience is led to wonder, could they be the same person? While some on the set harbor their own conspiracy theories, many more start to resent the extent to which Duran the character and Graham the co-star have hijacked the production. Yet, the nature of truth is decidedly slippery in both Haven and Hellman’s films.

While audiences should try not to get hung up on mere plot during Road, the film is not nearly the exercise in postmodern gamesmanship it appears to be. Indeed, the film’s biggest surprise is that viewers can essentially trust what they see, though it will all seem rather obscure up until Hellman’s conclusion. However, the deliberate pacing and eerily quiet atmosphere will profoundly challenge any multiplexers who happen to wander in.

Unlike Godard’s Film Socialisme, Road has a narrative essence viewers can readily grab onto. Hellman also masterfully sets the mood and scene. His use of the lush Smoky Mountain backdrop is particularly evocative of the profoundly mysterious in a Twin Peaks kind of way. Yet, this is a film with a distinctly individual feel.

Shannyn Sossamon plays a critical role maintaining Road’s mystique, suggesting a multiplicity of possible truths as Graham/Duran. She is also remarkably convincing acting like she is acting. By necessity, Tygh Runyan’s emotionally distant but highly malleable Haven is much harder to get a handle on. If anyone beyond hardcore cineastes sees Road though, it should be a breakout vehicle for Waylon Payne, who is unsettlingly good as Haven’s not as dumb as he looks local yokel advisor.

Road is a challenging film, but there is a there there. Ultimately, it all makes objective logical sense, but it is a strange (and at times slow) trip getting there. One of the most patient, cerebral thrillers to escape the festival circuit into theaters, Road is respectfully recommended for like viewers. It opens this Friday (6/10) in New York at the Village East.

Spanish Guilt: Even the Rain

Whether from Hollywood or Spain, movie people can be counted on for hypocrisy and pretension. The indigenous population of Bolivia immediately learns this when a Spanish crew arrives to film a historical epic on the cheap in Iciar Bollain’s didactic yet strangely engaging Even the Rain (trailer here), Spain’s shortlisted official submission for best foreign language Oscar consideration, which opens this Friday in New York.

Envisioning a searing indictment of colonial exploitation, Sebastián’s politicized biopic will basically be like every other Christopher Columbus film, except it will be produced on a shoestring budget. To stretch their funds, his producer Costa arranged to shoot in Bolivia, where the indigenous extras will earn only two dollars a day. The obvious irony is largely, but not entirely lost on the cast and crew.

Contrary to Costa’s better judgment, the director casts Daniel, a local leader of the restive indigenous proletariat in a critical supporting role in the film. Much to the producer’s alarm, the uprising of Sebastián’s film-in-progress increasingly parallels the burgeoning 2000 Cochabamba protests against the foreign-owned water utility, which charges exorbitant rates while supposedly even prohibiting locals from collecting rain water.

Never subtle, Rain tips its hand right away with a dedication to leftist pop “historian” Howard Zinn. Greed is bad we are told in no uncertain terms. (The fact that Cochabamba’s access to water is arguably worse under the Morales regime than before the 2000 demonstrations is a mere detail not worth mentioning.) Yet, the film’s fervor and sprawling messiness turn out to be considerable virtues.

In fact, the heroes of Sebastián’s prospective film are Bartolome de las Casas and Antonio de Montesinos, early critics of Spanish brutality, who also happened to be Catholic priests. Screenwriter Paul Laverty (a frequent collaborator with Ken Loach, which also says quite a bit) captures the radical impulse to savage well-intentioned liberalism for lack of ideological purity, personified unlikely enough by the production’s embittered (and often drunk) star Antón. Yet, perhaps Rain’s greatest irony is that it is not Sebastian, the passionate artist, who has an awakening of conscience, but Costa, the money man (a rare display of screen love for producers).

Bollain has talent for staging big scenes, like riots and the arresting sight of Sebastián’s massive cross winging its way through the Andes via chopper. She also allows the film-within-the-film to intrude on the action in intriguing ways. However, it is Luis Tosar who truly powers Rain as Costa. Viscerally intense and realistically contradictory, he blows his more internationally renowned co-star off the screen.

Though perfectly fine, Gael García Bernal’s Sebastián is not unlike the driven directors seen in other movie-making dramas. However, Karra Elejalde steals nearly each of his scenes as the profoundly cynical Antón. Just like his character, he demonstrates a flair for barbed dialogue. Bollain also elicits some rather remarkable performances from her nonprofessional Bolivian cast, including memorable turns from Juan Carlos Aduviri and Milena Soliz, as Daniel and his daughter Belén, respectively.

Rain is the best in-your-face leftist film since Paolo Sorrentino’s bravura Il Divo. Though shortlisted, Oscar somehow passed over Bollain’s film when the nominations were announced. Frankly, it is a better film, political warts-and-all, than several of the final nominees. Absolutely worth seeing as film (but not necessarily as civics), Rain opens this Friday (2/18) in New York at the Angelika Film Center.

Green’s Portuguese Nun

For his latest film, Eugène Green did not set out to adapt The Letters of a Portuguese Nun, the scandalous epistolary romance now attributed to the Comte de Guilleragues, but he plays a director shooting such a project. Yet, even that film-within-a-film is highly unorthodox in Green’s oddly spiritual The Portuguese Nun (trailer here), which opens this Friday at the Anthology Film Archives.

Julie de Hauranne is a Portuguese-French actress fluent in her mother’s language, but making her first trip to Lisbon for Denis Verde’s avant-garde re-working of The Portuguese Nun. There will be no dialogue and few scenes of her together with her co-star. Instead, they are filming the visuals that will accompany their pre-recorded voice-overs. Those rather easy set-calls allow her plenty of time to explore the city. In doing so, she makes a fleeting, but perhaps deep connection to D. Henrique Cunha, a would-be aristocrat disgraced by his family’s connections to the Salazar and Caetano regimes. She also meets Vasco, a veritable street urchin and becomes fascinated with a real Portuguese nun, Sister Joana, who prays nightly at the candlelit Nossa Senhora do Monte Chapel, a place where the spirit could move even an avowed atheist.

If nothing else, Nun will convince viewers Lisbon is a spectacularly beautiful city. The word “picturesque” just does not cut it—not even by half. Its architectural splendor is perfectly matched by a soundtrack of exquisitely sensitive fados. These things are particularly noticeable since Green seems determined to keep the audience at arm’s length from the on-screen drama.

Rarely do Nun’s verbal cadences ever approach anything realistically conversational. Instead, there is a distinctly recitative quality to the dialogue, which Green emphasizes all the more by regularly directing his cast to deliver their lines straight into the camera in self-conscious close-ups. Though de Hauranne is frequently in motion roaming through the city, the film often feels static, like a series of frozen tableaux. Despite the sparkling sheen of Raphaël O’Byrne’s cinematography, Nun has the rigid formality of medieval paintings. Appropriately, it also takes questions of religious faith just as seriously.

Though one suspects the “North American born,” French naturalized Green leans somewhat to the left, there are absolutely no cheap shots taken at Catholicism in Nun. Instead, meeting Sister Joana is a transformational experience for de Hauranne. In an exchange one could never find in a Hollywood film, the saintly Nun explicitly connects faith and love with words that are powerful, because they are spoken with humility. Likewise, instead of being a snarky Bill Maher, the worldly actress’s questions elicit heartfelt responses, because they are meant in good faith, so to speak.

Frankly, Nun is a strange film to get a handle on. At times, Leonor Baldaque is so deliberately inexpressive as De Hauranne, she could be mistaken for a bad CGI effect. Though essentially playing himself, Green is nearly just as stiff when appearing as Verde. Conversely, Diogo Dória’s turn as the haunted Cunha is deeply compelling and fundamentally humane, while Ana Moreira radiates piety as Sister Joana.

In terms of method and tone, Nun almost approaches experimental filmmaking, yet it has a romantic soul and a respect for the transcendent faith of Sister Joana that borders on genuine reverence. It also shows unexpected flashes of a sardonic wit. Clearly, Nun is intended for an exclusive, self-selecting audience, yet it has moments of arresting beauty well beyond the sights and sounds of Lisbon. It would surely baffle multiplex audiences several times over, but the elusive Nun is highly recommended to the stylistically adventurous. It opens this Friday (10/22) in New York at the Anthology Film Archives.