Festivities
by Don Larsson

Some time ago, I managed to sample tidbits from the full platters of two film festivals: the Chicago Latino Film Festival (held, mostly, this year, at the historic Biograph Theatre where John Dillinger was gunned down) and the Twin Cities Film Festival (all over the place, but my viewings were at the funky Bell Auditorium in the U. of Minnesota's Natural History Museum). Some remarks:

Chicago: The first film was Besos Para Todos (Kisses For Everyone), a pleasant coming-of-age film from Spain, directed by Jaime Chávarri. Set in the Franco era of the 1950s, as repressive sexually as it was politically, the film centers on three medical students who rent a house together. Through a combination of circumstances, three "dancers" from a local club wind up taking up residence with them. One of the students, a virginal young man (Eloy Azorín, who played the son in All About My Mother) resists temptation when pursued by a pretty young middle-class woman who seems to have a crush on him, but becomes powerfully tempted by one of the dancers (Emma Suárez). Complications ensue and life lessons are learned.

The film is enoyable enough, at times suggesting a very mild version of more recent work by Almodóvar, but there are too many imperfections for it to be totally successful. Certain subplots - particularly those involving the students' crippled landlady, the vampiric lesbian dance club "hostess," and a failed political protest - lack development, and the centering of the narrative on the young men's stories leaves out any deeper examination of the dancers' lives. For example, when one of the guys gets the clap, we learn all about the students' reactions and treatments, but not about those of the women. Taken in the context of its historical setting, the film is a plea for tolerance and sexual freedom, but despite its title, some kisses are apparently not for everyone.

This was followed by a mesmerizing documentary from Germany, included in a Latino film festival because of its subject matter: Lieber Fidel - Maritas geschichte (Dear Fidel - Marita's story), about a German woman who became Fidel Castro's lover. Marita Lorenz was the daughter of a German ship captain. On a visit to Havana harbor soon after the Cuban Revolution, she hosted a visit by the new leader of the country, Fidel Castro. The two became lovers, but when Marita became pregnant, she was kidnapped and forced to undergo an abortion. From there (her story goes), she was recruited by the CIA to participate in one of its bizarre attempts to kill the dictator. Marita went on to be a part of other covert operations, only to wind up as a welfare mother in New York.

If even half of her story is true - and it appears that at least half is - Marita has led a remarkable life. But to the credit of director Wilfrid Huismann, her story is not just presented in a straightforward manner. Bit by bit, other events in her early childhood and in her later adult life are peeled back. Talking heads provide commentary, but their very identities - notably Watergate burglar and CIA op Frank Sturgis - at least give one pause. Conflicting accounts are not settled, but are offered up as evidence for thought. Whether Marita did know Lee Harvey Oswald, whether she had some of the adventures she claims she had, are left for the audience to judge.

Perhaps I overestimate the distancing of the film from its subject. The fact that Marita speaks in German, heavily-accented English, and New York accents at different times tends to fragment any impression of wholeness we might sense from her. The effect is underscored when American commentators are translated into German by a voice-over narrator, while at the same time rendered into English subtitles! If not as rigorous in its skepticism as Errol Morris' films tend to be, Dear Fidel still offers a view (through a glass, darkly) of some of the last century's undercurrents, and how a single life could be tossed about by them.

Twin Cities: Of the films here, the one that affected me the most was Firefly Dreams, made in Japan by John Williams. No, not that John Williams - this one is an emigré from the UK who describes himself, tongue protruding through cheek, as a follower of the "Welsh neo-realist school" of filmmakers. The film was presented as something of a curiosity, but it deserves wider distribution.

Naomi (Maho) is a spoiled teenager from Nagoya who blows off classes, argues with her parents, and spends much of her time on a cell phone. School is boring, and her parents seem like hypocrites to her, at best. Her dyed hair, slouching posture, and slurred slang, will seem - even in Japanese - universal to anyone familiar with contemporary teenagers. Hoping to keep her out of trouble during school break, Naomi's parents ship her to the country, where relatives own a small hotel, now given over to parties for elderly drunken businessmen. The girl hates the place at first, all the more so because she doesn't like her sweet but mentally retarded cousin, and then she becomes attracted to a local delivery boy who winds up disappointing her.

But Naomi is also given the responsibility of keeping an eye on an aging neighbor, Mrs. Koide (Yoshie Minami). At times dazed and distracted by the apparent onset of Alzheimer's syndrome, Mrs. Koide initially holds no more attraction for Naomi than anything else in the area, but over time the two begin to talk and start to develop a close friendship. "Koide-san" - selling chickens, tending her garden, still dressing in kimonos - is a living link to a Japanese past that the girl can hardly imagine. Over time, the old lady becomes an anchor for Naomi as she suffers some personal losses. Koide-san has her own losses to live with as well, and Naomi begins to uncover parts of the woman's past that demonstrate how anyone's life can throw off its own pulses of light, like the flashing in darkness of a firefly.

Even if he were Japanese himself, Williams couldn't have done a better job conveying the feelings of these characters, or the film's fine sense of place. Nagoya's crowded industrial modernity is as sharply observed as the more placid countryside. Even better is the director's sure control over his story. Not everything is explained in Firefly Dreams, nor does it need to be. Whereas Besos Para Todos has loose ends that seem undeveloped or unfinished, the loose ends in this film are more like avenues or by-ways that we see from the corner of the eye as we ride down toward the destination we have chosen. If you're curious, check out this interesting interview with Williams.

More formulaic but thoroughly enjoyable, is Silence...We're Rolling, by the one director from Egypt's once-prolific film industry whose name is known at all in the West, Youssef Chahine. Chahine has a reputation as a social critic with a neo-realist style, but any social criticism in Silence is presented lightly and with a smile. The story is as deliberately artificial as the back projections in some of the scenes.

Tunisian music star Latifa plays Malak, an Egyptian singing star who lives with her nubile daughter Paula (Rubi) and her wealthy matriarch of a mother (Magda Al Khattib, who in manner and white wig is reminiscent of Barbara Stanwyck in The Big Valley). Abandoned by her husband, who is tired of living in his wife's shadow, Malak is courted by Lamei (Ahmed Wafik), a dissolutely handsome con-man posing as a psychologist who wants to break into film. While Lamei begins to peel Malak away from her screenwriter, her director, and her family, Paula plans to wed her earnest boyfriend, a socialist law student who is the family chauffeur's son.

This soap opera-farce is leavened by musical interludes. The opening number, featuring Malak in concert with a full orchestra extolling the Egyptian character, is a lively, finger-snapping tune, and later there's an hilarious dream dance number set in a movie-set subway station. Some reviewers have searched hard to find social significance in the film - and there is a bit, but it is no more serious than the social critique in Titanic, which is actually spoofed in one scene.

International tensions are given only oblique notice in throwaway sarcasms about Israel and Kofi Annan. Deliberately artificial effects - cartoonish morphing, the Gidget-like back projection - are used for the sake only of their own outrageous humor. I'm sure that there are cultural references in Silence...We're Rolling that went over my head, but even if Malak's song is about what marks "a true Egyptian," you don't have to be Egyptian to enjoy this movie.

©2002 Don Larsson
CineScene