PIFF Dispatch. 4.

The international flavor of the Portland International Film Festival was modified slightly with its screening of a film about a local hero.

The most unusual thing about Touch Me Someplace I Can Feel, the new documentary-for-television about cartoonist John Callahan, is that I am not in it. Back in the early 1990s, when German television came around to do a documentary about Callahan, the filmmakers captured five inarticulate minutes of me verbally stumbling, as I stood in the lobby of the once-alternative newspaper where we both worked, trying to come up with something insightful about him, minutes that I hope never made the final cut. When 60 Minute came around to shoot a segment on Callahan, one of my old friends was in it because she happened to be his home health aid person at the time. Now, Dutch television comes looking for Callahan (though the movie is listed as American in the PIFF catalog) as part of the Promotional-Industrial Complex: the cartoonist and author has branched out into music, and has a CD coming out. The version of the film I saw had no credits, and seemed to be a near-complete work in progress.

Callahan uses some of the traditional tropes of cartoon art, settings such as desert islands and busy streets, or domestic scenes and "end of the world" sign carriers, as vehicles for his unusually acerbic humor. But like David Lynch and Jack Kerouac, Callahan, whom I only know in passing, is grossly misunderstood by his fans. For one thing, there is the sentimentality about his being a quadriplegic, the result of a drunk driving accident when he was 21 (he's now 55), a sentimentality that Callahan himself doesn't share or promote. And though the film, directed by Simone de Vries, who has made previous Dutch docs on the likes of Rutger Hauer, Kinky Friedman and Belgian cartoonist Kamagurka, elicits a few comments by Callahan against the Bush administration, Callahan remains is a proud conservative who generally eschews government support (believe it or not, many Republicans don't like Bush). Playing up to the camera, Callahan says, "I want to bring something beautiful to people," but that is inconsistent with his cartoons, which are joyously sexist and racist (jibes at Asians and Martin Luther King are shown in the film), and Callahan and his best friend, someone nicknamed K-Man, are shown on Portland's NW 23rd Avenue, a crowded street full of boutiques like a beach resort town, ogling girls ("That's a serious rack," K-Man comments on one blonde). At one point in the film, Callahan is about to embark on an anti-feminist movement rant, but stops himself.

De Vries's film is patterned somewhat along the lines of Terry Zwigoff's Crumb, in its mandate to offer as full a portrait of the man as it can. A subdued Robin Williams is shown commenting on long-term failed efforts to adapt Callahan's autobiography to the screen (when Williams went into rehab, he travelled to Portland). Tom Waits calls and leaves a rendition of one of Callahan's songs on his message machine. There are several long shots of Callahan in odd places, such as a supermarket parking lot or a public restroom, drawing a cartoon or rehearsing a song. Shots of mothers with carriages, skateboarders and joggers seem to be a rebuke against those who enjoy full mobility. A long sequence shows Callahan arriving too early for an event at a local trendy nightclub called Holocene, only to find that he is several unnecessary and health-risking hours early. He later recounts to K-Man the disorganization he found there as "typical of Portland" and describes Holocene as a typical "Portland poser shithole." Callahan also subtly mocks Portland's coffee shop culture, illustrated by the film, which is an example of Callahan literally biting the hand that feeds him, since he is an habitué of such locales (but then, write what you know, they say). The film ends with Callahan making nude sketches of a local SuicideGirl.

In its languorous pace, Touch Me Where I Can Feel lacks the depth and urgency of Crumb. Long takes that simply, dully watch Callahan are interrupted by the briefest of confessional excerpts (Callahan was adopted, and in general has felt continually abandoned throughout his life). But such confessions are unnecessary. As Callahan says, quoting an Italian saying, "He who jokes, confesses."

More taxing, and demanding an international mind set is The Caiman (Il Caimano), Nanni Moretti's state of the union address about Italy under Silvio Berlusconi (the title is a nickname for Berlusconi based on the Spanish word for alligator). The film juggles three threads. Film producer Bruno (Silvio Orlando) is divorcing his ex-movie star wife. Living temporarily in his office, he decides to help a young woman, Teresa (Jasmine Trinca), make a movie about Berlusconi. Meanwhile, documentary and docudrama footage show Berlusconi himself in various guises and guilements.

The Caiman is a look behind the scenes of the Italian moviemaking industry and its political stage show, suggesting that there is little difference. Moretti himself appears in the film as one of three people who play Berlusconi, hinting that the politician is either ubiquitous or that all Italians have a little Berlusconi in them. Despite being the first filmmaker to take on Berlusconi in a feature film, some reviewers have criticized Moretti for dwelling too much on domestic tribulations, but in fact the necessary dissolution of a marriage is parallel to what Moretti sees as the necessary separation of Berlusconi from the body politic. Variety, on the other hand, offered a rave review, and the World Socialist Web Site its own view.

The premise of Jafar Panahi's Offside is simple. Iran's laws forbid women to observe sports events in public stadia. Yet on one particular day, specifically June 8, 2005, the day of the Iran-Bahrain game at Tehran stadium, a set of soccer obsessed teen girls fixate on getting inside. Some get in, but several are taken to a holding pen where they are unable to view the game. The young girls are guarded by equally young guards, the youth about to inherit a nation. As is consistent with Panahi's previous films (The White Balloon, The Circle, Crimson Gold), Offside is casual yet pointed, realistic yet anecdotal. Its plain surface masks deeper implications. If it lacks the irrationalities of Crimson Gold, the film does explore an aspect of Iranian culture hitherto unacknowledged in international cinema, and has the immediacy of being shot at a real game. Additional commentary for this prize-winning film (the Jury Grand Prix award at the Venice Film Festival) can be had at Slant and Planet Sick-Boy. [Earlier: David D'Arcy.]

Mildred Pierce meets Welcome to Sarajevo in writer-director Jasmila Zbanic's Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams, which tells a somber story of a woman and her daughter having parallel, dire romances, set against a background of moral and economic devastation. Esma (Mirjana Karanovic from When Father Was Away on Business) is a single mother who must work two jobs. The living exist to wait and honor the dead, and Esma's dread secret affects her ability to cope with lover and daughter. Despite feeling long for its 91-minute running time, Grbavica won the Golden Bear at last year's Berlin International Film Festival. More from Slant and the Village Voice.

Posted by dwhudson at February 18, 2007 6:04 AM