PIFF Dispatch. 8.

With two of the three representatives of a hopefully resurgent Mexican Cinema making a fine showing at this year's Oscars, the Portland International Film Festival offered local film patrons a broader appreciation of Spanish-language cinema with works less likely to acquire similar prestige. Grouse as one may about the varied deficiencies of Babel, Pan's Labyrinth and Children of Men, they show an unusual and powerful command of the medium. The Spanish films offered by PIFF weren't necessarily bad, but they evinced a certain reliance on conventionality (I'm trying to avoid the word "laziness") or a lack of imagination about how to wield the tools of the trade.

Obaba is an example of magical realism set in the Basque country as a young woman, Lourdes (Bárbara Lennie), attempts to make a film, as a school project, about a small school in the village of the title. This film, by Montxo Armendariz (Secrets of the Heart), recounts the effect on the student of the assignment and the town, where bright green lizards seem to have the run of the place. This is a long, slow, confusing film that lacks crispness, urgency and humor. It features three or four lengthy flashbacks and an unnecessary romance in the film's "now," and ends ambiguously. Variety's Jonathan Holland and Michael Guillén at Twitch were much more enthusiastic.

The Method (also known as El Método and El Método Grönholm) imposes an interesting constraint on itself, like Hitchcock's Lifeboat. But there is a logical reason for its confinement: it is based on a play. Against a backdrop of anti-globalization riots in the street, seven applicants for a mid-level management job in a faceless corporation vie with each other through a series of increasingly bizarre tests. Confined to the testing room, with only the occasional excursion out (to the bathroom), the film sticks to the faces and tasks of the applicants, one of whom may be a spy from the corporation itself.

Marcelo Piñeyro's film has a glossy sheen, excellent art direction and a superb use of the widescreen image (by Alfredo F Mayo) but is a little long, ultimately ambiguous, and doesn't have the courage of its satirical convictions. And if I'm hearing the soundtrack right, it borrows the tune "Patricia" from La Dolce Vita to no immediately apparent purpose. A few alternative views: Robert Koehler in Variety and Mathew Englander.

Also difficult to follow, with its unannounced flashbacks featuring different actors playing earlier editions of the main cast, is Los Aires Dificiles (Rough Winds), Gerardo Herrero's adaptation of a popular novel by Almudena Grandes. I wasn't sure what was really going on most of the time, but what appeared to be happening was that one man was on vacation at the beach, where he has an affair with his maid and then reencounters his brother, who married the main guy's love of his life. I think. The somnambulism of the lead actor wasn't much of a help. Instead, the robust sexuality of the bulk of the cast served as a pleasing distraction from the main line of the plot, which at one point draws upon that old standby of soap operas, the unintentional tumble down a staircase. The rest is all long, long takes of people walking along the ocean. There is apparently only one review of the film on the entire web, from Jonathan Holland in Variety.

Very UnSpanish, if that is permissible to say, is The Secret Life of Words (Strand Releasing's page), Isabel Coixet's follow-up to her earlier My Life Without Me, also starring Sarah Polley; this one plays more like a Lars von Trier or a Dennis Potter film than Victor Erice.

The premise is simple. Hanna is a partially deaf woman working in a factory. For her own good, the boss sends her on vacation. Sitting in a restaurant she overhears someone seeking a nurse on his cell phone and volunteers her services; this leads her to an oil rig in the north Atlantic. There she cares for Josef (Tim Robbins), who's suffered third degree burns during a rescue attempt. He is also temporarily blinded, so he yearns to know more about the withdrawn, stern and sorrowful-sounding woman taking care of him. The film is something of a mystery, as we and Josef are curious about Hanna's various quirks and her background.

Words is a polished and effective film, but perhaps has less story than its running time would demand. It does reunite Polley with Julie Christie, the duo having collaborated on Away From Her, screened earlier at PIFF. Alternative views come from Filmbrain, Ella Taylor in the Village Voice and Lael Loewenstein in the Los Angeles Times.

Posted by dwhudson at February 28, 2007 5:49 AM