Latinbeat, 9/10.

A little more than halfway through Four Barefoot Women (screening again tomorrow, Tuesday, at 4:30 pm), a quiet, slow-moving but generally fascinating film about four middle-aged, modern-day Argentines, I found myself wondering if the movie had been directed by a woman or a man. I was heavily leaning toward the former, but no, it turns out the director is Santiago Loza, and I can't help wondering what women think of this attempt (a damn good one, I feel) by a male to explore the thoughts, actions, inactions and general condition of women's lives in a country that has not given its citizens - male or female - much stability over the decades.

Updated.

Loza, who gave us Extraño a few years back, brings this group to life with humor, sadness and pain (once scene in particular should provoke more than a mere "Ouch!"). Religion, life/death, money, sex, employment, unwanted phone calls, mothers and children occupy their minds and bodies and offer the viewer, by extension, plenty to mull over. Odd as these women may seem initially, they grow into surprisingly full-bodied characters.

A primitive movie about primitive people, Russian writer/director Kirill Mikhanovsky's Fish Dreams (Wednesday at 6:15 pm) tracks a young man who makes his living by diving into the sea for whatever fish or crustaceans he can find. We learn a little - very little - about him, the girl he fancies, his coworkers and some of the townspeople of the seaside village where he resides. By "primitive," I don't mean that the film is set in the prehistoric past (this is definitely the present), but rather that our lead characters seem unable to think clearly, let alone communicate. They fish by day and watch soap operas at night, but there is not much connection between the two. (A mother likens her daughter to a character on the soap, but communication doesn't go much farther than this.) In the end, people make such ridiculous decisions that all you can do is shrug.

The filmmaker seems content to observe and observe and observe, spending far too much time watching villagers push boats into the water (and a giant-screen TVs into a house). Mikhanovsky has found an extremely likeable and photogenic lead actor in José Maria Alves, and the other characters are believable, as far as they are allowed to behave. But after nearly an hour and 45 minutes, I would have expected to learn - and maybe even feel - something more about these people and their plight. I'll remember the movie, its characters (to an extent) and certainly the locale, but, as usual, when I see almost anything set in Brazil, I come away thinking about how rotten it is that its people are left in such near-complete and constant disarray. Films like Fish Dreams seem to appear and win awards (this one has won several) simply by virtue of their offering up the third world, slackly, in all its primitive appeal. Fair enough, I suppose. But, what the hell: in its own way, an exploitation movie like Turistas (also set on and near the beaches of Brazil) makes for more intelligent, certainly more rousing - and even politically correct - viewing.

Writer-director Andrés Di Tella calls his documentary Fotographías (tonight at 6:15 pm) a personal essay about his mother, based on a box of photos left to him by his father. With his pre-teen son, he travels to his mom's birthplace in India to retrieve it, and they meet, for the first time, a number of relatives. This sounds like a fascinating journey, but in the rather bizarre hands, eyes and mind of Di Tella, we learn practically nothing more than we could from a curt plot summary.

If the director is suffering from palsy or bad arthritis, I sympathize. Otherwise, couldn't he have held his camera just a bit more firmly? I can't recall another film this headache-inducing from the sheer, non-stop wobbly-ness of its camera-work. Every time fact or other about the mother appears on the verge of coalescing, Di Tella seems to take pleasure in robbing us of the moment. Yes, I realize that the character of one's parent is not easy to ferret out (see 51 Birch Street for further verification). Still, I felt I actually knew his mom better before the movie than after it.

Even after such nifty, upscale, rapid-paced crime capers as Lucky Number Slevin, Nine Queens and its good American remake, Criminal, Bluff (today at 1:45 pm) adds a few twists to the repertoire: a narrator who talks to the camera; characters who are so venal, stupid and nasty that we couldn't care less what happens to them; and a sense of humor that pervades even the most unpleasant moments. This is certainly the most "mainstream" movie I've encountered from Colombia (granted I have not seen that many), so I would not be surprised to find it in American art-houses sooner than later. Everything about the film - from its slick photography and editing, to its clever writing and swift direction - is pretty near the top of the genre. The only caveat here is that this genre, even at its best, remains a little less than first-rate. One of Bluff's saving graces, however, is that, rather than providing us with twist upon twist and double-cross after double-cross, the plot instead relies more on chance and character for its resolution. Which, in the end, makes it more interesting, even surprising, than certain others of its ilk.

Immigration, the theme of Latinbeat's opening film, La Misma Luna, gets another going-over via the Tania Cypriano's Brazilian/US documentary My Grandmother Has a Video Camera (tomorrow at 6:30 pm). Ms Cypriano tracks her grandmother, as well as her entire extended family, as they move, little by little from Brazil to the US - some legally, some (it appears) maybe not. But then the American Dream darkens, and they go home, only to return and then depart, return and depart. Along the way, the filmmaker toggles between the workplace and leisure - finding the arrangement bizarre for one major family member, who seems to have worked her entire life to earn money that she uses to return to Brazil for vacations. Cypriano must also come to terms with her own naturalization proceedings, which she finds troubling. This is not exactly the kind of immigrant story Americans are used to seeing, and it broadens our horizons considerably, I think.

Also on this program are two shorts from Central America: Temporal from Costa Rica, the screener for which claimed to have English subtitles but did not, and Pinta the Bird from El Salvador. Both narratives make use of their respective country's beautiful and colorful location. At 22 minutes, Temporal is undoubtedly the more engaging of the two; in terms of story and style, Pinta the Bird, barely ten minutes in length, is simplicity incarnate.

Update:

Another quick note on the Latinbeat series from James van Maanen.

Viewers of a certain age might be forgiven for thinking first of Melina Mercouri and Jules Dassin when they hear the title Never on Sunday (Morirse en Domingo), to be shown tomrrow at 2 pm and on Wednesday at 8:45 pm. A better - and more correct - translation for this very black comedy from Mexico might be "Don't Die on Sunday." The film begins with the last breaths of an expiring uncle to some sad, slow musical strains and then, on a dime, turns ice-cold funny. Had the film ended about half an hour sooner and kept its temperature at freezing, it might have been a classic. But the introduction and handling of a maybe-love story attenuates the story and softens its blows.

Still, there are not many comedies this dark that follow the trail of a corpse with such redolent style (and smell), all the while exposing Mexican corruption from the petty to the maximal. Writer Antonio Armonia and director Daniel Gruener (Sobrenatural) have concocted a ruthless and funny tale of users doing what they do best that should delight fans of bleak humor. The cast assembled is crackerjack, too - alternately amusing us and then creeping us out.

Earlier: Michael Guillén spoke with Gruener in January.

Posted by dwhudson at September 10, 2007 4:46 AM