Palm Springs Dispatch.

All of the tenants at the Old Abraham Hotel - be they Jewish, Christian or Muslim - seemed disgruntled with the landlord upstairs in several of the films offered and caught at the 19th Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF). If it wasn't the superb central performance of Erkan Can as Muharrem, a devoutly religious man thrown off his moral compass and driven mad by worldly affairs, in Takva: A Man's Fear of God (Turkey's submission for the foreign language Oscar); then it was Jeon Do-yeon in her Cannes-acknowledged tour de force as Shin-ae, a widow riddled with grievous fury at God's presumption of her right to forgive, in South Korea's entry Secret Sunshine.

And if not Jeon Do-yeon, then it was César Troncoso's energized portrayal of Beto in The Pope's Toilet, wherein he stakes more than faith and is shortchanged by the Holy See's visit to his small Uruguayan village. And if not Troncoso, then Assi Dayan as Rabbi Abraham in Israel's My Father My Lord, where faith demands he accept a father's ultimate sacrifice. All of these fine actors and actresses represented crises in faith as voices shouting into the whirlwind. Each of their performances melded intensity to existential doubts and outrage and each honored their respective countries with consummate craft.

After railing against God, there isn't much else to do than to trust in love. But even that's an enterprise fraught with hazard, if not humor, as several of PSIFF 08's rom-coms demonstrated. The ensembles in The Silly Age (Cuba, 2006), City in Heat (Argentina, 2006), Lovesickness (Puerto Rico, 2007), Burn the Bridges (Mexico, 2007) and Caramel (Lebanon, 2007) all dealt with the human need for relationship, a need that transcends both gender and generations, inflecting itself through braided entanglements, chance encounters and tiered narratives. I don't necessarily consider these arthouse films as much as I enjoy them for being mindful and entertaining films. They remind us that what remains essentially resonant about human beings is their requisite interdependence, captured in nuanced ensemble performances, comically accented by all the quirks and foibles that characterize individual follies and obsessions.

Several of the above entries were part of the Awards Buzz program, compiled from the submissions from countries vying for the coveted handful of nominations for the Academy Awards, foreign language category. Being part of the PSIFF 08 lineup is, as indieWIRE's Brandon Judell phrases it, "an astute campaign strategy" since, according to Variety, over 30 Oscar voters call Palm Springs "home."

Among those campaigning for Oscar nominations were Lucia Puenzo's Argentine film XXY about an intersex youth facing choices foisted upon her/him. By even having to qualify gender via a diagonal slash, the film effectively portrays the anger resident in such culturally contrived, if not essentially artificial, dualities. I haven't met an intersex individual yet who hasn't expressed anger at being coerced to make a choice that decimates or violates his/her original psychological and/or biological wholeness. XXY reminded me of the prescience of William Goyen and his compassionate portrait of intersexuality in his 1983 novel ArcadioXXY approaches a difficult subject with reasoned care. Where its surface symbolism falters in depth, its strong performances persevere in compassion. Especially noteworthy is Martin Piroyanski who is brought to an anguished pitch of confusion by his own budding desires and the choices, likewise foisted upon him by his family, his community and his own changing body.

Bulgaria's submission, Ilian Simeonov's Warden of the Dead (Pazachyt na myrtvite), could be, as Variety's Jay Weissberg proposes, "a metaphor for Balkan society." Compellingly atmospheric, at times haunting and lyrical, I often lost my way because too much was going on. But I remain morbidly enchanted by these tales of children intimately associated with the death horizon. For me, they're a specific genre of ghost story (The Curse of the Cat People, The Innocents, Poltergeist, Spirit of the Beehive, The Others, The Orphanage) wherein the luminous innocence of youth attracts a great inevitable sadness from the dark beyond. Vladimir Georgiev plays "the boy" and he's a dead ringer for a pre-teen Mark Wahlberg. He is wise (and responsible) beyond his years and occasionally exhibits supernatural - though shamanic would be a better word - abilities. In other words, he's a psychopomp of sorts. I didn't dislike the film, I floated on its mood, but I wished I could have understood it better or, more accurately, that it had expressed itself more cogently.

I'm not exactly sure why Israel's entry, Beaufort, won Joseph Cedar the Berlinale's Silver Bear for Best Director, unless it was an acknowledgement of his deft and fluid maneuvering within the claustrophobic confines of this infamous hilltop fort; the scene of one of the Israeli government's most misguided acts of arrogance. It's a solid enough film, albeit with a familiar theme (somewhat linked to the railing against God contingent, though here the military brass stand in for the capricious overlords who place the value of human life at the level of cannon fodder). I was distracted the entire film by commanding officer Liraz's (Oshri Cohen) striking beauty. Lashes by Maybelline. I just couldn't believe someone this beautiful would be foolish enough to accept such a military assignment, let alone command such authority, when they're destined to be a movie star. At about the halfway point, I began to realize who was going to be killed off in the next reel through less-than-subtle scriptural alerts that finally succeeded in compassion fatigue. What a pity that, for a little English, The Band's Visit, a film with genuine heart and considerable charm, didn't get its rightful due.

I Just Didn't Do It (Soredomo boku wa yattenai), Japan's submission, is not a very cinematic film. It eschews all the techniques available to embellish its story and, by doing so, actually achieves a thoroughly compelling and streamlined indictment of the closed world of the Japanese legal system where claims of innocence are grounds for increased prosecution. Its economy of focus is rich beyond words.

Speaking of legal systems, Nikita Mikhalkov's 12 (12 Razgnevannyh Muzhchin), a loose remake of Sidney Lumet's 1957 12 Angry Men, was, hands down, my favorite film at PSIFF 08. I'm nearly reluctant to write about it at all until I've seen it at least one more time; it's that dense, that important, that complex. I'm grateful to Ronnie Scheib's glowing Variety review for encouraging me to take a chance. As Lumet's 12 Angry Men is one of my favorite films, I was concerned with all that might go wrong, and (admittedly) kept looking for things to go wrong. When the film expanded out of deliberations to reference external events, I bemoaned the loss of the original's claustrophobia, until I realized that 12 had masterfully expanded that sense of claustrophobia to encompass a country in the grip of wartime atrocities. From its opening nightmare sequence, in which charging soldiers are gunned down (superimposed upon a victory parade where onlookers are cheering), to its grisly closing image that has been incrementally emerging from the shadows throughout the film, 12 is a masterpiece of moviemaking that adds a twist to Lumet's original, lifting it into a whole new debate on the role of the individual's civic responsibility in administering justice. I can hardly wait to see this film again.

Posted by dwhudson at January 15, 2008 6:47 AM