SFIFF Dispatch. 3.

I've been trying to pick and choose among the many fine offerings at the SFIFF this year, narrowing it down to films that haven't already had a lot of play elsewhere, at least in the States, and/or that might otherwise be overlooked or that don't already have a major distributor. (Which didn't stop me from seeing The Wackness [site]; review for that one coming a bit later.) While these two films - one Norwegian, the other Californian - couldn't be more different in most ways, they both embrace the cynical sides of their protagonists, who ultimately, nonetheless, find some semblance of joy.

The Art of Negative Thinking

"If we focus on our opportunities, we can become giants."
"Small changes lead to big changes."

These are the mantras uttered by a group of disabled adults in group therapy in Bard Breien's dark comedy that goes to some unexpected places on its way through a rather simple story. Fridtjov Såheim (Hawaii, Oslo) plays a man wheelchair-bound after a car accident, moping around the house he shares with his beleaguered girlfriend Marta (the lovely Marian Ottesen), who doesn't know what to do with him. With his shaggy long hair, his weapons fixation and obsession with The Deer Hunter it's almost as if he's tricked himself into thinking he's a recovering Vietnam vet. The positive-thinking disabled group come visit him at Marta's request, and find converting him to their "cause" proves rather difficult. In fact, over the course of one evening, he'll convert them to his cause in some ways. And if this is beginning to sound potentially maudlin, Breien generally keeps things properly acerbic, while the excellent ensemble cast never veers into caricature. 

With its decidedly anti-PC, darkly comic sensibility, the film already has some critics referencing Lars Von Trier, but it's a bit sweeter than, say, The Idiots. Breien treats his characters as flawed people who have understandable levels of anger and, in the end, compassion for each other. It could easily cross a line into mocking the characters, but just as they must find humor in their own less than ideal situations and get past them, so too does the filmmaker, and so too do we.

The film is also often riotously funny, even in smaller moments (the "shit bag" passed around at meetings), in that deadpan Nordic way, and in the broader slapsticky moments, too. Even if there's a feeling of certain inevitability, a connect-the-dots-ness, to where all this is leading - and there are a few surprises, too - it's in the going, the minutiae, and in the way the characters react to each other where the film won me over. With essentially one location, The Art of Negative Thinking could make for a fine play.

The script pokes fun at not only the "power of positive thinking" but also at self-help proselytizing; the film is less about positive or negative thinking and more about trying to feel. This is also probably not a film they'll show at future International Society of Clinical Psychology conventions; the arrogant group counselor means well but doesn't allow for improvisation or adaptation to the client's feelings. It's all in their minds.

Piss off, Norman Vincent Peale!

Aside: Two of the actors playing the disabled, Henrik Mestad (Gard) and Marian Ottesen (Marte), were both in the new comedy Gone With the Woman, which was Norway's entry for this year's Foreign Language Oscar.

Medicine for Melancholy

I was wary of Barry Jenkins's film even before I even saw it. That's not his fault: I've simply gotten to the point, sadly, where I dread low-budget/indie films shot in my hometown, San Francisco, having sat through too many recently that made me want to claw my eyes out - and then having to nod and smile at the makers afterwards when the lights come on. And in the press notes for this film, "The City of San Francisco" is listed as one of three main characters, which made me worry even further. What's more, the very title is a bit tacked on - Jenkins confessed in an interview that he saw a character in Chloe in the Afternoon reading Ray Bradbury's book and thought it made a fitting title. Nothing inherently wrong with that; only that I was disappointed there wasn't more to the reference in the film.

Despite my fears, Medicine for Melancholy, flawed though it may be, is a low-key revelation.

In an interview the director revealed he was influenced by Claire Denis's Friday Night and appropriately also credits Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise/Before Sunset and, like those films, Medicine is set around a brief encounter, over the course of a day and night and into day again, between two strangers who meet, spend time with each other, slowly realize that this is only a fleeting relationship, and move on. Here it is Micah (the quite likable and funny, if a bit low-energy Wyatt Cenac, who has been involved in TV's King of the Hill), an "urban black male" with hipster-ish tendencies, who worries about the struggles of minorities in a gentrifying San Francisco. His counterpart is the more refined Jo (Tracey Heggins), who doesn't say much at all at first, perhaps realizing this was all a big mistake given that she has a boyfriend, but who warms up to Micah over time. Their connection is real and their disconnect just as real and bittersweet.

Micah is soft-spoken and polite - he says "appreciate it" a lot - until his humor and oddnesses surface, a pleasant surprise to Jo and to us. When Jo says she wants to go SFMOMA, he looks at her incredulously and responds with a riddle, "What do two black folks not do on a Sunday afternoon? Go to a museum," and then adds, "It's funny because it's not funny."

The film is nicely shot in a faded tint that seems to exist appropriately somewhere between black and white and color. As promising as the film is as a feature debut for Jenkins, where it goes a bit awry is in the way it tries to force Micah's political viewpoint in ways that feel tacked on rather than coming about naturally. His concerns are presumably the director's (and for the most part mine): renters' rights and gentrification and the decrease in numbers of African Americans in San Francisco - important topics, to be sure, but here it feels like we're taking a break from the flow for a lecture. In fact, the film literally takes a break with a lecture: in one scene, after a lovely moment where Jo and Micah go shopping for dinner fixings (at one of my favorite haunts, Rainbow Grocery), they then stop to eavesdrop on what appears to be a real tenants union meeting. Look, I'm all for renters' rights, but I wasn't prepared for a meeting. (See Boom: The Sound of Eviction for one documentary on the struggle/subject.) Another scene has Micah lecturing Jo about black flight, but at least Jenkins has the good sense to have a counterpoint character in Jo, who begins to tire of Micah's rants at just about the same time that we do. 

Fortunately, it's that sense of humor Medicine for Melancholy generally has about itself, helped immeasurably by Cenac's keeping-it-real performance, that won me over. Even if it makes some missteps along the way, this is certainly a debut that makes me look forward to Jenkins's next offering. Appreciate it.

Posted by dwhudson at May 1, 2008 3:55 AM