Seattle Dispatch. 3.

From my decidedly distant perspective, Ain't Scared, the debut feature from French director Audrey Estrougo has echoes of Abdellatif Kechiche's L'Esquive (aka Games of Love and Chance) in its portrait of the Paris projects, or in French lingo, les cities, but has its own sensibility and its own vivid surprises. There is little sense of racial divide or tension as we watch the young men of these ghettoized suburbs filled with minorities, the poor and unemployed, a cultural mix of French-born citizens of African, Arab, white, Jewish, and Asian ancestry, talk and play and flick shit at another (race does come up in the insults, but it is equal opportunity and decidedly non-aggressive).

But halfway through the film, which surveys a day in the life of the neighborhood as their local hero, Jo, prepares to leave to play football for Arsenal in England, the whole thing begins again, this time from the perspective of two of the young women: Julie, the white girl, and Fatima, the angry black girl who moons over Jo. Suddenly race is front and center. "Whites and Blacks shouldn't mix," the black girls (which, by their definition, encompasses both African and Arab) state to the camera in a scene as confrontational as anything in Do the Right Thing.

The poster for Nanette Burstein's documentary American Teen is modeled directly on the promotional photo for The Breakfast Club, which is appropriate. Not just because she picks similarly recognizable social specimens for her year-long study of the American high school students - the Homecoming Queen, the jock, the nerd, etc - but also because she structures the film like condensed season of Dawson's Creek or One Tree Hill. The portraits of these kids often feel honest, sometimes intrusive, and occasionally they come off a little camera-conscious, which may simply be the nature of the beast. It's just that Burstein's editorial choices feel driven to deliver familiar story arcs. For a film that's supposed to get beyond the clichés offered up by the popular media, it winds up mired in the usual conventions and characterizations.

Seattle doesn't get many world premieres, but there are some, and every once in a while they are even interesting. Julia Sweeney's Letting Go of God, a concert/performance film of her one-woman show directed by the artist herself, is a straightforward recording executed with an effective enough functionality designed to preserve the performance and remain true to the modulations of the symphony of words and reflections. To be honest, the cinema is at its best when it's invisible and we can get lost in her amazing, funny, serious and moving monologue about growing up Catholic and accepting the faith without really exploring it until a bout of adult Bible study and spiritual quest through the religions of the world has her questioning what she believes and why. For all the humor (and it's very, very funny), it's all about answering a simple question: "God, who are you?" - and feeling comfortable and secure in what she discovers. The title of the film gives some idea of her destination, but it doesn't even hint at the joyous celebration of mysteries and wonders of life, the universe and everything that she still embraces on her own terms.

Another world premiere, the documentary Creative Nature [site], is a perfectly fine portrait of glass artist William Morris, a protégé of Washington-based glass artist legend Dale Chilhuly and his Pilchuck Studio. Organized around the biggest single exhibition of his work, it delves into his history, his working methods, the "periods" or movements of his work, and his inspirations, which he finds in the world around him. This isn't the kind of production that transcends its subject, but the footage of making his piece in the "hot room," the workshop full of furnaces and tools and teeming with fellow glass artists who serve as assistants while pursuing their own work, reveals a collaborative process in which few words are spoken and the physical nature of glass blowing and manipulation can be seen in the physical interactions of the many hands involved in simply holding and hauling the heavy materials involved in the art.

Garden Party [site], however, is a thoroughly inconsequential example of the intertwined short stories which ostensibly offer a portrait of a city. In this case, it's simply a fashionable take on the idea of strangers in Los Angeles passing through one another's lives. Half the characters are perpetually stoned (the others are somewhat more discreet) and you wonder if the writer was as well. We've got an artist addicted to Internet porn, a real estate agent who secures customer loyalty by including a little weed in her client's packages, a teenager who flees a stepdad making moves on her and making the rent by posing for, yes, Internet porn, and a blank slate of an aspiring singer/songwriter who just drifts through the city, getting by on the kindness of strangers; these are just a few of the characters who never seem to grow out of their single-sentence descriptions. When it's over, you're not sure if you've seen a movie or simply sat through a pitch for a screenplay.

-Sean Axmaker

Also all over Seattle these days: Brendon Judell (indieWIRE), the Siffblog, the Stranger and NP Thompson (House Next Door).

Posted by dwhudson at June 5, 2008 12:57 PM