SXSW '10: The Remainders

South by So What, you say? On one hand, cheap beer and thick queso and Barton Springs are soooo last month—but then again, with programming so rich, it takes a couple weeks to catch up with screeners and post-fest screenings. Here are a trio of Austin-based gems from this year's festival that, better late than never, you should watch out for:

The Happy Poet
dir. Paul Gordon

If Slacker defined the shaggy eccentricities of Austin life circa the early '90s, then Gordon's similarly low-key comedy is a delightful, deadpan reappraisal of the town's prototypical charm some two decades later. The writer-director-editor is hilariously dry as the titular bard Bill, a reserved young man who chases an underdog dream of running a healthy, organic food stand. With tons of heart but very little business savvy, Bill sinks what little money he has into his cart, ingredients and menu, ridiculously overwrapping his veggie sandwiches, squandering his overhead by giving away too many free samples (especially to, say, a pretty girl he shyly pursues) and awkwardly making the rest up as life breezes on by. What makes the film so winsome, beyond a lively supporting cast of believable kooks, is Gordon's sincerity, both as a performer and filmmaker. There are no pretentious, overarching themes unless you find them in your own day-to-day existence, the budding romance doesn't feel forced, and the plot turns casually and in long takes, as if we're mostly here to hang out—much like Slacker did—with a gang of flawed but likable Austinites with odd, optimistic worldviews.

Citizen Architect: Samuel Mockbee and the Spirit of Rural Radio
dir. Sam Wainwright Douglas

The Holy Modal Rounders... Bound to Lose co-director Douglas' heavily bearded mug makes a tiny but memorable appearance in The Happy Poet, which might be telling of how personal this hour-long portrait is considering you'd never know, without reading a press kit or interview, that he's the son-in-law of his late subject here. Mississippi-born architect Samuel "Sambo" Mockbee, who died of leukemia in 2001 shortly after winning a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant, applied his innovation and aptitude towards the betterment of the rural poor. Giving up his full-time practice to accept a position at the Auburn University School of Architecture, Mockbee founded the Rural Studio, a program that took students off-campus and into the rustic South to build aesthetically wild and utterly practical homes and community spaces in economically floundering locales—not exactly a moneymaker for a man of his talents. (The foundation of "The Yancy Chapel" was cast from recycled tires and concrete, while his "Butterfly House" channels air flow via its winged roof.) Crisply shot to honor the art of Mockbee's legacy, and told in an unpretentiously straight-forward but captivating manner, Douglas' film is an inspiring ode to creative rebellion and big-hearted pragmatism.

Lovers of Hate
dir. Bryan Poyser

We're not painted a very flattering first impression of Rudy (Chris Doubek, yet another costar in The Happy Poet) as he slams quarters in a self-service car wash to be used as a makeshift shower. Recently dumped after a 12-year marriage, Rudy comes off like one of the man-boys from the Apatow universe—a scruffy, embittered weirdo who still hasn't figured out adult responsibilities as, presumably, a late thirty-something. Badgering his poor, exasperated ex Diana (Heather Kafka) into pretending they're still a couple when his brother Paul (Alex Karpovsky)—a smug, well-to-do author of a Harry Potter-like fantasy franchise—strolls into town for a reading, Rudy comes off as a pathetic, ungrateful sad-sack. But is he so bad, and was he always this way? The behavioral setup of Poyser's slyly comical three-hander is a necessary red herring that reveals itself when Paul finds out about the breakup, then selfishly exploits it by snatching Diana away for a romantic getaway in a secluded, fancy-pants Park City subdivision. Of course, unbeknownst to either of them, Rudy has snuck his way into the four-story mountain lodge (with six bathrooms and an elevator!) that Paul is borrowing, and so begins an in-one-door, out-the-other comedy of errors as our loser anti-hero begins to gain our sympathies, even as he creepily spies on and attempts to thwart the inappropriate love affair, like some villain in a psychological thriller. The film could've worked just as a damn funny tale of sibling rivalry gone awry, but Poyser enhances the naturalism—and raises the karmic stakes—by imbedding the discrete one-upmanship into a bizarre love triangle in which all three players are constantly straddling the line between compassionate and deceitfully bad-mannered. Cleverly structured and cringe-inducingly honest, Lovers of Hate illustrates how fraudulent most rom-coms are, but doesn't lose any laughs in the process.

Posted by ahillis at April 6, 2010 2:23 PM