Day Two at the FFM (Saturday, August 26th)

Three full length and two short films today.

The bathrooms at the Quartier Latin are small. They haven’t learned the lessons (or gotten the real estate) of Paramount, AMC, or Star City. However, the super wide screens are nice, even if sitting closer than half-way to the front is overwhelming.

It was nice having not one, but two venues with free wifi within 3 minutes walking distance from the cinemas. Kudos to Starbucks, but St-Suplice, why do you make people register if the service is free? What a waste of time.

Camarón. Jaime Chávarri. Spain. 117 min. Spanish with English subtitles. José Monge Cruz, known in Spain as Camarón de la Isla, “shrimp from the island”, died in 1992 of lung cancer. His fame as the founding “cantaor” (or singer) of Nuevo Flamenco was such that 100,000 people attended his funeral. He collaborated first with the famous guitar player Paco de Lucía, and later one of Paco’s students, Tomatito. This dramatization of his life is the Flamenco version of Ray. And it’s damned good. Using original recordings of Camarón, his life story unfolds from his childhood in San Fernando (Cadiz), through his rise to fame, the usual problem with drugs (artists are such tortured souls) and his death from lung cancer (maybe the chain smoking from his adolescence?). Those of you that know our film preferences know that musical biographies (dramatized or not), documentaries, and art films are high up on our list. Camarón didn’t disappoint us at all.

Ex Memoria. John Appignanesi. UK. 15 min. In English. A nicely made, touching piece about Eva, an elderly woman with Alzheimer’s, who now lives in a supervised retirement home. The photography had a quality that you don’t even see in full length films, and being shot on film, was still superior to a lot of the shot on video productions that are so popular.

Slippery Slope. Sarah Schenck. US. 79 min. In English. A young NYC film director has her film “Feminism For Dummies” selected for Cannes, but the print is being held hostage at the lab, since her unpaid bill is $50,000. A young actor she used in her film gets her involved in a scheme to make a quick buck, but it turns out to be directing a porn film, the very thing she and her husband are opposed to. It’s a predictable, but cute film. Shot on video. But, it has its moments, principally in how her prudish mother succeeds in letting loose her inhibitions faster than her daughter. Jonathan said the young director is an innocent Carrie to the evil Samantha-like female producer, for those of you familiar with Sex in the City.

Ten Feet Tall. Aaron Wilson. Australia. 13 min. In English. A father and a husband deal with driving back to the country town to bury a woman...a daughter who was also a wife.

Samoan Wedding. Chris Graham. New Zealand. 97 min. In English. Call it “Four Samoan Guys and a Wedding”. All mid-30-something going on 16, they’re so bad with their pranks and drunken behaviour at community weddings, that all are banned from further ones – including a brother’s wedding in a couple weeks. Unless, of course, they can procure steady girlfriends by that time. One has a great girlfriend, but his carousing and alcohol problems keep them apart. Another’s a mamma’s boy, blind to his coworker’s desire. The third is forever trying phone chat lines, and always finding desperate women who lie more than he does, about everything. And the brother of the groom to be, is a lady’s man that prefers white women, but the kind like him – just in it for the sex. A very funny film showing Auckland, New Zealand from the non-white perspective. Hilarious sendups of stereotypes.